Two articles caught my eye this week. First, Colorado’s Governor Polis:
We need to create more seamless pathways from school to careers. In Colorado, for example, 91.4% of jobs that can support a family of three require postsecondary education or some form of training or certification in high school beyond diploma requirements. Conventional four-year degrees alone cannot solve this problem, as more and more jobs value skills over a formal college diploma.
This week’s other article is from Amanda Cage and Harvard’s Joe Fuller;
For too long, pathways to high-paying careers have been opaque and inaccessible, contributing to many workers becoming stuck in a “low-wage trap.”…AI can interdict that cycle, by providing personalized career navigation and providing hugely better matching between candidates and positions. It can be the tool that allows America to realize the promise of skills-based hiring.
The blur, accelerated by AI, is underway toward skills-based, lifelong learning pathways to prosperity across the country. Almost 20 states have eliminated or reduced credential requirements from their job postings. Delaware has developed blurred, employer-connected pathways for grades 7 - 14 for a decade.
Navigating the big blur while avoiding a mass system meltdown as the enrollment cliff looms requires serious resources. South Carolina’s Governor is seeking $3 million to take an ‘unvarnished look at the enrollment cliff” . Millions of dollars have been raised to support California’s Governor Newsom recently signed executive order, mandating the creation of a Master Plan on Career Education.
Support is coming from outside government, too.
Bloomberg philanthropies announced this initiative to eliminate any post-secondary requirement to accessing a family-sustaining career in health care.
Boston is one of 10 places where Bloomberg Philanthropies will spend a total of $250 million preparing high school students to start health care jobs as soon as they graduate.
But these innovations from outside the systems are slow to scale — and while they can catalyze change, employers and philanthropy can’t build the full infrastructure for new pathways on their own (they’ve tried and are trying).
Are our traditional post-secondary institutions ready and willing to blur away from traditional credentials, provide the range of life-long learning services required, and leap into the AI era? My answer hasn’t changed …. nope.
Time to leverage our immense traditional post-secondary platforms to provide a modern opportunity for everyone. They have ALL the scale — including broadly distributed place-based and community-connected facilities.
Community colleges need particular focus. These institutions support half or more of all post-secondary learners in most states; in Colorado, two-thirds of all post-secondary learners are enrolled in community colleges. Yet, in many states enrollment in community colleges is down >20% over the last few years.
Some states are directly addressing the community college conundrum. Pennsylvania’s Governor announced a new plan this week that:
"would consolidate 10 of Pennsylvania’s state universities and all 15 of its community colleges under one governance umbrella, boost state funding for public higher education, and allow students with low to middle incomes to pay only $1,000 a semester in tuition."
States with particularly troubled community college systems are considering free community college (tuition) for all;
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) “plans to urge state lawmakers to pass legislation that would provide free community college tuition for all high school graduates during her sixth State of the State speech on Wednesday.”
Mass. Governor Healey recently signed an executive order mandating that the state move to skills-based hiring, has long-term free community college strategy work underway, and has launched MassReconnect,
If you are 25 or older, MassReconnect will pay for all your tuition and fees and will provide you with an allowance to cover your books and supplies.
Free community college for all is expensive — so it’s vital that this be in the context of a clear understanding of appropriate outcomes. The median completion rate for community colleges nation-wide is 38% — that is, less than 40% of all first year full-time students complete a two-year degree within SIX years.
More and more states are moving to allocate funding based on ROI and outcomes;
Under a proposal dubbed Propel NC, the system would no longer award money to its campuses based on total full-time enrollment, something experts have long argued punishes colleges with large numbers of part-time students. The new formula would pay a premium to each college based on labor-market outcomes: the more students enrolled in courses in high-demand, high-paying workforce sectors, the more money the college receives.
Colorado has started publishing outcome-based data on pathways longitudinally as part of a bundle of changes to workforce pathways underway in the state.
No one is investing more in outcome-based funding for community colleges--for longer -- than Texas;
“Gov. Abbott advances funding overhaul, pouring $2.2B into Texas’ community colleges. New funding model will tie state dollars to student outcomes.”
Which metrics matter? Are completion rates the right measure? It’s … blurry …
Community colleges are critical to the big blur. In Michigan, 90% of the community colleges’ completion rates are lower than the national average, but many of them have vital place-based community connection roles, and could be critical new AI-enabled and employer-connected workforce accelerators. 33,000 Michigan high school students are enrolled concurrently in community colleges, up 12% in five years.
And demand for pathways to prosperity clearly exists, when community colleges shift focus;
“Community colleges offering vocational programs witnessed one of the highest numbers of student enrollment in fall 2023 ... Those community colleges with a focus on vocational programs saw registrations climb 16 percent, an increase of 112,000 students, substantially higher than the rate seen before COVID, when it rose 3.7 percent.”
Admission isn’t sufficient. Harvard's work underscores the importance of diverse connections and capabilities.
Career navigation is driven by:
– career information accuracy and access.
– skills and credentials.
– social capital.
– wraparound resources and supports.
– social structures and ecosystems.
America’s national security priorities, including global competition with China and Russia and leadership in a range of disruptive technologies, require a nationwide ten-year commitment to transition to blurred, lifelong-learning, AI-powered, employer-connected, place-enhanced, skills-and-competency-focused pathways to prosperity for all. Our community colleges can and should be a primary platform for all Americans to accelerate into this future.
Time to help them get there.
More data on why traditional higher ed needs to change, urgently:
'Microcredentials on the Rise, but Not at Colleges' " Companies partnering externally to provide training or professional development to employees increased by 26 percent (nearly 15 percentage points) between 2022 and 2023,..more than 61 percent of companies without external training partnerships are interested in developing them. While opportunities to partner with employers are growing, higher education is losing ground to private providers. Companies working with four-year colleges to provide employee training and professional development dropped by nearly 10 percent between 2022 and 2023, and community colleges also saw a decrease of 7 percent in training partnerships" https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/teaching-learning/2024/01/23/microcredentials-rise-not-colleges?&utm_medium=urban_newsletters&utm_id=jobs_and_workforce&utm_campaign=WorkRise
Most recent on Texas' approach for community colleges: "House Bill 8’s historic $683 million investment in community colleges rewards schools for getting students to complete a degree or certificate, transfer to a four-year university or participate in college courses as early as high school." https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/02/texas-community-colleges-funding/?utm_campaign=trib-social-buttons&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social