Bluegrass State Skills Corporation
The Bluegrass State Skills Corporation (BSSC) was established in 1984 by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as an independent, de jure corporation to stimulate economic development through programs of skills training to meet the needs of business and industry. The BSSC, in cooperation and coordination with other state employment and training organizations, has the capability to customize a comprehensive program of skills training services for new, expanding, and existing industries. The BSSC is attached to the Cabinet for Economic Development for administrative purposes, in recognition of the relationship between economic development and skills training efforts.
The BSSC’s four main functions are:
- To facilitate and administer Kentucky's industry specific training programs through grants-in-aid and skills training investment credits approved by the BSSC Board of Directors;
- To act as a broker, by coordinating the resources of providers of skills training and employers;
- To facilitate the creation of public/private partnerships through education and training programs designed to meet unfilled training needs of individual and multiple (training consortia) company training projects; and
- To administer any special state appropriation for industry specific training.
The BSSC provides grants for training of workers of Kentucky’s new and expanding companies and for skills and occupational upgrade training for workers of Kentucky’s existing companies. The Skills Training Investment Credit program can only be accessed by qualified existing companies that have been engaged in a qualified activity within Kentucky for not less than three years. For details on each of these programs, visit their website at https://ced.ky.gov/workforce/BSSC
