Enhance Quality of Life

Improve Employment, Education & Investment Opportunities
:Foster Sustainable Tourism
:Economic Diversification & Capital Investment
:Expanding Agriculture
:Leveraging Our Public Schools & Higher Education System
:Improving Our K-12 Public Education & Facilities
:Private-public-labor partnerships for education & workforce improvements to match local workforce present & future needs

Upgrade Infrastructure and Review Our Master Planning Process

EMC Recommendations

Summary of Recommendations

2005 Final Report

Education and Workforce Development are critical functions for building a prosperous economy and improving the standard of living.  In FY 2004, $2.5 billion of state and federal resources were spent on education and workforce development in Hawaii.  The Workforce Development Subcommittees will seek solutions that address the following workforce development challenges:

• Short-term worker shortage.  Growth in some sectors of the economy has helped drive unemployment below 3% and contributed to a shortage of workers.  Worker shortages are prevalent in specific areas such as teachers, health care, law enforcement, and construction, but are also being felt across the sectors, ranging from agriculture to technology.  There are not enough highly trained professional workers vs. researchers. There is a lack of Bachelors- and Masters-trained high tech workers. Neighbor islands lack the resources to provide professional training for nurses, teachers, and technology engineers, and pharmacists. Neighbor Island residents often need to move away from home and community to pursue training.

• Demographic factors will cause a long-term labor shortage that could impact negatively on economic growth and our standard of living.  Aging workers are retiring at a faster rate than young workers are entering the labor force.  Hawaii’s economy is expected to create 22,000 new jobs per year through 2012, but only about 12,000 youth graduate from Hawaii high schools each year.  The imbalance may worsen after 2012 as the baby-boom generation retires in larger and larger numbers.

• Insufficient number of living wage jobs.  An estimated 30% of jobs in Hawaii pay a living wage (approximately $49,500 per year statewide for a family of 4).  Recent economic growth has been largely led by the tourism sector, which provides relatively fewer full time, higher-skilled positions paying a living wage.

• Too many current workforce entrants are under-prepared for the world of work.  This ranges from deficiencies in basic skills such as reading, writing and math, to knowledge of career options, appropriate workplace behaviors, how to work as a member of a productive team, and substance abuse issues.  In particular, there are too few high-school internships, mentoring opportunities and other programs that promote project-based and job skill learning.  Hawaii’s high school graduation rate is high compared to other states, but relatively few graduates continue on to post-secondary degree and certificate programs after school.  Moreover, those who have been out of school for some time find many barriers to reentering post-secondary training.  These problems impede the development of a highly skilled and adaptable workforce that can support diversification.  On the training side, off-island consultants, researchers and companies are taking some high skilled assignments on the neighbor islands instead of local island residents due to the absence of local training resources for those job skills.

• Hawai‘i’s postsecondary education institutions, public and private, are struggling to meet the state’s workforce needs.  Postsecondary institutions are not providing sufficient degree-granting, retraining, and professional programs to address shortages in such areas as teachers, health care workers, engineers, scientists, and high-technology professionals. At a time when small businesses provide most of the new jobs in Hawaii, there are not enough entrepreneurial education opportunities to train people to start up and sustain their own businesses.

• Our education and workforce systems suffer from gaps in communication, coordination and flexibility.  Hawaii has worked toward developing a comprehensive strategy for workforce development, but the multitude of programs, funding sources and goals in workforce development creates a fragmented system that may not adequately meet workforce needs.  The most significant variances are created by: 1) Different standards, incomplete articulation and confusion over missions/roles among the major post-secondary programs -- UH four-year programs, Community Colleges, private college programs and DOE adult education; 2) Federal training programs and funds that are not very flexible and tend to establish independent bureaucracies; 3) A general lack of workforce system communication that does not encourage staff, offices and agencies to communicate about existing efforts or understand individual roles in the larger system; 4) Resource allocation does not enable cost-effective training.  Neighbor Islands lack resources to provide professional training for certain industries, including nurses, pharmacists, teachers, and technological/engineering workers; and 5) Underutilized geographic advantages.  Training programs need to be strengthened in advantageous geographic locations, allowing business and industry to develop internship programs and workers to receive training and subsequent employment (e.g., astronomy, optics/engineers, ecology/conservation biology, pharmacy, cultural nursing, and agriculture on Big Island; high tech and super computer programming on Maui).

• University of Hawaii mission.  The missions and roles of the UH system (including UH-Manoa, UH-Hilo, UH-West Oahu and our two-year community colleges) are not well understood by much of the public and the business community, nor are the roles played by private colleges in workforce development.  Perhaps UH’s overall mission should be reviewed in light of the state’s current workforce needs.   For example: what is the proper balance of emphasis on the Manoa campus between research and workforce training?  Both of these aspects of academic life have the potential to contribute to economic development.  It is a strategic decision with potentially significant impact on both the University and entire economy of our state. 

• Business involvement in education varies among communities and school districts.  While there are numerous examples of direct and indirect support from business in education, there is no definitive assessment of the business contribution.   Business has a considerable stake in an effective education and workforce development system that can surmount labor shortages, deliver work-ready employees and provide upgrades and training for current workers.  The business environment also provides the ideal laboratory for both teachers and students to learn from real world experiences.  Yet business participation is uneven and generally viewed as an untapped resource.  For example, many businesses do not utilize the county one-stop job centers and their services, and the number of businesses providing internships, mentorships or serving as project-based learning partners is small.  Business and teachers do not speak the same language nor do they have enough ways in which they can interact.