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Ross Gittell

Ross Gittell: Commit to New England's 'employability' advantage

Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

Higher education has provided New England with an economic advantage, as the region without strong natural resource advantages has relied on its higher education institutions (HEIs) and brainpower. A higher education-based economic advantage has enabled the region to develop strong well-paying technology and knowledge-based industries tied to New England’s academic research and development (R&D) capabilities, and to lead the nation in per-capita income (currently 30% above the national average) and unemployment consistently below the national rate.

Lumina Foundation’s report "A Stronger Nation'' suggests that about two-thirds of working-age adults in New England will require education beyond high school by 2025, while the region’s post-secondary-achool attainment is currently below one-half. This gap is affecting regional growth. New England lags behind other regions, and increasing numbers of national and regional employers look to other regions to grow employment.

New England would benefit if colleges and universities enabled more of an employabilitym advantage for the region. Broadly enhancing the employability of residents by expanding access to advanced education, particularly education aligned with areas in which there are long-term skill gaps can also lead to well-paying careers for greater numbers of people and help arrest rising income and geography-based inequality in the region.

Clusters

Many New England industry clusters built over the past century have strong ties to higher education. These include an array of technology- and education-based industries, where employment concentration is 40% above the national average. The high-technology clusters of note include aerospace, defense, biotech and information technology. An export sector that is increasingly R&D-based is healthcare, tied to biotech and pharmaceutical industries; healthcare’s concentration in the region is 25% above the national average.

While these clusters remain strong in New England, other nations and U.S. regions are gaining ground on New England.  Since 2000, high-technology industry employment as a percentage of total employment has declined in New England from 7% to 6.6%, while holding constant in the U.S. Manufacturing employment concentration has had a particularly steep decline in New England, dropping from 13.4% and above the U.S. average concentration, to 8.3% of total employment and below the national average.

While high energy costs and other business factors may contribute to technology and knowledge-based industry decline, labor-skill shortages and demography are working against the economic vitality and competitiveness of the region now—and will increasingly do so if efforts are not made to close the gaps.

New England’s regional unemployment rate has been consistently below the U.S. average, as the region’s population and labor force have been growing at only about half the U.S. average since 2000. Along with this slow growth, the population is aging across New England, with the percentage of the population who are young adults (ages 25 to 44) going from over 31% (and above the U.S. average) to 25% (and below the U.S. average). Meanwhile, the share of the population age 65 and older went up from below 13%, to greater than 16%.

This highlights the need for New England HEIs to work together to help ensure that the demography does not work strongly against the regional economy. One way to accomplish this is by focusing education in the region more purposively and directly on employability needs and expanding access to advanced education aligned with economic opportunity.

T-shaped challenge

Employability needs are broad and deep. They are so called T-shaped, including wide breadth and, at the same time, specialized skills. This means strong liberal arts/humanities education is critical along with strong career and technical skills, as well as skills-based education and experience, including internships and work-based learning. And New England higher education is well-positioned to do this, especially if its broad range of excellent institutions–research universities, public flagships and regionals, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges–can work together and with industry to help students align their academic program choice and extracurricular activities with career planning.

New England higher ed could then provide intentional, and more seamless education/career pathways to New England employment. This would involve providing current and forecast information about occupations and career opportunities, integrated academic and career guidance and planning, robust articulation and transfer of credits from secondary to postsecondary education and within postsecondary (including from community colleges to leading R&D HEIs), and internships and work-study experiences that strongly connect New England college students to employment in New England.

Working against the region’s economic vitality, however, is the Two New Englands paradox. Strong economic conditions and industry and employment benefits from higher ed are concentrated within the region where higher ed R&D is concentrated, including Boston/Cambridge-128, Providence, Hanover/Lebanon and New Haven. R&D from Yale, Dartmouth, MIT, Harvard and Brown has contributed to economic growth globally, but not in rural parts of New England.

Most of the R&D-leading HEIs are concentrated in urban areas (with notable exceptions being Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H, and the UMass flagship in Amherst, Mass.), while most rural areas in the region are left without many of higher education’s economic advantages beyond the direct spending by the locally based institutions and their students.

The Two New Englands underscores a significant gap between urban and rural New England. Urban New England is well above the national average in per-capita income, educational attainment (% of adults with associate degrees or higher) and employment concentration in high tech, information and finance. Rural New England, however, is below the national average on all of these. This is true while the concentration of employment in all areas of education is equal in rural and urban New England—and significantly higher than the national average. So it is not for lack of educational institutions that rural areas lag behind urban areas.

