Michael and Diane sit down with Alex Kotran, founder and CEO of the AI Education Project (AIEDU), to dive into what true “AI readiness” means for today’s students, educators and schools. They explore the difference between basic AI literacy and the broader, more dynamic goal of preparing young people to thrive in a world fundamentally changed by technology. The conversation ranged from the challenges schools face in adapting assessments and teaching practices for the age of AI, to the uncertainties surrounding the future of work. The episode asks key questions about the role of education, the need for adaptable skills, and how we can collectively steer the education system toward a future where all students can benefit from the rise of AI.

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

*Correction: At 17:40, Michael attributes an idea to Andy Rotherham, The idea should have been attributed to Andy Smarick.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. It is good to see you as always. Looking forward to this conversation today.

AI Education and Literacy Insights

Diane Tavenner: Me, too. You know what I’m noticing, first of all, I’m loving that we’re doing a whole season on AI because I felt like the short one was really crowded. And now we get to be very expansive in our exploration, which is fun. And that means we’ve opened ourselves up. And so there’s so much going on behind the scenes of us constantly pinging each other and reading things and sending things and trying to make sense of all the noise. And just this morning, you opened it up super big. And so it works out perfectly with our guest today. So I’m very excited to be here.

Michael Horn: No, I think that’s right. And we’re having similar feelings as we go through the series. And I’m, I’m really excited for today’s guest and because I think, you know, there are a lot of headlines right now around executive actions with regards to AI or, you know, different countries making quote, unquote, bold moves, whether it’s South Korea or Singapore or China and how much they’re using AI in education or not. We’re going to learn a lot more today, I suspect, from our guest, and he’s going to help put it all in the context, hopefully, because we’ve got Alex Kotran, excuse me, joining us. He’s the founder and CEO of the AI Education Project, or AIEDU. And AIEDU is a nonprofit that is designed to make sure that every single student, not just a select few, understands and can benefit from the rise of artificial intelligence. Alex is working to build a national movement to bring AI literacy and readiness into K12 classrooms, help educators and students explore what AI means for their lives, their work, and their futures.

And so with all that, I’m really excited because, as I said, I think he’s going to shed a little bit of light on these topics for us today. I’m sure we’re only going to get to scratch the surface with him because he knows so much, but he’s really got his pulse on the currents at play with AI and education, and perhaps he can help us separate some of the hype from reality, or at least the very real questions that we ought to be asking. So, Alex, with all that said, no pressure, but welcome. We’re excited to have you.

Alex Kotran: I’ll do my best.

Michael Horn: Sounds good. Well, let’s start maybe just your personal story right into this work and what motivates you around this topic in particular, to spend your time on it.

Alex Kotran: I’ve been in the AI space for about 10 years. But you know, besides being sort of proximate to all these conversations about AI, you know, I don’t have a background in software, computer science. I don’t think I have ever written a line of code. I mean, my dad was a software engineer. He teaches CS now. No background in technology or CS, no background in education. And so I actually, I had funders ask me this when I first launched AIEDU like, well like, why are you here? Like, what’s, what’s your role in all of this? You know, my background is in really political organizing. I started my career working on a presidential campaign, went and worked for the White House for the Obama administration, doing outreach for the Affordable Care act and other stuff like Ebola and Medicare and, and then found myself in D.C.

and after I just kind of got burned out of politics for reasons people probably don’t need to hear and can completely understand. And so it wasn’t that I was so smart to like, oh, I knew AI was the next thing. I just was like, I really want to move to San Francisco. I visited there, visited the city like twice and just fell in love and sort of fell into tech and an AI company that was working in cleantech. And so I was sort of doing AI work before it was really cool. It was like back in 2015, 2016. And then I ended up getting like what at the time was a kind of a really random job that I had a lot of mentors who were like, I don’t know, Alex, like AI, like this is just like a fringe, you know, emerging technology kind of like, you know, 3D printing and VR and XR and the Metaverse, you know, is that really like what you should do? And I just had like, nah, I just want to learn.

It seems really interesting. And that’s why I joined this AI company essentially working for the family office for the CEO. It was like, sort of a hybrid family office, corporate job, doing CSR, corporate social responsibility in the legal sector. This is the first company to build AI tools for use in the law. And so I was sort of charged with how do we advance the governance of AI and sort of like the safe and ethical use of AI and the rule of law. And so I basically had a blank canvas and ended up building the world’s first AI literacy program for judges. I worked with the National Judicial College in Stanford and NYU Law, trained thousands of judges around the world in partnership, by the way, with non profits like the Future Society and organizations like UNESCO. And because my parents are educators, I, you know, and my parents are foreign immigrants as well.

And so they always ask me about my job and really trying to convince me to go back, to go to law school or get a PhD or something. And I was like, well, no, but, you know, I actually, I’m, I don’t need to go to law school. I’m actually training judges. Like, they’re, they’re coming to learn from me about this thing called AI. And my mom was like, oh, like, well, that sounds so interesting. You know, have you thought about coming, you should come to my school and teach my kids about AI. And she teaches high school math in Akron, Ohio. And I was just like, surely your kids are learning about AI.

That’s, you know, my assumption is that we’re at a minimum talking to the future workers about the future of work. I just assume that, you know, like, you know, judges who tend to be older, like, they kind of need to be caught up. And after I started looking around to see, like, is there other curriculum that I could share with my mom’s school, I found that there really wasn’t anything. And that was back in 2019. 2018/2019. So way before ChatGPT and thus AIEDU was born when I realized, OK, this doesn’t exist. This actually seems like a really big problem because even as, even as early as 2018, frankly, as early as 2013, people in the know, technologists, people in Silicon Valley, labor economists, were sounding the alarms, like, AI is, you know, automation is going to replace like tens of millions of jobs.

This is going to be one of the huge disruptors. You had the World Economic Forum talking about the fourth Industrial Revolution. Really, this wasn’t much of a secret. It was just, you know, like, esoteric and like, you know, in the realm of like certain nerdy wonky circles. And it just, there wasn’t a bridge between those, the people that were meeting at the AI conferences and the people in education. And I would really say, like, our work now is still anchored in this question of, like, how do you make sure that there is a bridge between the cutting edge of technology and the leadership and decision makers who are trying to chart a course not over the next two years, which is sort of like how a lot of, I think Silicon Valley is thinking in the sort of like, very immediate reward system where they’re just, you know, like, they’re, they’re looking at the next fundraise. But in education, you’re thinking about the next 10 years. These are huge tanker ships that we’re trying to navigate now and we’re entering.

I think this is such a trope, but, like, we are really entering uncharted waters. And so, like, steering that. That supertanker is hard and I suppose to really belabor it as maybe AIEDU is sort of like the nimble tugboat, you know, that’s trying to just sort of like, nudge everybody along and sort of like guide folks into the future. And that demands answering some of this core question of the future of work, which hopefully we’ll get some more time to talk about.

Michael Horn: Yeah, I want to, I want to move there in a moment, but I, but first, like, I maybe I don’t know that all of our audience will be caught up with all the, you know, sort of this macro environment right where. Where we sit right now in terms of the national policy, executive actions as it pertains to AI and education. They’ve probably heard about it, but don’t know what it actually means, if anything. And so maybe sort of set the scene around where we are today nationally on these actions? What if it is actually meaningful or impactful? What if it is maybe more lip service around the necessity of having the conversation rather than moving the ball, just sort of set the stage for us where we are right now.

Alex Kotran: It’s really hard to say. I mean, there’s been a lot of action at the federal level and at state levels and schools have implemented AI strategies. The education space is inundated with, like, discussion and initiatives at working groups and bills and, you know, like, pushes for, like, AI and education. I think the challenge now is, like, we really haven’t agreed on, like, to what end? Like, is this, you know, are we talking about using AI to advance education as a tool? So, like, can AI allow us to personalize learning and address learning gaps and help teachers save time, or are we talking about the future of work and how do we make sure kids are ready to thrive? And there are some that say, well, they. We just need to get them really good at using tools. Which is a conversation I literally had earlier today where there was like a college to career nonprofit and they were like, well, we’re trying to figure out what tools that help kids learn because we want them to be able to get jobs.

I think like AIEDU, like, our work is actually, we don’t build tools. We don’t even have a software engineer on our team, which we’re trying to fix, like, if there’s a funder out there that would like to help fund an engineer, we’d love to have one. But our work is really systems change. Because if you like, zoom out and like, this is, I think, where I do have this skill set. And it’s kind of like, again, it’s a bit niche.

The education system is not. It’s not one thing. It’s like, it’s sort of like an organism. The same way that like redwood trees are organisms. Like, they’re kind of all connected, the root structure. But it’s actually like you’re looking at a forest that looks very different, you know, that’s not centralized. You know, every state kind of has their own strategy. And frankly, every district, in many cases, you’re talking about, you know, in some cases, like government scale, procurement, discussion, bureaucracy involved.

Advancing AI Readiness in Education

Alex Kotran: So if you’re trying to do systems change, this is really a project of like, how do you move a really heterogeneous group of humans and different audiences and stakeholders with different motivations and different priorities? And so our work is all about, OK, like, setting a North Star for everybody, which is like defining where we’re actually trying to go, what. And we use the word AI readiness, not AI literacy. Because what we’re, what we care about is kind of irrespective of whether kids are really good at using AI. Like, are they thriving in the world? And then like, how do you get there? Like, like most of our budget goes to delivering that work, you know, doing actual services, where we’re building the human, basically building the human capital and like, the content. So like training teachers, building curriculum, adapting existing curriculum, more so than building new curriculum, but like integrating learning experiences into core subjects that build the skills that students are going to need. And those skills, by the way, are not just AI literacy, but durable skills like problem solving, communication, and core content knowledge frankly, like being able to read and write and do math, we think is actually really important still, if not more important. And then sort of the third pillar to our work is really catalyzing the ecosystem.

And because the only way to do this is by building a movement, right? Like, sure, there. There’s an opportunity for someone to build a successful nonprofit that’s delivering services today. But if you actually want to change the world and really solve this problem on the timescale required, you have to somehow rally the entire, there’s like a million K12 nonprofits. We need all of them. This is like an all hands on deck moment. And so our organization is really obsessed with, like, how do we stay small and almost like operate as the intel inside to empower, like, the existing nonprofits so that they don’t have to all pivot and, like, become AI because, like, there’s just not enough AI experts to go around. If every school and every nonprofit wanted to hire an AI transformation officer.

Like, there just wouldn’t be enough people for them to hire.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, they’re still trying to hire a good tech lead in schools. We’re definitely not getting an AI expert in every school soon. So you’re, you’re speaking my language, you know, sort of change management, vision, leadership 101, etc. I’m wondering, you know, sort of not necessarily the place we were thinking we’d go in this conversation, but I think it’d be fun to go, like, really deep for a moment that I think is related to your North Star comment. What does school look like in the age of AI? When kids are flourishing, when young people are flourishing, and when they’re successfully launching? I think that’s what the North Star has to describe.

And you just started naming a whole bunch of things that are still important in school, which feel very familiar to me. They’re all parts of the schools that I’ve built and designed and whatnot. And so I think one of the interesting things is maybe we’ll then build back up to policy and whatnot. But, like, what does it look like if we succeed, if there is this national movement, we’re successful. We have schools or whatever they are that are enabling young people to flourish. What do you think that that looks like?

Alex Kotran: Yeah, this is the question of our day. Right. I mean, I think this is where, I mean, just to go back to this, like, state of play. I think, like, we’re kind of. It’s very clear that we are in the age of AI, right? This is no longer some future state. And frankly, like, ignore all the talk about AI bubbles because it kind of doesn’t matter. I mean, there was, there was like, there’s always a bubble. There was a bubble when we had railroads.

There was a bubble when we had, like, in the oil boom. There was a bubble with the Internet. You know, there probably will be some kind of a bubble with AI, but that’s kind of like part and parcel with transformational technologies. Nobody who’s really spent time digging these technologies believes that there’s not going to be AI sort of totally proliferated throughout our work in society in like, 10 years, which is, again, the timeframe that we’re thinking about. The key question is, though, like, what is it? Like, what does it mean to thrive? And so there’s more than just getting a job. But I think most people would admit that, like, having a job is really important. So maybe we start there and we can also talk about, you know, the, the social, emotional components of just sort of like, being able, being resilient to some of like, the onslaught of synthetic media and like, AI companions as other stuff. One of, if not the most important thing is, like, how do you get a job and like, have like, you know, be able to support yourself and, and that question is really unanswered right now.

Uncertainty in AI and Future Jobs

Alex Kotran: And so everybody in the education system is trying to figure out, like, well, what is our strategy? But we don’t know where we’re going? Like, we really do not know what the jobs of the future are. And like, I’ve, like, you hear platitudes like, well, it’s not that AI is going to take your job, it’s that somebody using AI is going to take your job. Which is a kind of a dumb thing to say because it’s, it’s correct. I mean, it’s like, it’s like, basically like, okay, either AI is going to do all the jobs, which I don’t like, like, that actually may happen, some people say, sooner than later. I just assume it’s going to be a long, long time if it ever, if we ever get there. And so until we get there, that means that there are humans doing jobs and AI and technology doing other aspects of work. So, like, what are the humans doing is really the important question. Not just like, are they using AI? But like, how are they using AI? How aren’t they using AI? Until we get more fidelity about what the future of work looks like, what are the skills you should be teaching? Because, like, you know, like, I think a lot about, like, cell phones.

And you go back to 2005 and you can imagine a conversation where it’s like, and all this is completely true, right? In 2005, it would be correct to say that, you know, you will not be able to get a job if you don’t know how to use a cell phone. You will be using a cell phone every single day, whether you’re a plumber or a mathematician or an engineer or an astrophysicist. And yet I think most of us would agree that, like, we shouldn’t have, like, totally pivoted education to focus on, like, cell phone literacy because, like, nobody’s going to hire you because you know how to use a phone and AI like, probably is going to some degree get there. I mean, it’s already sort of there, right? Like, sure, there are people who will charge you money to teach you prompt engineering, but you could also just open up Gemini and say, help me write a prompt. Here’s what I want to do. And it will basically tell you how to do it.

Diane Tavenner: I mean, we. You’ve seen this. You might not be old enough to remember this, but I was a teacher when everyone thought it was a really good idea to teach keyboarding in school. It’s like a class. What we discovered is actually if you just have people using technology, they learn how to use the keyboard. Right? Like, it happens in the natural course of things and you don’t have a class for it. So what I hear you saying is like, your approach is not about this sort of, you know, there’s some finite set of information or skill, you know, not even skills in many ways that we’re going to teach kids. But it’s like, what does it look like to have them ready for the world that honestly is here to today and then keeps evolving and changing over the next 10 years? And so where to even go with that, Michael because.

Michael Horn: I mean, part of me wonders, Alex, like, if I start to name the things that remain relevant, what, like, maybe the conversation to have is like, what’s less relevant in your view, based on what the world of work and society is going to look like?

What’s the stuff that we do today that you know, will feel quaint? Right, that we should be pruning from?

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, cursive handwriting. That is still hotly debated by, by the way.

Alex Kotran: But, you know, although you get like Deerfield Prep and they’re going back to pen and paper.

Michael Horn: Right. So that, I mean, that’s kind of where I’m curious. Like, what practices would you lean into? What would you pull away from? Because, I mean, that’s part of the debate as well. Like our friend Andy Rotherham, I believe at the time we’re recording it, just had a post around how it’s time for a, you know, a pause on AI in all schools. Right. Not sure that’s possible for a variety of reasons. But, like, what would you pull back on? What would you lean into? What would you stop doing that’s in schools today, as you think about that readiness for the world that will be here in your, we’re all guessing, but 10 years from now.

Alex Kotran: Now, what to pull back on? I mean, look, take home essays are dead. Don’t assign take-home essays like the detectors are imperfect. It’s like, and as a teacher, do you really want to be like an, you know, a cyber forensics specialist? Like that’s not the right use of your time. And also you’re using AI. So it’s a bit weird to the dissonance of like, oh, like empowering teachers with AI, but then like, we need to prevent kids from using it. But I think they’re like low hanging fruit. Like, OK, don’t assign take-home essays.

The way to abstract, that is students are. You can call it cheating, let’s just call it shortcuts. What we do need to do is figure out, OK, how can AI, how is AI being used as a shortcut? And whether you ban it in schools, kids are going to use it out of school. And so teachers need to figure out how to create assessments and homework and projects that design such that you can’t just use AI as a shortcut. And there’s like, this is a whole separate conversation. But just like to give one example, having students demonstrate learning by coming into the class and presenting and importantly having to answer questions in real time about a topic. You can use all the AI you want, but if you’re going to be on the spot and you don’t understand whatever the thing is that you’re presenting about and you’re being asked questions like, you know, that’s the kind of thing where sure, use all the AI. If it’s helpful, you might just.

But ultimately you just need to learn the thing. But like the more important question is like, I don’t know if school changes as much as people might think. I think it does change. I think there’s a lot that we know needs to change that is kind of irrespective of AI. Like we need learning to be more engaging. We need more project based learning. We need to shift away from just sort of like pure content knowledge, memorization. But that’s not necessarily new or novel because of AI.

I think it is more urgent than ever before.

Michael Horn: I’m curious, like what’s. Because I do think this is also hotly debated, right? Like in terms of the role of knowledge and being able to develop skills and things of that nature. And so I’m just sort of curious, like what’s the thin layer of knowledge you think we need to have? Or, or like Steven Pinker’s phrase, common knowledge Right

And what’s the stuff we don’t have? Like we don’t have to memorize state capitals, right? Maybe.

Diane Tavenner: No. Yeah, I don’t think we need to memorize the state capital, because, yeah, but keep going.

Michael Horn: Yeah, yeah, I’m curious now. It’s like, right, like as we think about, because we do have this powerful assistant serving us now and we think about what that means for work. And I, but I guess I’m just curious, like, what does that really mean in terms of that balance, right? Like, what is all knowledge learned through the project or this, you know, how do we think about, you know, and it’s a lot of just in time learning perhaps, which is more motivating. I’m curious, like, how you think about that.

Alex Kotran: I think this needs to be like, backed by, like research, right? Like, sure, it probably is, right, that you don’t need to memorize all the state capitals. But then I think you, you start to get to a place where like, OK, well, but do you even need to learn math? Because AI is really good at math and I think math is actually a good analog because I don’t really use math very much or I use relatively simplistic math day to day. I, I think it was really valuable for me to like, have spent the time building computational thinking skills and logic. And also just math was really hard for me and it was challenging. And like the process of learning a new abstract, hard thing. I do use that skill, even some of the rote memorization stuff. You know, my brother went to med school and like they spent a lot of time just memorizing like completely just like every tiny aspect of the human body.

They like have to learn it. It’s actually like, I think doctors are really interesting, a great way to kind of double click on this because if doctors don’t go through all of that and don’t understand the body and go through all of the rote process of literally taking like thousand question tests where they have to know like random things about blood vessels. And even if they’re never going to deal with that specific aspect of the human body, doctors kind of like build this sort of like generalized set of knowledge and then also they spend all this time like interacting with real world cases. And you, you start to build instincts based on that and, and you talk to hospitals about like, oh, what about, you know, AI to help with diagnosis? And one of the things I hear a lot of is, well, we’re worried about doctors losing the capacity to be a check on the AI because ultimately we hear a lot about the human in the loop. The human in the loop is only relevant if they understand the thing that they’re looped into. So, yeah, so like, I don’t know, I mean, maybe we.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, you’re onto something. You’re spurring something for me that I, I actually think is the new thing to do and haven’t been doing and aren’t talking about. And that is this, let me see if I can describe it as I’m understanding it, unfold the way you’re talking about it. So I had a reaction to the idea of memorizing the state capitals because memorizing them is pretty old school, right? It calls back to a time where you aren’t going to be able to go get your encyclopedia off the shelf and look up the capitals. Like you have to have that working knowledge in your mind, if you will, to have any sense of geography and, you know, whatever you might be doing. And it was pretty binary.

