Embattled H-1B training funds likely to disappear

by Terry Costlow

Since it was first authorized by Congress in 1998, the H-1B Technical Skills Training Grant Program (www.doleta.gov/h-1b) has earned mixed reviews.

The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration and funded by fees — originally $500, raised to $1,000 in 2000 and increased to $1,500 late last year — paid by employers who intend to hire foreign professionals to work temporarily in the United States. Its goal is to help employed and unemployed workers develop technical skills deemed to be in short supply in the United States and better enable U.S. employers to grow and prosper in an increasingly competitive global economy. Grantees include local or regional partnerships consisting of businesses or business-related trade associations, public and private educational institutions and training providers, community-based organizations and labor unions. To date, the Department has awarded more than 100 grants, totaling more than $243 million. Until the high-tech sector crashed in 2001, most of the training provided targeted engineering, information technology and telecommunications occupations. Since then, the emphasis has shifted to skills training for jobs in accounting, education and health care fields.

Whether the program is meeting its primary objective — to help reduce the growing dependence of U.S. employers on foreign sources of supply for skilled professionals, including engineers and scientists — continues to be the subject of widespread debate inside and outside government.

Some agency officials have been critical

The White House Office of Management and Budget, for example, has characterized the H-1B skills training program as ineffective and threatened to use H-1B fee revenues for other purposes. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, on the other hand, has praised H-1B jobs training partnerships as “a long-term solution to domestic skills shortages in high technology occupations.”

“While the H-1B grants may have marginally increased the technical skills of some American workers, they have not significantly reduced U.S. employers' reliance on foreign workers to fill high-skill jobs. Nor have they succeeded in building the institutional capacity needed to train American workers in ways that will be required if our businesses are to remain competitive,” another Labor Department spokesperson said.

The program is working well for other stakeholders

Though the H-1B Technical Skills Training program has been roundly criticized by some observers, grantee organizations contend that the money is being well spent.

“It’s important to keep American workers at a high skill level,” said Edward Lewis, a program manager at Lockheed Martin’s Maritime Systems and Sensors group in Manassas, Va. Last year, Lockheed was awarded a $3 million grant that it matched with company funds and training as well as teaching materials developed by Cyber-Learning of Alexandria, Va. Cyber-Learning and Lockheed have already developed three new courses for the project, which runs through early 2007. In ten short months, Lockheed has trained 500 people, including systems architects and engineers and software designers.

Lewis said Lockheed is compiling statistics to measure the project’s success, but noted that “a high percentage of our graduates” have received raises and “a substantial number” have earned promotions. “So far, we’ve been extremely pleased with the program,” he said.

H-1B training benefits manufacturers as well as service industries

“As more and more American companies adopt lean manufacturing methods, they’re going to need more and more people who have the knowledge and skills needed to make them work,” said Mary Chalkiopoulos, program director at the Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership (OMEP) in Beaverton. OMEP is using an H-1B grant to offer lean manufacturing skills training courses that typically run from one day to one week.

Chalkiopoulos reports that one OMEP trainee has already taken a new job, five have earned promotions and six others have received wage increases. “That’s a pretty good return for trainees who spend just a few days in class,” she said.

IEEE-USA’s perspectives

In testimony presented to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 2004 IEEE-USA President John Steadman cited recent reports from the Government Accountability Office (GAO-02-881) and the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration (Education and Training for the Information Technology Workforce) to support IEEE-USA’s contention that very few H-1B technical skills training grantees are preparing U.S. workers for the kinds of professional level jobs for which U.S. employers typically recruit foreign nationals on H-1B visas. IEEE-USA believes that high-tech professionals need much more individualized instructional opportunities than are generally available in traditional Workforce Investment Board administered programs.

Terry Costlow has been writing about engineering issues for more than 20 years. He can be reached at todaysengineer@ieee.org.