Better On-Job Training Vital, MIT Study Says : Calls It Key to Matching Japanese in Productivity

Better on-the-job training, even more than better schools, is the key to helping U.S. workers catch up to the Japanese and others in productivity, concluded an MIT report released Tuesday.

“Young Americans receive most of their job skills in institutions of formal learning, and what they pick up on the job is usually of a limited nature, gathered from watching a colleague,” said the report, “Made in America.”

Taking only small or partial steps to improve the nation’s competitiveness will doom the United States to steady slippage in the standard of living, according to the two-year study by scientists, engineers and economists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Japanese and West German corporations invest far more than most U.S. firms in training and retraining workers over a lifetime. The payoff, said the study, is a work force prepared and flexible enough to adapt to changing styles and technologies.

Started From Scratch

U.S. companies that are doing well today often are ones that have started from scratch or come through crises, the authors said.

They cited Xerox Corp., which fought back after losing most of the world copier market in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Ford Motor Co., which has rebounded to become the nation’s most profitable auto maker after losing $3.3 billion from 1980 through 1982.

“The management trick is, can you change before you have a crisis?” said Lester Thurow, dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. It can be done, he said.

International Business Machines Corp., Digital Equipment Corp. and Chaparral Industries Inc. do provide effective training, the report said. But many small and medium-sized companies feel they can’t afford to establish extensive training programs. Or they are concerned that if they do, they’d lose their investment when workers transfer to other companies.

Changing this “would require a kind of national political leadership that has not yet appeared,” the report said.

Neglect of Human Resources

The study was produced by a 16-member MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity.

The 344-page report’s principal authors were Michael L. Dertouzos, professor of engineering and computer science, Richard K. Lester, associate professor of nuclear engineering, and Robert M. Solow, professor of economics and Nobel laureate in economics.

Neglect of human resources may be the United States’ biggest failing, Dertouzos said at a news conference on the report.

Unless something is done, he said, “The nation will become progressively more impoverished in relative terms.”

While critical of U.S. public schools and vocational schools for turning out children ill-equipped in math, science and other disciplines, the report said school reform is only a first step toward a more productive work force.

On the Job

“Even if American schools were to be improved, there are reasons to believe that learning work skills on the job might be preferable to learning them in schools,” the report argued.

Skills developed on the job tend to be broader, more flexible and more relevant to the future needs of the corporation. Such skills are general enough so that they can be useful even if the worker switches jobs.

West Germany, for example, offers young workers apprenticeships in 400 occupations. The apprentice, usually 16 years old, spends an average of three years working in a firm under a supervisor. The training curriculum is negotiated with government, employers’ associations and trade unions.

In Japan, workers rotate between research, manufacturing, sales and other areas. They spend several days a year in corporate training centers and are also encouraged to take correspondence courses.

The report disputed the notion that U.S. workers are being outdone by foreign competitors because of a decline in the work ethic.