One Front Door

Gov. Polis on Colorado’s bid to create a unified postsecondary education and workforce agency, and the talent crisis behind that push. Also, TUMO’s fresh take on STEM education lands in Los Angeles, mobile-first job training for deskless workers from Opus, and how Alabama’s nursing apprenticeships seek to fix a broken career ladder for healthcare workers. (Subscribe here.)

A More Cohesive System in Colorado

As the Trump administration dismantles the U.S. Department of Education, moving management of a broad swath of its education portfolio and workforce development to the Labor Department, Colorado is seeking to create a new, unified agency to oversee postsecondary education, skills training, and employment services.

However, the state’s goals are focused on talent development, while MAGA leads with the culture war in justifying its plans to shut down the federal Education Department.

“There’s honestly a lot of uncertainty at the federal level right now,” Jared Polis, Colorado’s Democratic governor, says in an interview. “This is the opposite of that.”

Polis in May signed an executive order calling on several state agencies to analyze Colorado’s current postsecondary talent system and to develop recommendations for “transformative change.” That vision comes into focus with a report issued this week by the governor’s office.

“It’s urgent and in many ways overdue,” says Polis.

A key driver of the push for a unified agency is the “talent wall” Colorado’s economy soon will hit, according to the report, which cites the state’s aging population and declining in-migration from other states.

Meanwhile, workforce pros praise efforts Colorado has made to better align its education and workforce systems, as well as moves to boost apprenticeship and skills-based hiring, create clearer paths to high-demand careers, make community college more accessible, better serve people with disabilities, and prepare for the future of work.

Yet a knock on the state is that the right hand sometimes doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. The report describes Colorado’s distributed and deeply fragmented structure, which includes 472 schools with CTE offerings, 300+ registered apprenticeship programs, 4,500+ eligible training providers, and almost 10K degree options.

“That’s a lot of choice for people to navigate,” says Alison Griffin, a Colorado-based expert on postsecondary policy and a senior advisor to FutureRise, a nonprofit foundation focused on education and workforce training.

Polis says that although Colorado leads in many areas of workforce and education, the state needs better coordination and fewer silos. He pointed to the quantum industry—which has great potential for workers without four-year degrees—as a sector that could benefit from the new agency.

“We’ve leaned into innovation as a state,” he says. “We need to have the structure catch up.”

Co-Developers of Talent: The report calls for a new Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development that would serve as a cohesive system and “one front door” for Coloradans who are pursuing training opportunities or trying to find employment. Colorado can learn from other states that have made recent moves with similar goals, the report says, including Alabama, Delaware, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia.

Employers in Colorado welcome the governor’s vision for a more integrated and forward-looking postsecondary and talent ecosystem, says Christine Heitz, CEO of Colorado Thrives, a coalition of business leaders focused on economic mobility.

“The plan creates a more streamlined and practical way for employers to engage as true partners and co-developers of talent across the state—a role we believe is our responsibility,” Heitz says.

Legislation will be needed to create the state agency. Functions the report recommends centralizing under a new department include:

• Programs funded by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

• All state-coordinated higher education functions currently housed at the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

• The State Apprenticeship Agency.

• The labor market information team.

• The state Workforce Development Council.

A newly unified system also should work to determine which education and training programs lead to “credentials of value,” the report says. 

Polis cited particular frustration with Colorado’s inconsistent performance metrics. The report says widely varying outcomes measures prevent comparison across education and workforce programs, limiting the state’s ability to evaluate and prioritize approaches that deliver the strongest results. Heitz says the report’s emphasis on integrated data and analytics aligned with strategy is a step forward.

The push for a unified agency isn’t about cost cutting, or new funding streams. “This is not a funding play,” says Polis.

Leaders in the state want to move fast to make good on the report’s recommendations. Even if they succeed, a different governor would oversee the new agency—Polis is term-limited and the election to replace him is slated for next November.

Heitz says she hopes employers can be real partners to help ensure the implementation process for the new agency goes smoothly through the administration change. “Colorado is a workforce innovator, and this move reflects a forward-looking vision,” she says.

Apprenticeships Aim to Fix Nursing’s Broken Ladder

Many healthcare workers are stuck in low-wage jobs, while the nation has a severe nursing shortage. A growing apprenticeship effort, led by states like Alabama, aims to address both problems. Read the article—the second in our series on nursing pathways—on Work Shift.

Tech Skills and Motivation

The fast-moving labor market has made “learn to code” a slur amid worries about the limited shelf life of tech training. Yet educators also face pressure to keep current on AI fluency and other digital skills so students aren’t left behind in an increasingly tech-grounded economy.

The TUMO Center for Creative Technologies has an answer for how to strike that balance with its education program, which is free and aimed at teenagers.

“Skills are a Trojan horse to unlock motivation,” says Kabir Sethi, a regional director for the nonprofit TUMO.

The first U.S. center of the unusual model opened in greater Los Angeles a couple months ago. TUMO was founded in Armenia and now has centers in Argentina, France, Germany, Portugal, and several other countries, with more locations on the way. Prominent local champions have helped spur the program’s spread, including Germany’s Angela Merkel and Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris.

“Germany is our best market,” says Sawyer Hescock, the CEO of TUMO Los Angeles, “They see it as a plug-and-play solution.”

