More than half of American high school students don't go on to college and often flounder in "dead-end" jobs. They -- as well as college-bound students -- would benefit dramatically from planned workplace experiences, according to a Cornell University expert. Structured work-based learning programs can significantly improve students' career paths, social and technical competence in the workplace and self-esteem.

After four years of testing approaches in the Cornell Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration Project, The Cornell Youth and Work Program has published the guide Learning Well at Work: Choices for Quality (printed and distributed free by the National School-to-Work Opportunities Office, 1997) to help others develop high-quality, work-based learning programs for high school students.

"Work-based learning is a promising complement to conventional school-based learning and a key component of school-to-work opportunities systems," said Stephen F. Hamilton, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Youth and Work Program in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. Hamilton and associate project co-director Mary Agnes Hamilton have authored the 92-page, full-color, heavily illustrated guide.

The guide summarizes seven principles for high-quality, work-based learning that the researchers have gleaned from their demonstration project, which involved 100 students from seven high schools in the Binghamton, N.Y., metropolitan area. The students were employed 10 to 20 hours a week in either health care, administration and office technology, or manufacturing and engineering technology. The project adapted elements of European apprenticeship and was guided, in part, by advice from leaders of organized labor and representatives of the New York State Department of Labor. More than two dozen Cornell undergraduate and graduate students helped work on the project in addition to parents, schoolteachers, counselors and administrators, as well as several hundred coaches, mentors, managers and coordinators from eleven firms.

Intended for people in workplaces and schools interested in work-based learning opportunities for youth and for policy-makers, the manual covers the principles in detail, offering numerous examples, case studies, quotations, planning steps, suggestions, objectives and general nuts-and-bolts information for planning, managing or evaluating a work-based learning program.

In eight chapters, which include photographs, illustrations, charts, boxes and anecdotes, the guide summarizes the Cornell Youth and Work Program, explains types of work-based learning and offers practical advice for people involved in work-based learning. The principles include ways to ensure that youth gain basic and high-level technical competence through challenging work, broad-based skills by rotating through positions and personal and social competence in the workplace. The principles also include how to convey clear expectations and assess progress; how to assign adults in the workplace formal teaching roles (e.g., as mentors); how to ensure that youth achieve high academic standards; and how to help youth identify and follow career paths.

Also included is an appendix with sample program announcement and evaluation forms, sample mutual expectations agreements, examples of worksheets that identify work tasks and technical skills needed to complete the tasks, and specific skills and training needed for coaches, coordinators, mentors and managers involved in such a program. Many of these documents are available on the World Wide Web (address below).

In addition to the guide, the Cornell researchers discuss high-quality, work-based learning in the May issue of the education journal Phi Delta Kappa, which discusses eight types of work-based learning, and in a forthcoming issue of Training and Development, the journal of the American Society for Training and Development, which summarizes the seven principles described above.

Hamilton spent a year observing apprenticeship systems in Germany and has made shorter visits to Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden, and he is the author of the book Apprenticeship for Adulthood: Preparing Youth for the Future (1990). President Clinton, who wrote a statement for that book jacket, subsequently spearheaded the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 that encourages the creation of learning environments for young people at work.

Work-based learning programs are badly needed, Hamilton stressed, because high school students typically work at low-skill, low-paying jobs that have little security and few opportunities for advancement and that convey that there is little connection between school and work. If students don't take school seriously, they often become locked into low-level jobs, because the previously high-paying factory jobs have moved overseas. Also, employers view teens as irresponsible and tend to hire and train applicants in their mid-20s, Hamilton said.

"Apprenticeships would motivate more youths to take schooling seriously, because it would become much more relevant to their lives; apprenticeships would also meet the labor market's need for workers who are better educated," Hamilton added.

The Cornell Youth and Work Program maintains a detailed Web site, which makes available research and program tools developed for the Broome County youth apprenticeship demonstration project intended for teachers and trainers at work and school. See .

Learning Well at Work: Choices for Quality is distributed by the National School-to-Work Learning Center at 400 Virginia Ave., SW, Room 150, Washington, DC 20024; phone (800) 251-7236, fax (202) 401-6211, e-mail <stw-lc@ed.gov>.

The Cornell Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration Project was supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, New York State Legislature, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Dr. G. Clifford and Florence B. Decker Foundation. The publication was supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, BellSouth Corp., Ciba Educational Foundation and IBM Corp.