Connecting Education & Work

Practical Solutions for 21st Century Collaboration

Working Together

• Employability in Higher Education: A Review of Practice and Strategies Around the World (2016)
  • How HEIs are developing employability programs, best practice methods - embedding programs, skills employers value, and education/business partnerships
  • Employability Skills Wheel: Employer Involvement section - impact on learner, employer and provider

• Employer Engagement Toolkit: From Placement to Partners
  • learn how to deliberately integrate employer engagement into core decision-making
  • review strategies to increase number of ways employers can participate in program design and development
  • utilize a comprehensive approach for developing relationships with employers
• Higher Ed's Role in Shaping the Workforce Podcast - Lumina Foundation President and CEO Jamie Merisotis

Partnering to Develop Integrated Pathways

• Competency Models - educator and employer work together to verify knowledge, skills and abilities for critical functions of the workplace
  • Questions to ask employers:
    • Which of these competencies are needed for entry-level jobs?
    • Which of these competencies are needed for each step in the career progression?
    • Which competencies build upon each other and lead to the next step in the career progression?
    • Which of these competencies are lacking within current labor force and need skill building opportunities for workers and job candidates?
  • Industry recognized and/or postsecondary credentials; CareerOneStop Certification Finder

• Career Pathways for the Liberal Arts (Burning Glass Technologies, January 2018)
  • employers value hybrid skills - both liberal arts skills (critical thinking, communication etc.) AND specific technical skills
  • add high-demand skills to degrees; enhance value in the job market (liberal arts grads 20% more likely to be underemployed and earn less than those with specialized degrees)
  • 1.4 million job postings potentially open to liberal arts graduates
    • 10 career clusters offer strong career potential
      • business administration, data analysis and data management, human resources, information technology (IT) and networking, sales, programming and software development, finance, marketing and PR design, media and communication
  • consider how to incoporate learning opportunities and credentials to include hybrid skills; liberal arts and professional degrees
• Career Pathways Toolkit - steps for building a career pathways program
• Integrated Pathways - aligning systems for college, career and economic success; Pathways Approaches Offer:
  • Labor market alignment
  • Contextualized learning
  • Opportunities for work-based learning
  • Flexible scheduling
  • Stackable credentials

Understanding Stakeholders to Guide Best Practices

Helping Today's Students Succeed

• Fifty-eight percent of students say getting a good job is their primary motivation
  • increase student motivation - connect the dots between course content and employability
• Sixty-eight percent disagree that higher education is fine the way it is
  • obtain more knowledge about your students personal and career aspirations to integrate and complement course content
• Sixty percent believe it's harder to find a job as compared to parents at their age
  • educate about complexities of labor market and career pathways; provide supplemental resources or embed with learning activities

Review all of the survey results at Why Choose Higher Ed? (2018) and New America's Public Opinion Survey of Higher Education (2017).

• more diverse in age, race and income level compared to previous generations
• more mobile and don't necessarily live on campus
• participate in the workforce and have family responsibilities
• lifelong learning and continuing education are becoming the norm

Learn more about the mismatch between today's students and federal policy.

Access and Affordability

• Top two reasons students choose to enroll in an institution is location, access/affordability
• On Second Thought: U.S. Adults Reflect on Their Education Decisions

• offer online or hybrid courses to accommodate students' with competing obligations
• incorporate OER resources or textbooks to reduce costs
• offer online/blended learning opportunities; accommodate busy schedules, access barriers for rural students (Culturally Responsible Relationship Education for Rural Communities)
• create guided pathways to improve retention and completion rates; informed decision-making reduces tuition costs (unnecessary courses - major hopping)

OER Resources:

• George Mason University OER Metafinder
  • SkillsCommons Repository (free and open digital library of workforce training materials)
• Blueprint for Success in College and Career Textbook
• Six Steps to Job Search Success
• Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking Textbook
  • University of Pittsburgh OER LibGuide (subject, complete courses, multimedia, images/artwork, books, open respositories)
• OER Research Guidebook and Toolkit

Employer vs Student Perspective

What are best practices for improving competencies?

• general course expectations
• learning activities

Employers, Students Differ in Perception of Graduates' "Career Readiness"

Readings

• Universities in a World of Rapid Transformation - University, Society, and Future
• Transforming Higher Ed by Listening to Consumers
• Propelling College and Career Success: The Role of Strategic Partnerships in Scaling Delaware Pathways
• We Need a New Deal Between Higher Education and Democratic Capitalism
• Investing in Adult Education is an Economic Catalyst