Like it really wasn’t easy to access knowledge like that. So you really did have to like memorize these things. Math, multiplication tables get cited often and whatnot for fluency in thinking and whatnot. So I don’t think that goes away. But it’s different because we have such easy access to AI and so there isn’t this like dependency on, you’re the only source of that knowledge, otherwise you’re not going to be able to go get it. But it doesn’t take away the need to have that working understanding of the world and so many things in order to do the heavier lifting thinking that we’re talking about and the big skills. And I think that, I don’t think there’s a lot of research on that in between pieces, like, how do you teach for that level of knowledge acquisition and internalization and whatnot? And how do you then have a, you know, a more seamless integration with the use of that knowledge in the age of AI when it’s so easily accessible? So that feels like a really interesting frontier to me. That doesn’t look exactly the same as what we’ve been doing, but isn’t totally in a different world either.

It is restricted, responsive and reflective of the technology we have and how it will get used now.

Rethinking Assessments and Learning Strategies

Alex Kotran: Yeah, it’s, it’s a helpful push because like, what I’m not saying is that I know everything in school is fine. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a superintendent who would say, oh, I’m feeling good about our assessment strategy. Like, we’ve known that and because really what you’re describing is assessments like what, like what are we assessing in terms of knowledge, which becomes the driver and incentive structure for teachers to like, you know, because to your point. Are you spending five weeks just memorizing capitals or are you spending two weeks and then also then saying, OK, now that you’ve learned that, I want you to actually apply that knowledge and like come up with a political campaign for governor of, you know, a state that you learned about and like, tell us about like why you’re going to be picking those. You know, tell us about your campaign platform. Right. And you know, like, how is it connected to what you learned about the geography of that state? So it’s like adapting, integrating project based learning and more engaging and relevant learning experiences. And then like the mix and the balance of what, what’s happening in the classroom is sort of, and this is the, the challenging thing because it’s like the assessments will inform that, but it’s also there the assessments are downstream of sort of like it’s not just about getting the assessments right, but it’s like, why are we assessing these things? And so that you very quickly get to like, well like, what is the future of work? And because like, yeah, I mean like, you probably don’t need to learn the Dewey Decimal system anymore.

Even though being able to navigate knowledge is maybe one of the most important things, certainly something I use every day.

Diane Tavenner: One of the things we tend to do in US Education, Alex, is be so US centric and we forget that other people on the planet might be grappling with some of these things. I know you track a lot of what happens around the globe. What can we look at as models or interesting, you know, experiments or explorations. Everything from like big system change work, which I know we have different systems across the world, so that’s different. It’s a little bit, it’s not groundswell, it’s a top down but like anything from policy, big system all the way down to like who, who might be doing interesting things in the classroom. Where are you looking for inspiration or models across the globe?

Alex Kotran: I mean, South Korea is a really interesting case study. You mentioned South Korea. I think at the beginning of this, during the intro they were just in headlines because they had done this big push. They would like roll out personalized learning nationwide. And then they announced that they were rolling back or sort of slowing down or pausing on the strategy. I forget if it was a rollback or a pause, but they’re basically like, wait, this isn’t working. And what they found is that they hadn’t made a requisite investment in the teacher capacity. And that was clear.

And so part of the reason I’m tracking that is because I don’t know that there’s very much for us to learn from what any school is doing right now, beyond, like, there’s a lot for us to learn in the sense of like, how can we empower teacher, like, how do we empower teachers to run with this stuff? Because they are doing that. You know, like, I think there’s a lot to learn from a, like a mechanical standpoint of like, implementation strategies. But I don’t know that anybody has figured this out because like, nobody can yet describe what the future of work looks like. And I know this because the AI companies can’t even describe what the future of work looks like. You know, you had like Dario Amodei at Anthropic seven months ago, saying in six months, 90% of code is going to be written by AI, which is not the case. Not even close.

Diane Tavenner: And Amazon’s going to lay off 30,000 white collar workers this week,

Alex Kotran: Which they did.. Yes. And so you have. But is that really because of AI or is that because of overhiring from interest rates? I mean there’s like, so, so until we answer this question of like, what is like. And really the way to say what is the future of work is like, to put it in educational terms, how are you going to add value to the labor market? Like, David Otter has this like, example which I think is really important. It’s like, you know, the crosswalk coordinator versus the air traffic controller. And then, like, we pay the air traffic controller four times as much because any one of us could go, be a crosswalk coordinator like today, just give us a vest and a stop sign. I don’t, I assume you’re not moonlighting as an air traffic controller. I’m certainly not.

It would take us, I think, I don’t know what the process is, but I think years to acquire the expertise. And so there is this barrier of expertise to do certain things. And what AI will do is lower the barriers to entry for certain types of expertise, things like writing, things like math. And so in those environments where AI is increasingly going to be automating certain types of expertise, then, well, for people to still get wages that are good or to be employed, they have to be adding something additional. And so the question of like, what are the humans adding? Again, we get to stuff like durable skills. We get to stuff like a human in the loop. But I think it’s much more nuanced than that. And the reason I know that is because there’s the MIT study.

I think it was a survey, but let’s call it a study. I think they called it a study. So there’s a study from MIT that found that 95% of businesses, AI implementations failed, have not been successful. So really what we’re seeing is, yes, AI is blowing up, but for the most part, most organizations have not actually cracked the code on like, how to like, unlock productivity and like. And so I think that there’s actually quite a lot of business change management and organizational change that’s coming. And so actually kind of trying to hone in on what does that look like, I think is maybe the key, because that will take 10 years if you look at computers. Computers, like, could have revolutionized businesses long before, but they ended up getting adopted. I mean, it took like decades actually for, you know, spreadsheets and things like that to become ubiquitous.

And like Excel is a great example of something. I was just talking to this, this expert from the mobile industry who was talking about, like, the interesting thing about spreadsheets was it didn’t just automate because there were people who literally would hand write, you know, ledgers before Excel. And so obviously that work got automated. But the other thing that spreadsheets did, where they created a new category of work, which is like the business analysts, because. Because before spreadsheets there was really the only way to get that information was to like, call somebody and sort of like compile it manually. And now you had a new way to look at information which actually unlocked a new sort of function that didn’t exist. And that meant, like, businesses now have teams of people that are like, doing layers of analysis that they didn’t realize that they could do before. And so

Diane Tavenner: I wonder, what you’re saying is sparking two things for me. And again, we could talk probably all day, but we don’t have all day. So sadly, I think this might be bringing us to a close here for the moment. But I’m curious what both of you think on this because you brought up air traffic controllers. And in my new life and work, I’m very obsessed with careers and how people get into them and whatnot. I’ve done deep dives on air traffic controllers. And it’s, my macro point here is going to be.

I do wonder if this moment of AI is also just extreme, exposing existing challenges and problems and bringing them to the forefront. Because let me be clear, training air traffic controllers in the US was a massive problem before AI came around, before any of this happened. It’s a really messed up system. It is so constrained. It’s not set up for success. Like, it’s just such a disaster and a mess and it’s such a critical role that we have. And it’s probably going to change with AI. Like, so you’ve just got all these things going on.

And I’m wondering, Michael, from your perspective, is that what happens in these, you know, moments of disruption and is that all predictable and how do we get out of it? And then, Alex, you’re talking about. I was having a conversation this morning about this idea that all these companies no longer are hiring sort of those entry level analysts, or they’re hiring far fewer of them. And my wondering is no one can seem to answer this question yet. Great. Where’s your manager coming from? Because if you don’t employ any people at that level and they haven’t sort of learned the business and learned things, what do you think they’re just sitting on the sidelines for seven, eight years and then they’re ready to slide in there into, you know, the roles that you are keeping? And so are these just problems that already existed that are now just being exposed, you know, what’s going on? What do you all think?

Job Market Trends and AI

Alex Kotran: So, first of all, we really don’t know if the, like, I’m not convinced that the reason that there’s high unemployment among college grads is because of AI. I mean, I think there was overhiring because of interest, low interest rates. I think that companies are trying to free up cash flow to pay for the inference costs of these tools. And, and I think in general, like, you know, we’re, there’s going to be like, sort of like boom, bust cycles in terms of hiring in general. And we’ve been in a really good period of high employment for a long time. I think what, what is clear is if you talk to like earlier stage companies, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine at Cursor, which is like one of the big vibe coding companies, like blowing up, worth lots and lots of money. And I asked them about, like, oh, like I keep hearing about like, you know, companies aren’t hiring entry level engineers anymore because like, you’re better off having someone with experience.

And he’s like, all of our engineers are in like their early 20s. Huh. OK, that’s interesting. Well, yeah, because actually it’s a lot faster and easier to train somebody who’s an AI native who learned software engineering while vibe coding. But he’s like, but we’re a small organization that’s like basically building out our structure as we go so we don’t have to like operate within sort of like the confines. I think there’s going to be this idea of like incumbent organizations. They have the existing hierarchy because ultimately you’re looking for people who are like really fast learners who can like learn new technology, who are adaptable and who are good at like doing hard stuff. If you’re a small organization, you’re probably better off just like hiring young people that like, you know, have those instincts.

If you’re a large organization, what you might do is just maybe you’re laying off some of the really slow movers and then retaining and promoting the people that are already in place and have those characteristics. And then your point about like training the next generation, like law firms are thinking about this a lot because like you could, maybe you could automate all the entry level associates, but you do need a pipeline. But then you get to do you need middle managers? I mean like if the business models are less hierarchical because you just don’t need all those layers, then maybe you don’t worry so much about whether you need middle management and it’s more about do you need more. I think what companies are going to realize is they actually need more systems thinkers and technology native employees that are integrated into other verticals of knowledge work that outside of tech. So like, if you think about marketing and like business and customer success and you know, like non profit world fundraising and policy analysts, like all of these teams that generally have like people from the humanities. You know, I think companies are going to say, OK, how do we actually get people that like can do some vibe coding and have a little bit of like CS chops to build out some, you know, much more efficient and productive ways for these teams to operate. But like nobody knows. Nobody knows.

I don’t know. Michael?

Michael Horn: I love this point, Alex, where you’re ending and that like, and I like the humility frankly in a lot of the guests that we’ve had around. This is like the honesty that we’re all guessing a little bit at this future and we’re looking at different signals right. As we do. I think my quick take off this and I’ll try to give my version of it, I guess is you mentioned David Otter earlier at mit, Alex. Right. And part of his contention is that actually, right, it levels expertise between jobs that we’ve paid a lot for and jobs that we haven’t and more people like, as opposed to technology that is increasing inequality. This may be a technology that actually decreases inequality. And I guess it goes to my second thing, Diane, around what the question you asked and air traffic control training is a great example.

But like, fundamentally, the organizations and processes we have in place have a very scarcity mindset. And I suspect they’re going to fight change and we’re going to need new disruptive organizations, similar to what Alex was just saying, that look very differently to come in. And it gets to a little bit of, I think what everyone says with technology, like the short term predictions are huge. They tend to disappoint on that. The long term change is bigger than we can imagine. And I guess I kind of wonder is the long term change what we. Alex, earlier on this season we had Reed Hastings and you know, he has a very abundant sort of society mindset where the robots plus AI plus probably quantum computing, like, are doing a lot of the things, or is it frankly sort of what you or I think Paul LeBlanc would argue, which is that a lot of these things that require trust and we want people like, yes, you can build an AI that does fundraising for you. But like, do I really trust both sides of that equation? I’d rather interact with someone.

Right. There’s a lot of social capital that sort of greases these wheels ultimately in society. And I guess that’s a bit of the question. And Diane, I guess part of me thinks, you know, Carlota Perez, who’s written about technology revolutions, right. She says that there will be some very uncomfortable parts of this, right. And a bit of upheaval. Part of me keeps wondering if we can grease the wheels for new orgs to come in organically, can we avoid some of that upheaval because they’ll actually more naturally move to paying people for these jobs in a more organic way.

And I, right now we have a, I’m not sure we have that mindset in place. That’s a bit of my question.

Diane Tavenner: More questions than answers. More questions than answers. Really. This has been, wow, really provocative.

Michael Horn: Yeah. So let’s, let’s, let’s leave. We could go on for a while. Let’s leave the conversation here for the moment. Alex, A segment we have on the show as we wrap up always is things we’re reading, watching, listening to either inside work or we try to be outside of work. You know, podcasts, TV shows, movies, books, whatever it might be. What’s on your night table or in your ear or in front of your eyes right now that you might share with us.

Alex Kotran: I’m reading a book about salt. It’s called Salt.

Michael Horn: This came out a few years ago. Yeah. Yeah. My wife read it.

Alex Kotran: Yeah, I’m actually reading it for the second time. But it is, you know, it’s interesting because we. It’s something that’s, like, now you take for granted. But, you know, there’s a time when, you know, wars were fought. You know, it sort of spurred entire new sorts of technologies around. Like, the Erie Canal was basically, you know, like, salt was a big component of, you know, why we even built the Erie Canal. It’s. It’s actually nicknamed a ditch that salt built, you know, spurring new mining techniques.

Technology’s Interconnected Conversation

Alex Kotran: And, you know, I just find it fascinating that, like, you know, there are these, like, technology is so interconnected not to bring it back. I know this is supposed to be outside, but all I read, I only read nonfiction, so it’s going to be connected in some way. I just, like, fascinated by, like, you know, there are these sort of, like, layers behind the scenes that we sometimes take for granted that, you know, can actually be, like, you know, quietly, you know, monumental. I think what’s cool about this moment with technology is it’s like everybody’s a part of this conversation. Like, before, it was, like, much more cloistered. And so I think that’s just, like, good. Even though, yes, there’s a lot of noise and hype and, you know, snake oil and all that stuff, but I think in general, like, we are better off by, like, having folks like you, like, asking folk, asking people for, like, you know, like, driving conversation about this and not just leaving it to a small group of experts to dictate.

Diane Tavenner: So I think this is cheating, but I’ve done this one before. But I’m gonna cheat anyway because, as you know, Michael, because you hear me talk about it a lot, the. The one news source I religiously read is called Tangle News. It’s a newsletter now and a podcast. It’s grown like crazy since I first started listening. I love it. It’s like a startup.

It started, I think when I started reading, it was like, under 50,000 subscribers or something. Now up half a million. Executive editor, Isaac Saul, who I’m going to say this about a news person I trust, which I think is just a miracle. And I’m bringing it up this week because he wrote a piece last Friday that, honestly, I had to break over a couple days because it was really brutal to read. That’s just a very honest accounting of where we are in this moment. The best piece I’ve heard, I’ve read or, or heard about it. And then on Monday, he did another piece where, you know, they do what’s the left saying? What’s the right saying? What’s his take? You know, what are dissenting opinions? I just love the format. I love what they’re doing.

I was getting ready to write them a thank you note slash love letter, which I do periodically. And I thought I’d just say it on here.

Michael Horn: I was gonna say now you can just excerpt this and send them a video clip.

Diane Tavenner: So I hope, I hope people will check it out. I love, love, love the work they’re doing, and I think you will too.

Michael Horn: I’m gonna go historical fiction. Diane, I’m like, surprising you multiple weeks in a row here, I think. Right? Yeah. Because, Alex, I’m like you. I’m normally just nonfiction all the time, but I don’t know. Tracy said you have to read this book, Brother’s Keeper by Julie Lee.

It’s based on. It’s historical fiction based on a. About a family’s migration from North Korea to South Korea during the Korean War. It is a tear jerker. I was crying like, literally sobbing as I was reading last night. And Tracy was like, you OK? And I was like, I think I won’t get through the book. But I did, and it’s fantastic.

So we’ll leave it there. But, Alex, huge thanks. You spurred a great conversation. Looking forward to picking up a bunch of these strands as we continue. And for all you listening again, keep the comments, questions coming. It’s spurring us to think through different aspects of this and invite other guests who have good answers or at least the right questions and signals we ought to be paying attention to. So we’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.

But nowadays , said Christina Sanchez, a school and college counselor at in the San Fernando Valley.

Sanchez, who has worked as a counselor for more than two decades, has put in the time in schools to know what students think and feel about their possible future career paths. 

She said career and technical education is amongst today’s high school seniors, and, as far as she can tell, even are feeling the shift. 

But from her perch at Triumph Charter High, a , Title I school, Sanchez also said students should be mindful of the path they choose, whether it be college or the workforce. 

“If they are going to college just because somebody told them it’s best, that usually doesn’t work out,” she said. “But I also think they should consider the benefits of a college education.” 

Read on as Sanchez weighs in on why the CTE is ascendent, what colleges are doing to adjust, and whether this shift is good for students. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

University enrollment has declined over the past decade, and vocational programs are rising in that same timeframe. Have you noticed this trend and what do you attribute this to? 

We still have students going to college, but yes it is definitely a declining number. 

I would say there’s more interest in a quick payout. They see that more in trades. So, students are gravitating toward trade school where they can focus on a career and get out sooner. They feel they can make money quicker, and just as much, if not more, as with a college education. 

They’re equating education with money more, especially since the pandemic. Yes, there are obvious connections between those. But, it’s not the only factor, and it really depends what field you go into. 

What are universities doing to avoid a decline in enrollment?

There are still schools like UCLA and UC Berkeley who are very selective. UCLA is not begging anybody to apply.

I’ve definitely seen private colleges sending marketing emails more to get students to apply, and even waiving application fees. Sometimes they say ‘you don’t even need to do the extra work, just send us a transcript.’ Public universities are extending deadlines often as well. 

Community colleges are also increasing and promoting their trade programs more than ever. That’s becoming a focus for them because they’re trying to compete. 

Are there more downsides to a college degree now than in years past, and are students more pessimistic about going to college?

There’s definitely a resistance to taking out student loans. It doesn’t help that parents will often highlight cautionary tales, like a niece or nephew who went to college and is now working retail. 

I haven’t noticed any increases in unemployment rates or underemployment rates. Those are specific instances, not really a trend. When we do hear back from our alumni who went to college, they are almost always working on something related to their degree. I rarely have a student come back and say they haven’t been able to get a job. 

Why are trade careers becoming more interesting to students? 

There are always trending careers, but they ebb and flow. Today, social media has more of an impact on what careers students see. Sometimes I talk to students and ask, ‘How did you even know about that?’ and they say they saw it on social media. 

People highlight their career paths, and students see the best of it. They see what the person chooses to show. Just like it is with people’s private lives, you may not see the bad days or the bad sides of it. They’re not highlighting the negatives. I definitely see that influencing students when it comes to career paths, especially in the last five years. 

What advice would you give to a student choosing between a trade school and a university in this current job climate? 

I think everybody should do what’s right for them. If they are going to college just because somebody told them it’s best, that usually doesn’t work out. But I also think they should consider the benefits of a college education, other than what type of job you can get. I do find that there are benefits beyond that. 

Some are not seeing that job opportunities are wider with a college degree. If you are trained in one industry and you don’t enjoy it, you don’t have as much flexibility as someone with a college degree. You’re 17 years old, how do you know you want to be an electrician? 

When they make the decision, they need to be open to everything so that they know for sure it is the right one for them and not just one they made because they didn’t work to explore their options. 

I think what needs to be done more in schools is career exposure. Students are mostly making decisions based on what they see on the internet, what they read, and random examples. They’re not really experiencing the world of work because we have such an academic focus in our schools. Many schools promote college prep, and it almost seems like career things are considered ‘anti-college.’ 

That might be doing students a disservice to students who don’t get to see all these careers and what they look like. So I do think schools should do more with career guidance. I’m in support of career education, apprenticeships, and dual enrollment, but it should be done for careers you get with a college degree, not just trade school careers. It does seem like when schools do have career programs, they tend to be in the trades. It should be both. 

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Indiana is the latest state to work with ETH Zurich — where Albert Einstein once studied —  to develop ways to break down barriers between educators and business so that career training can be a large part of a reinvented high school experience.

Indiana government, business and education officials  — like those in Alabama, California, Colorado, Washington State, New York City and Washington, D.C. — have spent the last few years working with Ursula Renold, the former head of the Swiss vocational system.

Now a professor at ETH, Renold’s highly-regarded Center on the Economics and Management of Education and Training Systems, known as CEMETS, earns rave reviews and advises companies and officials around the world.

A broad Indiana coalition including legislators, the state community college Ivy Tech, the Indiana Department of Education and Indiana Chamber of Commerce have visited Switzerland under CEMETS’ direction. Committees of executives from several industries have also taken trips to see Swiss companies and schools in their field.

The coalition expects to release a statewide plan to expand youth apprenticeships — potentially from 500 today to 50,000 in 10 years  — in September. 

“College, of course, is very important, and it will continue to be important,” said Claire Fiddian-Green, President and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, which has paid for and is leading some of the work. “But we know that it’s not serving the majority of students in Indiana today.”