New England would benefit if HEIs across the region focused more on employability of graduates for jobs in the region, and committed to a regionwide collaboration to address labor market skill gaps. This could help ensure that rural areas do not fall further behind. Employers that might not stay or be attracted to New England because of high costs could locate in the region’s rural areas if an appropriately skilled labor force were there, thus benefiting from New England’s higher ed and tech advantages while avoiding the high costs of urban areas. This could be particularly attractive for larger employers that are based in urban New England, but looking to expand employment nearby.

What can be done?

A first step has already been taken with NEBHE's organization of the New England Commission on Higher Education & Employability, chaired by Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo. The commission comprises representatives from all sectors of higher education in all New England states, along with regional employers and public officials. The Commission's purpose is to inspire and enable a regional approach to employability that builds on the region's higher education advantage. Preliminary priorities that have emerged include:

Having HEIs in New England commit to collaboration on employability. They could, for example, share a goal to increase college attainment in the region (associate degrees or higher) from the current 46% to over 60% by 2025, and align education programs to regional employment opportunity.

Strengthening HEI “cross-sector” (Research, Regional, Private, Community College) collaboration, with a focus on student educational pathways to employment in the region. This could involve stronger articulation and transfer programs for students in the region between community colleges and public and private research universities in STEM and other high-demand program areas. This would target community college students most interested in advancing their education beyond the associate degree, particularly those concerned about costs and facing geographic restrictions during their first years of college.

Enhancement and promotion of sub-bachelor's degree options, including industry and occupation certificates and career and technical education, aligned with labor market needs and well-paying careers, and focused on areas with high skill gaps and high job availability.

Strengthening academic preparation and academic and career planning for students in K-12. This could include making available to students and their families “state of the art” labor market information and career-planning tools in New England’s secondary and postsecondary institutions. Partnerships with industry could be extended and advanced to include more work-based learning opportunities for students in the region, such as internships, co-ops and work-study programs. Best practices could be modeled in career preparation and academic program alignment.

Coordination of re-education and retraining efforts for adults in a region-wide collaboration focused on needs of employers in strong clusters that are pervasive in the region. This could include a region-wide effort to provide credit for prior learning experience. Innovative and coordinated practices could enable adults to retrain or be placed in well-paying employment across the region.

Focus on efforts that address income inequality based on economic opportunity gaps and underrepresentation of various groups in the region's competitive industries. Explicit equity objectives and practices could support advancement of underrepresented groups.

Rural HEIs should be included in regionwide efforts and have opportunity to partner with R&D focused HEIs. This could involve expanding innovative pedagogy using technology and varied course delivery (e.g., hybrids and virtual) to connect urban and rural institutions and advance higher education services in rural areas.

Link employability efforts to R&D advantages, for example, by leveraging of R&D to promote the locating of production/manufacturing rural areas.

And do all the above in ways that distinguish the region as a national and global leader in R&D … and E.

Ross Gittell is chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire, vice president and forecast manager of New England Economic Partnership, and a co-chair of NEBHE’s Commission on Higher Education & Employability.

 

 

John O. Harney: Trying to raise the employability of New England's college students

Via the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)

BOSTON

On June 28, the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) convened members of the Commission on Higher Education and Employability (CHEE) in Providence to discuss concrete ways in which New England employers, education leaders and policymakers can work together to ensure a successful, equitable workforce future.

The Commission comprises high-powered educators, employers, economists, policymakers and several students. It is chaired by Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, the self-described “action-oriented” chief executive who has brought Johnson & Johnson, Virgin Pulse and Vistaprint Corporate Solutions to the Ocean State and attracted national attention with her plan for free college tuition.

NEBHE has historically been interested in higher education’s connections with economic and workforce development. Now, there’s a new urgency. As NEBHE President and CEO Michael K. Thomas wrote in an op-ed in the Providence Journal the day before the Commission convened, “Our region faces a fast-changing modern economy, as well as challenging demographic shifts, and it’s time that we optimized how higher education works with other stakeholders in our regional economy—starting by providing our students with the right skills to match tomorrow’s jobs.”

Disconnects everywhere

The Commission has a tall order. Job One is to get educators and employers simply to speak to one another.

