Prioritizing Industry

A growing group of two-year colleges emphasize high-value programs over ones that don’t pay, with an emerging playbook from Aspen and CCRC. Also, a Louisiana community college helps bring high-wage steel jobs to town, new calls for research and policy action on AI and the workforce, and an essay on three major myths about stackable credentials. (Subscribe here.)

Convincing Employers to Pay Grads More

Southwest Wisconsin Technical College was in a tough spot a decade ago. With a budget shortfall and sliding enrollments, the college faced sanctions after an accreditation visit then-President Jason Wood called disastrous.

The college’s agriculture programs are crucial to the local economy. Yet too many Southwest Tech graduates were landing jobs in the industry that paid $14 an hour or less. The college decided to bite the bullet, closing a half dozen credential programs that no longer matched workforce needs.

“We built everything around one unshakable belief—we don’t graduate people into poverty,” Wood said in a speech last year at NC State University.

The college reinvested money saved from the shuttered programs and from new grants into a revamped precision agriculture program, one that was more high-tech, workforce-aligned, and transfer-friendly.

“Faculty placed a new emphasis on short-term training tied to industry-recognized credentials like a commercial driver’s license, drone certification, and pesticide application,” said Wood, now VP for Salt Lake Technical College, which is part of Salt Lake Community College.

The ploy worked. Employers agreed to almost double entry-level wages for grads who earned those credentials.

That success led the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program to last year name Southwest Tech the nation’s top community college. This week the Aspen Institute revisited that effort with a new report on an effort by 10 community colleges—including Southwest Tech—to increase the number of students entering and completing high-value programs, and to reduce the number of students enrolled in programs with weak postcompletion results.

The project from Aspen and the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College began in 2023. The 10 colleges collectively boosted enrollment in high-value pathways by 27% while making a 25% cut on the other end of the scale.

“You’ve got to go to employers and say, ‘What would it take to pay our graduates more?’” says Josh Wyner, director of the College Excellence Program.

The 10 participating colleges pursued a wide range of reforms and innovations. For example, Florida’s St. Petersburg College focused on changing its advising processes to reduce the number of students in general studies and to help more enroll in high-value programs.

“Early decisions matter,” Wyner says, adding that colleges ideally should “front-load career advising.”

The decision to shut down poor-performing programs is rare and difficult, Wyner acknowledges. Higher education tends to be an industry that is much better at addition than subtraction. Yet sometimes cuts are necessary, particularly during a period of economic transformation.

“Too often we treat a college’s program inventory as if it’s immutable. It isn’t,” Wyner says. “Colleges decide what they offer, what they expand, and what they phase out.”

In addition to asking where employers are hiring, he says, leaders of two-year colleges should be asking where their students can build careers that provide economic mobility. “Those that don’t may gain tuition revenue in the short run while sacrificing enrollment over the long run,” says Wyner.

The College Excellence Program and CCRC have expanded the program focused on high-value programs, adding an additional 54 colleges to the project. Aspen will continue to monitor results, including graduate wages, at the original network of 10 colleges.

During his speech last year, Wood said any community college can replicate Southwest Tech’s success across any field.

The Kicker: “First, prioritize the industry,” he said. “If your program array is heavy on low-wage industries, develop new programs focused on higher wages.”

Custom Training for High-Paying Jobs

River Parishes Community College has played a key role in bringing a massive South Korean steel industry investment to the small town of Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

Hyundai Steel has committed to spending $5.8B to build its first steel plant in North America. The facility, which will supply Hyundai’s U.S. automotive manufacturing operations, is slated to employ 1,300 workers locally, with an estimated 4K+ related jobs to follow.

The average wage for jobs at the plant will be $95K, Florida-based reporter Matthew Arrojas writes this week for Work Shift. That’s more than quadruple the median household income in Donaldsonville, where 82% of residents are Black. A century ago, the area lost much of its population as Black families migrated north for factory jobs.

“Workforce was just as important as the site itself,” Jayson Newell, senior vice president of business investment at the Greater Baton Rouge Economic Partnership, tells Arrojas.

The state helped clinch the deal with Hyundai by promising to build a $30M training center anchored by River Parishes Community College. As part of the partnership, RPCC developed a curriculum based on Hyundai’s needs. 

