Not that long ago, I read several quotes along these lines:
"We have plenty of openings, and we're getting 5 times as many resumes as before, but only half as many qualified applicants."
Most of the quotes were from people in medicine, IT, and similarly complex fields. The problem isn't a lack of "training" of the sort that could be covered by a community college course and a 3-month internship; the problem is a lack of "training" of the sort that comes through years of hard work and experience, combined with an entitlement mentality that says "the world owes me a job" instead of "I will develop skills that are useful to an employer, and therefore be able to get a job".
As you say, this is not a problem that will be solved by increasing funding.
A corollary to this is that in any complex field that is expanding at any material rate, demand for capable (experienced) people will be higher than supply. There are more jobs than yesterday, so there are more jobs than there were people getting experience yesterday.
I really feel like apprenticeship could be useful in these cases. It's not like investment in employees, where if they jump ship you lost your investment - there's always the expectation that an apprentice leaves, it's a system built for informant operators.
But to be an apprentice requires more humility than most people are ready to offer - the basic equation is you get training and you pay for it by doing shitwork. Though I guess that's not too much different than an internship, except you work with a master (a person) not an institution (an employer).
One issue I can see is that people can hone their skills on freelancing, open source and learning projects, but when they go for a job they will probably get beaten to the position by someone who better fills the 5 years of industry experience in x.... regardless of skill.
"We have plenty of openings, and we're getting 5 times as many resumes as before, but only half as many qualified applicants."
Most of the quotes were from people in medicine, IT, and similarly complex fields. The problem isn't a lack of "training" of the sort that could be covered by a community college course and a 3-month internship; the problem is a lack of "training" of the sort that comes through years of hard work and experience, combined with an entitlement mentality that says "the world owes me a job" instead of "I will develop skills that are useful to an employer, and therefore be able to get a job".
As you say, this is not a problem that will be solved by increasing funding.