“We are trying to grow another great pathway that allows for upward mobility for young people in our state and also meets the demand for skilled labor that employers have been struggling to find for a long time,” she said. 

That vision includes creating thousands of apprenticeships in fields such as health care, manufacturing and information technology, which are common in Europe. Such apprenticeships would add to the more traditional ones in the U.S. in the construction trades. 

Among potential changes coming to Indiana based on the Swiss system are letting 11th and 12th graders work part time while attending school part time; and letting businesses have a say in which work skills schools teach students.

The plan will likely call for high school students to receive credit toward graduation from their work and training experiences, a change already being discussed at the department of education as it debates new diploma requirements.

Indiana already has a pilot Modern Youth Apprenticeship Program that started in 2021 to let high school juniors and seniors earn money working in businesses, such as AES Indiana and pharmaceutical company Roche, through their first year in college. Nearly 500 students have worked as apprentices in the three-year program.

That program will soon expand to four other communities across the state, but officials want to grow it even more.

“We’ve really kind of hit the accelerator,” said Robert Behning, the Indiana House education committee chairman.

Annelies Goger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who researches career training, has traveled to Switzerland with Indiana officials for research on how the state, along with Colorado and Alabama, is breaking ground in trying to bring apprenticeships to a large scale.

“I am struck by the level of cohesion and shared vision in the state across many of the key leaders in workforce, education, the legislature, and the chamber,” Goger said. “CEMETS has played a critical role in creating the space and time for these leaders to work together and align around how they plan to tackle several challenges with student success.”

Day 1 of our Summer Institute was a hit!

— Chair of Education Systems (@CES_zurich)

The top challenges the Indiana coalition has identified and are looking to Renold and the Swiss for solutions include high school class schedules that interfere with work, a lack of public transportation for students to get to jobs without a car, and businesses’ willingness to train large numbers of students — not just a few as a charity effort.

Perhaps the biggest will be having competitors in each field partner to find common skills they all want new employees to have, so apprentices can train for an entire industry, not just a single employer.

The Swiss have solved many of these issues, at least to a far greater degree than the U.S. About two thirds of students in Switzerland participate in apprenticeships as part of their education. Though attending university can still be the most prestigious path, apprenticeships are respected and are often combined with college by students who want both theoretical and practical training.

The Swiss also have no reluctance in having high-school age students as apprentices as Indiana is considering. Many Swiss apprenticeships start as early as age 15, not after high school when most start in the U.S. Swiss companies view working with young people as a chance to attract new talent, not the risk and bother many American companies do.

The Swiss system also gives companies a say in what skills schools teach in return for taking on responsibility and the expense of co-training teenagers. 

Fiddian-Green said she was sold on the potential of Indiana schools and businesses cooperating to help students and themselves after attending a summer seminar in 2019 that CEMETS runs every year. Teams from around the world spend the week of the seminar  touring businesses and schools, then work with Renold’s staff to try and better grow training programs back home.

Fiddian-Green said visiting training centers that Swiss businesses create just for young people and seeing how competing companies can agree on what students need to be taught to succeed in that industry, not just their own company, was eye-opening.

“You start to have light bulbs go off after you’ve been there about three days, because it all starts to kind of click together,” she said.

Noel Ginsburg, the Colorado businessman who created the CareerWise youth apprenticeship program in Colorado in 2016 had a similar experience. He credits Renold and the CEMETS summer seminar with showing him how apprenticeships succeed for so many students and  inspiring CareerWise, which has served nearly 2,200 apprentices.

“It’s the combination of the theoretical that you learn in the classroom, where there’s discussion, but then you see it at scale, which is why CEMETS is powerful,” Ginsburg told The 74.

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and his wife Judith are also fans of Renold, CEMETS and the Swiss system after Renold and staff took them to businesses and schools to see it in person. Chase now hires CareerWise apprentices in its New York City offices and is an outspoken backer of CareerWise expansion in that city.

Judi Dimon told The 74 she was impressed with how engaged Swiss apprentices were, even those still of high school age. And she saw how seriously companies took apprenticeships as a recruiting and talent pipeline strategy, not a charity program as many youth training programs are.

“It was not… a corporate responsibility project that is paid for by the (company) foundation,” Dimon said. “It is core to the businesses themselves, and to the culture and to their ability to attract young talent.”

That shift of viewing high school work experiences as a real business strategy and not just a public relations effort is cited by many experts as crucial to expanding high school internships or apprenticeships to a large scale anywhere in the U.S., not just Indiana.

Making a return on investment case to businesses is one of the key issues that Indiana teams have been working on with CEMETS staff.

Others include adapting high school schedules so that students can fit in real work time, perhaps by having some days of only work and some devoted to school as in Switzerland.  

The state also wants each industry to develop standards for what employees should know across many companies, so that training can be common across an industry. Having committees of competitors from Indiana building a plan together with CEMETS is a step toward the industry associations that determine training in Switzerland.

“Those associations actually create a curriculum with input from the education system,” Fiddian-Green said. “That’s a huge critical function that makes it possible for employers to engage in apprenticeship, and that’s what we don’t have in Indiana.”

CRPE’s in-depth interviews with students and educators across six high schools in New England yielded a resounding message: the primary purpose of high school is not to prepare every student for college. 

Instead, parents and students in wide-ranging circumstances describe happiness, fulfillment, and a “good life” as their priorities. “I just hope that she’s happy, [that she finds] something that she enjoys doing and that she can just find her place,” said a parent of a student in credit recovery. A parent of a straight-A student taking multiple AP courses said, “I want her to just pursue whatever makes her happy, honestly.” A rural student said, “How I measure success isn’t exactly in scores or numbers. It’s more of, do I enjoy where I’m at in life, and is this where I saw myself going, and where can I go from here?”

Underneath these desires hum a host of economic and social pressures. “Success would mean for me that I am not living a paycheck-to-paycheck life, or I’m not struggling to provide for me and the others around me,” said one student. A parent added, “Honestly, I think it’s really hard for kids to settle on what they want to do right out of high school right now, given the state of our environment and our world and everything that’s happening.”

What leads to happiness and stability? Some students have told us about college plans, convinced that college is the path to “being my best self and earning my own money and doing a job that I enjoy.” But others aren’t so convinced that college will lead to success on their own terms. The reasons are varied: young people don’t want to do more school; they’d prefer to avoid high-stakes tests and applications; they’re concerned about finances; or, they would simply prefer to start earning money in a job they know rather than make a big bet on future opportunities they can’t access yet.

Administrators in our study are also noticing a trend away from college as the agreed-upon best path out of high school. “At one point, people defined success by college,” said an assistant superintendent. “And I think that people have come to realize now that that’s not the ultimate measure of success.” 

Letting go of ‘college for all’ …

Our study’s findings aren’t an anomaly. Since the pandemic, Americans as a whole have college prep as a key function for high schools. 

In many ways, this shift is a good thing. Present and future workforce needs are changing rapidly, demanding continuous waves of learning. Meanwhile, college graduates even now aren’t reliably showing proficiency in skills that employers value. CRPE and others have argued for years that the old “4+4” equation—four years of high school and four years of college—is increasingly outdated. That’s especially true when for a four year degree top $35,000 and student debt is crushing across income levels, with few solutions in sight. Over the past decade, Gallup surveys that three in four Americans do not believe college is affordable for everyone who needs it.

… Without exacerbating inequities

The challenge for high schools is how to make the shift beyond college for all without reverting back to fundamentally inequitable patterns. While historically underrepresented groups have made notable gains in and over the past decades, disparities persist along the lines of race and income. Those inequalities are cause for concern because evidence still that college can be a powerful engine of economic mobility. Students from low-income and high-income families who attend the same college, especially selective colleges, end up having similar earnings in adulthood. But students from families in the top 1% of income distribution are 77 times more likely to attend elite colleges than students from the poorest families. Taking into account persistent racial wealth gaps, this means that , and learners face multiple structural barriers to economic mobility.

The push for K-12 schools to prepare all students to enroll in a four-year university represented a laudable effort to address this staggering inequality, but the problem hasn’t been solved. In 2022, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian Americans all college prep as a much higher priority for high schools than White Americans did. In our study, one teacher from a Title I high school said, “I worry for every single student that leaves us, that they’ll have the tools to make a real life for themselves, with choices.” Could leaving “college for all” behind mean giving up on a commitment to equity? 

The way through this conundrum is to reject the between going to college or not. If the options are either “college” or “no college,” then inevitably only some students—mainly those already advantaged—will get support toward a college degree. But if the options include many paths to family-sustaining careers, with further education and credentials at multiple points on each path, then many choices can be good choices. 

High schools that internalize this mantra won’t be any less committed to college readiness for all students, and they won’t divide their students between kids who are college-bound and others who prefer to “work with their hands.” Instead, they’ll help every young person be ready for the adult world of work, aware of the trade-offs of choices they make, and academically prepared for higher education—when they choose it or need it.

What high schools are learning

No school we’ve studied has fully solved how to move beyond the traditional mindset while still avoiding the harm of low expectations, especially for historically underserved students. But some schools are approaching it in deliberate, thoughtful ways from which that others can learn.

At Nokomis Regional High School in rural Maine, educators believe that a wide range of college and non-degree options requires students to develop self-knowledge and articulate their own personal life values. Nokomis starting in ninth grade and develop a concrete plan by senior year. A critical new step is an interdisciplinary course called “The Good Life,” which helps, according to one student, to define “your version of the good life and how are you going to achieve it.” She also noted that comparing visions can help students expand their thinking about options. At Nokomis, as well as several other schools in our study, educators describe success as a viable postsecondary plan for every student, whether or not four-year college is part of it.

KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate in Massachusetts was founded with the KIPP network’s commitment to guarantee college access and success for underrepresented communities, especially students of color. The school has long focused on college prep courses, robust college counseling for every student, and for students through their college years. But now, administrators are listening to students who don’t yet feel ready to commit to college, and others who have dreams of entrepreneurship, beauty school, performance arts, and beyond. The school is expanding its own postsecondary counseling services to support a wider range of options, while staying committed to rigorous academic preparation so every student is at least college ready, if not college-going.

The high school every student deserves

In these and other high schools across the country, the work ahead will be difficult. High schools have proven remarkably resistant to change, and past efforts to transform them have seen limited results at best. 

Most critically, schools will need to maintain a laser focus on setting and maintaining high expectations for every student, even if the endgame for those expectations—traditionally, a bachelor’s degree—is shifting. Students who don’t choose college right away cannot be given an “easier” high school experience; they need a challenging one that maximizes their potential. 

Doing this well means listening seriously to families about their goals and priorities, not telling them what’s best. It also means exposing students to a far more diverse range of education, training, and work opportunities. Every student will need information and adult mentors to help them learn about their options, think through the trade-offs, and make an informed decision. They’ll also need relationships with a diverse range of adults to gain a foothold in their careers. Schools can’t do this alone: they will need help from employers and community partners. They also need their states to redesign policies on credit and seat time, since existing policies allow precious little flexibility for learning through internships and outside of school walls.

Skeptics who are hesitant to let go of the college-focused reform agenda need only think about the vibrant individuality of young people in their lives. In our study, one academically ambitious student dreams of being an opera singer, another student with a history of truancy aims to be a judge, and a third from a family of educators just wants to start working. They need their high schools to take them seriously. They each deserve an education that helps them to set and pursue goals that matter to them—and to adjust course when their interests or circumstances change.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

Perhaps the biggest failure of the current education ecosystem is its inability to envision what the future holds for our students and to make systemic changes now to prepare them for that future. Shackled to a monolithic, change-resistant system, school and district leaders continue to make incremental and piecemeal changes to a broken system expecting to get different outcomes.

In an analogous way, almost all public-school systems are like Blockbusters in the late 1990s — unwilling to assess the impact of technological advances and consider how they might need to revisit their design principles. In the end, if an organization does not move purposefully toward some likely future, then any path forward will do, and it is likely to be the path they are currently on.

The workplace’s 2035 needs

Numerous studies and analyses already point to a fundamentally different workplace and different skills that will be required by 2035. Employers are already signaling that they need workers with “” such as critical thinking, communication, being able to work in teams and learning how to learn.

We do not know exactly how artificial intelligence will change the workplace by 2035, but we already know its impact over the last decade and can extrapolate forward. Similarly, we are witnessing in real-time the expansion of the “gig economy,” which will change the workforce in both positive and negative ways.

Indeed, there seems to be a growing symbiotic relationship between artificial intelligence and the gig economy. As artificial intelligence becomes more ubiquitous, forcing workers out of “left-brain” jobs, companies have greater labor options and can take advantage of outsourcing low-skilled tasks to the gig economy. Amazon’s Flex and DSP delivery programs presage this type of shift in the labor market and a trend that is likely to grow quickly.

Even if future workplace and workforce changes are more incremental and benign, graduates clearly need additional and different skills and competencies to be successful in the future. Reading and fundamental math skills will remain important, but they will no longer be sufficient.

Graduates with year 2035 skills and competencies will be in the best position to compete for higher-skill jobs. And as always, if schools do not help students gain these skills, then better-resourced families will have a competitive advantage.

My biggest fear is that poor and other disadvantaged students will neither gain reading proficiency nor be taught the 2035 skills. If social mobility continues to decline, the two achievement gaps — the traditional reading and math gap and the year 2035 competencies gap — will be “locked in” for the next 50 years.

“Wholescale” reform

The time for bold reform and desperate measures has come and gone — probably around the turn of the century. Now the only option for schools with large populations of struggling students is wholescale, systemic reform. Absent that, it is unlikely that school leaders will be able to close the opportunity gap or innovate in ways that will prepare students for the future.

If every system is designed to get the results it is getting, then we need a fundamentally different system to get different outcomes. But one cannot develop a new system through incremental changes to the old, failing system.

No number of refinements of the gears and mechanism on an analog watch can make it a digital device. No amount of change to the Blockbuster “system” of renting movies through brick-and-mortar outlets was going to make it an online system. Similarly, educators cannot continue to make incremental changes to the current way of operating and become a different system.

Millions of dollars are spent on after-school tutoring, new and improved professional development, one-on-one laptop initiatives, tweaks to the salary schedule, smaller class sizes, stronger teacher prep programs and more interventionists. But none are systemic changes, and none will make more than a marginal difference.

Add to that an army of educators, vendors, consultants and advocacy organizations who are vested in the status quo and one can easily see why reform has not been systemic. This is why the current, broken, system will continue to move forward like the walking dead.

No, the only way to transform education is through wholescale change.

For change to be truly systemic, one has to change the design principles and ways of operating in order to achieve different outcomes. Imagine, for example, if schools were intentionally designed to help students learn how to learn and learn how to think. What if that same school outlined the specific year 2035 competencies students should acquire, such as problem-solving, working in teams, critical thinking, information literacy and communications, and was held accountable for achieving those outcomes?

Imagine if schools not only taught reading, math and science, but also required different “experiences” that students would have to complete in order to move from the early grades to the middle grades and then to the higher grades. And what if those experiences could be completed outside of school and with experts who are not teachers?��Imagine if schools paid a professional wage in a teacher’s first year and also eliminated all non-instructional tasks from the teacher role. What if the teacher in such a school did not have to make lesson plans, make copies, grade papers, handle discipline or do any work after 4:00 p.m.?

None of these specific examples can be accomplished piecemeal, but all of them can be accomplished at the same time if a school or district underwent a wholescale systemic change. The schools in the network in Texas have proven that it is possible and are quickly expanding “proof points” for other schools and districts to emulate.

Districts need a split-screen approach

While changing a school or small network system is certainly possible, it is next to impossible to transform a district. There are just too many interrelated and financially connected parts — too many vested interests and too many political barriers. Still, there is one approach that takes advantage of the nimbleness of innovative schools, while adhering to the traditional incremental approach that public education is used to and prefers.

For any existing district or network of schools with more than a handful of schools, the best strategy for implementing systemic change is a combination of the , authored by Ted Kolderie, and the “proof point” strategy.

Using a split-screen strategy, a district would not attempt to make systemic changes district-wide. Rather, it would implement transformative changes in one or two schools while continuing to make incremental improvements in the rest of the district. Once the schools operating with the new system principles achieve the outcomes and succeed, they will become proof points to allow the district to implement systemic change in even more schools over a period of time.

Wholescale, systemic change is happening in a relatively small percentage of schools in the country, and we are out of time. But hope springs eternal and a small number of leaders could still change the public education system before the opportunity gap is locked in. We could change the course of public education and better prepare students for success if:

• District and school leaders outline year 2035 competencies and the outcomes they believe schools should attain.
• District and school leaders use the split-screen and proof-point strategy to begin wholescale, systemic transformation.
• State legislators expand support for schools attempting wholescale systemic change (such as the partnership legislation passed in Texas in 2017).
• State legislators provide parents with greater ability to choose schools that focus on year 2035 competencies.

The profession has been talking about changing the system for quite some time. Time’s up — we have to act now. With a nod to the movie Interstellar: we know it is not impossible, but in any case, it’s necessary!

Mike Miles is founder and CEO of Third Future Schools and former superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District

is a nonpartisan quarterly journal from The Bush Institute that operates from the belief that ideas matter. They shape public policies, spur action, and lead to results. Each issue presents compelling essays that address a central question or theme. Along with Bush Institute directors and fellows, The Catalyst convenes leading experts and writers, as well as new and rising voices, to address each topic.

The modern economy and the education system’s ability to better prepare students with the skills they’ll need for the jobs of the future was the theme of a recent expert panel discussion organized by The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute. 

Panelists included Maryland state Sen. Jim Rosapepe; Don Fraser, Education Design Lab chief program officer; and Lateefah Durant, vice president, Cityworks DC. The event was moderated by Taylor Maag, PPI’s director of workforce development efforts. You can stream and replay the full conversation right here.

Recent news coverage about schools and preparing students for careers: 

Indianapolis Students Get ‘Leg Up’ On Careers With European-Style Apprenticeships

Irked by Skyrocketing Costs, Fewer Americans See K-12 as Route to Higher Ed

‘Academic Career Plans’ Have Students Exploring Careers as Early as Kindergarten

New Data: Female College Enrollment Drops at Twice the Rate of Male Students

Panelists include Maryland state Sen. Jim Rosapepe; Don Fraser, Education Design Lab chief program officer; and Lateefah Durant, vice president, Cityworks DC. Taylor Maag, PPI director of workforce development, will moderate. or watch the livestream at The74Million.org beginning at 2 p.m. ET Thursday.

Recent coverage from The 74 about schools and careers:

• Indianapolis Students Get ‘Leg Up’ On Careers With European-Style Apprenticeships
• Irked by Skyrocketing Costs, Fewer Americans See K-12 as Route to Higher Ed
• ‘Academic Career Plans’ Have Students Exploring Careers as Early as Kindergarten
• New Data: Female College Enrollment Drops at Twice the Rate of Male Students

The existing education model is clear: First, you learn; then, you work. The problem is, that’s not a great plan for a world where good jobs will require constant learning, where routine jobs whose skill requirements rarely change are already moving overseas or being done by robots. Today, America�� in readiness for an ever more automated world, because our schools aren’t coming up to speed fast enough.��

But the good news is, we know how to do better. We can design educational paths that let students learn college-ready skills at the same time as they’re exposed to high-tech, high-growth careers — and then continue to intertwine learning and work in adulthood. That’s the idea behind our Fort Lauderdale Aviation Academy, a model we developed this year that ties together middle school, high school, postsecondary education and career training.

It’s a vision that not only better meets our responsibility to set students up for economic success but also more effectively engages them in their daily learning. Broward County is home to more than 800 aviation-related businesses. The number of local jobs in the industry is expected to increase by nearly a quarter over the next five years, and two-thirds of those jobs require only a high school diploma. Yet to keep up and advance, workers must continuously develop their skills. The industry is becoming increasingly technical and digital. Its software changes rapidly, demanding employees who are great teammates and creative problem-solvers.��

The same pattern is seen nationwide, as employers increasingly identify ongoing skill development as a top priority. A�� found that by more than a 3 to 1 ratio, employers prefer to train existing employees rather than hire new ones. At the same time,�� away from manual labor and basic academic skills toward complex reasoning and technological know-how. A diploma or certificate, then, is not the end of the road but part of a lifelong journey full of off-ramps to further learning and on-ramps back into the workplace.