In a recent Gallup study, 96 percent of college representatives said they felt confident in their institution’s ability to prepare students for the workforce, yet only 11 percent of business leaders agreed that today’s college graduates have the skills and competencies that business needs. Also the cultures are very different.

Kelli Vallieres, a NEBHE associate and CEO of Sound Manufacturing, a Connecticut provider of metal fabrication, recounted an “externship” she has worked on with the local high school that took ages to put together. Why? Partly because schools have so many mandates put on their time, said Vallieres.

Vermont state Rep. Kate Webb, a Commission member, added that employers have difficulty articulating the skills they need. Rounding out the dysfunction, students struggle to represent the value of their foundational skills, intelligence, adaptability and resilience … making it hard for employers to assess their strengths.

Several Commission members agreed on a need to address the disconnect between the culture of employers on one hand, and educators on the other.

Working on a plan

To help the Commission develop recommendations due out later this year, the membership is divided into working groups. At the June 28 meeting, working groups focused on: "Effective Use of Labor Market Data & Intelligence; Targeted Higher Education Partnerships; and New Economy Tech Skill Bundles''.

New Hampshire economist and Community Colleges Chancellor Ross Gittell and Andrea Comer, vice president with the Connecticut Business & Industry Association Education and Workforce Partnership, are co-chairs of the working group on Targeted Higher Education Partnerships.

Their working group embraced the full range of education providers—including public, private and new kinds of credentialing organizations—to prepare students and faculty with the talents demanded by the economy.

Gittell recounted “takeaways” from the inaugural meeting held May 31 in the Rhode Island State House. Among them: Students need opportunities for “work-integrated learning” where they learn at the workplace perhaps while earning credits or other credentials. To be attractive to employers, they also need a combination of “foundational” skills (a preferable term these days to “soft skills”) such as resiliency and industry-specific skills. There is also a need to integrate career planning early in student lives. A role for organized labor. And a regional outlook. Gittell used the example of Portsmouth, N.H., landing a big company that chose the New Hampshire seaport partly due to its proximity to Boston, Mass.

Another key to the Commission’s work, said Gittell: Industry needs to come to the table with money.

But co-chair Comer offered a caveat. She noted that Connecticut is still struggling to recover from the recession. GE and Aetna rubbed salt in the wound with their recent decisions to leave the Nutmeg State. We need to do more to encourage employers to stay, rather than asking more of them, Comer warned.

No picking winners and losers

Gittell said he cringes when he harkens back to the government policy of picking industry winners and losers. Instead, he said, New England should promote its diversity of industries across the whole region, not just in Boston and Cambridge.

The working group suggested that the Commission: Define common characteristics of best practices, create a template of partnerships that work, devise a taxonomy of workforce skills, develop granular credentials, analyze local demographic differences and produce a regional playbook along the lines of the “Communities that Work Partnership” sponsored by the Aspen Institute and funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce and private foundations.

Also the working group noted intersections between workforce investment boards (WIBs) and public schools in industry clusters. Some suggested looking at teaching itself: adapting inquiry-based, rather than traditional, techniques and creating “externships”—essentially summer internships to help teachers adopt techniques that energize students.

The group also coalesced around suggestions to watch return on investment and even to develop a “business case” for the Commission itself.

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) President Rosanne Somerson righted the ship, noting that the Commission’s goal is to create  engaged citizens and culture as much as jobs, which should at least be meaningful and fulfilling.

Love the sound of burning glass

Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, spoke to the Commission about his firm’s belief that jobs have a “genome.” If you want students to have successful middle-class lifestyles in the 21st century, he told the audience, they need certain skills. Among those skills: data science. The jobs are not in data science per se, said Sigelman, but more than three-quarters of middle-skill occupations require digital skills. Digital skills should be integrated into every major at every degree level.

The value proposition of liberal arts seems to rise and fall. But conventional wisdom suggests that liberal arts grads will do fine with employers as long as they also have the more practical, industry-specific skills employers are looking for. For example, a student studying the classics or anthropology may be more successful with social media experience.

Hybrid jobs that mix skills sets are also the most human, so less easily automated, Sigelman said, because people increasingly will be asked to manage automation. The Rhode Island School of Design now prefers the term “intelligent augmentation” to “artificial intelligence” because it feels less like a human job-eater and more like a blender of human judgment and data.

