https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
Spend a bit of time taking it and it's clear what at least one reason for this shortage is.
The correlation of compensation to educated workers probably explains why the US government is staffed by morons that treat the economy like a teething ring.
We still talk about Reagan's mass-firing of ATC controllers, and that event was in *1981*. The impact is multi-generational and is still very visible.
Edit: Also linking another comment where ATC was literally told they're not in the offer... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42899944
this is not 100% accurate by any definition of the word accurate. It is an interpretation of a letter, and a wrong one in my opinion.
Believe me I'm quite pissed at the media for finally making both sides of the US political spectrum equally uninterested in facts
And the ATC was told they're not included in the offer after the emails were already sent out. Like you trying to reframe it and add more context makes it more stupid, not less.
This is made up. It's a layoff letter like we see at big corps any other week. "We're reorganizing, here's an offer, take it or not, your job might get cut in 9 months."
"Enhanced standards of conduct: The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work. Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward. Employees who engage in unlawful behavior or other misconduct will be prioritized for appropriate investigation and discipline, including termination."
So, by all means, chase reparations. But don't think you've stumbled on the reason, either.
The test was shut down because it was obvious and egregious: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-.... But the people who designed it didn’t resign.
Additionally, part of the changes that brought along the biographical questionnaire had another major change: they opened up positions to the general public--meaning a candidate didn't need to go through one of the college-affiliated programs anymore. However, that also meant that people had to find their way through the on-boarding process, which at least initially was not well developed and many candidates failed to complete the necessary steps to move the process along.
That we would sacrifice any amount of safety/efficiency in pursuit of other goals is a major problem.
I also apply this thinking to other fed gov programs (eg NSF, DoD, etc)
Edit: in other words, how many lives should we sacrifice in our civilian air travel to achieve equity?
We sacrificed those lives to save money. End of story.
What you’re describing is the motte of DEI. And that’s great. But it often turns into the bailey of “racial preferences or quotas.” Which is illegal.
How do you not know that? Where did you go to high school?
https://thehill.com/regulation/transportation/4617992-buttig...
The same for military recruitment.
Because people here in the field are saying what discourages others from applying is low pay and high stress. Yet you seem to think it’s an outdated hiring practice, so who told you that?
Maybe that has something to do with why recruitment is down. But no, you're probably right it's DEI.
I imagine this was the result of an inappropriate and inadvertently p-hacked analysis of a silly survey of existing employees, along with a large helping of unjustified assumptions.
This is the kind of thing that might be, gradually, mitigated by improved high school math education. We don’t need more calculus to fix this, and we also don’t need more Pandas or R or “data science” or statistics-taught-the-way-it-usually-is. I think students could use a serious education in what data and statistics means, how to ask the right questions, and how to identify cases where the wrong question was answered, even if the answer came from fancy math.
edit: I saw https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... — wow, apparently a good amount of actual bad intentions may have been involved. Although the people in charge may well have thought that their bad intentions were good intentions. Sigh. One of the worst parts of the current anti-DEI madness is that its proponents are not entirely wrong.
??? From the OP:
"This assessment was implemented in large part due to a push for diversity among ATCs by the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE)."
And from your link:
"In 2012 and 2013, the NBCFAE continued pushing this process, with members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push diversity among ATCs. "
I can't see how anyone would read those two sentences and conclude "this utter nonsense doesn’t appear to be DEI nonsense". Diversity, the D in DEI was specifically the reason why it was implemented.