Understanding our DNA

I didn’t expect to enter the new year feeling very optimistic, not after gorging on year-end retrospectives and prognostications, watching COVID sweep the nation, and demonstrating to myself and my family the absence of fine motor skills required to construct a level-4 Revell model. But there it is. You see, in the interstices, I continued my usual steady diet of higher education trend review. My review is typically an undirected browse following breadcrumb trails thrown up by newsfeeds, social media, and colleagues. Yet with all its serendipity, my quest over the past several weeks kept arriving at convincing stories of higher ed’s adaptivity, including a variety of aspects related to pandemic effects, technology change, evolving student need, etc. I want to focus here on adaptivity to employer-driven demand, which naturally enough brought me back to HERI’s Freshman Survey.

The survey, published since the 1960s, captures changing attributes and perspectives of the first-time, full-time students who enroll annually in U.S. higher education. Did you know, for example, that 84 percent of 2019 freshmen cited “ability to get a better job” as a very important reason in their decision to go to college? That’s about the same proportion as those who cited “to learn more about things that interest me” as an essential reason, and it is a full ten points higher than the proportion opting for “to gain a general education and appreciation of ideas”.

More newsworthy is the trend line. The goal of getting a better job scored higher among freshmen in 2019 than four decades ago when freshmen scored it south of 75 percent. The importance of getting a good job only burst into the mid-80 percent range in the last several years. In my view, I owe this to the dramatic rise in the net price of attending college, students’ increasing reliance on loan funding to pay for their education, and the resulting opportunity costs that are associated with their obtaining a college degree.

Colleges and universities, like students, have adapted to these changing conditions by emphasizing the long-range market value of their credentials and aligning credentialing programs ever more closely to workforce needs. Their adaptation shows up in State System university data (review of which is especially enjoyable over eggnog), as evident in our annual accountability report that we provide to the General Assembly in support of our appropriations request (new report coming soon!), and some retooled data dashboards. Our program array—the degrees, majors, minors, areas of concentration—constantly evolves. Between 2015 and 2021, 266 new certificates and 213 new degree programs were added to our collective array, while another 66 certificates and 396 degrees were retired from it. As a result of that evolution, we have seen:

• a pronounced shift to programs that directly feed high-demand occupations—about a third of our baccalaureate degrees conferred every year are in STEM-H fields, and a quarter are in business. Along with education, these three broad areas now contribute more than half (56 percent) of the undergraduate degrees that the State System universities produce annually;
• growth in the number of graduate degrees (where there is an even higher concentration of programs feeding the high-demand areas) and the proportion of graduate students in our overall student population (up 4 percent overall in the last ten years, and between 5 and 10 percent over that time period at eight of our universities);
• dramatic increases in the number of non-degree credentials that target specific employer need and help people upskill and re-skill to advance their careers and lift their families (up 246 percent since 2015 to 1,220 annually); and
• the success our graduates have in Pennsylvania’s economy (as demonstrated with data published in my October 2021 blog).
  
  

Why is all this happening?

1. Workforce development is in our DNA. In the nineteenth century, our universities were conceived as pipelines feeding high-demand, under-supplied occupations, notably in education where demand for teachers skyrocketed on the back of public investment in elementary and secondary education. While our universities’ programmatic focus has evolved significantly since then, their roles as engines of economic development and the concomitant social mobility that ensues has not. As an aside, I have to admit I always chuckle when I hear higher education leaders (sometimes in fist-pounding mode) claim their institution or sector is solely responsible for workforce development. A little humility, please. That responsibility, in truth, is shared by secondary schools, community colleges, vocational and trade schools, research universities like IUP and now West Chester, liberal arts colleges like Cheyney and Mansfield, and regional comprehensive universities like the rest of our State System universities. And we would do well to at least acknowledge the role played by the largest post-secondary educational sector (measured in terms of annual expenditure) that exists outside the formal higher education establishment and includes corporate training programs, trade apprenticeships, coding academies, and a growing range of the like.
2. The size of the talent gap is so great that educational providers must step forward together to fill it. While there is overlap in the credentialing programs that characterize Pennsylvania’s complex and diverse higher education ecosystem, the talent gap is (in my view) over-stated. It also tends to exist in areas with high student or employer demand (where it is an advantage to have more rather than fewer providers) and/or low regional supply. The latter has typically encouraged four-year universities to offer associate degrees. Stakeholders pay too little attention to the creative partnerships that exist where institutions in different sectors collaborate, bringing their distinctive competencies to bear in partnerships that deliver real advantage to their students.
3. Our baccalaureate degree programs ground our graduates in a critically important general education. That means they combine the soft skills that employers look for most (communications, critical thinking, problem-solving) and familiarity with some of the theoretical and technical constructs of disciplines that lead directly to high-demand occupations. That blend—enhanced by great faculty who help students learn how to think and create—lends to the distinctive value of a State System university undergraduate degree. Additionally, we see universities collaborating more and more to retain—actually broaden—opportunities in low-enrolled but vitally essential programs in the arts and humanities and certain STEM disciplines. University integrations in the northeast and west will accelerate the trend, as will the System’s recent investment in a single student information system—a technology platform that will allow us to realize two of our greatest and as yet largely untapped potentials as a System:

• ensuring students anywhere have access to courses and programs everywhere, and
• enabling a greater breadth of program and faculty expertise in low-enrolled and specialized domains than any single State System university could possibly afford based on its own enrollments.
  