Most of the jobs that require a college degree also want a lot of work experience, Sigelman noted. He also said there has been a larger increase in management jobs than in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) since the Great Recession; yet “middle-skills” workers (with more than a high school diploma, but less than bachelor’s degrees) are more likely to manage than MBAs.

Several employers ask for bachelor’s degrees in much larger percentages than the share of current workers in the occupation who actually have them. For example, 60% of job postings for administrative assistants ask for a college degree, but only 20 percent of current AAs have one. They do increasingly need digital skills. But Sigelman says a college degree is a proxy for some skills that could be offered in a more efficient way.

There’s a perception that those with college degrees can advance in an organization without needing more formal education.

Burning Glass has reported that among job ads that explicitly request credentials, most requested just one of 50 specific creds. Still, certifications and other signals such as academic minors and transcripts that show job-market skills help students demonstrate workplace skills. Also, Seligman added, “brand” matters for a higher education institution (HEI), including regional HEI brand recognition.

Employers are generally likely to invest in employees’ last-mile applications—training in the technical skills that employers want and that change fast, but colleges don’t offer.

Also different kinds of HEIs leave a different mark on the skills conversation. Kerry Healey, the president of Babson College and former Massachusetts lieutenant governor, observed that skills like resilience and adaptability, banishing fear of failure and learning how to be creative are things that need to be “baked in” to the curriculum for everyone. Last-mile skills like coding and computer languages and internships can be pursued extracurricularly on Fridays and weekends.

Sigelman suggested the Commission develop “communities of practice” in areas such as career services. Degrees matter, but how do we make sure they represent a bundle of skills, making them more relevant and sustainable over the life of a career?

Chasing talent

Talent is the name of the game, stressed Travis McCready, president & CEO of Mass Life Sciences Center (MLSC), in his expert testimony to the working group on Targeted Higher Education Partnerships.

He told the group that the MLSC offers a “wide aperture” for talent through middle and high schools, vocational-technical schools and postsecondary education. He added that pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis, Amgen and Shire have migrated toward talent hotspots in the Bay State.

Here, too, an equity component surfaces. School districts with high free- or reduced-lunch populations are specially invited to apply to the MLSC for funds to buy high-quality lab equipment. Once you get to college level, McCready warned, it’s too late if you’ve never worked with a graduated pipette.

Community colleges also get access to MLSC funds for lab facilities and courses. But McCready acknowledged that the MLSC is not an expert, so it serves as convener of industry and community college presidents to encourage relationships. The MLSC offers what are essentially internships and apprenticeships. They are not all lab-related. Life sciences companies need finance and liberal arts specialists too, but, McCready said, the liberal arts students who tend to get hired have some understanding of science.

Noting that more half of New England college students attend independent HEIs, Roger Williams University President Donald Farish pointed out an irony in spending big money to lure private industry but skimping historically on spending for private higher education. Especially when the demography tells us we need to bring in more students.

McCready said the MLSC has worked with Harvard and MIT, as well as small private colleges that fill a niche, such as Wellesley College with its efforts to increase women in life sciences and Regis with its work to accelerate immigrant entry in the disciplines. The MLSC had also experimented with Dean College, which traditionally had no life sciences.

Nevertheless, 70 percent of UMass grads stay and work in the state, and McCready pointed out that money invested in UMass in recent years was “catch-up” after years of low state investment.

Despite all its successes, the MLSC hasn’t cracked the code yet on black and Latino students, said McCready. Only 6 percent of Latino students go on to get hired by industry.

Equity imperative

The tough record with black and Latino students relates to the Commission’s so-called “Equity Imperative.” NEBHE wants to ensure that the workforce vision serves all New Englanders. It’s not only a matter of social justice, but also as a matter of sound economics in the slow-growing region. Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire have the oldest median-age populations in America. And where there is population growth, it’s among groups—both urban and rural—that have not been well-served by education or the job market.

All babies are equal at nine months old; but by age 2, socioeconomic factors begin having an impact on their cognitive development. An attainment gap appears. By high school, a dropout gap has taken has taken hold … soon to translate into an “employability gap.”

Underrepresented groups, for the purposes of addressing the employability gap, include: students of color, students from low-income families and first-generation students. Susan Brennan, associate vice president of university career services at Bentley University, added students with disabilities to the groups New England should bring into the equation. Some could add children of incarcerated people and scores of other sources of inequity.