To prepare our students to meet the growing demand, we partnered with Atlantic Technical College, Broward College and a council of industry leaders to create a specialized learning track. As early as seventh grade, students who are curious about aviation can opt into aviation-themed units of study. As freshmen and sophomores, students have the opportunity to add electronics and aviation-oriented business classes to their core academic coursework. In 11th and 12th grades, students who are serious about pursuing a career in aviation spend half their school days at a combination of Atlantic Technical and Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. They study computer programming and become familiar with avionics and software that simulates everything from the cockpit experience to mission control to aircraft design. They even see how planes are built from scratch. In the summer, they have access to paid internships. Before they even graduate from high school, students get used to experiencing education and work as intersecting endeavors rather than sequential ones.��

As further evidence that education is a lifelong endeavor, our students are joined in the program by adults who are training to advance their careers or enter the aviation industry from other fields.

By the time students in the aviation program get their high school diploma, they are certified and ready to jump into entry-level aviation technician jobs. Part of what’s so promising about the program, though, is that as students spend time at the airport, become actively engaged in aviation and see the wide variety of related jobs, they often become more excited and more ambitious about their futures in the industry. Students can continue their studies at Atlantic Technical, where they can prepare for more skilled jobs in the field — even as they work and get paid — or go on to earn four-year degrees in aviation science, putting them on track to become pilots.

Broward’s aviation program is still in its early stage, and our families and students continue to help shape it. But it provides an exciting vision for what school can be for all our children: an enthralling experience tailored to their unique interests; an exercise in complex reasoning; a pragmatic preparation for real jobs guided by real employers; and, perhaps most importantly, a reimagining of education as a joyous, never-ending journey. That’s the kind of educational experience we owe all our students.

Leslie Brown is chief portfolio services officer for Broward County Public Schools and an alum of ’s&�Բ�����; program.

This growing focus is increasingly leading them to evaluate whether a degree will convey knowledge, skills and experiences that employers now consider relevant.

A from the Association of American Colleges & Universities found that while about 60 percent of recent college graduates believe they are ready to enter the workforce, less than a quarter of employers would agree. As it turns out, this disconnect may be less about cracks in the education-to-employment pipeline and more about a language barrier.

Institutions, employers and students lack a common vocabulary to convey which skills are in demand and which ones students already possess or should develop. In a 2014 Gallup poll, just 10 percent of business leaders said they “strongly agree” that undergraduates leave college with the skills they need to succeed in the workplace.

Students share similar concerns. A Strada Education Network and Gallup found that just over a quarter of working Americans with college experience said they strongly believe their education was relevant to their work and daily life. on the recent Federal Reserve Board study of household economics points to buyer’s remorse among some college graduates. Institutions are caught in the middle, facing concerned “customers” on both sides.

The way out is for colleges and employers to explore practical ways to broker improved alignment and communication with one another. Colleges must find ways to better signal that students have developed the competencies a tightening labor market demands. They must support students in developing skills that effectively communicate their capabilities and value to employers. And they must support employers in unlocking more value through better-informed, and more open-minded, hiring and screening.

While technical skills like coding, data science and software engineering are in high demand, so are uniquely human skills like communication, creative thinking and problem-solving. A recent of more than 100 million job postings, résumés and social profiles found that employees possessing both critical technical and soft skills are the most in demand. Institutions must encourage employers to better articulate just what technical and human skills they desire.

Companies must learn to look beyond their traditional understanding of which majors and institutions create the best candidates. They need to communicate their requirements with more nuance and be willing to invest in training that enhances a promising hire’s technical and human skill sets. Institutions, in turn, must communicate — and teach students to communicate — what human skills students have developed, as well as the importance of those skills in an increasingly automated world of work. This is especially important for liberal arts programs, which have the potential to serve as primary talent pipelines for employers in need of these increasingly important skills.

Institutions and employers can bridge the gap by working together to create relevant experiential learning opportunities for students. At Purdue University, the career center has partnered with Parker Dewey to offer micro-internships at a variety of companies that can help students find more real-world work experience while still on campus.

These typically short-term, remote work experiences are a low-risk commitment for both students and employers and can encourage more companies to look beyond hiring practices that exclude students who don’t study the right major, complete the right internship or have the right personal connections. And it allows employers to articulate to institutions just what skills they are looking for from graduates.

Institutions and employers can also work together to connect employees to ongoing educational opportunities. Increasingly, employers are becoming active participants in supporting employee learning through continuing education and tuition benefit programs. Five years after Starbucks its College Achievement Plan with Arizona State University’s online program, tuition as an employee benefit has gone mainstream. Corporate America is taking matters into its own hands by reinvesting in employee education.

Papa John’s, for example, is using a platform called Engagedly to provide tuition benefits to employees through a partnership with Purdue University Global. Meanwhile, labor groups, like , are working to address the same challenge by helping employees identify opportunities to upskill through continuing education.

Such efforts are vital to building bridges between higher education and employers. An inability to open and widen these kinds of lines of communication comes at great cost to colleges and businesses, as well as their students and employees. If students, institutions and employers all hope to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving world of work, they must learn to speak the same language.

Lori Sparger is chief operating officer and chief innovation officer at . Dave Jarrat is senior vice president of strategic engagement and growth at .

I’ve seen this firsthand over my three-decade career with organizations that address the consequences of poverty, issues like access to food or decent shelter. While treating the symptoms is important work, the real challenge is to break the cycle.

Economic status is, to a large extent, passed down from generation to generation. , the chances of making it from an impoverished childhood to an affluent adulthood are lower in the U.S. than in many other developed countries. Among youngsters who grew up in the bottom one-fifth of the economic scale, very few Latino (7.1 percent) and even fewer black (2.5 percent) children ever make it to the top fifth of household incomes.

There are many reasons for the perpetuation of poverty among people of color, but I believe a major obstacle to social mobility is the lack of opportunity for youth from underserved communities to understand their true potential and pursue what is possible. Students who don’t know anyone in their family, school or community who has gone to college or has chosen a professional career may never know that that path is possible for them. And, if they aspire to pursue a specific career path, it may be difficult to find the guidance and support they need to succeed.

Millions of young people across America between the ages of 16 and 24 are neither in school nor working. Termed opportunity youth, they are also disproportionately young people of color and from low-income backgrounds. The Aspen Institute estimates that there are currently , representing 1 in 9 members of this age group in the U.S.

According to , young adults not in school or working cost U.S. taxpayers in lost revenues and increased social services. Several organizations, like and , are helping to connect disconnected youth to jobs that give them purpose and a pathway to economic independence.

They key is to reach these students before they become disengaged from school and work by presenting them with meaningful career opportunities while still in school, allowing them to try a potential path they may have never known was possible and to taste success in the world of work.

How do we do this? High school career readiness programs can take many forms, but it’s important that students be exposed to what it takes to work in a competitive, corporate environment. They should see why continuing their education beyond high school is critical to advance their career and build relationships with mentors. And they must have the opportunity to hone in-demand soft skills like public speaking, collaboration and critical thinking.

This approach to high school career readiness is preventing students from becoming opportunity youth. At Genesys Works, a workforce development organization providing pathways to career success for high school students in underserved communities, the skills training and corporate work experiences we provide have resulted in graduating from high school, with 95 percent going on to enroll in college. And with a focus on in-demand fields, such as information technology and finance, our alumni by most measures.

For instance, was homeless in high school. He had the opportunity to complete a high school career program and internship with Ecolab, a global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies. Dionne earned four major scholarships, which fully funded his college education at the University of Minnesota. There, he received his bachelor’s degree in housing studies. Griffin now works for the city of St. Paul in planning and economic development, helping others access affordable housing and a way out of the dire situation he once faced himself. The internship opportunity he received in high school opened doors, transformed the way he thought about his future and ultimately changed the trajectory of his life.

Griffin is just one example of what can happen when we enable students to explore their potential and start down a career path while still in high school. Motivation plus real opportunity is a powerful formula. By exposing youth from low-income backgrounds to what is possible through the right opportunities and support structures early on in high school, we can help break the cycle of poverty and move more teens into the economic mainstream. These young adults, our society and our nation will greatly benefit as a result.

David Williams is CEO of .

, businesses need to do more to train and attract talent to remain competitive. Long gone are the days when employers could sit back and wait for the right candidates to walk through their doors.

Many major corporations are beginning to recognize that the best way to ensure that the current and future workforce has the right in-demand skills is to provide young people with on-the-job training. There is a tremendous opportunity to develop the talent pipeline by tapping into — talented young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor employed. According to , there are nearly 4.7 million opportunity youth, about . Our failure to help connect this population to work and education has serious economic implications.

Studies from the Aspen Institute show that only of opportunity youth will earn an associate’s degree or higher, compared with 36 percent of the general population. This is troubling because workers with only a high school diploma experience and than those with more education. Opportunity youth also cost taxpayers��$93 billion annually — $1.6 trillion over their lifetimes — in lost revenues and increased social services, according to . To re-engage this population, skills and job readiness programs like Gap’s help youth from low-income communities land their first jobs. Gap expects that by 2020, 10,000 teens and young adults will have received job coaching and critical first-job experience through This Way Ahead.

Then there are organizations like that collaborate with businesses to help opportunity youth move from minimum-wage jobs to meaningful careers in just one year. The program’s success hinges on a two-pronged approach to skill development in which participants complete courses eligible for college credit while interning at a company — simultaneously developing technical and soft skills. To date, AT&T has hosted nearly 125 Year Up interns, helping them build skills that will help set them on a path to career success. We recently committed to hosting 200 Year Up interns annually at AT&T locations around the country by 2022.

One of our current Year Up interns, Logan Boswell, has known from a young age the value of a career and developing the skills necessary to get a good job. As a first-generation college student without a network to turn to for postsecondary academic guidance, Logan worried about choosing a path that could result in a degree lacking market value. But by applying and being accepted to Year Up, Logan discovered new insight into his personal and professional aspirations, tapping into skills like project management, creativity and organization to help him chart his course.

Today, Logan is enrolled at El Centro, a community college located in downtown Dallas, while wrapping up a six-month internship at AT&T that taught him everything one would need to know to move into a future leadership position. Day to day, he learned the ropes in a variety of areas – operations, sales, customer experience – that he’ll need for success as a seller and for continued growth in a range of business-oriented roles.

Meanwhile, the project management courses he’s taking at El Centro have taught him advanced Microsoft Excel, career development and interpersonal relationships. Through Year Up, he has expanded his network and found the financial, emotional, academic and professional support he needs to succeed.

Across all industries, every company must work to ensure that a diverse pipeline of skilled talent is coming through the door. To continue to develop that pipeline, we must have creative, concerted collaborations among corporations, educational institutions and nonprofits. Working together, we can inspire human progress and move our business, and our country, forward.

Charlene Lake is senior vice president—corporate social responsibility and chief sustainability officer at .��

“They’re surrounded by farmland,” said John Purcell, head of vegetables research and development at Bayer Crop Science, a major agriculture science player in the region. “But they just don’t understand really all that goes into modern food and agriculture. And I think that’s what’s so exciting about this opportunity.”

If all goes according to plan, by next year Bayer will be in a partnership with Woodland Community College and a nearby high school to make good on a program that more than 100 schools have rolled out domestically and overseas.

Known nationally as P-TECH, short for the Pathways in Technology Early College High School, the program is now gaining a foothold in California. The six-year program teaches college courses to high school students and creates a smooth transition into a community college. That’s all en route to an associate’s degree for which there’s economic demand, with numerous job-training experiences during the process.

The P-TECH model first took root in Brooklyn eight years ago as a collaboration between IBM and the local K-12 and college systems. IBM . Now hundreds of businesses serve as partners to P-TECH by mentoring students and offering paid internships, working with educators to design industry-relevant curricula, and being at the end of a school-to-workforce pipeline to hire P-TECH graduates. Early results suggest high school students in the program are college-ready at higher rates than students in other New York City schools.

Woodland’s focus will be on a set of courses that students can use to springboard into agricultural disciplines, such as animal science, plant science, mechanics and environmental science. There’s even a need for drone specialists and graduates in information technology more broadly “for mapping out the fields, for being able to offer pesticides, for looking at irrigation, so there’s a whole IT component in there as well,” said Ioanna Iatridis, dean of career technical education and workforce development at Woodland Community College. The high school partnering with the college to roll out the program, Pioneer High School, is literally next door to the college campus, so the students at Pioneer have long-standing exposure to Woodland. “The proximity makes it nice and comfortable,” she said.

California’s farming communities need skilled workers in large part because agriculture “is becoming more technologically sophisticated and complex, driving greater demand for skilled labor,” indicated a 2014 . In the Greater Sacramento region, where Woodland is located, an estimated 5,300 new openings in positions related to agriculture will become available between 2015 and 2020 through job growth and replacing current workers, , a labor market research provider for California’s 115 community colleges. Many of those jobs pay well and require postsecondary education, like plant scientists, industrial machinery mechanics and market research analysts.

National forecasts of the growth in agricultural workers are mixed. The number of farmers, ranchers and other agricultural managers is expected to at around 1.02 million workers by 2026. Positions for are expected to grow 7 percent by 2026 to 46,000 workers from 43,000. Employment for is projected to rise 6 percent to 29,200 from 27,500.

California joined the P-TECH fray by legislative edict last year. Lawmakers and then-Gov. Jerry Brown allocated $10 million to the state’s community college system for a pilot run called the STEM Pathways Academy Grant. Out of 14 applicants, for the five-year grant, each one requesting funding at about $1.4 million. The colleges will focus on one or two career pathways in agricultural science and technology, cybersecurity, biotechnology, manufacturing, information technology or nursing. That’s according to a review of grant applications that The 74 requested from officials at the California Community Colleges.

Unlike the Brooklyn version and its counterparts, California’s model will offer free college courses only while students are still in high school, said Raul Arambula, dean of intersegmental support at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. Students will have to pay the standard $46 per unit at community colleges once they graduate from high school to continue in the program, despite “a rigorous, relevant and cost-free education in grades 9 to 14” being a stated goal of the pilot. Nearly half of the state’s community college students are low-income students who receive state tuition waivers, which . Full-time students can further receive financial relief through local promise programs that offer free tuition.

The California experiment seeks to instill a college-going culture in communities where degree attainment lags and draw stronger ties between businesses, high schools and community colleges so that students graduate with employable skills. The pilots will start small, each enrolling several dozen or fewer students per year. Woodland plans to add 30 students a year for the five-year duration of the pilot. In West Contra Costa, a more urban area closer to San Francisco, 60 to 80 students are expected to enter the manufacturing and information technology programs each year. Like other programs in the pilot, the West Contra Costa Community College District plans to heavily recruit students in households where no adults completed college.

San Diego Miramar College, another pilot site, plans to enroll about 100 students in total for its biotechnology program. The region it serves expects 1,509 that require college awards but not a four-year degree.

As this is the planning year in Woodland, the community college has yet to hash out many of the program’s details. How many college units will students take while they’re in high school, how will students be selected for the program and what their first college classes will be are still in the works, Iatridis said.

The college wrote in its grant application that it wants at least 70 percent of its students to earn an associate’s degree after six years in the program. Students will have access to college tutoring for their college-level courses. Woodland will also be keeping track of student success in the program by collecting data on transfers, completion and employment, Iatridis said.

The goal of ensuring that students graduate on time from community colleges has numerous efforts in California. Just under half of students earn a certificate or transfer to a four-year university after six years of community college, .

West Hills Community College District, another winning applicant and one focusing on agricultural technology, wants students in its program to be earning 30 college units by the time they finish high school — half the units needed for an associate’s degree. That could go a long way toward increasing the odds that students earn associate’s degrees or transfer on time.

Students in ninth grade will start their college sequence with a course in tractor operations and another on college success. The 10th-grade college curriculum will include a world history course and computer applications for agriculture. Juniors and seniors will take college courses such as introduction to agricultural economics and introduction to plant science, along with courses in elementary Spanish and art appreciation.

“These are college courses, they just happen to be at the high school,” Arambula said.

The businesses of agriculture and viniculture loom large in the counties near Sacramento that Woodland College services.

Expanding degree offerings and transferable courses in those sectors was one of the college’s main objectives.

“When we think about food and agriculture right now, there’s a definite shortage of labor. It’s definitely a time of tremendous evolution in food and agriculture,” Purcell said. Bayer is still finalizing its plans with the college, but Purcell noted that the Bayer-Woodland partnership is a “great way to really provide the kind of pipeline of talent that we need for an industry that’s evolving rapidly.”

And though California has launched several efforts to expose more high school students to college courses, like dual-enrollment programs and early colleges that allow students to earn college credit through nearby community colleges while still in high school, the STEM Pathways Grant stands out for its emphasis on job preparation.

Business partners are “not simply an advisory board, they play a huge role in the delivery of the curriculum over the four years,” said Michael White, who retired as Woodland Community College president June 30. Bayer’s Purcell is helping the college attract other business partners to expand the breadth of the program.

Students aren’t obligated to choose work over college once they complete the high school or community college leg of the program. Courses offered will allow students to transfer into four-year universities if that’s the path they choose.

“There would be a natural pipeline to UC Davis for those who want to pursue a bachelor’s or any other higher degree,” White said.

But like the other pilots in California, the partnership between Woodland and Bayer will come with internships and other job-training elements for students of the program, including a placement at the front of the line for job interviews.

That investment makes sense for the company.

“We’re always looking for a pipeline of potential employees,” Purcell said. “And I think what’s cool is, when kids come through programs like this, they have an advantage, frankly, because there’s already been an exposure with either us or other companies in the field.”

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

When David Rada, a social worker, decided he wanted to switch careers, he turned to computer coding classes on the internet.

“I was working 40 hours a week and studying online 10 or 15 hours a week for four or five months,” Rada said. “But you can only go so far on your own. I figured the next step for me was to get in a program with an instructor.”

Rada, 30, looked into coding boot camps, which promise to take students with little or no background and turn them into software engineers in as few as 12 weeks. But the cost of stopping work for months of full-time, intense training while also paying tuition — an average of $12,000 — was prohibitive.

Then, in January, he saw an announcement on the website of , one of the leaders in boot-camp-style education. The school would be opening a site in Stamford, Connecticut, in March, and tuition would be free for state residents.

Rada, who lives in nearby Westport, couldn’t believe his luck.

It turned out he was in the right state at the right time.

Connecticut had recently been hit with a double whammy that suddenly made state funding for technical education start flowing like water. In 2016, General Electric left its home in Fairfield after 42 years, blaming in part a lack of high-tech talent for its move to Boston. The next year, two defense contractors — Pratt & Whitney and General Dynamics Electric Boat — put the state on notice that without more skilled labor, their businesses would be in trouble.

The state had to quickly address an estimated 7,000 unfilled high-tech computer jobs and 12,000 openings in advanced manufacturing.

Connecticut is not alone in having a shortage of skilled workers. by the U.S. Department of Labor on April 9 show that there were 477,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs nationwide at the end of February. There are no equivalent statistics for coders, who can work across industries from hospitals to retail to design. But the , which represents 5,000 app and information technology companies nationwide, estimates there are 223,000 open jobs for software developers.

“We have an immediate crisis,” said Eric Brown, vice president of manufacturing policy and outreach at the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. “The need is everywhere, from entry-level workers with basic training to the need for engineers and everything in between.”

General Assembly was one of two coding boot camps that the state awarded a total of $2.5 million in December to provide tuition-free software engineering and data analysis to 400 students over two years. The other, , opened in Hartford at the end of April. Through various workforce initiatives, the state has also awarded $1.8 million to the ��school, a two-year program that launched in New Haven in January. Holberton trains students to be full-stack engineers, fluent in all aspects of software development, while the boot camps teach more narrowly targeted skills.

But those investments are dwarfed by the $50 million the state Legislature approved in 2018 for programs that will train workers in high-tech skills needed by the major defense contractors and manufacturers and the more than 4,000 small suppliers that call Connecticut home. Only $5 million has been allocated so far, Brown said.

Michael Kozlowski, executive director for manufacturing at Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, said the state is seeking to prepare an additional 30,000 trained workers in the next 15 years, as the “silver tsunami” of retirement hits manufacturing.

The goal is to shorten the training, lower the cost and create partnerships with industry to guide students right into careers. Public-private career training pipelines are emerging throughout the state, while eight community colleges now offer traditional skills, from blueprint reading to welding or pipe fitting, in six-week courses and more sophisticated 10-month programs in 3-D printing and computerized machine-making. The longer program is subsidized by the state. While it costs Connecticut an average of $14,000 per student to run the program, students are charged about $7,000 in tuition. With grants, many students pay only $1,000 for the course, Kozlowski said.

