tails strategic planning and/or action by an individual that is meant to optimize opportunities for full and continuous employment and the income security that being able to cover expenses without hardship provides.
Some employees are seeking "full-career employability" by means of "lifelong learning," the name given to a whole range of skills-training and skills-enhancement courses designed specifically to upgrade and enlarge the scope of employee knowledge and increase their value as workers (Lifelong, 1999). Many of these courses offer some form of certification or even academic credits, and many are offered through community colleges. Trade magazines are replete with high-technology certification opportunities as well. The training courses may not be offered free of charge, but some may be subsidized and/or deductible. The conceptual point driving this set of affairs is that the knowledge pool for the most employable of workers is fluid and is always open to being filled up again.
The relevance of what is going on in the employment marketplace in general to the need for career-development programs for athletes who may not have graduated from high school or college should be obvious to anyone who has noticed the life-and-work perceptions of young students in general and young (or not-so-young) athletes in particular. Lamenting what he takes to be a general lack of social awareness and the implicit presence of a social problem on the part of those who offer teenagers vocational guidance, Kutner (1993) reports on the "half-baked" career goals of teenagers, who as a group tend to aspire to working-life goals that are bound to be closed to all but a happy few. The unrealistic career aspirations, Kutner suggests, should be checked or at least brought more into line with the reality of what is required (e.g., education, training, experience, lots of hard work) to make any such dream become a reality.
The need to address career-dev...