At Eastern Connecticut State University—which is about 30 percent students of color—lower-income, minority and first-generation students often had no cars, so had difficulty traveling off campus to internships. White students got most of the internships, said President Elsa Núñez.

Eastern’s Work Hub eliminates that need, allowing students to develop practical skills doing real-time work assignments without having to travel off campus, and providing the insurance company Cigna with a computer network and facility where its staff could provide on-site guidance and support to Eastern student interns. Moreover, Núñez observed that the boss in Eastern’s internships automatically becomes the mentor—important in the employability discussion.

Commission member Paul LeBlanc, the president of Southern New Hampshire University and guru of competency-based education, said a critical factor is to provide internships and mentors for students of color; also cultural, not academic, mentorship is needed for students who get the feeling they don’t belong, as Núñez said of her own beginnings in college.

In case anyone still doubts an equity imperative, LeBlanc cited the hard data from Deloitte showing benefits from diversity in teams. RISD’s Somerson said diversity is crucial to innovation. Núñez had a solution for companies that want a fast track to diversity: Forgive student loans.

Rhode Island College President Frank Sánchez added some keen insights to the equity panel.

Why is the conversation missing the large segments of unemployed and underemployed people who are not connecting with traditional educators? How do you formally embed employability in the curriculum? How can we bolster compassion in nursing and teaching, or help businesspeople connect with diverse populations?

Sánchez added that ironically many of the things that HEIs do to raise stature—such as increasing tuition and raising standards—hurt the most vulnerable students. To which Núñez remembered a mentor’s quote: “We can be an elite institution without being elitist.”

Some pointed out a simple overlooked truth on equity: the profound importance of stable state need-based financial aid, which has been generally up and down in New England.

Labor-Market Information

A working group on labor-market information (LMI) weighed real-time vs. traditional LMI. Real-time LMI has the virtue of capturing in-demand employability skills. But working group members agreed that the two types of LMI are complementary and should be bolstered by local intelligence, conversations with employers, local economic drivers and student body makeups.

Berkshire Community College President Ellen Kennedy suggested that the information be tweeked for different sectors to establish benchmarks and skillsets. And that exemplars offer best practices. And perhaps that the Commission identify five essential knowledge points to brand New England and make it attractive for businesses to settle.

Working group members hailed recent LMI initiatives including WorkReadyNH and Maine is IT!, a U.S. Labor Department-funded partnership with Maine community colleges. They also floated the idea of a partnership to share costs of working with outfits such as Burning Glass to look at resume data to study career progressions and occupational transitions. And they spoke of communicating how LMI can be used to improve institutions’ business practices.

Student voices

A key aspect of the NEBHE Commission is the voices of students.

Great Bay Community College alumna Heather Bollinger thought that the region could benefit from a regionwide version of WorkReadyNH. That’s a Granite State program that teaches students interviewing skills so they are prepared to enter the workforce.

Another student rep on the Commission, Mariella Lucaj of the Community College of Rhode Island, recommended marketing the Commission’s work directly to students—and encourage them think differently about their skills—and job prospects.

Desirae LeBlanc, a University of New England student on the Commission, recommended finding a way to push students to want to seek out internships; spoke of her own experiences with service learning programs helping her with employability skills.

Alas, in a nod to today’s sometime-linear thinkers, one of the student reps suggested it’s critical that a student know where they’re going. That led to a few comments about “pathways,” once all the rage, but apparently losing some luster. (Though Comer acknowledged that such structure is especially beneficial to students from underserved areas.)

Even the term “skills” was questioned as connoting lower-level work. Then, oh no, “competencies” and “proficiencies.” Add to that “scaffolding” and “emerging digital skills” and “putting ideas in a parking lot” and you see why at several points, Commissioners spoke of the need to create a sort of glossary showing definitions in the new language of career education.

Last point: We need to include all stakeholders at the table in at least yearly engagement to sustain the work. Perhaps a New England consortium for partnerships?

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.

 

Ross Gittell/Jeremy Hitchcock: 'Skating to where the puck is going'

New England’s economy has improved, but economic opportunity and skills gaps contribute to slower growth in employment, income and social mobility than in previous recoveries from recessions. With an aging population and relatively slow natural growth rates in the labor force, these gaps put the future of the New England economy at greater risk than that of other regions.

