November 30, 2015
Flash Edition
Announced
on Nov. 17 by the Department of Labor, the TechHire
Partnership Grants funding
opportunity offers significant new money and approaches to education and training
partnerships to train more adults for the IT industry, with an emphasis on
young adults between the ages of 17 and 29 and those with barriers to
employment. OCTAE stakeholders working with these populations are encouraged to
learn more. Sign
up to stay current with technical
assistance and announcements on this opportunity.
Applications
are due March 11, 2016.
See
a fact
sheet from the White House on the
larger TechHire initiative.
The
executive summary of the funding notice is provided here:
America has about 5.4 million
open jobs today, substantially more than in any year since 2001.[1]
The new openings in information technology (IT) fields including software
development, network administration, and cybersecurity are projected to grow at
a rate that is two-thirds higher than the average for all jobs.[2]
The average salary in a job that requires IT skills – whether in manufacturing,
advertising, retail or banking – is more than 50 percent higher than the
average private-sector American job.[3]
Helping more Americans train and connect to these jobs is an important
opportunity to get more people into the middle class, but it is also an
economic imperative for America’s continued leadership in global innovation.
Today our IT training pipeline is dramatically under-producing workers to fill
these good jobs, which is costing employers, workers, and the U.S. economy. As
this is the case, communities across the country are in need of more
cost-effective, timely, agile, and market-responsive training pipelines for
these jobs.
As President Obama said at the
launch of his TechHire initiative: “It doesn’t matter where you learned code,
it just matters how good you are in writing code. If you can do the job, you
should get the job.”[4]
The good news is that new training models are emerging to take advantage of
this opportunity both in universities and community colleges, but also
nontraditional approaches like
“coding bootcamps”[5],
high-quality online courses, or competency-based programs at more traditional
institutions that can rapidly train workers for a well-paying job or
entrepreneurial opportunities, often in just a few months. And new
industry-trusted talent placement organizations are helping Americans trained
in non-traditional pathways get connected to employers based on their skills
even if their resumes may look different from the typical candidate. In
addition, the Department of Education is launching experimental efforts to
explore the quality and benefits of these accelerated and non-traditional
training models with the Education Quality Through Innovative Partnerships
(“EQUIP”) Title IV pilot.
The Administration is committed
to making sure that Americans who are most in need— specifically youth and
young adults ages 17-29, individuals with disabilities, individuals with
limited English proficiency, and individuals with criminal records and other
unemployed, dislocated, underemployed, and front-line incumbent workers —have
access to new, innovative training opportunities that produce quality results,
and to the customized guidance and supportive and specialized services to gain
employment in and advance to new positions in H-1B occupations and industries.
These funds can be used to support training services in occupations for which
H-1B visas have been certified, or other occupations in industries in which a
significant number of H-1B visas are certified. A list of the H-1B industries
that are acceptable for applications under this FOA can be found in Appendix F.
For that reason,
The Employment and Training Administration (ETA), U.S. Department of Labor
(DOL, or the Department, or we), announces the availability of approximately
$100,000,000 in grant funds for the TechHire partnership grant program. We expect to
fund approximately 30-40 grants, with individual grant amounts ranging from $2
million to $5 million. This grant program is designed to equip individuals with
the skills they need through innovative approaches that can rapidly train
workers for and connect them to well-paying, middle- and high-skilled, and
high-growth jobs across a diversity of H-1B industries such as IT, healthcare,
advanced manufacturing, financial services, and broadband.
These grants are financed by a
user fee paid by employers to bring foreign workers into the United States
under the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program. This program is authorized under
Section 414(c) of the American
Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA), as amended (codified at 29 USC 3224a). Grant awards will be
made only to the extent that funds are available.
Grants will be awarded to the
lead applicant of a public and private partnership of entities that includes:
• the public workforce investment
system;
• education and training providers, such
as community colleges, community-based and faith-based organizations, and
“bootcamp” style tech programs; and,
• a business-related nonprofit
organization, an organization functioning as a workforce intermediary for the
expressed purpose of serving the needs of businesses, a consortium of three or
more of businesses, or at least three independent businesses
At least $50 million of this
funding opportunity will be awarded to applicants proposing programs serving
out-of-secondary school6[6]
youth and young adults between the ages of 17 and 29 with barriers to training
and employment as their primary target population. Applications must include
significant employer engagement, including a minimum of at least three employer
partners, or a regional industry association consisting of at least three
employers, with demonstrated engagement in the project. Additional partners
that reflect the character and resources of the local or regional economy and
the community are strongly encouraged. This funding opportunity announcement describes
the application submission requirements that are listed in Section VI.B,
Content and Form of Application Submission. Finally, the Department is
committed to producing strong evidence on the effectiveness of the grantee
programs; therefore, full participation in any national evaluation initiated by
DOL is a condition of all grants awarded.
While this funding opportunity
supports the broader goals of the White House TechHire Initiative (https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/technology/techhire),
there is no preference given to designated TechHire communities. This funding
opportunity is open to all eligible applicants identified in Section III.A,
Eligible Applicants. Further, applicants may propose to serve local, regional,
or multi region (national) areas.
Get the full Grant
Notice.
[1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
[2] http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_102.htm
[3] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#15-0000
[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/technology/techhire
[5] Bootcamps may be short,
intensive, and rigorous courses of training
[6] Secondary school generally
refers to the last four years of formal instruction. The standard U.S.
qualification awarded to students who graduate from secondary school after 12
years of formal instruction is a High School diploma, or equivalent secondary
diploma or certificate.
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