With workplace training, Japan’s Kosen colleges bridge ‘skills gap’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/with-workplace-training-japans-kosen-colleges-bridge-skills-gap/2011/10/03/gIQAF0gmjL_story.html

Every year, about 1 percent of Japanese 15-year-olds turn away from high school. Then they turn into full-time nerds-in-training, enrolling in colleges where they make robots and write software, test diodes and study English, dirty their hands on factory floors and wait for job offers to come flooding in.

Flood in they do, even though Japan’s economy is stagnant and its population is shrinking. Graduates of the standard five-year course at Japan’s 57 national colleges of technology, collectively known as Kosen, can each expect about 20 job offers, school officials say. Students who stay on for an extra two years of advanced study receive 30 offers.

The skills gap that troubles Japan is tormenting the United States. Since 2000, the percentage of U.S. young adults aged 20-24 with jobs has fallen from 74 to 62 percent, a level not seen since the 1930s, according to a 2011 study by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. It concluded that the “college-for-all” system that emerged in the United States after World War II is failing the majority of American youth.

By the time they reach their mid-20s, only about 40 percent of Americans earn an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, census data show.