Retraining: learning new tricks in a down economy

The World

Some 5.6 million American manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1999, and many of those jobs don’t appear to be coming back anytime soon. At least some of the people who worked in manufacturing are trying to learn new job skills: We look at the successes and failures of retraining programs with Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner. We’re also joined by Hal Higdon, president of Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo., who says community colleges are too overburdened to be effective; and Robin Ambrosy, laid off in January of 2006 from her job with Sony and now retraining to become an occupational therapist.

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