Pay ranges from $20 an hour to $60,000 a year for machine-making and quality control.

But pay may not be enough of a lure to draw students into manufacturing careers rather than college.

“There’s a huge challenge getting the attention of students, teachers, guidance counselors and, most of all, parents,” Brown, of the business group, said. “We are trying to change the high school evaluation process so that technical education, not just a two- or four-year college, will be considered a successful outcome.”

At the other end of the spectrum, software engineering schools are having no trouble finding students who want to avoid four years of college and the debt it often brings.

The state’s high-tech worker shortage includes 2,500 software engineers and 600 entry-level jobs, said Nadine Krause, executive director of New Haven’s Holberton school. In all, there are only 450 computer science graduates a year from traditional colleges in Connecticut, she said. Not all of those graduates will stay in the state, or even in the computer science field. Of those who do, many won’t have the soft skills — communication, work ethic, time management, cooperation — necessary to succeed in the work world. Krause estimates there are only 60 or 70 new work-ready computer graduates in Connecticut each year.

Holberton, housed in a renovated bus depot turned shared workspace and incubator called District, aims to double the number of able graduates. The school, whose curriculum was developed in San Francisco and has been replicated in Bogotá, Colombia, does not charge tuition up front. There’s not even an application fee. Instead, it works on an income-share agreement in which students pledge to pay 17 percent of their salary for three and a half years whether they make $40,000 or $145,000. The maximum repayment is $85,000, Krause said.

“This allows people to go into different fields,” she said. “They don’t have to be motivated by money. They can work in nonprofits if that’s what inspires them.”

On a recent Thursday morning, a dozen or so Holberton students were scattered throughout the sprawling 8,000-square-foot space. It was not one of the school’s mandatory on-site days, but those who were there worked in small groups. Some camped out in conference rooms named for inspiring figures like Billie Jean King and Frida Kahlo, others sat at tables that double as whiteboards, but most chatted in a gleaming kitchen area, comparing notes. No one had pulled an all-nighter, so The Cube, a darkened, soundproof room where students can curl up on felt cushions when they need a break, was empty.

Holberton has no teachers. The curriculum is project-based, and students consult with one another or reach out to their mentors for help when they run into a challenge, just as employees of a business would.

The school’s first cohort of 28 students started in January. The next group began in June, and a third will start in the fall. Like Tech Talent South and General Assembly, Holberton aims to address the lack of diversity in the tech world. Its first group is 20 percent female and 68 percent people of color. The application process is blind, so Holberton officials didn’t know what the makeup of the next class would be.

Ellen Last, community organizer for Tech Talent South in Hartford, which opened at the end of April, said the school looks to train more women to become software engineers. The company’s headquarters are in Charlotte, North Carolina, and it has opened schools across the South.

The school chooses a language to teach after studying what skills are needed in the city in which it launches. In Hartford, it’s Java, a computer language often used in established industries, like insurance. (In more startup-heavy communities, the program stresses a newer computer language, .)

“We are the first program of this kind to come to Hartford,” Last said. “The mission of Tech Talent South is to come to communities that didn’t have resources like this. The idea is ‘There is talent here, let’s get our local talent the skills they need for the evolving landscape.’”

General Assembly is based in a stylish co-working space called Comradity in Stamford’s developing industrial South End.

“We’re a pretty easy school to hook up,” Mickey Slevin, General Assembly’s regional director, said. “All we need is a computer connection, a screen and some whiteboards.”

Students come from around the state to attend class from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. With homework averaging 20 hours a week, some find it easier to stay in a nearby hotel during the week.

The classroom sessions are geared to adult learners since most of the students are career changers. On a recent day, 12 men and four women, almost all in jeans and sweatshirts, focused intently on their computer screens. Later, they would pair off to work on projects together.

General Assembly is developing partnerships with local businesses and will try to match students with employers in Connecticut, Slevin said, but students are not required to work in the state in order to get free tuition.

Connecticut isn’t the only state that pays General Assembly students’ tuition. The school, which has two dozen campuses worldwide, has a similar free-tuition agreement with Rhode Island and gets federal and municipal funding for workforce development programs for underrepresented minorities in various other locations.

Donovan Taitt, a lead instructor at General Assembly, was first introduced to software engineering through a federally funded social-impact program, , in Brooklyn. He got the basics in a six-week training; then he was accepted to General Assembly. After learning web development, he took a job working on the website of Neiman Marcus in Dallas.

“I decided to come back because it’s a good community,” Taitt said. “Also, I missed home.”

Taitt said he was grateful to have the chance to develop the skills that make such wide-ranging job choices possible — without the financial hardship of college tuition.

“We not only teach tech skills, but just being in the space, being in the community, makes you realize what’s possible,” he said.

After just a few weeks in the program, Rada, the former social worker, seemed to agree with that assessment.

“At the beginning what was motivating me was just getting a better career,” Rada said. “But now that I’m here, it’s become more interesting. All I think about is coding right now.”

Lead image:��Donovan Taitt went through General Assembly’s coding boot camp and then returned to the program as a lead instructor at its Stamford, Connecticut, site. (Debra West)

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Yet learning in American classrooms has not evolved in the same way. Today’s children still largely experience the majority of their learning in one building, five days a week, between the hours of roughly 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.

If we want to ensure that the next generation can make transformative contributions in an ever-evolving world, we must catalyze similar changes to the world of learning. All students should be able to engage in hands-on learning, build open-ended relationships and address complex problems in spaces that transcend their school walls.

To truly transform how our kids learn, we need to first recognize that learning happens everywhere, across our communities; from our local libraries and science centers to the businesses that line Main Street and cutting-edge startups in incubators. And we need to deliberately embed these opportunities as integral parts of a comprehensive, community-based learning experience for our youth.

But broadening the array of institutions that work together to shape our public education system isn’t enough. We must also empower students to navigate and access this variety of opportunities. And since this is by definition a community-driven endeavor, each network of assets should align with the culture, needs and opportunities of its locality.

In rural schools like , for example, middle and high school students engage in a range of real-world, multidisciplinary experiences: analyzing open space options for town planning, building exhibits for a local nonprofit organization or creating campaigns to reduce bird mortality on roads.

In Colorado, Aurora Public Schools partners with businesses across the state — from the Colorado Ballet and McDonald’s to Home Depot and Boulder Engineering Studio — to structure settings where for 21st century competencies such as invention, information literacy, organization and research.

As a part of Pittsburgh’s , schools have established deep partnerships with informal educators, business leaders, technologists and community activists to create a continuum of classrooms where students hone skills aligned to careers in coding, early childhood education and media.

To create effective out-of-school learning days, it is imperative not only to build networks like Wyoming’s but also to empower trained learner to assure that all youth can access those networks to realize their goals and aspirations.

This requires us to rethink how we finance student learning, so that not only are current resources more equitably and flexibly deployed across the educational pipeline, but also community-based organizations large and small can better access public funding streams. As students explore the possibilities of postsecondary education, they should also be able to blend and braid Pell Grants and workforce development funds to support more expansive learning experiences. And as we strive to allow more funding to flow to an expanded array of learning opportunities, how can we ensure that these resources not only support the needs of a given place but also are most aligned with students’ interests, needs and aspirations?

In a world that evolves by the day, this shift can enable us to change how our young people approach learning. Integral to this change are expanded conceptions of the school day, how our students learn in their communities and the universe of environments that they can explore and engage in to further transform the future.

is the former associate commissioner of the Colorado Department of Education and the executive director of , an initiative laying the groundwork for a modernized education system. is vice president of education and innovation at and is in the process of launching Place Network, a national, place-based network of rural K-12 schools.

Georgia wants to position its college graduates at the forefront of the financial technology boom — by way of a new degree that offers highly specialized coursework and a foot in the door at major fintech companies.

The nexus degree in fintech from the University System of Georgia debuts this spring and entails 18 hours of coursework — approximately one year of study — in technical areas like payment transactions. At least six of those hours are spent in the field working for one of the financial technology companies that call Georgia home. The — “nexus” — refers to this connection between learning in the classroom and learning on the job.

A piece of the goal is to make sure that young Georgians are at the top of the list when competitive fintech companies are hiring. The other piece is to create a pipeline for talent and — through internships and career opportunities — to keep talented graduates from leaving the state for hubs like Silicon Valley, said Scott Meyerhoff, chief financial officer for , a payment technology provider.

“Why would you want to leave Georgia? You can change the world, and take a bike to work doing it,” Meyerhoff said. “And with the cost of living here, you wouldn’t even need to live in a 350-square-foot studio.”

“The new degree is additionally valuable for people who may have a job but want to acquire a new skill, or who have not yet completed a college degree and want to advance,” .

USG Chief Innovation Officer Art Recesso said nexus degrees are meant to get Georgians into high-demand sectors quickly to meet the need while attracting students who might be interested in a more technical education.

“What we heard from companies is that, ‘Your grads are great, but what could really put them over the top is experience in these highly specialized fields,’” Recesso said. “Somebody who has this on their résumé goes to the top of the pile.”

The nexus degree in fintech is just debuting this spring, Recesso said. The curriculum was designed by subject-matter experts and includes coursework in keeping transactions secure, for one, on top of an experiential learning component that places students at major companies.

Fintech is booming in Atlanta. A popular statistic cited by those who work in “” is that 70 percent of all payment transactions conducted in the U.S. are routed through Atlanta-based merchant-service providers like , and others, which processed a total of about $5 trillion in transactions in 2015.

But the $30 billion industry also has deep roots in the state. Before the Great Recession, dozens of banks of varying size had headquarters in Georgia. The mass closure of branches in subsequent years earned the state the dubious honor of leading the nation in bank failures. But while the financial institutions vaporized, the companies that provided their underlying technology remained, leaving a vacuum that would be filled by new fintech enterprises, Meyerhoff said.

“Georgia had the high-speed internet, and the access and capability to handle transactions seamlessly,” he said. “So we thought, what could constrain it? And it was not having that talent pool fully developed.”

Today the state is trying to grow its own fintech workforce, a contrast in many ways to Atlanta’s bygone proposal to import an Amazon HQ2 and the slew of highly skilled engineers and developers that would come with it.

Meyerhoff said that while he neither supported nor opposed the Amazon deal, he did wonder whether the financial incentives could be better spent on an industry that was already positioned to hire residents to high-tech and innovative careers.

“It’s right here in your backyard,” Meyerhoff said. “You can invest in the pipeline that’s already here, that’s already innovating.”

At InComm, 75 percent of interns have accepted full-time jobs with the company. Others, like Kennesaw State University alumnus Kevin Osorio, have taken jobs elsewhere.

“One of the biggest takeaways from InComm was being able to expand my networking circle and how to carry myself as a professional,” Osorio said. “My passion was always in cybersecurity, and through multiple efforts I was offered a full-time position as a cybersecurity analyst at Intercontinental Exchange/New York Stock Exchange.”

Osorio said he found his passion in cybersecurity classes at Kennesaw, but he added that he might have been interested in fintech classes had they been on offer before he graduated in 2017.

While the HQ2 proposal once included a for potential workers, USG will instead focus on nexus degrees that also offer technical training for careers in growing industries like fintech and moviemaking.

The credential first launched in the fall of 2018 at Albany State University and Columbus State University in high-need, technical fields. Columbus State offered a film production credential, while Albany State — a historically black university — focused on blockchain with machine learning or data analytics. Nexus degrees stand on their own, but they’re also “stackable,” allowing students to take them on top of other degrees to create a customized educational experience — engineering with a side of fintech, for example.

Nexus degrees were developed as part of USG’s College 2025 Initiative, which seeks to expand access to higher education to first-time and nontraditional students, as well as those in pursuit of technical careers. The university system is the sixth-largest in the country by enrollment, and the vast majority of those 318,000 students come from Georgia.

But gaps exist in the demand for skilled workers and the number of Georgians with some postsecondary education. by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute found that in 2015, the state had 129,000 fewer workers with bachelor’s degrees than jobs that required them, and another 189,000 fewer workers with some college or an associate’s degree than needed. In , by 2020, 60 percent of jobs in the state will require postsecondary credentials, but only 42 percent of Georgians between the ages of 25 and 34 will have them.

The same study found that 78 percent of Hispanic Georgians lack postsecondary schooling, compared with 68 percent of black Georgians and 56 percent of white Georgians.

Recesso said the response from the student body has been overwhelming, with more than 400 students enrolled in fintech classes so far. The university system had to offer more sections to accommodate the interest, and the hope is to eventually offer spots to up to 1,000 students.

An understanding of security is among the top priorities for new hires at InComm, Meyerhoff said. But his company, and others, would also like to see graduates who understand that a single payment transaction often encompasses many steps and players and, more importantly, those who know how to keep that process running smoothly.

“What’s most in demand is people who want to change the world, get into a fast-growing industry and not think about the traditional world of banking,” Meyerhoff said. “We’re looking for innovative and creative people.”

For students looking to go into fintech, engineering careers are readily available, but companies are also looking for program managers, graphic designers and more, according to Meyerhoff. A student interested in fintech should also look into internships, he said, which could be a part of the experiential learning built into the nexus degree.

The next step may be to broaden the fintech curriculum to include high school students, too. Meyerhoff said the idea has been broached in ongoing discussions between Atlanta’s Chamber of Commerce, the members of fintech Atlanta and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.

“We could really create an extension of STEM education,” Meyerhoff said. “Payments are a great equalizer that allow people to pay, shop online, with a bank account, without a bank account. We’re looking for people from all over the board.”

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Fredrick Bailey remembers the white bucket he used to set out on the porch to catch rainwater, a recurring task when bills went unpaid and the utility company cut off the water supply. He cleaned himself and washed his clothes after school with the harvested water.

“Often times clothes didn’t dry during the night, so I’m standing waiting for the bus in sixth grade, and everything I have on is wet,” Bailey recalls. “And I’m having to take extra clothing to school.”

Raised in rural La Grange, Georgia, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, Bailey often returned home to a house with no electricity and sometimes with no food. He attended several different elementary schools in his early years, as his father and stepmother moved from place to place. Finding dinner was enough of a challenge, never mind schoolwork. Bailey acted out in class and sometimes stole food to overcome harrowing hunger.

One day in middle school, one of Bailey’s teachers realized he was struggling to see the blackboard. She referred him to a program called Communities in Schools. The , designed to be a dropout prevention program, situates itself on-site in schools and uses local affiliates and site coordinators. The site coordinator, an adult not directly affiliated with the school but still within its walls, acts as a mentor and a one-stop resource for students, connecting them to all kinds of social services and programs they might not otherwise know about.

For Bailey, meeting Cynthia McWhorter Bryant, his site coordinator, changed his life forever. He got glasses, behavioral counseling, food vouchers and health insurance as a result of McWhorter Bryant connecting him to various programs and resources. He started attending an afterschool program, with a bus that would take him home at night. Eventually, Bailey even moved out of his home to live with the bus driver, Jerome Cofield, and his family for the remainder of high school.

“I knew that I didn’t want to live like this. I knew I was sick and tired of living like this,” Bailey said of his life before connecting with McWhorter Bryant. “Communities in Schools was just the organization that said, well we can help you. … They gave me the means to make it out of my situation.”

Bailey not only graduated from high school but also went on to earn his associate’s degree from Gordon College, and then attended the University of West Georgia, where he received his bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. He later earned a master’s degree in adult education from the University of Phoenix.

Now 31, Bailey has worked in higher education, mentoring and advising students, and he currently is the Milliken Alumni Fellow at Communities in Schools, working on how the nonprofit can create internships for their students in governors’ offices and expose them to different career paths.

Growing up, Bailey wanted to be a principal. Often having to rely on himself for food or clean clothes, Bailey said he did not really have an “American Dream,” per se. Primarily, he just did not want to struggle anymore, he recalls.

“Where I come from, my American Dream was just to get out of the ’hood: to be somewhere where I’m not afraid to walk down the street, to be somewhere where my home is not infested with roaches and rats, so that was my American Dream,” Bailey said. “And I think as I grow, it could change. As I have kids, that could change, but I think it’s different for everyone.”

The American Dream in the Age of Automation

The “American Dream” is a deep part of the American psyche. are already using the term to rally supporters, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a happy way of living that is thought of by many Americans as something that can be achieved by anyone in the U.S. especially by working hard and becoming successful.”

But the concept meant quite the opposite a century ago.

“The original ‘American Dream’ was not a dream of individual wealth; it was a dream of equality, justice and democracy for the nation,” Sarah Churchwell, professor of American literature and public understanding of the humanities at the University of London, . “The phrase was repurposed by each generation, until the Cold War, when it became an argument for a consumer capitalist version of democracy. Our ideas about the ‘American Dream’ froze in the 1950s. Today, it doesn’t occur to anybody that it could mean anything else.”

In Georgia, Bailey’s dream came true with the help of an astute teacher and diligent community worker. But increasingly in the U.S., stories like his do not reflect the norm, and this trend could continue as automation gains a foothold in the labor market.

The estimates of just how many jobs will be lost in the name of technological advancement vary — a 2017 McKinsey Global Institute report suggests that by 2030, anywhere between 10 million and 800 million jobs — but there is little doubt that automation will certainly necessitate the adaptation of future American workers. Price Waterhouse Cooper estimated in 2017 that about 38 percent of U.S. jobs .

While the modern idea of the American Dream is galvanizing, it could also be a perilous one because . Social mobility rates in the United States are the lowest across developed countries — an American child born in poverty is more likely to stay poor than her counterpart in a similar country, . Additionally, for non-white Americans, burdens to the American Dream are even more difficult to overcome due to factors , which can persist even after higher education is attained.

And current and future students are poised to enter the most automated and fast-moving economy the country has ever seen by the time they hit the job market.

So in a nation where the American Dream comes with the condition of success, the age of automation could dramatically change Americans’ ability to achieve that dream — especially if defining success misplaces the true source of happiness.

Mindset Over Matter

Students in the U.S. today feel huge pressure to achieve their own American Dream. Psychologist and Yale University professor Laurie Santos points to research that found that elite high school students are overwhelmingly sleep-deprived and overloaded with homework.

“Particularly with careers and getting into perfect colleges, I think the kinds of expectations we put on students are just unreasonable,” Santos said.

Santos’s class, “The Science of Well-Being,” last year. Santos is not teaching rocket science; she’s teaching happiness and dispelling many of the myths that come with an American Dream, especially for college students at an Ivy League school. The course, , teaches students about how our minds — and our culture — lie to us about how to attain happiness.

“[Our minds] tell us, ‘I’m only going to be happy if I’m an astronaut,’ or ‘I’m only going to be happy if I’m a millionaire,’ or ‘[if I] work at Google,’” Santos said. “[But] the people that work at Google aren’t necessarily happier than janitors — that’s just what the research suggests, so I think we need a broad overhaul of the kinds of ways we talk about careers and we need to stop falling prey to our mind’s biases. We can all be happier, but we need to think about our mindsets more when we think about our careers.”

The American education system as a whole — starting as early as middle and high school — is, in fact, potentially setting the next generation up for a disappointing future by not offering students the research behind where true happiness — and what should probably be defined as the real American Dream — lies, Santos said.

A typical American Dream might consist of wanting a successful career, money, a good education and, perhaps, a house or a family. Despite these ideals being ingrained into American society, none of these things lead to happiness, Santos teaches in her class.

Most happiness research shows that the relationships and connections people have to one another are the most common indicator of happiness. In 2012, Craig Olsson and his colleagues published that followed children in New Zealand from childhood to adulthood. They found that “indicators of well-being in adulthood appear to be better explained by social connection rather than academic competencies pathways.”

This supports findings from reams of past research. In , Ed Diener and Martin Seligman found that undergraduate students they surveyed who identified themselves as “very happy” differed from unhappier students in their “fulsome and satisfying interpersonal lives.”

Santos, who is called upon to speak at high schools around the country, said she finds high school students frustrated once they hear how happiness is actually achieved.

“I think it’s a hard pill to take in part because this is not what our capitalist culture teaches,” she said. “High school students, who, when they hear this message kind of feel like they’ve been duped for so much of their lives, they’ve been taught that they have to get perfect grades, so you can get into the perfect college, so you can get into the perfect job, so you can make a ton of money, and no one is teaching them to prioritize the things that really matter.”

