National Skills Summit

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National Skills Summit
Innovative Initiatives: CONSORTIA: The Large Scale Advantage

Chapter 7: Introduction
CONSORTIA: The Large Scale Advantage

Consortia, usually comprised of a broad group of organizations including educational institutions, government, businesses, and community-based organizations, can often meet the needs of an industry or community more effectively than individual partnerships. By bringing different stakeholders together, a consortium can most efficiently mobilize the resources and talent necessary to address a widespread, multi-faceted skills shortage. A consortium can offer the following advantages:

Pooling Resources Helps Small Businesses
Small business participants in the National Skills Summit repeatedly commented on the need to provide training for their employees. Often, however, they have neither the staff nor the funds to assess their needs and adopt innovative practices that will help them meet their employment goals. A consortium can enable them to do so.
Universal Curriculum Standards
A consortium of businesses can structure job-training curriculum by articulating and agreeing on skills commonly needed in the industry. The element of commonality effectively creates industry-wide standards for instruction, which benefit the industry as a whole.
Certification For An Entire Industry
Consortia make it possible to establish of industry-wide performance standards and credentials. Workers with such credentials know with certainty that their skills are portable from firm to firm, while employers can be sure that credentialed employees possess a known minimum quantity of skills.
Breaking Down Barriers
National Skills Summit participants agreed that three of the largest barriers to employment - lack of childcare, lack of transportation, and inadequate communication and marketing of available community services - can best be addressed by consortia. By working with their industry partners, employers can leverage resources to build a stable workforce.

The following practices demonstrate how consortia can use their collective resources to address the skills shortage in their respective industries and communities.