Job Corps was established in 1964 to address employment barriers faced by severely disadvantaged youth throughout the United States. Thirty years later, it remains as a nationally operated program at a time when responsibility for other federal training programs, most notably the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), has been delegated to state and local agencies. In program year 1993, the most recent 1-year period for which complete spending and outcomes data were available, about three-fourths of the program’s total expenditures of about $933 million was for center operating costs, such as staff salaries, equipment, maintenance, and utilities (see fig. 1). The remaining funds were used for student allowances and payments; contracts for outreach, screening, and placement services; contracts with national training providers; and facilities construction, rehabilitation, and acquisition. Currently, 111 Job Corps centers are located throughout the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico (see fig. 2). Although most states have at least one center, four states have no centers—Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Wyoming—while several states have four or more centers (California, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Oregon, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington). Private corporations and nonprofit organizations, selected through a competitive procurement process, operate 81 centers; the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior, as required by law, directly operate 30 centers, called civilian conservation centers, under interagency agreements. While the program’s capacity has fluctuated over the years since its establishment, the current capacity closely approximates its original size. In 1966, about 41,900 slots were available at 106 centers. Today, approximately 41,000 slots are available at 111 centers, ranging in size from 120 slots at a center in California to 2,234 at another center in Kentucky. Appendix III lists the centers, their student capacity, and their operating costs for program year 1993. Job Corps enrolls youth aged 16 to 24 who are economically disadvantaged, in need of additional education or training, and living in a disruptive environment. Enrollments are voluntary, and training programs are open-entry and self-paced, allowing students to enroll throughout the year and to progress at their own pace. Individuals enroll in Job Corps by submitting applications through outreach and screening contractors, which include state employment service agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private for-profit firms. On average, students spend about 8 months in the program but can stay up to 2 years. Each Job Corps center provides services including basic education, vocational skills training, social skills instruction, counseling (for personal problems as well as for alcohol and drug abuse), health care, room and board, and recreational activities. Each center offers training in several vocational areas, such as business occupations, automotive repair, construction trades, and health occupations. These programs are taught by center staff, private contractors, or instructors provided under contracts with national labor and business organizations. Participation in Job Corps can lead to placement in a job or enrollment in further training or education. It can also lead to educational achievements such as attaining a high school diploma and reading or math skill gains. One feature that makes Job Corps different from other federal training programs is its residential component. For example, employment training services under JTPA, the federal government’s principal job training program for the economically disadvantaged, are provided in a nonresidential setting. Under Job Corps, 90 percent of the students live at the centers, allowing services to be provided 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The premise for boarding students is that most come from a disruptive environment and therefore can benefit from receiving education and training in a new setting where a variety of support services are available around the clock. The residential component is a major reason the program is so expensive. While in the program, students receive allowance and incentive payments. For example, initially a student receives a base allowance of about $50 per month, increasing to about $80 per month after 6 months. In addition, students are eligible to receive incentive bonuses of between $25 and $80 each if they earn an exceptional rating on their performance evaluations, held every 60 days. Students can also earn bonuses of $250 each for graduating from high school or receiving a general equivalency diploma, completing vocational training, and getting a job. Students receive an additional $100 if the job is related to the vocational training they received while in Job Corps. Students obtain jobs through a variety of mechanisms, including finding the job on their own, being referred by their vocational instructor, and being placed by the Job Corps center or a contracted placement agency. The last comprehensive study of the effectiveness of the Job Corps program was done nearly 15 years ago. While that study concluded that the program was cost effective—returning $1.46 to society for every dollar being spent on the program—more recently, audits by Labor’s Inspector General, media reports, and congressional oversight hearings have surfaced issues and concerns with the program’s operations. Among these are concerns about the quality of training and outcomes in relation to program costs, incidents of violence occurring at some centers, and the overall management of the program. The Job Corps program is the most expensive employment and training program that Labor administers, spending, on average, four times as much per student as JTPA. According to Labor’s program year 1993 figures, the cost per Job Corps terminee averaged about $15,300. In contrast, the cost per youth terminee (aged 16-22) in JTPA averaged about $3,700.The clientele targeted by Job Corps, as well as the comprehensive services provided to the students, contributes to the high cost of the program. Job Corps seeks to enroll the most severely disadvantaged youth who have multiple barriers to employment. We compared characteristics—at the time of program enrollment—of the 63,000 program year 1993 Job Corps terminees with the 172,000 comparable youth terminees from JTPA.Using JTPA’s definition of hard-to-serve clients, we compared those characteristics that could be commonly applied to both programs—being a school dropout, being deficient in basic skills (reading and/or math skills below the eighth grade), receiving public assistance, and having limited English proficiency. We found that the percentage of Job Corps students with a combination of two or more of these employment barriers was much greater than it was for JTPA participants—about 68 percent of all Job Corps terminees nationwide compared with 39 percent of JTPA terminees(see fig. 3). To address the needs of students with multiple employment barriers, Job Corps provides a comprehensive range of services. Among these services are those associated with the residential component and instruction in social skills. Residential living services include meals, lodging, health and dental care, and transportation. Social skills instruction is a structured program that teaches 50 skills, including working in a team, asking questions, dealing with anger, learning self-control, handling embarrassment, and arriving on time for appointments. Taken together, expenditures for residential living and social skills instruction accounted for about 44 percent of the program year 1993 Job Corps operating costs nationally. At the six centers we visited, we obtained detailed information on program year 1993 expenditures for various Job Corps activities and found that about 45 percent of the funds was spent on residential living and social skills instruction, whereas about 22 percent went for basic education and vocational training and 21 percent for administration (see fig. 4). While Job Corps reported nationally that in program year 1993 about 59 percent of the 63,000 students who left the program obtained jobs,only 36 percent of Job Corps students complete their vocational training (see fig. 5). At the six centers we visited, we found that almost half the jobs obtained by students were low-skill jobs not related to the training provided. However, the students who completed vocational training at these centers were 5 times more likely to obtain a training-related job at wages 25 percent higher than students who did not complete their training. Yet, about 40 percent of program funds at the six centers was spent on students who did not complete vocational training. Using program year 1993 results, five of the six centers we visited would not have met Labor’s current standard for measuring vocational completion—56 percent of vocational enrollees in the program for at least 60 days should complete their vocational training. At the 6 centers we visited, we analyzed the outcomes for the 2,449 students who had been enrolled in Job Corps for at least 60 days and who also had entered a vocational training program and found that about 44 percent of the students completed their vocational training. As shown in figure 6, the proportion of these students who completed vocational training programs ranged from about 18 percent at one center to about 61 percent at another—overall, about 30 percent completed vocational training. Overall, students who completed vocational training were 50 percent more likely to obtain a job than those students who did not complete it (76 percent versus 49 percent, respectively). Furthermore, we found that those students who completed their vocational training were more likely to get a training related job than those who did not complete it.Comparing the types of jobs obtained by students who did and did not complete their vocational training, we found that students who had completed their training were five times more likely to obtain a job that was training related. At the six centers we visited, about 37 percent of the students who had completed vocational training obtained training-related jobs (see fig. 7). In contrast, only 7 percent of those students who did not complete their training obtained training-related jobs. For example, training-related jobs for students who received health care training included nurses’ assistant, physical therapy aide, and home health aide; for those who received training in the skilled construction trades, training-related jobs included painter, carpenter, and electrician. Overall, about 14 percent of all program year 1993 terminees at the six centers received training-related jobs (this consisted of 11.4 percent vocational completers and 2.8 percent noncompleters).