WATCH: Laurie Santos talks Psychology and the Good Life

Experts in wide-ranging fields from economists to sociologists use happiness as a measure of how satisfied people are, not necessarily in a given moment but with life on a larger scale. Happiness, in other words, is not the feeling you get when someone likes your Instagram post or when you enjoy a delicious meal. Happiness, they say, is also not found in money, degrees, jobs, possessions or even true love.

“The pursuit of happiness is to not pursue pleasure or gratification but rather to pursue the actual, positive emotion and the things that foster those actual positive emotions,” Christine Carter, a sociologist and happiness expert at , explains.

In other words, pursuing actual happiness looks quite different in research than it does in the myriad books, trainings and meditations permeating American life. There is one strong finding from hundreds of studies about what the best predictor of a person’s happiness is: our connections to other people.

“So if we want to find lasting joy, our best bet is to pursue real-life social connections with other people, and those connections need to be both broad and deep,” Carter said.

If happiness comes from broad and deep human connection to others, automation poses a potential risk to human happiness, as it often eliminates the need for people. Santos points to simple everyday moments where automation has already swallowed up human interaction, such as the self-checkout line at the supermarket or catching up on email on a smartphone while walking.

“If you think that we have 6 billion people who are doing that with these tiny moments, eroding the social connection that our species has grown up with for millions of years, you can see how much we might be fundamentally changing our interaction without realizing it,” Santos said. “And then there’s this real question about, What do we want to do about that?”

Tal Ben-Shahar, author and former Harvard “Positive Psychology” professor, said automation and happiness should go hand-in-hand, particularly because humanity still possesses creativity and emotions, which so far cannot be automated.

by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King and Ed Diener on happiness and success research found that “happy people show more frequent positive affect and specific adaptive characteristics,” than less happy people. In other words, happy people tend to be more successful and engaged in their work and in their communities — and they tend to have stronger relationships. A more automated workplace could open up opportunities for creativity, Ben-Shahar said.

“We don’t need mechanical, repetitive action anymore as we did in the past,” he said. “Today we need creativity, thinking outside the box. [When] you increase happiness levels, that is exactly what you find.”

If the science of happiness is left behind in automation’s wake, however, Ben-Shahar sees a darker future.

“The impact could be dystopian or utopian, and unfortunately, I don’t see a middle path,” he said. “We’ll need to do the work and … not all, but a lot of this work can be aided by the research that psychologists and philosophers are doing today.”

Ben-Shahar founded the , which offers classes that teach five research-based cornerstones of happiness, including relationships or relational well-being as well as physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual well-being. Ben-Shahar has also been working with schools to begin teaching students the science of happiness in the classroom.

Ben-Shahar started the in Israel in 2010 to incorporate positive psychology into classrooms. From 2013 to 2017 researchers have studied the outcomes of the program using control groups of students who were a part of the program and those who were not.

A 2013 study of one middle school that used the program found that “participants in the intervention program were more optimistic, had increased self-esteem and self-efficacy, and lower depression and anxiety symptoms compared to their counterparts in the control group.” Overall, researchers found modest gains in students’ cognitive engagement and school grades but wrote that those gains were “particularly noteworthy in light of the persisting pressure on schools to increase students’ grades and standardized test scores.”

Ben-Shahar is rolling out a kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum in a handful of U.S. schools in the 2019 school year as well. The curriculum is designed to be implemented over three years to facilitate the attainment of higher levels of happiness.

WATCH: Tal Ben-Shahar on the Incredible Power of Positivity

‘Most People Will Never Be Exceptional’

When Ruth Whippman, a British journalist and author relocated to the U.S. with her family in 2011, she began to notice that the American pursuit of happiness took on an interesting form, distinct from how she experienced life in England. The American Dream takes hold for even families she met at the playground, she found, as parents in the U.S. seem to manifest the idea that their children are going to be extraordinary and grow up with their “dream job” in mind.

“I think we’re setting up our kids with very unrealistic expectations of what life is going to be like, and I think with this idea that everyone is going to be exceptional, we’re really taking away from the actual genuine pleasures of ordinary life and working life,” Whippman said.

Whippman noticed that American culture has taken to an extreme level this idea of a child growing up to become an exceptional individual. She admits that as a parent herself, it’s a tough balance to strike — it’s hard as a parent not to want the best for your kids.

“Most people will never be exceptional — that’s what exceptional means — and we’re just sort of setting people up to fail, really, if that’s the standard,” she said.

In her book , Whippman researched and documented how the American pursuit of happiness has led the U.S. to be the most anxious country in the world, based on the 2012 World Health Organization’s rankings.

For American adolescents, mental health statistics are just as dire. Psychologist and author Jean Twenge analyzed recent mental health surveys of U.S. teens and found disturbing trends. She refers specifically to the “iGeneration,” or “iGen” for short, which Twenge defines as the generation born between 1995 and 2012.

“After declining or staying stable for several decades, depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide deaths became more prevalent among American adolescents between 2010 and 2015, especially among females,” . “Thus, in these nationally representative samples, iGen adolescents reported experiencing more mental health issues than Millennial and GenX adolescents did at the same age, and more committed suicide.”

Carter, the sociologist and UC Berkeley happiness expert, is working on a book, The New Adolescence, and has four teenagers. She references Twenge’s work (including her book ) when she describes the coming tsunami of a mental health crisis that the next generation will face.

“We’re not looking at a spike of mental illness; we’re looking at a tsunami of mental illness coming down the pike. The trends are terrifying,” Carter says. “I mean, that said, I have great news, we actually know what human happiness is made of, right? I’m not saying we’re going to undo the technological revolution — we’re not — technology will continue to evolve, but we’ll start to adapt to it.”

Emphasizing Strengths, Relationships

With existing jobs threatened for the future generations, research from Yale professor Amy Wrzesniewski is like a breath of fresh air. suggests a practice called “interpersonal sensemaking” at work, which focuses on finding meaning at work through certain actions and behaviors.

More recently, in 2013 Wrzesniewski and colleagues published research that argues that employees can have some latitude in how they can craft meaning into their jobs regardless of exactly what that job is.

“By altering task and relational boundaries, employees can change the social and task components of their jobs and experience different kinds of meaning of the work and themselves,”

Equally compelling , which Yale’s Santos uses in her class, that builds on Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman’s , shows that a person’s individual strengths are important to finding value and meaning (and ultimately happiness) in a job or career — not the job itself.

As Santos’ Yale course teaches, finding happiness in work or in a job is much more tied to individual strengths of a person rather than that person’s job being a “calling” or “dream job.”

“It’s how you frame the job, your mindset about the job and whether or not the job is really tracking the kinds of things that you personally find meaningful and you personally get some value out of,” Santos said. “But really, the good news is the research suggests that any job can do that if you really frame it in a way that allows you to develop this meaning.”

This is good news in the midst of a rapidly evolving job market for recent and soon-to-be graduates.

Reframing jobs for students may look like a career academy based on strengths (like this one in western Nebraska) or simply connecting students to an adult who has a relationship with them, like what Communities in Schools does, which research shows is crucial for happiness.

Of course, Santos notes in her online course lectures that changing our mindsets takes practice and work. Students taking the online course must track their progress and practice exercises like keeping a daily gratitude journal and “savoring” experiences. After a large portion of the student population took Santos’s course on campus at Yale, she helped create a space on campus for students to spend time with one another in a “no-work” zone so they can, instead spend time on their relationships and connections and with one another.

When Bailey discusses his experience with Communities in Schools, his relationships with Cynthia, his site coordinator, and the Cofield family who eventually took him in, are the things that he believes really made the difference in his future. Cynthia and Bailey stayed in touch long after graduation, he said, and when she passed away suddenly in 2014, he spoke at her funeral.

“Looking back at high school, I was in a much better place in life with the Cofields,” Bailey said. “I think I definitely was stronger in my thought pattern.”

Communities in Schools places a high priority on connecting students to an adult with whom they can have a stable, healthy relationship, or as CIS site coordinator Raven Jefferson quotes the nonprofit’s founder’s motto, “relationships change lives, not programs.”

Understanding how happiness is found and then understanding ourselves (and our personal strengths) will ultimately lead to a happy life, experts say. Communities in Schools does not just push students to college, because as Jefferson, an alumna of the program herself, knows, not all students have to or need to attend college.

“I know for a fact that college is not for everyone,” she said. “I am an advocate for having a plan, not so much for going to college, because I know it’s not for everyone.”

Jefferson is a first-generation college student who in 2014 received her bachelor’s degree from North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. She is now back in her former middle school, Welborn Academy of Science and Technology in High Point, where she first learned about CIS.

Jefferson’s connection to her CIS middle school site coordinator, Pridell McCormick, played a crucial role in her not only accessing her educational aspirations but also finding that she, too, wanted to be in schools as a site coordinator.

“He served as a surrogate father figure for me,” she said. “I knew him prior to him becoming my site coordinator but having that extra one-on-one time and guidance and having him in the school was really helpful and impactful.”

Jefferson works with many students who are on track to be first-generation college students, and she is planning to take students on a tour of historically black colleges and universities during spring break. She also will take students to the local community college to see what courses and certifications they offer. She encourages her students to further their education even if it is not a four-year degree.

Who Gets to Be Happy?

While money and education are not the main determining factors to find happiness, both still play a role to some degree.

And education does translate into more earning power later in life. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks how educational attainment means a lower unemployment rate and more earnings. The over the age of 25 with a bachelor’s degree is 2.5 percent, while the rate is 6.5 percent for those with less than a high school diploma. Similarly, receiving a bachelor’s degree, versus not earning a high school diploma, can mean doubling one’s earnings.

Despite more education potentially translating into more earning power, money does not make a person happy — after a certain point. While there is some debate about what baseline amount of financial security leads to happiness, (which Santos uses in her Yale course) shows that money makes no difference above an income of $75,000.

While this baseline might be freeing for some Americans, it’s a telling figure for others. Or as Whippman writes in her book, “what Kahneman’s research shows is that money makes a big difference to all measures of happiness up to an income of $75,000,” earnings greater than what the majority of Americans are taking home. In 2017, 58.3 percent of American households made less than $75,000 in income, .

The median household income in 2017 is estimated at $61,372, although white households averaged more income than Black- and Hispanic-led households, . The median income for Black households in 2019 was $40,258 and $50,486 for Hispanic households.

So for many Americans, money could mean happiness simply in terms meeting basic needs or feeling comfortable to support family members. Whippman looks to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s work as a guide.

In 1943, Maslow published his now often colloquially called Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” His theory is often portrayed as a pyramid, starting with a base of physiological needs — food and water. The next level of the pyramid is safety, shelter or security. Interestingly, love and esteem (which seems to translate to human connection, also known as the best predictor to real happiness) sit in the middle of the pyramid. Self-actualization is at the top. While Maslow did not expect his theory to be understood in absolutes, he acknowledged the ascent of the hierarchy is possible.

Whippman, who attended a conference last year based on Maslow’s views, sees the hierarchy of needs as a way to help explain why the American pursuit of happiness as an individualistic journey is not working.

“It used to be self-actualization was the tiny bit at the top, when you had all the other things in place… but we’ve turned the thing on its head, and we’re trying to balance on this pyramid of having self-actualization without having any of the other things in place,” she said.

But this happiness disparity as a condition of wealth is starkest in the United States.

Carol Graham, an economist and University of Maryland professor, has found wide gaps in happiness levels between the rich and the poor in the U.S. In her heavily researched book Graham found that the gaps between how the rich and the poor in the U.S. experience happiness, as well as hope in the traditional American Dream, were double the happiness gaps between rich and poor in Latin America.

While the national poverty rate has decreased in recent years and is now at 12.3 percent, the reports that in 2017, 39.7 million Americans are in poverty.

When asked the classic American Dream question about believing if hard work will get one ahead or not, Graham said there were large gaps between how the rich and the poor responded.

Comparing results between Latin America and the U.S., Graham said, “the poor in Latin America are significantly more likely to believe that hard work will get them ahead than the poor in the U.S.”

Conversely, the rich in the U.S. overwhelmingly believe that hard work will get them ahead. Essentially leading to a gap in who believes the American Dream is achievable.

“It’s interesting that it’s only the rich that believe in the American Dream, roughly speaking,” Graham said, referring to as a possible explanation.

Applied to the American upper class, Lerner’s hypothesis suggests that if you’re doing well, you want to believe you live in a fair society.

“You don’t want to believe you got ahead because you were lucky and everyone who didn’t got screwed over,” Graham said. “You want to believe hard work got you ahead, and in most instances, hard work gets most successful people ahead, but they’ve also had some advantages that they’re often less likely to admit.”

Increasingly, the gaps between the rich and the poor in the U.S. are widening, Graham found as she analyzed research in her book.

“… The empirical findings in this chapter confirm the increasingly consistent story of ‘two Americas,’ with the poor much less likely to be optimistic about their futures than the rich,” Graham writes. “Along with increasing levels of inequality and stagnation in mobility rates have come increasing divisions among the rich and the poor in the United States, divisions in terms of means, capabilities, and ability to plan for the future; opportunities and outcomes; well-being and markers of ill-being; and hope, aspirations for the future, and faith in the American Dream.”

America Prefers Sweden

Countries that have smaller gaps between the rich and the poor — or less income inequality — are happier. In research for his book Benjamin Radcliff analyzed what makes certain countries happier than others and found that democratic socialist countries, like western European countries and those in Scandinavia, are both happier and more equal in wealth distribution than the U.S. These countries also tend to have larger safety nets for their country’s poor, providing assistance with health care, food and shelter.

Radcliff argues that democratic socialist governments do a good job of providing the basic needs found at the bottom two levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: ensuring people have food and shelter.

“The welfare state affects those two things directly, massively, which makes a huge difference in people’s happiness, but then it also affects the higher level kinds of needs that people have,” Radcliff said. “Once you have security, the argument goes, then the next thing in your life is trying to find connections with other people, particularly to find a partner, to have friends and so on, to build close connections with people, and my argument is that that’s a lot easier to do when you’re not starving or living in poverty or insecure.”

Americans theoretically support these kinds of governments. Michael Norton and Dan Ariely conducted research, , to test Americans’ view of income inequality and wealth distribution. Using unlabeled pie charts, they found that Americans prefer Sweden’s income distribution (, with the largest slice at 36 percent) to our own.

Norton and Ariely also found that despite how much Americans grossly underestimated how unevenly income is distributed in the U.S., all respondents — including the wealthy — showed a desire for more equal wealth distribution. Norton and Ariely note that these findings do not necessarily transcend to the political realm of society, however.

“Despite the fact that conservatives and liberals in our sample agree that the current level of inequality is far from ideal, public disagreements about the causes of that inequality may drown out this consensus,” they write in the paper. “… Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitude toward economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap.”

The Future of Happiness

With both technology and American culture seemingly working against the truth of what makes people happy, educators can and must play a major role in students’ lives as they advise them on the decisions they make at a young age about their futures, Ben-Shahar said.

Schools and educators have the ability to go beyond what students say they want to be when they grow up, he said, helping them lead a healthier life and engaging them to deal with positive and negative emotions beyond schoolwork.

Santos added that it is time to start dispelling the “perfect college” myth — the idea that young people are “messing up” if they don’t attend an Ivy League school or get the perfect summer internship or job.

“Happiness can be found in any college,” she said. “That’s a scary thing to tell people, right? It’s hard.”

Santos also believes it’s necessary for the next generation to lead a “young-person revolution” that begins to flip these cultural norms.

“My sense is that there’s been this arms race about career preparedness or college preparedness that’s just crazy, [and] we can’t continue on that path … something has to give,” she said.

For companies interested in their employees’ happiness, the coming age of automation means a re-evaluation of what people actually need to be happy.

Whippman found in her research that some companies that push happiness or mindfulness trainings were actually anti-union or did not offer the positive employment benefits that are known to lead to happiness at work. Whippman found research as she wrote her book that shows union workers are happier than non-union workers, even after controlling for pay. found that union membership actually boosted life satisfaction.

“I think it’s part of this whole trend of blurring the lines between work and personal life, and I think it can be a bit of a smoke screen,” Whippman said. “Often it’s the companies that have the most happiness training and mindfulness training that are actually the worst offenders when it comes to things like basic pay, health insurance, good conditions, vacation time — the kind of things that actually really do build genuine workplace happiness.”

Radcliff’s research reflects similar ideas, and he believes the inherent conflict between the market economy and equality is the question at the heart of politics.

“Are we going to just let the market run along, leaving people in its wake destroyed while it leads toward general progress? Or are we going to use the power of government to intervene in the market to introduce ideas about justice and equality which are absent from the market?” he said.

When asked if the income gap — and the happiness gap — will continue to grow together if nothing changes, Graham said her research shows a future that is “intensely worrisome.”

“If people have no expectations for the future — they don’t believe in it — they’re not going to invest in it, and that’s going to apply to their children, so that applies to the next generation,” she said.

Not all hope for happiness should be lost — just yet, experts say. But if the pursuit of true happiness is something that Americans continue to value in their personal lives and the leaders they elect in all levels of government, changes loom ahead. That research provides an opportunity for educators, like Santos and her packed course at Yale, to step in and help students change that trajectory for the better.

Ultimately, deconstructing the very ideas on which our “American Dream” are founded — in favor of what research says truly makes us happy — is not a simple lesson to teach, nor an easy pill to swallow, for an American culture so obsessed with the opposite. It will take diligent, persistent work by educators — preferably early in students’ lives — to reverse the mindset that a piece of paper, job or salary will lead to a happy life.

Even in the short period after teaching the hugely popular course, Santos has seen some results. One senior who took her class has since graduated and is now in her first full-time job. She wrote to Santos recently. She took the lowest-paying job offer she received, largely due to what she learned in Santos’s course.

“She realized from taking the course that the ability to plop down and see her mom for coffee was ultimately going to be more important than having an extra $50,000 in life,” Santos said. “All things considered, the ability to have the kind of social connections she wanted was going to be more important for happiness. And she said when she made that decision it was like this relief came over her when she thought she had to choose on the basis of this other thing when in practice, choosing on the basis of her social needs was going to make her a lot happier.”

Disclosure: This essay is part of a series of Future of Work stories sponsored by Pearson exploring how automation and evolving economic forces are impacting education from kindergarten through college.

Many young people never get this type of opportunity to make connections and share expertise. For many children and families served by our organization, Communities in Schools, the — a dream, and an unlikely one. from wealthier families and economic opportunity, they are very likely to remain in cycles of generational poverty. To change this, they need a resource that isn’t measured in dollars.

Sociologists call it social capital, the connections and relationships that help people navigate toward a successful future. Colloquially, it’s who you know and how they can help you navigate careers and opportunity.

The job-shadowing experience at Albemarle was one small step toward delivering this valuable commodity to children who might not otherwise have access to it, and to help them and their families move up the economic ladder in Charlotte. , in part by helping children and their families build relationships across socioeconomic lines. These relationships provide valuable information, support and connections they would otherwise lack; empower them to unlock their own potential; and enable them to get ahead.

Other cities around the country should follow suit. Though social capital won’t show up on anyone’s balance sheet, its benefits are profound and make for a strong investment in our future. It allows people to navigate postsecondary education, , receive promotions or . Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are than their more affluent peers to have access to such important social networks that go beyond their neighborhoods and families. But they know how powerful this non-fiscal resource is, and they want it. High schoolers in Charlotte defined social capital as:

●��“Creating bonds you’ve never experienced before.”

●��“When everyone plays a role in gaining access to opportunity.”

●��“Building a better community.”

●��“Making a positive impact.”

●��“The balance of relationships and connections within a community.”

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To us, it’s clear that boosting young people’s social capital belongs on the list of things society must do to prepare them for life. We are part of a national network of organizations that work in schools to give children the full range of supports they need to do well academically. Helping students build social capital means that when we send high schoolers to shadow professionals on the job, we’re not just telling them to put on dress clothes and introduce themselves. We’re coaching them to see themselves as leaders, build enduring relationships with the people they meet and think about the value they have to offer.

Economic segregation contributes to the problem, so it follows that the solution doesn’t lie solely with individuals. We have to take action at a larger scale, as is happening in Charlotte, Detroit, Seattle and other communities that have prioritized improving economic opportunity for those who have been left behind or stuck in the middle. , but Communities in Schools of Charlotte-Mecklenburg is among the organizations helping to lead the way and pinpoint policies that will turn a city, its schools, its youth organizations, its cultural and faith institutions and its businesses into relationship incubators for students.

