Job Training vs. College

Three federal agencies describe their vision for a unified, industry-led federal workforce system, as the White House taps Ivy League money for workforce development. Also, a cyber skills partnership in Texas between a university, a community college, and a tech-training provider. (If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe here.)

Talent Strategy, Awaiting a Plan

The Trump administration has rolled out a strategy for improving the federal workforce system and developing alternatives to four-year college degrees. Meanwhile, the White House has begun tapping deals with Ivy League universities to pay for some workforce development programs.

The Departments of Labor, Commerce, and Education issued the 27-page “talent strategy” report. Former veteran officials at those agencies, from both sides of the political spectrum, say the report is reasonable and well articulated, describing goals shared by most workforce pros.

However, an actual plan with deliverables and timelines is the needed next step, they say. And the report’s stated goals—from streamlining data systems to modernizing licensing systems—will be very hard to achieve, say those sources, particularly given the DOGE-led gutting of staff members and institutional knowledge at the Labor and Education Departments. 

The report’s tri-agency approach is part of the administration’s emphasis on integrated, cross-sectoral systems. But the White House says the Labor Department should be the lead agency for all federal workforce development efforts.

The current patchwork of workforce programs creates a “disjointed and bureaucratic system” for jobseekers, according to the report. “The fragmented web of duplicative programs must be replaced with a streamlined, coordinated system that delivers unified workforce services.”

States will be able to integrate disparate federal workforce funding streams into a single block grant, say the agencies, citing the Make America Skilled Again proposal from President Trump’s May budget request. 

The report also says the administration will work with Congress on a legislative proposal, drawing from workforce development authority held by tribal governments, which would allow for the streamlining of state grants and the addition of clear accountability provisions.

While many state workforce leaders might welcome the proposed consolidation and flexibility, the MASA plan also includes a proposed $1.64B budget cut to $4.6B in workforce funding streams.

“As the report highlights, we need to modernize how workers find good jobs and how businesses find skilled workers,” Katie Spiker, chief of federal affairs for the National Skills Coalition, writes on LinkedIn. “Starving an already underfunded system would move us in the wrong direction.”

Credentials of Value: Industry should lead the revamped workforce system, the three agencies say, with a boost for registered apprenticeships and other high-quality work-based learning opportunities that lead to in-demand jobs. In addition, targeted federal investments should back employer-led upskilling in priority industries.

“Employers must play a central role in defining in-demand skills, validating training models, and steering investments toward the roles and credentials that matter most,” the report says.

The strategy includes a focus on performance funding. It seeks to direct money toward education and training providers that generate measurable returns in employment, earnings, and credentials awarded.

On the data front, the three departments will seek to coordinate across a wide range of databases to create a “single, integrated framework for tracking education-to-employment outcomes, reducing duplication, and improving cross-agency data alignment.”

The agencies also will seek to develop a public Credentials of Value scorecard, which sounds similar to a system Texas has been building. 

Also this week, the Labor Department debuted a performance dashboard to track the effectiveness of Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs. With data from 550 workforce development boards around the country, the public-facing tool includes earnings, employment, and credential attainment rates for WIOA program participants.

Ivy League Universities and Community Colleges: The administration describes its talent strategy and focus on workforce programs as a corrective to leaning too heavily on the traditional four-year college model.

“For decades, America’s labor market relied on the university system to develop new generations of workers,” the report says. “But this ‘college-for-all’ approach has failed, and the patchwork of non-college programs targeting occupation-specific skills is inadequate to replace it.”

The broad brushstrokes of this new approach arrive as the White House has begun to make good on President Trump’s promise in May to take money away from Harvard University and give it to trade schools. Those moves are part of the administration’s aggressive, wide-ranging pressure campaign against universities.

According to reports from The New York Times and Bloomberg, Harvard has signaled a willingness to contribute $500M to workforce training programs in exchange for the restoration of more than $2B in frozen federal funds.

The administration has a precedent to lean on, having recently secured a voluntary agreement from Brown University to contribute $50M over 10 years to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island.

Brown will choose the locations and distribute the funds, says a university spokeswoman: “The agreement aligns with long-standing initiatives to support local partners who make a difference in the lives of thousands of Rhode Islanders and prove to be powerful engines of economic mobility in the state we call home.”

Trump’s pitting of job training against traditional college could pose risks to workforce programs. The pendulum in Washington tends to swing, and zero-sum thinking won’t cut it if the goal is to help millions of Americans break into better careers.

Another big question for many across higher education and workforce development is the extent to which Trump’s Republican Party thinks community colleges can be part of the solution to the nation’s labor market challenges. So far, the signals haven’t been good for the two-year sector.

For example, as it moves career and technical education programs to the Labor Department and away from the Education Department, the administration wants to limit federal CTE funding to K–12 schools while seeking a $400M cut to annual federal support for those programs at community colleges and area CTE centers.

It wasn’t all bad news for the college degree in the talent strategy—the apprenticeship degree got a shout-out in the report.

The call to expand job-embedded degree programs is further evidence that the model is a priority across geographic boundaries and political parties, says Joe E. Ross, president of Reach University, which offers apprenticeship degree programs and has experienced abrupt cuts by the Trump administration.