There are ways to overcome these gaps. Stronger bridges between education and employment (“E-to-E”) and specifically between the region’s employers and community colleges can be built, which would benefit the regional economy and individuals and their families across New England.

The data are strong on the benefits for state economies and for individuals from advancing higher educational attainment. In New Hampshire, for example, moving the percentage of working-age adults with college attainment from its current level of approximately 50% to 65% would mean a $1,400 increase in per-capita personal income and an increase of about $130 million in state revenue annually, according to the National Center on Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS).

For individuals in New Hampshire, the increase in average weekly earnings from high school graduate to associate degree is over 21% and, for bachelor’s and higher, over 50%. Even with the strong returns to higher education, the percentage of working-age adults with a college degree is not rising fast enough to keep New Hampshire among the top states in educational attainment and make up for the retirement of the state’s aging, highly educated Baby Boomers.

Nationwide, from 2008 through 2012, the percentage of U.S. adults with an associate degree or higher increased by 1.5%, while New Hampshire’s percentage increased by less than half that—just 0.7%. This is occurring while increasing numbers of employers are bemoaning the lack of available skilled workers and many New Hampshire working families are struggling financially.

Currently many high school graduates in New England, particularly from low-income families, are going directly into the labor market and taking jobs in relatively low-paying positions in retailing and services with very limited advancement prospects. They will very likely be the “working poor” for an entire generation. They will receive low pay and be the first to lose their jobs during the next economic downturn. The challenge and the opportunity is to inform these young people and their parents of the benefits of going to college and working in the region—and the consequences of not going to college. Business and education leaders have to provide guided, supportive and affordable pathways to college completion and into fruitful employment in New England.

The lack of skilled workers while many residents remain marginally employed might be best characterized as an education-to-employment gap—an E-to-E disconnect. Individuals without postsecondary education or an applied higher education skillset are not as successful as those with higher education and with their education aligned with the needs of companies that are hiring for well-paying positions. In New England, the employer needs are increasingly complicated and specialized. Employers need workers with the so-called “soft skills” of communication and teamwork, plus the ability to problem-solve and think critically—and they increasingly require workers with domain expertise in a field that they can apply, for example, marketing, industrial design, machining or coding.

But fixing the problems in the labor market and economy is more complicated than advocating “advanced education.” In Future of the Professions, Oxford University economist Daniel Susskind talks about 130 licensed professionals, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics uses a Standard Occupational Classification to define 840 different occupations. It used to be employment was as simple as medical school for a doctor, law school for an attorney, business school for an accountant, engineering school to be a civil engineer, or a community college for welder.

Those examples—medical, accounting, welding, engineering programs—suggest the value of an “apprentice-type” model with education aligned with and drawing on work experience and tied to employment after credential obtainment. And there are many examples of programs at the doctoral, bachelor's and certificate levels that continue to be effective at education-to-employment progression and are based on apprenticeship-like approaches. But what we need now are more programs developing student skillsets for which there are rising numbers of unmet jobs. In many of these, a credential alone will not complete a graduate’s training, but will be part of their E-to-E journey. This gets more pronounced as the economy becomes more complicated.

Because E-to-E is traditionally decoupled and new jobs are being created outside standard progressions, too small portion of the population can fill these jobs—and that is slowing the growth of the economy. There are many fields and job classifications that have no well-defined program or progression. Education institutions and business organizations need to partner more than ever to create the bridge from education to employment to close the skill gap and the opportunity gap.

We can point to several places where building that E-to-E bridge from education to employment has been successful in New Hampshire. In each of these cases, N.H. community colleges have been a catalyst for creating on-ramps to economic opportunity and employment. Great Bay Community College (GBCC) in Portsmouth and Rochester, and Nashua Community College are partnering with suppliers to the global aerospace industry, Albany International, Safran and GE to train workers in advanced composite materials manufacturing and CNC machining. In these programs, college faculty worked closely with company engineers, management and frontline workers to design curriculum. Students’ program work includes on-the-job experience and students have internship opportunities and virtually guaranteed employment after successful program completion.

Given the context of the opportunity and skills gaps we face, it’s clear that we need to cross the chasms. If we can tap that potential, we can unleash another wave of growth and enhance the competitiveness of the region. How can we broaden work-based education and training models beyond traditional Department of Labor strategies and other traditional apprenticeship practices to have them span K-12, postsecondary education and the workforce with a larger number of employers and industries, including in the fields of health, IT and financial services.

