There’s a quiet debate raging within colleges and corporations about certificate training and offering certifications. On one side is academia, which wants to educate the whole student on a broad range of topics. On the other side are the associations, like the Newspaper Association of America, and corporations looking for employees who require the specific technical knowledge necessary to quickly (and cheaply) jump into their departments.

Finally, in the middle are the students, who want to gain a broad range of knowledge, but also hope to have that first important job lined up and are still looking for career paths and future upward mobility within their industries.

In general, most traditional four-year universities don’t offer courses that align with specific technical certifications. According to Brian Cameron, assistant professor in the information sciences and technology department at Penn State, certifications are only found at four-year universities in the continuing education office, which are geared toward working professionals.

Certification push

According to David Overbye, dean of curriculum at DeVry University, a lot of the push to incorporate certificates and certifications into college curriculum comes from vendors promoting their products; corporations, which want to hire trained, experienced graduates who require little training; and associations who represent their industries in helping find, train and retain “A”-list technical people.

In that respect, the NAA falls into the last camp. The association’s Printing and Technology Committee, comprised of senior production executives, sees the need and problems associated with competing for new workers in a shrinking technical talent labor pool.

 

In its February 2006 bi-annual meeting, the committee called for the need of “press operator training [that] remains a priority in order to attain consistent operator skills and train press and non-press employees about printing production.”

NAA training

To that end, NAA developed a plan to create Print Tech, a press operator certificate curriculum. 

The curriculum includes training tracks for beginner, intermediate and journeyman/first-line supervisor press operators, as well as an information course for non-press managers. 

The curriculum’s goal is to create a national training center consortium to support local and regional classroom training and distance-learning alternatives where locally based training is not supportable. Future tracks are envisioned for environmental, health and safety and troubleshooting.

NAA fueled interest in the plan by presenting it to course developers at Technical Association of the Graphic Arts member colleges and universities.

Following a request for proposal issued last May, Cal Poly agreed to work with NAA, signing a commitment in principle.

Since then, modules for the first beginner press course are now under development, with beta testing scheduled for late winter 2007.

Full training goal

In addition to TAGA, NAA is working with the National Council for Skill Standards in Graphic Communications, which developed standards and credentialing programs for the Printing Industries of America and Graphic Arts Technical Foundation.

By working with the Pewaukee, Wis., based organization, NAA hopes to identify development issues that may affect certification before they become problems.

NAA is also working with RR Donnelly, which has expressed interest in developing courses aimed at its 10,000 commercial plant employees.

“Print Tech will be the solution to standardize press training within NAA’s membership newspapers,” said Tom Croteau, NAA’s senior vice president of technology. “When completed, NAA’s association member press employees will be eligible for this training.”

Ken Columbia is the Newspaper Association of America’s director of industry staff development. He can be reached via e-mail at coluk@naa.org.