  

In sum, our program array evolves to track workforce demand because we are good at what we do. We listen by engaging with our communities, our students, our employers, and our state owners. In doing so, we learn about demands and needs that are going unmet.

We innovate to meet those needs.

We hustle.

If you ever doubt this, have a look at your favorite university program. If the program you are looking at is of recent origin, you’ll see entrepreneurialism and passion combined with rigorous and careful analysis and planning focusing on student and market demand, program viability, and, yes, on cost and revenue. Somewhere near its origin, you’ll find a small cadre comprising mostly faculty and often energized by a single entrepreneurial individual, who is able to articulate demand and translate it into actions that capitalize on opportunity.

There are a lot of great stories to be told about the learning experiences our universities provide. Collectively, our universities offer nearly 800 undergraduate, 300 graduate, and over 200 certificate programs across more than 250 academic areas. They are responsive to real and pressing societal needs and produce the talent that drives Pennsylvania’s workforce. Let me focus here on four of the newer and more uncommon ones that may come to characterize many in the next generation:

• Cheyney University’s Workforce Enhancement Network in Cybersecurity is a partnership between the university and employers AT&T and PSECU. It offers a short-course certificate program that qualifies completers for skilled and highly under-supplied entry-level roles in the IT space. The program helps employers fill an acute regional talent gap while at the same time diversifying their employee base. The program also provides working learners with sub-baccalaureate credentials that offer instant access to high-demand jobs and thus an initial foothold on a career development (and associated social mobility) ladder. From this initial foothold working, learners have clear pathways to more advanced certifications, leading to career advancement (and ultimately university degrees).
• Clarion University’s award-winning 2-year Plastics Process Technician Apprenticeship program was designed by 12 regional plastics manufacturers to bridge a specific and real skills gap in northwestern Pennsylvania’s manufacturing workforce. A great advantage of this program is that employers supply credit-bearing apprenticeships to enrolled students allowing them to earn while learning and effectively aggregating employer demand to “pull” students through the program.
• Shippensburg University partners with the supermarket chain, Giant, and higher education providers (Harrisburg Area Community College and Harrisburg University) to upskill current Giant and other employees in various competencies required in modern supply chain management through a variety of credentialing programs developed in coordination with the company.
• Millersville University’s Registered Behavioral Certification program provides onramps for immigrants and refugees into entry-level roles that pay sustaining wages while filling an urgent regional talent gap. In partnership with employers, the program guarantees students a job interview upon completing a certificate.

So, what distinguishes these programs? What are their salient characteristics? Why are they important as potential growth areas? Six things:

1. They focus on non-degree credentials involving shorter bursts of learning, anywhere from six weeks to two years. As such, they provide opportunities for working learners to increase their earning power without committing to the time and expense required for an undergraduate or post-baccalaureate degree.
2. They result in industry-recognized credentials that employers acknowledge as bestowing upon their holder the competencies and skillsets required to perform effectively in a particular role or category of roles. Industry recognition is essential in building an effective “market” for these degrees. It provides employers with the confidence they need in credential holders and—as importantly—offers prospective students with the confidence they require that the time and expense involved in acquiring the credential will be returned in increased marketability and/or earnings.
3. They engage employers as partners in a variety of ways:
   a. identifying competencies and skillsets around which credentialing programs are designed;
   b. providing financial incentives for prospective students, notably in the form of credit-bearing apprenticeships and/or jobs for credential holders; and
   c. providing a pipeline for students, notably where employers offer tuition assistance to their employees who enroll in the credentialing programs to re-skill or upskill.
4. They enable social mobility in at least two ways:
   a. As short courses, they do not require the time or financial commitment of a degree program and, accordingly, are available to low-income, working, and other students whose life circumstances do not otherwise position them to participate in and reap the benefits of a post-secondary education; and
   b. Where credentials “stack” upon one another as parts of well-developed pathways, they allow working learners to continue their educational journeys and expand their workforce participation and earning power throughout a lifetime.
5. They meet students where they are in their working and learning journeys. This effort is especially important for non-traditional students who may not have the academic preparedness necessary to succeed immediately in a college degree program. Further, students enrolled in most of these programs earn while they are learning, and most will have jobs upon completion.
6. They expand upon and enhance the regional character of our universities because they are responsive to regional needs, and universities develop them in partnership with regional employers and others.

Does any of the above mean I think State System universities will or even should shift wholesale to the supply of workforce aligned non-degree credentialing programs? Hardly. But I do believe that such programs:

• support the economic health and competitiveness of all regions in our Commonwealth;
• enable more people to participate effectively in the 21st-century economy and to become socially mobile than would otherwise have an opportunity to do so;
• reflect and grow the stewardship and care our universities have always shown to their regions;
• reflect the entrepreneurial character that has historically driven continued innovation in and relevance of our universities; and
• supplement—and in many cases grow directly out of and/or build upon—core capabilities in undergraduate and post-graduate degree programs.

In all these ways, such credentialing programs are a natural outgrowth of our genesis, another chapter in the constantly evolving story of our educational programming, and—as Pennsylvania’s only public university system—a responsibility associated with our service to the Commonwealth.