One of our previous education solutions was a general purpose “high school” education. The rise of high school education began with the Committee of Ten in the late 19th Century, and high schools became ubiquitous during the early 20th Century. This has been a great success as we are able to reach the entire population. The high school systems have become built up, standardized and, now unfortunately, too often exist in discipline silos and divorced from 21st Century workforce requirements. To confront our new challenges, we need to partner, collaborate and adapt. Where we all have fallen short is that our high schools, community technical education, community colleges and industry do not collaborate enough in the areas of high employment need.

The mental model is nothing new but it’s essentially a dual-education system that combines theory and practice (which happens to be the motto of Jeremy’s alma mater, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute).

NHTI (Concord’s community college) and Manchester Community College IT graduates comprise over 10% of the workforce for Dyn Inc, the fastest-growing IT company in New Hampshire. GBCC and River Valley Community College in Claremont and Lebanon are partnering with Exeter Hospital and Dartmouth-Hitchcock, respectively, on training medical technicians. All these programs provide guided pathways from general education, to job-specific employment skills in occupations that pay greater than average wages for associate degree holders and have promotion and career opportunities. All these programs provide work-based learning opportunities such as internships and job placement And students can enter all these programs while still in high school through dual-enrollment (Running Start) courses that the Community College System of New Hampshire has with virtually every high school (over 90) in the state.

These programs are not educating professional engineers or doctors but rather  professionals, desperately needed by employers as evidenced by the thousands of openings in these fields. In essence, we expanded the high-skilled talent pool by bridging the education to economy divide by establishing educational pathways to regional employment and, in doing this, we are addressing the opportunity and skills gaps in New Hampshire.

What is required is that community college and other educators work alongside employers from industry in the design and delivery of the guided-pathway programs and that these programs are focused on 21st Century skills—those with high future need and strong career prospects. We in workforce development and higher education need to do what hockey great Wayne Gretzky attributed his success to: skating “to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

Industry and community college leaders have to work together to build bridges and guided pathways that support economic opportunity, employment and income growth, and a strong future for the New England regional economy. We can help to address the opportunity and skill gaps by building stronger connections of E-to-E: education-to-employment.

Ross Gittell is chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire. Jeremy Hitchcock is the founder of Dyn, a New Hampshire-based Internet performance management company.

This piece first ran on the Web site of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org).

 

John O. Harney: New England vs. demographics

  BOSTON

“The Great Recession and not-so-great recovery applies to all of us.”

That was University of Southern Maine professor Charlie Colgan’s  remark at at the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) conference Oct. 13 as he noted that Maine was just two-thirds of the way back to pre-recession employment levels.

The  New England forecasts at the Fall Economic Outlook conference were  generally cautiously optimistic, sprinkled with the expressed and implied NEEP mantra: “Having said that, I could be wrong.”

It may be the dismal science, but it’s an experiment you're part of every time you go to work or buy anything.

“What is relatively unique in New England is the region’s demographics—with a rapidly aging population and steep declines in young adult population threatening the region’s workforce skills and education advantage,” said New England Forecast Manager Ross Gittell, chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire.

In Maine, for example, Baby Boomers and their children simply had fewer babies, so all of Maine’s added population in the next 40 years will come from in-migration, but the big sources of that in-migration—Vermont and New Hampshire—are also shrinking, said Colgan. Will productivity increase enough to keep Maine and New England competitive?

Gittell and others joked that given the demography, the region should have focused on under-18 housing instead of over-65 housing.

Colgan noted that ship and boatbuilding have returned to Maine as a major industry (thanks to more destroyers  being built at Bath Iron Works) and natural-resource industries have returned, in a sense, with Lincoln Logs coming back to Maine from China.

Colgan, by the way, is one of the professors let go recently by the University of Southern Maine—part of a higher-education disinvestment story that may say more about the future of the New England economy than any other layoff tracked by NEEP.

He warned that people in Maine see the loss of old-economy jobs such as the impending closure of the Verso paper mill in Bucksport as a tragedy, while they view the laying off of intellectuals at USM, who may be “from away” (though Colgan’s not) as a win for taxpayers.

