This paper was presented to a meeting of the Wellington Exchange, an international group of higher education officials, in December 2008. One of the topics of the meeting was around the issue of possible skills shortages emerging as a result of demographic trends, with the ageing of the population of developed countries. The paper argues that this…

The job market should be considered as interaction between supply and demand, and not from the perspective of new and emerging occupations. Three recent major post-World War II changes in the human resources posture have tended to create labor surpluses: shift from rural South to urban North, increased number of working women, and the postwar baby…

Recent immigration legislation has potential impacts on migrant education and Mexican American education. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was passed after nine years of intense debate. The heart of so-called immigration reform is employer sanctions, which seek to restrict migration to the United States by prohibiting employers from…

The stereotype of rural Hispanic Americans often connotes social problems such as poverty, illegal immigration, and migrant workers. In reality, rural Hispanics are part of a larger demographic trend changing the balance of power and socioeconomic relations among ethnic groups. Part 1 of this paper reviews demographic information.…

Caribbean migration to the United States has largely resulted from capital investment in the region. Such investment attracted labor to areas targeted for high economic development, and when employment opportunities in those areas dwindled, the migrants headed toward the United States, where industries welcomed these sources of cheap labor. While…

After asserting that public institutions should not provide training for nonexistent jobs, this paper reviews problems associated with the accurate prediction of future manpower needs. The paper reviews the processes currently used to project labor force needs and notes the difficulty of accurately forecasting labor market "surprises,"…

Reports the results of a literature review and a survey of catalogers which were conducted to study the problem of the decline in quantity and quality of applications for entry-level cataloging jobs. Factors studied included: competition between types of library professionals, automation, library education, the women's movement, and library…

Congressional concerns on health legislation and on priorities for medical education are described. AIDS, health insurance, and training programs are discussed. (MLW)

Economic demand analysis is used to examine optometric personnel supply and demand and the potential for a glut or undersupply of eye care services in the near future. (MSE)

Medicine needs a revised conceptual framework: biologic concepts need to be joined with concepts stemming from social, economic, governmental, and cultural phenomena. Health should be understood in sociocultural and behavioral as well as biological terms. (MLW)

Further work is needed in identifying strategies to improve rural health services that are most appropriate and cost effective in regions with differing circumstances and needs. Substantial reform of payment systems favoring rural and primary care is essential to the effectiveness of educational reform. (Author/MSE)

Four major factors responsible for trends in applicants to dental school are identified: cost, competition, demographics, and the practicing dentist. The initiation of the Pew National Dental Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine is described. (MLW)

The current state of dental labor research, dimensions of interest, problems of policy analysis, and the importance of these issues for dentistry are discussed, and a conceptual model for such research is presented. Immediate attention to the research is encouraged because of need and greater opportunities than ever for collaboration. (MSE)

In the last decade, unprecedented rates of job growth and improvements in adult education were accompanied by increased numbers of children living below the poverty line and a decline in real income for most families. There are several possible explanations: (1) a kind of job growth that produces disincentives for a significant number of people to…

Although times seemed ripe for far-reaching initiatives to safeguard the quality of engineering education, current political noise about the issue threatens to drown out the engineering community's message. However, the engineering community's theme should be that economic growth in a modern economy, that industrial policy, is based first and…