This is not a call for wealthy, privileged people to swoop in and save poor children. The children we work with, and others like them across the nation, don’t need to be saved. They aren’t helpless. They are strong, resilient, talented, full of potential and ready for opportunity. Yet they lack networks and access — to someone they can have their first conversation about college with. Or someone to teach them about growing industries. Or someone to help them crack open doors that might otherwise be closed to them.

What we’re calling for is the desegregation of social networks so every child is exposed to experiences that can open up a world of opportunity. When that happens, whole communities will be transformed.

Molly Shaw is president and CEO of Communities in Schools of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which empowers children to succeed in school and in life. Dale Erquiaga is president and CEO of the national organization . He formerly was superintendent of public instruction for Nevada.

As ambassador, LeVine persuaded 30 Swiss companies with U.S. facilities to extend those opportunities to students here. Now commissioner of the Washington state Employment Security Department, she continues to seed the idea that the traditional “four by four” model — four years of high school followed by four years of college — is old news.

LeVine was one of a number of speakers who convened to mark the 25th anniversary of the Center on Reinventing Public Education by considering what leaps, conceptual and practical, will be required to provide all students with the skills to both keep up with automation, robotics and artificial intelligence, and ensure a healthy democracy.

A Seattle-based think tank, CRPE generates research and ideas about issues in education, ranging from the effectiveness of school governance models to best practices in equitable finance and charter school accountability.

The symposium explored ways in which the traditional concept of school could be challenged, pushing particularly on the notion that the traditional high-school-to-college continuum leaves too many talented people behind. About a third of Americans have a four-year college degree, yet an estimated 6.3 million jobs are going unfilled for lack of skilled candidates.

The author of this story moderated the panel anchored by LeVine, “Rethinking High School to College and Career Pathways.”

Because public education in the United States is geared toward degree attainment and not skill acquisition, employers see a degree as a proxy for career readiness when, in fact, it doesn’t necessarily mean a job seeker has the ability to collaborate, solve problems or succeed at other tasks that require complex intellectual skills to complete.

The traditional four-year college model is as antiquated as its K-12 precursor, attendees agreed. Even as they are hobbled by enormous debts, graduates don’t necessarily possess the traits that assure them a well-paid job.

After nine years of compulsory schooling, LeVine told attendees, every Swiss student has the opportunity to opt in to a national system of apprenticeships. Winning one is prestigious, and 70 percent of Swiss teens participate, choosing one of 250 career pathways. They continue to go to high school part time, and many later earn a college degree.

Swiss businesses contribute 60 percent of the $6 billion annual cost and receive a return on their investment of up to 10 percent, LeVine said. Business sees the expense — the equivalent of 1 percent of the GDP when state and federal contributions are added — as an investment, not an act of corporate responsibility.

Despite the system’s seemingly enormous price tag, the apprenticeship model is actually 40 percent less costly than full-time attendance at a traditional high school. Students who finish the equivalent of high school without completing an apprenticeship are on an academic track that leads directly to college.

The magic, which is difficult to communicate to anyone steeped in the American concept of school, is that there are no dead ends for students. One may earn a graphic design credential as an apprentice, yet go on to become a doctor.

LeVine was joined by women spearheading efforts to create apprenticeship systems in Washington and Colorado. Home to tech-fueled corporations such as Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing, Washington already is grappling with the workforce implications of automation. The state has launched multiple efforts to increase the number of students in the pipeline to fill skilled jobs that don’t require a traditional degree.

At the same time, its industries are piloting some of the technologies that will disrupt the job market. For example, a first-of-its-kind Amazon store in downtown Seattle has done away with traditional customer service; shoppers’ devices are scanned and their accounts billed as they enter, fill their carts and leave without checking out.

The workforce of tomorrow, CRPE Director Robin Lake said, places a premium on skills only the human mind possesses, such as teamwork, empathy, deep thinking and problem-solving.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, no one has a plan for how schools are going to deliver all of these things while still struggling to just deliver the basic competencies,” she said.

The kindergarten-to-college pipeline provides too little of those, and does so in a way that perpetuates inequities, she said. Shifting the discussion from talking about schools to talking about students could help usher in what one attendee called the “Age of Agility,” in which an array of experiences offer opportunities for all kids, not just students ranked as “good” by conventional measures.

“We need to design for the tails, and not the means,” Lake said, referring to students with disabilities and other challenges who are not typically thought of as likely talents, as opposed to those who fall squarely in the middle academically. Or, put another way: “The student is the ‘X’ we need to solve for.”

The unskilled, routine jobs previously open to students who don’t make it to and through traditional higher ed are being automated at a rapid pace, which means the middle class is particularly vulnerable to the shift, Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, told the group.

“In the past, in the industrial era, we needed only a few leaders with lots of people working for them,” Schleicher said. “Now we need all leaders.”

Hand in glove with doing away with the notion of high school and college as two separate — and lengthy and expensive — experiences, other ideas advanced at the symposium and in published by CRPE explored tying education funding much more closely to individual students, who could use funds to pay for everything from out-of-school enrichment activities to special education services; creating system navigators to help families choose an array of educational options to best meet their child’s needs; and finding ways to design evaluations that measure success in such highly individualized environments.

Communities can start, à la Switzerland, by tapping local businesses and civic organizations interested in ensuring the right talents are being nurtured, symposium speakers agreed.

Summarized Todd Rose, a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of noted books on individualization, “We have to find a way to do for education what Apple did for music.”

Disclosures: The Walton Family Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York provide financial support to The 74 and for the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s 25th anniversary symposium.

The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

, business leaders have lamented a shortage of workers with abilities that are still , such as improvising solutions to unanticipated problems and boosting teamwork and morale.

Women outperform men in many of the underlying skills that lead to job success — skills commonly referred to as noncognitive because, like emotional IQ, creativity, and conscientiousness, they’re not clearly predicted by test results.

The demand for soft skills, as they’re also known, was borne out in ��that found that “social skill-intensive occupations” — including teaching and some computer science and health care jobs — had increased by 12 percent since 1980 and enjoyed higher wage growth. Positions that demanded lots of brain power but little social aptitude had declined.

The huge rise over the past century in the number and percentage of women who work in the U.S., highlighted by more recent nationwide efforts to steer young females toward traditionally male-dominated STEM careers, would appear to give women at least an equal shot at great jobs.

But it hasn’t turned out that way —��at least not yet.

The percentage of women who work has dropped three points since 1999 — driven largely by increased school enrollment rates and job competition among older teenagers, according to . Even so, nearly 57 percent of women in America were part of the labor force in 2015, up from 38 percent in 1960. And women continue to increase their share of the total workforce: They are now nearly 47 percent of all workers, up from one-third in 1950.

Census and survey data tell two stories. The percentage of female scientists and engineers rose to 28 percent from 23 percent over the past two decades, with substantial increases in fields, such as biology and medical research, and in social science (psychologists and sociologists). But only 15 percent of engineers are female, and overall gains for women in science and engineering occupations, while considerable, do not come close to reflecting the fact that women are about half of college-educated workers.

Disparities are particularly evident across racial and ethnic categories: Despite gains, black and Hispanic women make up just 6 percent of women who have science and engineering jobs.

Advocates and researchers say persistent gender stereotypes keep many women from seriously considering these positions and leave insufficient support for the few who do. Childbearing and motherhood come with and may divert women who are in science and engineering careers to lower-paying but more flexible middle-skills health care jobs (like lab technician or pharmacist) — a sector that is now 70 percent female.

The push for soft skills often fails to take into account these disadvantages, experts warn.

“The fact that a curriculum may be incorporating soft skills — and despite what we hear employers say about soft skills all the time — that hasn’t moved the needle,” said Lois Joy, associate research director at , a nationwide workforce organization. She said women typically lack established career pathways, including mentoring and professional networks, that often help men succeed.

“It doesn’t matter how well girls are communicating if they’re not communicating to the right people,” she said.

She and other workforce specialists point to successful programs — vocational schools and nonprofits . But these remain the exception.

“We still have to marry the relationship between workforce and wages with the socialization process that leads to women choosing the occupations that they do in greater numbers than men,” said Nicole Smith, chief economist at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. “Technology has resulted in the influx of women in the labor force. What we haven’t seen is women moving toward specific occupations that pay better.”

If you build it, she will come

A San Francisco tech worker and ��decided to help local women do just that.

Michelle Glauser likes to say that when she completed an expensive software engineering program and entered the tech field — including a job at the cloud communications firm Twilio — her income tripled. But she also found herself part of a profession with little gender or ethnic diversity and costly barriers to entry for “non-stereotypical engineers.”

She wondered if the problem was getting worse. By driving San Francisco property values — the median cost of a house rose from $666,000 in 2012 to $1.57 million in 2018 — the tech industry displaced the very people, particularly low-income women, who would particularly benefit from the kind of training she had received at Hackbright Academy, which calls itself “the leading engineering school for women in the Bay Area.”

Partnering with local tech companies that were looking to build diversity, in 2016 Glauser launched Techtonica, offering a six-month training program in web development to 10 women of color earning less than $50,000 a year. Along with web development, the initiative sought to build the women’s workplace skills, such as .

The small initiative offered advantages that most STEM programs can’t match. Business partners helped lead and picked up the cost of the training, as well as housing and childcare expenses (and laptops). Partners mentored individual apprentices, and the course culminated in job offers for each woman. In effect, the program functioned as a job network the women didn’t have.

Glauser plans to expand Techtonica beyond the Bay Area. For now, it remains a sought-after boutique offering: The organization received 170 applicants for its second 10-person cohort in 2018. Glauser suggested there would be similar interest elsewhere if local business supported such efforts.

“I’ve done a bunch of research — every single city that has a high number of tech jobs has high income disparities” across its population, she said.

Persisting stereotypes

Females �� and have higher : They earn 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees, including 50 percent in science and engineering subjects, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Female labor has provided a to the nation’s economy, but a dam-burst of highly qualified women into science and technology has only partly materialized.

Why doesn’t superior academic performance, drawing on non-cognitive prowess, translate into even greater STEM employment gains for women?

Experts cite the fact that women remain primary caregivers for children, which impedes their careers in many ways. A mother earns 20 percent less than a father in the years following the birth of their child, according to that found that the gender pay gap could be largely explained as . Time away from work, reduced work hours, and decreased pay all contribute.

The economists also found that women move to jobs at “family friendly” companies offering flexible hours and family leave days after having children. Before the birth of a child, for instance, men and women are equally likely to work in the public sector; 10 years later, women are 10 percentage points more likely to have these jobs.

The lead researcher, Henrik Kleven of Princeton, told Vox that some of the effects were subtle, such as a mother not being offered assignments with longer hours or travel “because of the perception that they are the primary caregiver to a child.”

Those cultural cues continue to shape not only whether jobs are seen as innately male or female, but also what men and women : Men put a greater premium on higher earnings, while women value stability and flexibility.

“The socialization process leads women into intellectual and caring professions in greater proportions than men,” said Georgetown’s Smith. “It leads women to believe this is where they belong. They have a longing to care, to give, to nurture that overrides a concern about wages.”

Even the behavior correlated with professional success differs by gender. found that “agreeableness had the greatest influence on gender differences in earnings: men were considerably more antagonistic (non-agreeable) than women, on average, and men alone were rewarded for that trait.”

Another researcher summarized data last year showing that “very agreeable” men — in the top quintile of agreeableness — .

Educators have tried to disrupt these patterns and strengthen career pipelines by building “work cultures” in school that expose students to new possibilities and on-the-job experience. In ��of children who grow up to file patents, economist Raj Chetty found that STEM programming by itself was not effective — apart from being born into affluent families, he observed, the biggest influence on whether girls became inventors was whether they lived close to women who invent.

“These findings suggest that there are many ‘lost Einsteins,’” Chetty said, “individuals who would have had highly impactful inventions had they been exposed to innovation in childhood — especially among women, minorities, and children from low-income families.”

“They set a model”

Studies of vocational and STEM-centered programs have been limited and offered little clear evidence of improved achievement for male or female students. One exception: that found that they improved graduation rates, especially among low-income students.

One of those schools, Minuteman High School, which serves 10 towns north of Boston, was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2018. Fifty-one percent of its students have disabilities, and nearly one-quarter are considered economically disadvantaged, but 95 percent of students graduate in four years.

Minuteman is recognized by workforce advocates for its success in preparing female students for science and technical careers. The school runs a STEM camp for middle school girls in the summer and a high school camp during February vacation.

Every new student goes through what Principal Jack Dillon calls “an exploratory process”: immersion into each of the school’s 18 career majors, from plumbing and heating to robotics.

“We want to expose the girls to all the types of majors we have that maybe they didn’t know about,” said Dillon. “We want our girls to be in engineering, programming, web, biotechnology. We do a decent job trying to promote those programs.”

The soft skills of his female students has become both a selling point for middle school girls and a way to make the sale.

“We really used to take a higher proportion of males to do our presentations to other schools, but we switched that to a higher proportion of female students, because they set a model for the girls in the other schools,” he said. “It’s now about three girls to one boy [doing presentations]. Years ago, that was reversed.”

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Globalization and new technology are transforming our economy at an accelerating rate, and automation from current technologies could . The future of work has changed forever, but the fact that our public policies have not kept pace means that many working Americans no longer experience the security associated with employment.

That lack of progress is why our country has an but . It’s why, even at a time of historically low unemployment, Americans feel less secure, as the number of stable jobs providing health, retirement, and other benefits declines precipitously. And it’s why barriers to entrepreneurship have been part of the reason for .

These problems require a sense of urgency and commitment to act. The economy has already outgrown our existing systems, structures, and safety nets, and we are leaving too many people behind.

That is the basis of a new report from the , which brought together some of the country’s most innovative state and local officials, along with some of the nation’s foremost experts on these issues, to develop a road map for expanding opportunity in the face of massive economic disruption. It recognizes that much of this work must be done outside of Washington, and that we cannot wait for the federal government to lead the way.

Our group identified three key areas for progress:

1 Improving education and workforce training:

Well-paying, secure careers are accessible only to those who have the knowledge and skills that businesses need, and who can fill roles that aren’t easily automated or outsourced. Americans need 21st century skills, but also the resources to retrain, adapt, and innovate continuously to keep pace with the changing world economy.

We recommend that state and local governments provide career pathways that ensure students leave high school with not only a diploma but also college credit and workplace experience in high-demand fields; reduce barriers to four-year and community colleges; expand apprenticeships and credentialing opportunities that don’t force workers to forgo income for an extended period; and create tax incentives for employers to invest in training for their employees.

2 Modernizing the social safety net:

Addressing education and training issues is not enough. Fewer jobs offer the level of benefits that was the norm in decades past, whether they are in traditional fields or in the gig economy. New initiatives are required to ensure that employees have access to everything from health care to workers’ compensation insurance to retirement savings plans. Challenges to a secure safety net are particularly acute for women, who disproportionately face obstacles ranging from primary responsibility for childrearing to unequal access to training.

We recommend that state and local governments create portable benefits structures that can move with workers between jobs in our dynamic economy; make savings accounts available to all Americans, so they can put money away toward retirement; and ensure that unemployment insurance is available and more practical for job searchers, including nontraditional workers. In addition, proposals for paid family leave and affordable child care options would alleviate some of the unfair obstacles placed on women who are trying to advance their careers.

3 Supporting entrepreneurship and innovation:

Innovation and entrepreneurship are generating an ever-expanding array of products and services, as well as the new jobs that go with them. But that activity is concentrated in too few places, and too many people are affected by barriers to starting and growing a business — like onerous fees and licensing requirements. State and local policymakers must help by providing access to capital and networking opportunities, as well as by reducing regulatory barriers.

We recommend that state and local governments help startups by eliminating onerous fees; encourage small business lending by infusing local lenders with capital; address the challenges facing rural communities through universal broadband and other economic development supports; and reform occupational licensing to reduce obstacles to employment and entrepreneurship.

While not an exhaustive list of policy options, these recommendations (along with the specific examples listed in the appendices of the report) are a road map to a future in which everyone can take advantage of the opportunities of our new economy and no one gets left behind. They are practical and implementable, and they will ensure that the political rhetoric around quality job opportunities is matched by the reality experienced by many Americans.

Debbie Cox Bultan is executive director of the NewDEAL network of 150 rising state and local officials and of the NewDEAL Forum, which identifies and promotes innovative, future-oriented state and local pro-growth progressive policies that can improve the lives of all Americans.

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

This theme directly aligns with what we at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, America Succeeds, and Getting Smart have termed the , a commitment to forging a system that is agile and adaptable, to capitalize on progress for all students, and to developing new ways to prepare them to be successful in an ever-changing world.

In the fall of 2017, America Succeeds released a report, , to call attention to the seismic shifts underway in education-to-employment pathways. As a society, we are in the early stages of a rapidly accelerating revolution that is bringing automation, artificial intelligence, and technology into parts of the workforce that have, until now, escaped this latest wave of disruptive change. Professional services such as bookkeeping, radiology, and legal aid are quickly joining the list of impacted industries we are more familiar with, like manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and logistics.

As the report says, “The bottom line is straightforward: if students and workers must be agile and adaptable to succeed in this new world, then the same holds true for the education system that prepares them.” In many cases, that means calling for a radical transformation of education-to-employment pathways.

Nine months ago, America Succeeds and the Chamber Foundation partnered with P2T on its effort while undertaking one of our own: the Age of Agility Tour. We undertook a multi-city listening tour to hear from business, education, and policy leaders on the ground and learn how crowdsourced innovative solutions are aimed at closing the growing skills gap within their states. The tour launched in 2018 with an event in Arizona, then continued to Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Illinois, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas, and New Jersey. The tour is wrapping up with a final Washington, D.C., event, in partnership with Getting Smart, on Jan. 24.

The goal of each summit has been to inspire attendees with new models and promising practices to prepare students for the future locally, while encouraging participation in the broader discussion about scaling these educational opportunities to all students. So far, more than 1,000 attendees and five governors’ offices have participated in the tour, eager to confront the challenges and champion the solutions presented.

We are seeing similar pushes and pulls on the current education system, and suggestions for places to focus on moving forward, from both our summits and the proposals submitted by P2T stakeholders. present a variety of innovative action plans around disrupting traditional education pathways, and the alignment and partnership with other organizations offers the most intriguing opportunities for significant impact in the future.

The most significant momentum is building around the idea of redesigning the intersection between education and workforce preparation across the education system. Flexibility is critical for learners, educators, and the system’s structures to adapt and respond to the changing needs of communities and the modern, global economy. The education system has to be framed with the agility to prepare students for the world of the future.

Across the national tour, we often share this quote from Jaime Casap, chief education evangelist at Google: “We need to be preparing kids for jobs that don’t exist and to use technologies, sciences, and methods that we haven’t even discovered yet, to solve problems we haven’t identified.”

While there is still much work to do on building consensus for the strategies and tactics to create an agile education system, the urgency of addressing this issue is hard to ignore. States, communities, companies, and millions of workers are already starting to feel the impacts of this latest workforce revolution. Policymakers from both sides of the aisle are confronting economic uncertainty and a desire to protect jobs — and our community has a rare opportunity to ensure that these conversations and concerns are linked to efforts to modernize education.

As our Age of Agility Tour wraps up in Washington, let’s focus on how we can work together to make it better in the future. Let’s find ways to collaborate across organizations and across the country to take on these new challenges. Let’s start building a system designed for the Age of Agility.

Cheryl Oldham is senior vice president, Center for Education and Workforce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Tim Taylor is president and co-founder of America Succeeds. Tom Vander Ark is chief executive officer of Getting Smart.

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

The district’s expansion has been managed by a respected and resourceful district leader who credits much of the success of its schools, which rank among Arizona’s best, to its selection of teachers.

Teachers who have earned credentials through traditional programs “remain our meat and potatoes,” said Calvin Baker, the superintendent who has run Vail schools for 30 years. But the district also serves as its own school of education, training non-certified staff — as well parents and community volunteers — to become educators.

“The true benefit of having your own [training] program is the changes it makes in the school culture,” Baker said. “If you get a classroom aide, teacher’s aide, a paraprofessional, and they’re struggling learning to teach algebra, their approach to students who get can’t homework done is going to be different than other teachers. We’re a community of learners. And when they do become teachers, they offer a symbol for all the other paras and aides in the organization.”

