Transportation Skills Needed by Private-Sector and Public-Sector Organizations

Abstract

The University of Rhode Island requested an assessment of the potential demand for developing new academic programs in the areas of transportation and logistics. Although the research focused on Rhode Island public- and private-sector organizations, it was concluded that the results have broader applications for the academic community. The research was accomplished by interviewing a total of 24 key executives in four large private companies and five large public-sector organizations. The questions focused on “skills required to do your job.” The interviews resulted in the following conclusions: (a) a distinct difference must be made between education needs, training needs, and outreach needs; (b) concerning public agency needs, responses tracked closely to the several national studies that have taken place over the past several years; (c) private-sector organizations view logistics and supply chain management as critical to their bottom line; (d) there appears to be a common interest among interviewees for universities to establish more outreach programs; (e) private-sector companies all expressed possible interest in targeted logistics and supply chain management programs (certificate programs or individual courses could be of interest, either as traditional classroom or Internet-based); (f) definite interest existed among public agencies to establish courses and distance-learning–based certificate programs in “transportation policy and management” (the author's label); and (g) there were a surprising number of common needs.