MIT Sloan Management Review Article on The Overlooked Partners That Can Build Your Talent Pipeline

America has a skill problem. It’s not the result of inadequate educational systems letting down younger workers or a lack of aptitude among older workers, as some claim. The problem is the widespread failure of American companies to share responsibility for skill development. Many employers are simply unwilling — or unable — to invest sufficient resources, time, and energy into work-based learning and the creation of skill-rewarding career pathways that extend economic opportunity to workers on the lowest rungs of the labor market ladder.

About the Author

Nichola J. Lowe (@lowe_nichola) is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and interim director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Putting Skill to Work: How to Create Good Jobs in Uncertain Times (MIT Press, 2021), from which this article was adapted.

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