THE JOB CORPS
At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, the 6-foot 3-inch (1.9-metre), 218-pound (98.9-
Kg) Forman won the gold medal in the heavyweight boxing competition.
He continued to win. George won all 40 of his professional bouts, including a sequence of 24
consecutive knockouts. He finally fell to Muhammad Ali in eight rounds in the “Rumble in the Jungle”
in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974. He subsequently retired from the ring and became an evangelist.
In 1995 a number of products, including an eponymous home grill was introduced; it earned him
more money and more fame than his boxing career.
A study backs up what George Foreman always said: the Job Corps works. When the Job Corps,
an original antipoverty program from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, was on the ropes and facing
deep budget cuts in the mid-1990, George came to its defense. "Job Corps took me from the mean
streets and out of a nightmare lifestyle into a mode where the most incredible of dreams come
true,” More scientific evidence is in a study by Mathematical Policy Research quietly released last
week. The study finds that the Job Corps measurably improves the education and job prospects of
disadvantaged youth. It also offers clues as to why.
The Job Corps is the most intensive and expensive of the dwindling number of government
programs for disadvantaged youth. The $1.3 billion cost last year amounts to about $20,000 for each
participant. Although critics mistakenly argue that the Job Corps is as expensive as a year at Harvard
-- ignoring public subsidy and endowment spending that raise Harvard's true costs for each student
well above $50,000 a year -- the costs are high. The stakes are also high. Each year, the program
serves more than 60,000 mostly poor, urban high school dropouts who are 16 to 24 years old. A third
of the male participants had been arrested at least once before joining the program; two-thirds of
participants had never held a full-time job. If the Job Corps does not improve the prospects of
disadvantaged youths, then less-intensive programs are unlikely to help either.
The Job Corps is expensive because 90 percent of students are sent from their neighborhoods to
one of 116 residential campuses in 46 states. There they stay for academic education, vocational
training, counseling, health education and job placement assistance. Students train for jobs in the
new and old economy, from Wal-Mart to Skydiving.
Author Karl Wallace