The after-school program is designed to give teens the skills and tools to succeed in a digital world. It’s open to anyone between the ages of 12 and 18 and lacks entrance requirements or tests. The centers enroll lower-income students as well as wealthier participants, who arrive with a wide range of academic preparation.

Students are in charge of their learning at TUMO, which features self-paced activities, workshops, and project labs. The program is built around 14 “learning targets,” ranging from game development, gen AI, and programming to writing, music, and drawing. Learning activities in each field have three levels of depth and lead to workshops, which are taught by specialists.

The curriculum is student choice mixed with structure, Sethi says, and emphasizes creating and making things. TUMO also features learning coaches and visiting mentors.

“Choice really matters,” he says. “We really don’t want it to feel like we are pushing you in one direction.”

Teens typically attend the center twice a week for about two hours per visit. There are no grades or competition at TUMO, says Sethi. “Your portfolio is your signal.”

The results are impressive. Participants see substantial gains in their grades at school, outpacing control groups. They are more likely to attend college and get into selective institutions. Alumni also are more confident in the job market and are 3.5x more likely to work in tech.

The model isn’t cheap to run, with an average annual cost of $2K per student. Yet TUMO has remained free for all participants, thanks to creative and flexible funding structures across its growing number of global locations.

The new TUMO Los Angeles, which is located in North Hollywood, is backed by public funding. The state of California contributed $23.5M through a grant, while the city kicked in $3M in operational support and $2.5M to build a performing arts center. The money followed strong support from Karen Bass, LA’s mayor; Adrin Nazarian, a city councilmember and former state lawmaker; and other prominent backers in this country.

“I’ve seen a lot of STEM programs, but this is one of the best in the world,” Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder and CEO, said after visiting a TUMO center in Armenia.

The centers are designed to be high-quality spaces. Even the small “box” hubs TUMO runs across Armenia are modern and inviting—former shipping containers that look like stations on the moon. “We want them to feel they’re in a world-class space that’s built for them,” Sethi says of TUMO participants.

Roughly 600 teens already are learning at the LA center, with 500 more on a waiting list. With more funding, Hescock says, TUMO could hire additional staff to serve all those students.

The nonprofit plans to expand to more U.S. cities. The goal is to begin with big markets like Atlanta, NYC, and San Francisco, says Hescock, then move into cities with large shares of high-need teens, like Detroit, Memphis, and New Orleans.

Sethi, who is based in Mumbai and attended Macalester College, was a veteran consultant when he first encountered TUMO’s results with students. “I saw the data and I didn’t believe it,” he says. And while TUMO requires serious resources, Sethi is optimistic about the program’s growth potential.

The Kicker: “We have the resources in the world to make spaces like this,” he says.

Open Tabs

Credentialing Boom
Digital badges are the largest category among the roughly 1.85M unique credentials that are issued in the U.S. by 134K providers, finds Credential Engine. The nation’s credential market has fundamentally shifted as the validation of learning moves from paper to digital formats, the nonprofit says. Digital credentials are verifiable, searchable, and shareable when supported by a mature technology infrastructure, including a standard description language.

Workforce Pell
The U.S. Department of Education has released its draft regulations for Workforce Pell, recommending that earners of bachelor’s degrees be eligible for the grants. Negotiators have begun meeting as part of negotiated rulemaking, which the department wants to wrap up this week. In January the Trump administration plans to conduct a second session of the rulemaking, on a congressionally mandated wage test for colleges.

Wages and FAFSA
A new earnings indicator has been added by the Education Department to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process. Institutions will be flagged when the median earnings of graduates four years after completion lag those of high school graduates in the same state. The move is about transparency, writes Nicholas Kent, the under secretary of education, and helping students and families make data-informed decisions.

Data Center Jobs
Community colleges should offer flexible credentialing to keep pace with workforce demands for data centers, including $15B Amazon is investing in northern Indiana, Muddassir Siddiqi, president of College of DuPage in Illinois, writes for Community College Daily. DuPage created an interdisciplinary associate degree in facility maintenance and a data technician certificate, integrating competencies that are rarely offered within a single program.

Preparing Students
Employer confidence in U.S. higher education is strong, according to the latest version of a survey from the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Respondents placed high value on graduates’ preparation for an AI-enabled workforce, the liberal arts association found, and expressed strong confidence that colleges are meeting this need. A large majority (81%) said a job candidate’s possession of a microcredential positively influences their hiring decisions.

CTE Pathways
Congress should increase funding in the next reauthorization of the Perkins Act, through which $1.2B flows to state CTE programs, recommends a brief from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The nonprofit, which seeks to improve the socioeconomic status of Black Americans, calls for reinvigorating narratives about CTE pathways, which remain stigmatized. Standards for data collections and reporting also need improvements.

Job Moves
Lenore Rodicio has been selected as the incoming president and CEO of Achieving the Dream. Rodicio previously served in several leadership roles during a long stint at Miami Dade College. She will replace Karen Stout, who has led ATD since 2015 and is stepping down next summer. 

Scott Jensen has been hired to lead the new future of work practice at Infosys Public Services. Jensen since 2023 has been director of workforce strategies for CHIPS at the U.S. Department of Commerce. He previously led Rhode Island’s Department of Labor and Training.

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