Press Releases

Today, in a hearing titled “Eliminating Barriers to Employment: Opening Doors to Opportunity,” Republicans took the opportunity to focus on the greatest barrier to employment for Americans from every community and from every walk of life: the failure of American postsecondary education.

Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in her opening statement, “It seems our colleagues on the other side have done their level best to have a hearing about employment without addressing the role of education… Looking at individual policies outside of the role of education is not the way to approach this question of opening doors for Americans.” Foxx and other Republican members of the committee emphasized how real postsecondary education reform, increased apprenticeship offerings, earn and learn opportunities, and other ways to reconsider how all education is truly career education can close the skills gap and increase high-quality employment opportunities for workers throughout the country.

Republicans brought as their witness, Daniel Pianko, co-founder and managing director of University Ventures, a company working to transform the pathway from higher education to employment. Pianko said in his testimony, “The skills gap is exacting a heavy toll on American families and institutions. It is impeding economic growth, promoting generational inequity, jeopardizing the American Dream, and creating real anxiety about the future of work.”

Unlike proposals from the left that clamored for increased federal spending and programming, Foxx said that the way forward must center on “the innovation and initiative of individual Americans.” Foxx added, “the American dream was founded on the premise that individuals are free, and capable of improving their lives, of living better and climbing higher than their ancestors before them.”