Research Brief
Six Skills for Success
Jun 30, 2022
The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe (ChalleNGe) program provides a positive intervention for youth who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. Participants work with mentors who help them with school or job search. The authors of this report identify a set of common skills among high-paying, growing occupations that do not require a bachelor's degree and describe how to incorporate such skills into the ChalleNGe curriculum.
An Analysis of Labor Markets, Occupational Features, and Skill Training for the Youth ChalleNGe Program
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The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe (ChalleNGe) program provides a positive intervention for youth ages 16 to 18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. The program includes 40 locations (sites) in 31 states and territories. About 250,000 young people have taken part in the ChalleNGe program, and nearly 190,000 have completed the program.
ChalleNGe is a residential, quasi-military program. Participants, called cadets, spend five and a half months onsite in the Residential Phase, in which they are immersed in daily classes, exercise, and other activities. The next 12 months, in the Post-Residential Phase, cadets work with mentors who help them with school or job search and work. Many ChalleNGe sites are interested in providing additional job training during the Residential Phase but face space, budget, and personnel constraints.
In this report, the authors provide background on the middle-skills labor market — the jobs for workers with more than a high school education but less than a bachelor's degree. They discuss which occupations are in the middle-skills labor market and the training and education required for those occupations. They then identify a set of occupations, which they call the goal occupations, that are high-paying, attainable, and growth-oriented. Using occupational characteristics, the authors identify a set of common skills shared among the goal occupations. The report is intended to provide background on the middle-skills labor market for sites interested in occupational training and describe how to incorporate skills that are common among good middle-skills occupations into the ChalleNGe curriculum.
Chapter One
The "Middle Skills" Pathway to Good Jobs — High-Paying Jobs That Do Not Require a College Degree
Chapter Two
What Is a Good Job? Part 1 — How Good Jobs Are Identified in Existing Sources
Chapter Three
What Is a Good Job? Part 2 — How Good Jobs Are Identified in Our Analyses
Chapter Four
Finding 1 — The Goal Occupations ("Good Jobs") for Workers Without a College Degree
Chapter Five
Finding 2 — The Skills and Capabilities Common to the Goal Occupations ("Good Jobs")
Chapter Six
Finding 3 — Current and Potential Investments That ChalleNGe Can Make in Skills and Capabilities for Cadets
Appendix A
Assessment of Occupation Families
Appendix B
Regional Variation
Appendix C
Subgroups and Elements of O*NET Categories
This research was sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs and conducted within the Forces and Resources Policy Center of the RAND National Security Research Division (NSRD).
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