Computerworld - Arthur M. Langer is chairman and founder of Workforce Opportunity Services, a nonprofit that uses an outsourcing model to train economically disadvantaged youth and match them with hard-to-fill IT positions. Langer's "skills first" approach stresses getting vocational training and a job upfront, and then gradually fulfilling general education requirements part time to finish a degree in five to six years -- leaving students with no debt. And since many families today can't afford the cost of college tuition, Langer's model is one that could have much broader appeal.
What is Workforce Opportunity Services' mission? It started as a research project about 11 years ago with a group from Harlem, an underserved population. Colleges can't handle nontraditional, underserved populations, and corporations also have difficulty assimilating that type of talent.
Training is not the challenge. These kids need to work because they don't have any money for school. They end up working 35 hours per week, and before long they can't do it. They drop out. Meanwhile, many companies can't find talent because no one wants to go into that discipline or they can't get people at competitive rates.
So we took underserved young people who were smart and put together a program where they could work for competitive wages while going to school. As they progress through the program, they move from working part time to full time. We became an outsourcing company, but we are a [nonprofit] charity.
Arthur M. Langer
A little-known fact about you: People see me as an academic, but I spent 11 years at Coopers & Lybrand. Also, I graduated from the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York.
What's your favorite vice? Chimay, an ale that's made in Chimay, Belgium, by Trappist monks.
What would you be doing if you weren't in this career? I've always wanted to own a bookstore.
Who's your role model? Winston Churchill.
What's your favorite book? The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
What's your greatest ambition? To help many people who came from where I came from.
How does the business model work? It is an on-demand model for talent. We find the business client first, and they tell us what they need. We ask what skill sets they are seeking, such as Lotus Notes, mainframe Cobol or quality assurance. Then we design a one-year curriculum to train students -- not just vocational training, but a curriculum that teaches them how to write and communicate and be successful in the business world. We agree on the content, but it is our responsibility to convert that into an acceptable academic program for a major university.
We then select an educational partner in the area, a flagship institution like Columbia, Penn State and others, and then we find the talent that matches the need best. We allow the client to participate in the selection, and we deliver the talent in under 20 weeks, after an initial six-week selection process and then 13 weeks of the first term. The students work for WOS as consultants. After a year, they get hired away by many of these companies. In many cases, they're hired away early.
Once a student has a job, what is his or her incentive to keep going toward an associate or bachelor's degree? The student gets a certificate from a university, and often that's transferrable into credits at a community college. In New Jersey, for example, the certification issued by Rutgers provides 30 credits, which means the student is halfway through an associate degree.
After they graduate, as long as they're working for us, we pay their education to go part time at night to finish their degree. Once a company hires a student, they take over that obligation. The aim is to have them get a degree after five to six years with no debt.
How is the program funded? Our billings cover our costs. This model will let us transform our educational and job creation system to compete. You can't just keep putting in money from the government.
What has the organization accomplished so far? We have doubled in size three years in a row. We're going into areas where IT organizations are hurting, like Allentown, Charlotte and Jacksonville. We also see an opportunity to grow our service center areas.
We have over 200 consultants today in five states, and we're expanding beyond IT to other areas, such as healthcare and customer service operations. Thirty percent of our consultants are women, and we have very high rates of Hispanic and African American students. We also have over 65 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts working at Prudential, Johnson & Johnson and Sealed Air.
How competitive is the program? Very. For quality assurance positions at Siebel, about 300 people applied. Over 200 finished precertification, and we could select only 30 for the certification program.
It's not just the economically disadvantaged who are having trouble financing a college education. Could this represent a new model for higher education? I think so. The system that we have just doesn't work for a large portion of our population anymore. Going away to four years of college is no longer going to be a solution. They can't afford it, there's too much debt, and they're getting out seeking jobs that aren't there. Universities have to not only become more competitive, but offer lower prices and different types of relationships. Our model is one of the first to do that.
We have to get kids to work and advance them in school while they're working. If we don't do that, a vast portion of our population is going to be in trouble.
They need the skills first, so we do the certification first. Then they go to college while they have a job. Our students are essentially going to school for nothing because their work and billings are covering the costs to allow them to do that.
Read more about Management in Computerworld's Management Topic Center.
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