The Kicker: “I think this is the first time the executive branch has ever mentioned the concept,” he says. “There is room in this plan for a different kind of degree.” — Elyse Ashburn contributed reporting for this article.

Creating New Pathways for Cyber Skills

More than 1.3M people across the country work in cybersecurity, but there are more than half a million jobs still open. From network administrators to ethical hackers, there’s a need for cybersecurity workers across industries, including less traditional ones like healthcare and manufacturing.

A new initiative between Baylor University, McLennan Community College, and the for-profit tech-training provider General Assembly aims to address the cybersecurity workforce gap, starting in central Texas. General Assembly will provide its curriculum for IT basics and Python programming, which prepares students to take certification exams. Baylor and McLennan will provide the instructors and hands-on training at their $3.5M Central Texas Cyber Range.

The Big Idea: It’s an unusual partnership that brings together two-year and four-year institutions and a for-profit tech-training program under one roof. The collaborators say they each bring a unique strength, and the only way they’ll be able to address the workforce demand is by working together. 

Jeremy McCormick, a computer science professor at McLennan and director of training at the Cyber Range, says the new short-course offerings from General Assembly will help students quickly get a taste of the field and earn a certification—and then decide if they want to stay and progress. If they do, the course will count toward an associate degree in cybersecurity at the community college. From there, graduates can enter the workforce straight away or earn a bachelor’s degree from Baylor in two more years. 

“We’re stronger together than apart,” McCormick says. “Each one of our schools fills a different niche.”

Filling a Gap: The Cyber Range, housed at Baylor, opened two years ago as a partnership between the university and McLennan. Students from both institutions take classes there and gain hands-on experience. The range also hosts events for the community and employers, such as skills competitions and hacking exercises. But leaders there thought they could be doing more.

After looking at their own courses and talking with local industry leaders, they decided that the General Assembly courses on IT basics and Python would be the perfect fit. Jeremy Vickers, former associate vice president of innovation and economic development at Baylor, says the courses fill a gap in the university’s computer science bachelor’s degree program. 

“A lot of computer science programs don’t actually teach coding all that much, at least pure coding. And very few of them do certificate pathways,” Vickers says. “They tend to offer a broader set of skills and knowledge, and then as people move into the market, they tend to add those certifications.”

In the new partnership, students in the General Assembly courses will be prepared within 10 to 12 weeks to take the CompTIA and certified entry-level Python programmer exams and receive a voucher to take the tests, fast-tracking the path to certification. The partnership allows the colleges, especially McLennan, to expand capacity in a field where it’s hard to find and compete for qualified faculty. 

“Cyber education right now is completely overwhelmed,” McCormick says. “We’re lucky at McLennan Community College to have a great staff of several people fully trained in cyber, but every single one of our faculty members is overloaded with classes right now.”

No Quick Fix: With the certifications, students can immediately go into the job market. But it’s not a quick fix to getting people good jobs. Despite a push to make hiring in the cybersecurity industry skills-first, more than half of jobs in the field require at least a bachelor’s degree, and most openings are not for entry-level workers. The certifications alone likely won’t be enough for everyone to get good jobs, McCormick says. 

McLennan and Baylor are trying to make it easier for people, especially those who are working full-time, to continue their education by offering classes in hybrid form and on nights and weekends. The partnership will also be a test case for an in-person and hybrid model for General Assembly’s IT basics and Python courses, which are typically offered online. 

The required classes at the Cyber Range not only give students more hands-on experience, but also appeal to employers, says Nick Simmons, vice president of sales at the cybersecurity company LevelBlue and a professor at Baylor. And many cybersecurity certifications require experience in addition to coursework. 

“It’s one thing to learn, and it’s another thing to go and demonstrate and put it to work,” Simmons says. —By Colleen Connolly

Open Tabs

Measuring Value
An accrediting agency that oversees community colleges, mostly ones located in California, released a new ROI metric for its member institutions. The measure from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges provides an earnings snapshot for learners 10 years after they enrolled in a certificate or degree program. The commission followed a new ROI metric from the College Futures Foundation and the HEA Group, calling it a reasonable starting point.

Workforce Training
Massachusetts has awarded $24M in grants to 23 organizations to train 2,490 state residents for high-demand careers in the trades, construction, and manufacturing. The grant program supports adult learners, particularly unemployed and underemployed people from underserved populations. Since 2023, Massachusetts governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, and the Commonwealth Corporation have awarded $53M in grants under the program.

Bootcamp Woes
Coding bootcamp operators, students, and investors say the bootcamp path to jobs is rapidly disappearing, thanks in large part to AI, Anna Tong reports for Reuters. Bootcamps were already on their way out, one investor said, but “AI has been the nail in the coffin.” The technology also is making it hard for graduates of computer science degree programs to land tech jobs, reports Natasha Singer for The New York Times.

Jobs Data
President Trump said this week that he will nominate E.J. Antoni to be commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Antoni is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and a longtime critic of BLS’s approach to collecting jobs data. Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner, after a weak jobs report, claiming without evidence that the jobs numbers were rigged. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer echoed the president’s comments about the data.

In Memoriam
Terry O’Banion, president emeritus of the League for Innovation in the Community College, died last month. O’Banion led the league for 23 years and was a widely sought expert voice on the two-year sector for many more years. He was generous with his time and expertise, including with reporters.

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