Students who enroll in the new program will complete their first year at the college or one of five other Louisiana partner community colleges. The second year will be offered at the training center, with tailored programs leading to a technical diploma in electrical maintenance, mechanical maintenance, or advanced manufacturing.

Arrojas reports that the program is designed to thread the needle by developing skills Hyundai Steel needs among its workers while also preparing graduates for a broad range of manufacturing roles. Click over to Work Shift to read the full article.

Call to Act Now on AI

More than 200 economists and AI researchers, including 16 Nobel laureates, have signed a statement on AI’s transformation of the economy. 

The technology may become radically more powerful over the next decade, says the short statement that was released this week and organized by Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab. The potential impact on the economy could be bigger than the Industrial Revolution, it says, risking large-scale job displacement as well as driving major gains in living standards.

“Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society,” reads the statement, which drew both high-profile praise and criticism.

AI and Work: Also this week, Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute announced its third cohort of senior fellows. Previous cohorts have examined how AI can transform higher education and how education systems can prepare people for an AI-enabled economy. This group of fellows will research frontier firms and the transformation of work.

JFF Horizons: The recently launched RAISE US, which is focused on workforce and AI, came up in many conversations this week during Jobs for the Future’s annual meeting. For example, I learned that the group’s name is pronounced “raise us,” not “raise U.S.” Also, the nonprofit has begun tapping consultants with deep subject-matter expertise across its wide range of focus areas.

Leaders from the group spoke during the final panel of the event, which was held in D.C. “Approach this like a natural disaster,” said Eric Holcomb, a former Republican governor of Indiana and RAISE US co-chair.

Eric Beane, the group’s president and COO, said the rise of AI offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve both workforce development and postsecondary education.

“Treat workforce development like a core economic development policy,” he said. “It’s not just a social safety net program.”

Open Tabs

Semiconductor Jobs
The labor gap for the U.S. semiconductor industry is expanding, with projected demand hitting 189K new workers by 2030, including 73K technicians, finds an analysis McKinsey conducted for the SEMI Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Without CHIPS support, only 13% of manufacturing-technician demand would be met. Looming shortages of technicians require rapid expansion of employer-linked, short-cycle training programs, the report concluded.

Training Grants
The U.S. Department of Labor announced the availability of roughly $40M for a second round of the Industry-Driven Skills Training Fund. The new money follows $86M for the grant program’s first round, which backed projects across 14 states, including $6M for the new Oklahoma Talent Accelerator. The grants provide outcomes-based reimbursement to employers in targeted sectors who commit to upskilling employees and creating hiring pipelines.

Tech Hubs
The U.S. Department of Commerce has invested just 6% of the $10B in authorized funding for the Tech Hubs program, writes Jason Rittenberg, a fellow at New America. Many of the 31 designated regional hubs have been successful in developing technologies and forming opportunities with industry partners. The Nevada site, for example, helped grow an apprenticeship program from Tesla and Truckee Meadows Community College from 85 to more than 700 apprentices.

AI and Jobs
North Carolina should launch a statewide AI career-transition program using labor market data to identify and prioritize workers who are most at risk of displacement, recommends the AI leadership council convened by Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic governor. The council’s AI Strategic Roadmap calls for the program to connect participants with employers, apprenticeships, career-support pathways, and incubators to accelerate their reemployment.

Career Literacy
Americans with high career literacy consider about six jobs during a job search, compared to two for those with low career literacy, finds a survey commissioned by the DeBruce Foundation. The capability to make informed decisions about occupational pathways is associated with higher wages and employment security. Career literacy also grows with age, suggesting that early exposure can improve long-term employment and economic outcomes.

Job Moves
Emily Bouck West has been hired by JPMorganChase as executive director and head of careers and skills for global philanthropy. A former U.S. Senate staff member, West previously was SVP of policy and initiatives for the Greater Washington Partnership and a public policy manager for Amazon.

Adam Fein has been hired by 2U as VP for academic innovation and strategic partnerships. Fein, former VP for digital strategy and innovation at the University of North Texas, most recently was SVP for product innovation and partner solutions at Risepoint.

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