Among tidbits from the other NEEP forecast managers:

Fairfield University professor emeritus Edward Deak noted that just 60 percent of Connecticut jobs lost during the recession have been regained in the Land of Steady Habits. No one knows whether they are as good as the jobs they’re replacing. What is clear in Connecticut, said Deak, is that “the well-to-do are doing very well.”

Connecticut has the sixth-oldest population in the U.S., though many people over age 65 are leaving the state after retiring. In retail, more purchases are being made via the Internet by working women with young children; fewer at the malls, Deak said, adding that when you look at Connecticut skylines, you don’t see any cranes. It’s all work on old buildings.

Bryant University assistant professor Edinaldo Tebaldi seemed relieved that Rhode Island is no longer first in unemployment; now it’s third. But this “gain” is associated with shrinking of the labor force, and the number of jobs is still below pre-recession levels.

New Hampshire has gone the other direction. Center for Public Policy Studies economist Dennis Delay said New Hampshire had been outperforming New England and U.S. job growth especially in early '80s, but is no longer the superstar. He showed 2012 migrants by higher educational attainments: lots of graduate or professional degrees among the foreign-born, but also many without a high school diploma. Delay noted that New Hampshire ranks high in indicators of home ownership, voter turnout and low welfare costs, but also high in student debt and low in growth of people ages 25-44—so-called wealth-building years.

 

Vermont economist Jeff Carr noted that about 90 percent of jobs  there lost during the recession had been recovered—second in New England to Massachusetts, which has fully recovered jobs. Vermont is difficult to analyze because the job totals in each sector are small. But that small size adds to anxiety about the loss of a few-hundred highly paid jobs at the closing Vermont Yankee nuke; as well as perpetual concern about IBM because its decisions are made in Armonk, N.Y. Carr also cited the importance of Vermont’s food industry, including craft brewers. (The  same day, the Vermont Foodbank reported that one-quarter of Vermont's citizens don't know where their next meal is coming from.)

Carr joked that he is in favor of financial-services bonuses in New York City and Boston because they boost Vermont's sizable second-home economy.

According to the New England regional forecast, prepared by Gittell, the regional economy will continue to see growth rates below the national average. The NEEP forecast is that total employment growth will average 1.3 percent a  year—and all the New England states are projected to have employment growth below the national average over the forecast period out to 2018.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, opened the conference with a presentation on the U.S. Economic Outlook. In a year or so, growth in gross regional product could go from 3% to 4 percent fueled partly by more housing, including pent-up demand among millennials who have been renting. The economist, and increasingly visible TV pundit, contended that financial aspects of economy are in great shape, especially high-income households. Middle-incomes households are still encumbered by debt, he said, but the high end does most of the spending, “though I’m not arguing economy can flourish without everyone participating,” said Zandi.

Phew. He told of his son majoring in philosophy. (Reminded me of the founder of one of the nation’s leading career-oriented online providers confiding that his child was majoring in sociology on a traditional campus.)

Despite Zandi’s general optimism, the risks include interest rates and a mélange of global issues, Zandi noted, adding that even Ebola could undermine traveling and spending (may not be rational to be so concerned about it, but people are). In response to a question, Zandi said he doesn’t think income and wealth inequality is a big issue in a given year, compared with the lack of labor. No one’s going to be writing a book about income inequality soon, he said. Really?

In his keynote address, former Maine Gov. John E. Baldacci, now at the law firm of Pierce Atwood, cited the importance of energy and exports in the region’s economic future. He hailed natural gas as the foundation fuel, while the region works toward renewables, including solar, tidal and wood.

He tied exports to tourism, noting that the owner of New Balance sneakers was introduced to Maine via ski vacations, where he was treated well, then announced plans to open plants in the state.

In a concluding panel, William Guenther, chair and CEO of Mass Insight, boasted: “Massachusetts has benefited for years from the talent cluster that we have offered business.” He noted, however, that technology-focused jobs are growing in such areas as big data analytics, cybersecurity, and computer sciences, but the state is not producing enough college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) to keep up with demand from business. "Jobs will always come to where the talent is,” said Guenther.

Jobs also go where there’s energy work. The state and Canadian province with the most explosive job sectors are oil- and gas-rich North Dakota and Alberta.

John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, the online publication of the New  England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org), where this column originated.

 

 

Carolyn Morwick: New Hampshire makes healthcare progress

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This is one of a series on this year's New England legislative sessions written by Carolyn Morwick for the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org). Our thanks to NEBHE.