On April 2, 2012 the Governor signed HB 12-1061, known as the Skills for Jobs Act. In a nutshell, the new legislation mandates an annual report that looks at the relationship between education degrees, awards, and certificates and the needs of the state workforce.
The intent of the legislation is to increase efficiencies within the education system during times of reduced funding for K-12 and higher education. The reports are intended to provide knowledge and motivation to reduce or eliminate redundancies, cut back on degree programs that don’t lead to jobs, expand existing programs, or develop new ones.
In an ideal world, students will graduate from college and will have adequate training to enter a job in their field of study with a company in Colorado. At the same time current workers will be able to find training that would allow them to retain their jobs or advance their careers. In addition, unemployed workers can receive training that allows them to find a job in the ever-changing workplace. The ideal training system eliminates the severe skills mismatch that currently exists between unemployed workers and the needs of the private sector.
There are unintended consequences that might arise from this piece of legislation. The following questions and comments consider some of these consequences as well as other issues related to HB 12-1061. The presentation of these ideas is not intended to support or oppose the new act. The purpose is to stimulate discussion about the issue.
Meeting the needs of our workforce is critical to our national security, competitiveness, innovation capabilities, and our world leadership position. And it makes sense (and cents) to meet these needs in a cost effective manner.
The questions and comments are divided into five areas.
1. Training and education have become a big and lucrative business. Who should determine the classes taught by the public sector and those taught by the private sector? For example, it has been demonstrated and accepted that the private sector is better suited to provide training in computer systems certification programs. Should other disciplines such as business, music, and foreign language also be taught exclusively by the private sector? In another example, partnerships between the public and private sectors have benefitted all parties. A case in point is the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU-Boulder. As part of their education experience, students can track satellites and secure internships with local aerospace companies. In this case, a degree with an internship virtually guarantees a job. In other words, some degrees are more likely to result in a job than other degrees. What about degrees, such as liberal arts or general studies, which do not directly prepare a student for a particular job? Are they more valuable because they provide students with a broad perspective of ideas and prepare them for many jobs or less valuable because they don’t prepare a person for a targeted position? When measuring the effectiveness of higher education, how do you account for a person who receives four years of education in their area of choice, then after working in that profession for six months decides they don’t like it and seeks employment in another area? And how do you account for the individuals who obtain a degree, but work in occupations that don’t require advanced education? The process of matching supply and demand might be accomplished more efficiently if students were required to take a battery of tests and limited to areas of study where they were the strongest. Would such an approach be too Draconian?
2. This leads to the age-old debate about the role of higher education. Is the purpose of our college and universities to train the workforce or is it to provide a safe haven for students to learn and grow up? Or are there other reasons to have higher education? Are students entitled to have a free or inexpensive college experience? Do college leaders and the public have the same perception about the role of higher education in society? Is higher education obligated to offer classes in areas that are a financial drain to the university, such as ethnic studies or the arts? In a similar light, is higher education obligated to provide courses in areas where there may not be a critical mass of students? This includes subject matters that might lead to future growth of the U.S. economy, such as cutting edge courses in nanotechnology, RFIDs, astrophysics, or molecular biology? Are programs that are cash cows more important than other programs? How do you apply university research to the classroom? How does commercialization of research fit into the education process? Should higher education have two sets of faculty – one to teach and one to conduct research that generates revenue and notoriety for the university? What role does experiential learning have in the education process? How do you ensure that degree and certifications are of the highest quality given the escalation of faculty wages, reduced state funding, increased donor funding, and donors who expect to have input into the development of curriculum? How do you deal with the diminishing perception of higher education? Has higher education been out of control for a long time? Are futurists and former education leaders justified in foretelling of a higher education bubble? Is higher education at fault for massive student debt because they have effectively marketed their services or does that blame lie with students who made poor business decisions? Will this massive debt cause future students to look at professions that do not require college degrees?
3. When developing education and training programs, how do you account for changes in the economy? During the 1990s, the high-tech clusters expanded at an unsustainable rate. Is it realistic to expect higher education to provide a trained workforce during such rampant periods of growth? Over the past decade many of the same clusters experienced a number of layoffs. Why would anyone want to pursue those occupations (engineers, software developers, hardware manufacturers) after experiencing a decade where no net jobs were added? How can companies forecast workforce demand and higher education provide an ever-changing workforce during such boom and bust cycles? How do you develop training programs for jobs that didn’t exist 20 years ago such as web designer, application developer, or games programmer? Should higher education focus more on providing a set of transferable skills or should they focus on training workers for specific occupations? Colorado only has about 2.2 million wage and salary workers, or less than two percent of the U.S. workforce. Those workers are in a wide array of industries spread across 64 counties. How do you provide training programs in topical areas and geographic regions where there is frequently not a critical mass of workers to run a program?
4. Over the last 35 years, the state has adopted fiscal policy that allows local colleges and universities to bolster their coffers by accepting a higher percentage of out-of-state students. Is it appropriate for Colorado’s universities to be training employees for other states and countries? What contributions do out-of-state students make to our higher education system and business community?
5. Will the required reports from HB 12-1061 cause college officials to take steps to adjust their admission requirements so their graduating students will have the degrees to meet the needs of the workforce? Will future college funding be based on the ability of the schools to meet the needs of the local workforce? Will future scholarships be given to those students seeking degrees that will fill occupations most critical to the state’s economy? Will students in “non-essential” areas be prevented from scholarship opportunities? How do you mandate or encourage participation in programs for machinists, lineman, and manufacturing technicians when they are not perceived as sexy occupations by many? What happens if you train 300 people for renewable energy jobs and only 6 of them are able to find jobs (this actually happened in a federally funded program in Colorado)? Colorado colleges graduate approximately 30,000 students a year with four-year degrees. In other words, about 150,000 students were added to the pool of potential workers between 2007 and 2011. Given the dire economic conditions at that time, how many of these graduates found jobs in their degree? Was there a surplus of degreed students? What happened to students who didn’t find degrees in their jobs? Do colleges and universities have an obligation to prevent students from entering degree or training programs where there is an obvious surplus?
There is sufficient evidence that the public and private sectors have collaborated over the years to meet the workforce needs of the private sector. Some of these efforts have been more successful than others.
Hopefully, HB 12-1061 will strengthen the partnerships that have been built in the past, higher education, and the private sector. The challenge of identifying and training workers to meet the demands of the workforce is much more easily debated than achieved.
©Copyright 2011 by CBER.