$65 million for starting up Workforce Pell, how to market apprenticeship, and $7.5 billion in grants listings.
Plus, DOL publishes a useful new AI framework and a new-old workforce bill in the Senate.
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Behind today’s paywall.
DOL puts the dollars into Workforce Pell and community colleges—and what to know about it.
What’s really needed to market apprenticeship.
A middle-of-the-road Senate bill on WIOA presented in the stalest way possible.
Toplines.
News you should know about money and things getting people to work.
DOL actually defines ‘AI literacy.’ That could be a big deal for workforce funding.
Political and business leaders have talked a lot about “AI literacy” as where we need to get workers and young people in the United States. You may have read in this space that I’m not a fan. One of the reasons why: it’s not clear what it means beyond “Write better prompts.”
That’s why it was helpful last week that the Department of Labor published guidance describing what the heck “AI literacy” actually is—and it is about a bit more than writing good prompts. The version of the guidance I would strongly recommend getting to know is the visual version of it, which you can access here.
Like a lot of government documents, this is a little too complicated for its own good, and like too many AI documents, the full guidance is a bit too philosophical and aspirational at times. The guidance describes five “foundational” pieces of AI literacy and six principles for building it. But in doing so, it describes hands-on training and indicates that AI literacy may need more on the human side than showing someone ChatGPT for a few minutes. It notes the importance of reasoning skills, access to broadband (a big barrier for young people in some of the data I have seen), and the importance of integrating AI into existing jobs, which is where many of the real-life “AI jobs” have been.
It also builds a useful “target,” which is key for effective investment of workforce funding. I may not be a fan of AI literacy (I prefer focusing on integration), but if a funder wanted a useful and well put-together guide to level set on the types of activities they want to fund, the visual version of this guidance creates a useful “target” for that cash. That’s been sorely needed, and given the challenges DOL has had in effectively building grants to impact AI, it would be great to see DOL use this guidance to try to court better projects in the future.
This week’s grant listings number: $7.5 billion.
More than two dozen grants today, with a big jump in the number this week thanks to a couple of Department of Labor funding opportunities you might have heard about.