Vail’s work has intersected with an education plan launched by the , a research-based affiliate of the state’s Chamber of Commerce, around a bill by Gov. Doug Ducey in 2017 — despite opposition by teachers unions — that allowed schools to not merely train aspiring teachers but issue credentials to them as well.

With a $50,000 seed grant from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, ACF began in 2014 to work with educators in implementing a set of workforce-building strategies called . Elsewhere in Arizona, and in other states, TPM has been used as a blueprint for employers trying to build a better labor pool in industries like energy and health care.

ACF officials were convinced the pipeline method could also be effective in . And they believed the new teacher licensing law, which still requires a college degree, two years in a classroom, and data showing candidates were effective, offered an opportunity to prove it. In the new scenario, district leaders and principals were equivalent to the corporation owners and managers in other industries.

ACF’s education arm, called A for Arizona, had already “back-mapped” the state’s effective teachers, based on student test scores, to where they had been trained, and interviewed K-12 and higher education leaders across Arizona.

“We surveyed education leaders in high-performing schools, and very few felt they were getting the kind of teacher talent they need to close the achievement gap,” said Rebecca Hill, ACF’s director of research and policy. “They all said the best provider was themselves and the training they gave in the school. They said external providers were not generally focused on what they needed.”

The organization determined it could help 86 schools statewide that earned the highest academic rating while also serving student populations where at least 60 percent were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Forty percent are charters in a state where charter schools educate almost one-fifth of students, the highest percentage in the nation.

“One thing we noticed was how many were in southern Arizona, including Nogales,” Hill said of the border city, which is nearly 100 percent Hispanic and poor. “It was a real mythbuster of what low-income English language learners were capable of. They had some of the highest results in the state. And lessons we learned there translated to our urban schools.”

As with TPM in industrial settings, where employers in the same sector are encouraged to collaborate with ideas for improving the labor supply, A for Arizona convened schools to identify common recruitment and evaluation issues and create bespoke systems for attracting strong classroom prospects.

The effort faces statewide obstacles. A September survey by found that nearly 25 percent of the state’s teaching positions remained vacant, and about half were filled with staff lacking certification requirements. The Arizona Republic began by saying, “There’s a good chance the teacher in front of your child’s classroom this year isn’t fully trained to teach.”

Some classroom educators left, or stayed away entirely, because of the state’s low pay, which ranked among the worst in the nation until the governor agreed to a three-year, 19 percent raise last spring, ending the teachers’ five-day statewide walkout.

Ducey’s “grow your own” licensing bill may eventually emerge as a broader, if still partial, fix.

“We jumped all over the state law,” said Baker, the Vail schools chief. “If someone has been in a regular workforce, if they’ve been in sales, law enforcement, management, they bring a different perspective to kids — and to the teacher meetings in the teachers’ lounge. They’re intimately familiar with the world we’re trying to prepare kids for.”

Arizona has the only TPM plan devoted solely to improving education. But other TPM programs focused on closing the so-called skills gap — the deficit of workers trained for increasingly technical positions created by recent advances — typically reach back to high school.

In Kentucky, whose economy trails the rest of the country but which has enjoyed manufacturing growth, a TPM analysis found that worker shortages resulted in part from underdeveloped relationships between employers and school systems, said Beth Davisson, executive director of the workforce center at the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.

Working with manufacturers in the rural southwestern part of the state, where “engineering turnover was crazy high,” Davisson found that young workers left because there was no place nearby to get further training and employers weren’t engaging with local schools to build what she called “a culture of engineering in the community.”

“There’s been a huge problem between what employers recognize and what education pushes out,” she said. She believes new education and early exposure-based initiatives hold promise.

“We’re working with employers across the state to plug them into schools,” she said. “They need not only to provide training and equipment, they have to build the pipeline.”

Traditionalists might balk at education reform guided by the business-based Chamber of Commerce — an effort based on management principles — but ACF Chief Executive Lisa Keegan, formerly the state’s top education official, thinks that’s backwards.

“When I started at the chamber with A for Arizona, I said, ‘Let’s flip this. Let’s quit looking at failure. Let‘s look at who gets it done and do more of that,’” she said. “The reason this has been so successful is that it’s a reflexive business principle to look at what’s successful and do more of it.”

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Van Dyks is not alone, according to Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. A majority of college graduates require additional education in order to qualify for a good-paying job, Carnevale said — though many might not find that out until after commencement exercises are over. While colleges are expanding their career development offices and providing students with opportunities for internships, few students take advantage of those resources. For those young graduates, the realities of the job market come as a surprise.

The traditional path is to pursue a master’s degree, but many college graduates, like Van Dyks, are abandoning the academic track and following a path that some might view as going backward: enrolling at a community college or a for-profit technical school and getting an associate’s degree or industry certification, specifically to qualify for a job. According to Carnevale, 14 percent of bachelor’s degree holders go that route.

Van Dyks chose Eastwick College, a for-profit technical school in Ramsey, New Jersey, for a variety of reasons, including scheduling flexibility, assistance with job placement, and assurances that she will be immediately employable, at a good rate of pay, after graduation.

As college president Tom Eastwick put it, schools like his prepare students for real jobs: “I think being an electrician or a plumber is a home run,” he said. “They do very nicely. Sometimes $20 per hour.”

Working for a degree, not a job

Though she had an interest in medical work, Van Dyks did not start college with a clear picture of specific careers, salaries, or training requirements in health care. She settled on a psychology major in her sophomore year without a great deal of thought; browsing through a list of majors, she decided it sounded more serious than other majors, and she had already taken a number of classes in that department.

Her high school guidance counselor had not talked with her about careers, nor did she gain that information at college. On Rutgers’s sprawling campus in New Brunswick, with its 35,000 undergraduates, most of her classes were in large lecture halls where she had little direct contact with her professors, who possibly could have offered guidance about employment in their fields.

Five years ago, Rutgers expanded the offerings at its career services center, both online and in person. In an email, Neal Buccino, an associate director for media relations for the university, said that “we hear time and again from employers that experience is the new entry-level requirement.” So Rutgers offers students internships, co-ops, and other work-related opportunities. Buccino said 86 percent of students who completed their bachelor’s degrees in 2017 — including 81 percent of psychology majors — reported being employed or in graduate school six months after graduation.

But despite these offerings, Van Dyks said she didn’t attend job fairs or visit the career center. Unpaid summer internships are difficult for students like her, who must contribute money toward their education. Instead, she focused on finishing her academic requirements and participating in the social life on campus. She had chosen Rutgers because, at $27,000 a year, it was the most affordable option, and by working over summer breaks, she was able to keep her student loan debt to $30,000 — far less than some of her friends, who owe more than three times that amount. She graduated in four years with a 3.2 grade point average, assuming that a variety of options would be waiting for her.

Carnevale said that less than 5 percent of college students take advantage of career development services at their school, because it is not required. Without career counseling in college or high school, he said, many students — like Van Dyks — are unprepared for the working world.

On the hunt for a job

For months after graduation, Van Dyks searched online job boards but wasn’t happy with the opportunities for liberal arts college graduates with no work experience. Positions in sales, human resources, and marketing, which turned up most often, sounded boring or confusing. Without a degree in a medical field, she found she was qualified only for health care jobs that paid $12 per hour — less than what she makes at the ice cream parlor.

The process was extremely stressful. She said, “You feel lost. It’s a scary feeling.” She said she and her friends frequently complain about the job market and that her female friends with liberal arts degrees had more trouble finding work than her male friends who majored in business. This, too, is typical: Carnevale said men are more more likely to major in business or a STEM field; the most popular majors for women are nursing and psychology.

Van Dyks gradually realized she needed additional education. “In the past, you just needed a bachelor’s degree. Now, you need a master’s degree,” she said. Unable to take out additional low-interest loans or get any further financial help from her family, she would have to seek out costly private loans. The expense of continuing her education was an unwelcome shock.

At times, she blamed Rutgers for not preparing her for a career: “I think they left me high and dry. They took my money, and look where I am now.” At other times, she blamed herself, saying she should have made more strategic decisions. “I tell my brother, go into business, even if you hate it, because you’ll get a job,” Van Dyks said. She admitted that she could have taken a job in sales, but she didn’t think she would be good at it.

Carnevale wasn’t surprised that Van Dyks had trouble finding employment with her psychology degree. The two main career pathways for students in psychology — social work and counseling — require a master’s. Perhaps that explains why psychology majors earn less than other humanities majors after graduation: “What you take determines what you make,” he said.

Retooling for work

Van Dyks had never thought about a career in sonography. But after her mother clipped an article from the newspaper that said the field offered many good-paying jobs, she did some research and started taking classes at the local community college, then transferred to Eastwick in January 2018 for an associate’s degree in . The two-year program costs almost ; getting a master’s at Rutgers would have cost twice as much.

She transferred, rather than continuing at the community college, because Eastwick’s rolling admissions process meant she didn’t have to wait until September to begin the specialized program. She thought the students there seemed more serious than her classmates at the community college, and she appreciated the school’s advertised placement rate of , with a starting salary of $60,000 per year.

Founded as a secretarial school with 32 students in 1985, Eastwick College now has three campuses with nearly 2,000 students training in a variety of fields, including plumbing, funeral services, facilities management, occupational therapy, and surgical technology. Most of the at the Ramsey campus, which specializes in higher-end medical careers, are older, suburban, and already have some college experience.

“They already tried college for a year or two, and they come home,” Eastwick said. “They’re frustrated because they realized they weren’t really getting much out of college and weren’t making much progress.”

Eastwick students are placed in externships for the last few months of their program and are supported by a large placement staff to help them land their first jobs. They are pushed to take placement exams, and the school covers the fees. It’s a highly structured program that Eastwick said benefits students who might become overwhelmed at a large college.

The move toward transparency

For-profit colleges like Eastwick have been subject to increased regulation in recent years regarding accreditation practices, retention rates, and job placement claims for their students. Some, including and , have been forced to close, though Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been . Reforms were necessary to shut down the bad schools, Eastwick said, and may have raised the prestige of his college, though they substantially increased the cost of running his schools.

What they also did, however, was increase transparency in how realistic job prospects actually are for graduates of for-profit schools — and Eastwick resents that community colleges and four-year institutions are not held to the same standards.

Carnevale agreed that all colleges should be more transparent about employment outcomes. Some college administrators, he said, want students to believe that classics majors earn as much as engineering students — and aren’t willing to put hard numbers on an online spreadsheet.

He also described the current “college for all” mentality as “idealism at its best.” Change is happening gradually, he said, as government officials and parents push all schools in higher education to disclose information about student outcomes. But right now, he said, “the system is out of joint. Not everybody wants or needs to go to college.”

With its lack of accountability, uneven information, and outcomes determined by socioeconomic status, Carnevale said, “the kids are the casualties in this whole system.”

Disclosure: Laura McKenna is the parent of a Rutgers University student.

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Across America, employers are struggling to find skilled talent to fill critical jobs. With more than 6.3 million job openings and almost 40 percent of employers indicating they don’t have the capacity to take on new business, it is clear that the American education system is impacting the business community’s ability to grow, innovate, and compete.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation recognizes that the challenges facing our nation’s education system are complicated. More than 9 million students are stuck in our nation’s lowest-performing schools, and only a third of our students graduate ready to succeed at college-level work. There are no silver bullets and no easy fixes. But what we do know is that the answers won’t come from Washington, but rather from local leaders who know and understand the needs of their communities.

The business community is already stepping up in innovative ways to support learning across the K-12 continuum by creating partnerships with community organizations to create a talent pipeline, collaborations with high schools and districts to provide work-based learning opportunities for students, and efforts to advocate for policy change at the local, state, and national levels. Businesses have made a concerted effort to partner with schools to bring more purpose and real-world learning opportunities to students in districts across the country.

Texas

In 2010, Texas Instruments approached the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas with a problem: By 2020, the company would not have enough engineers. Furthermore, there were 715,000 vacant STEM positions — science, technology, engineering, and math — in Texas alone. Compounding their challenge was the fact that much of the prospective workforce — 57 percent of middle and high school girls in the state — were not interested in STEM careers.

With support from companies like Texas Instruments and Ericsson, and in partnership with local schools, universities, and policymakers, the Girl Scouts built the . This 92-acre living laboratory teaches girls both the hard and soft skills critical for careers in STEM, as well as for college and careers outside STEM fields. With 88 percent of girls who attended reporting increased interest in STEM careers, the center is already making strides in fostering long-untapped STEM talent.

In addition, the two companies are partnering with schools and districts to build STEM curriculum and to leverage their own talent, encouraging employees to be volunteers and mentors to aspiring engineers.

Illinois

In Wheeling, Illinois, when community leaders realized the impact that an aging workforce was going to have on labor shortages, they reached out to High School District 214. Together, they recruited 950 industry partners to start the , which now provides more than 12,000 students from six high schools access to 44 career pathways. This remarkable program offers 39 industry certifications and the chance to explore real employment opportunities before graduation from high school.

From the creation of unique in-school health care labs and certified nursing assistant training to a first-of-its-kind nanotechnology laboratory filled with equipment typically found in America’s top higher-education research institutions, this collaboration has pushed the boundaries of what is possible when business and public education act on their shared mission. And it is not just students who win; educators have received invaluable guidance from business leaders across sectors on the skills necessary to excel in their respective industries.

Additionally, District 214 has partnered with local colleges and universities to ensure that all students have access to early college credits as well as no-debt, low-cost college opportunities after they graduate. As a result of the early exposure to careers in their communities, District 214’s students are graduating from high school with a clearer path to college and career.

Scaling opportunity

At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, we believe there are thousands of businesses eager to provide greater opportunities for students to connect classrooms with careers. Over the past few years, we have worked with our network of state and regional chambers across the country to help define this elevated role for both business and business intermediaries as drivers of education solutions and to identify areas of opportunity for expanded employer leadership.

Work-based learning has emerged as a primary avenue for new forms of business engagement in helping to equip the next generation of workers with the skills and experience they need to be career-ready. An employer-managed, work-based learning process can expand opportunities for youth to connect to companies, make the mastery of basic skills like writing and higher-order math more relevant, and create the network of diverse talent businesses need to compete in the 21st century economy.

This month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is launching a new competitive grant program, the . This initiative will support five state or local chambers with $95,000 each to implement a high-quality work-based learning program in their community, focused on better connecting students with the academic and experiential learning opportunities needed to graduate ready for college and career.

The newest wave of the education revolution is here. The United States is competing on the global economic stage. With much of the workforce nearing retirement, and at a time when many industries are experiencing rapid growth, future success will depend on how well we work together to develop the students of today for the jobs of tomorrow.

Cheryl A. Oldham is vice president of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and is also senior vice president of the education and workforce program of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Disclosure: The 74’s coverage of the skills gap, the challenges and opportunities of better educating our future workforce, and efforts underway to improve local employment pipelines is underwritten in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

It’s more accurate to say Block is an apprentice lineman, a few months from earning his journeyman’s card after four years of training. He can look forward to a union-protected salary, a retirement at an average age of late 50s, and yearly earnings north of $100,000 after overtime, according to an energy company official.

Block is a member of the so-called middle-skills workforce, which comprises the lion’s share of the American labor market. Despite making up a critical share of the economy, middle-skills jobs — those that require more education or training than a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree — are only now slowly beginning to gain the attention of those focused on the K-12 education pipeline meant to prepare American children to meet the country’s labor needs.

“I don’t plan on changing jobs again,” Block said, shortly after returning to ground in his hydraulic bucket. For 18 years, he helped plan the routes of new power lines for Consumers Energy, the local power company. During most of that time, he said, he dreamed of being up on those lines.

“Something inside me wanted to do this job,” said Block, 36. “You do a job that, let’s face it, not everybody in the world can do. And when someone says, ‘What about being up there in storms and the rain?’ Well, that’s when you’re really helping people.”

Block enrolled in a 13-week line workers program at Lansing Community College, one of two in the state that offered the specialized training required for the job. Through an initiative to develop more students qualified to work on Michigan electric lines, his community college performance earned him a spot at Consumers Energy’s pole-climbing boot camp for the company’s future line workers. The collaboration between state higher education, business, and local government created a rapid career path change for Block and produced more than 100 line workers amid statewide shortages.

Getting the word out about middle-skills jobs

Success stories that involve parlaying a vocational certificate into middle-class security need more attention, workforce groups say.

The flow of students into colleges has slowed — between 2011 and 2017, undergraduate and graduate student enrollment in degree-granting institutions , or about 9 percent. But both the perceived and real value of a bachelor’s degree as a pass-through to high-paying professional success seems unlikely to diminish in the foreseeable future.

A continued emphasis on postsecondary degrees and white- and gold-collar jobs puts even more pressure on educators and employers to answer the unmet demand for middle-skills workers. So, advocates say, students must be exposed to these less-considered but greatly needed careers — and they must be taught that earning a four-year degree is not the only path to success.

It may be easy to forget that college as a prerequisite is part of a fairly recent paradigm shift. In the 1970s, before computers began to radically reshape the economy, just 20 percent of jobs in America required education or training beyond high school.

Today, that figure stands at more than 60 percent. Since the Great Recession, 11.5 million of 11.6 million new jobs demanded postsecondary academics or training. In calculating the value of a four-year degree, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that from 1970 to 2013, degree holders earned than those who had only a high school diploma.

To better ready students for college-level work, school systems have implemented higher standards, instruction that requires deeper student engagement, and harder tests. But groups that help students transition to postgraduate life say a conveyor-belt preparation model has contributed to students enrolling in college unprepared or uninterested, which has resulted in large gaps in completion rates between high- and low-income students, crippling student loan debt, and wide inequities by race and income on .

In collaboration with educators and business leaders, advocates are creating programs across the country that expose students during the school day or after school to . Ranging widely across sectors like health care and information technology, law enforcement and the trades, about half the country’s jobs fall into this category. But elevating middle-skills work was not among the reform priorities of No Child Left Behind, nor its K-12 successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, during the respective Bush and Obama administrations.

“We have young people who are increasingly disconnected, we have jobs and jobs and jobs that are unfilled, so we’ve got to build the bridges to make sure these kids get their jobs,” said Cate Swinburn, president of YouthForce NOLA, a New Orleans nonprofit that provides job exposure and training across local industries for students beginning in ninth grade. “There have never been bridges for our low-income and black students to good jobs.”

Breaking through student assumptions

The benefits of college can overshadow its risks. Enrollment has risen by about 50 percent since the 1980s (slowing after 2010), but only about one-third of Americans have four-year degrees. Completion is correlated with income: the Pell Institute, which reports on inequality in higher education, found that 58 percent of students from families in the top quartile of income earned bachelor’s by the age of 24, while the same was true for .

Low success rates among less affluent students along with rising costs, for graduates, and the lack of good job and wage prospects for many majors all fueled the move to diversify students’ post-high school options.

“The return on investment for a bachelor’s and advanced degree is very high, much higher than the stock market or real estate,” said Jeff Strohl, director of research at the Center on Education and the Workforce.

“But dropouts get all the downsides and none of the benefits of the system,” he said. “Your chances of accessing the middle class — the idea of education as the great equalizer — are taken away.”

Career and technical education in high school and community college has increasingly targeted middle-skills occupations, which may require more training and where employers have not been able to fill shortages — particularly in growing fields like health care and cybersecurity.

Missy Sparks, an executive with Ochsner Health System, one of Louisiana’s largest employers, says working with YouthForce NOLA gives the company the chance to break through students’ assumptions about the kinds of jobs they can get.

“I need to get to kids sooner, as they’re thinking through career pathways,” Sparks said. She listed shortage positions ranging from physician’s assistant to pharmacist to medical lab technologist, along with opportunities in IT, communications, and artificial intelligence. “I want to give them exposure to a range of jobs where I need help.”

YouthForce NOLA sponsors year-round and summerlong internships at Ochsner that allow students to experience as much of the “health environment” as possible, Sparks said. They watch operations, learn to make sutures, and attend presentations where professionals describe the education and responsibilities their jobs require.

The smorgasbord approach makes sense to Shaun Dougherty, a professor at Vanderbilt University who believes vocational programs should avoid narrowing options for students too early.

“What I’ve done over the last 10 years doesn’t align with what I wanted when I was 16,” said Dougherty, who studies career and technical education. “We should probably do things in high school that make [students] feel they have agency about what they want to do as adults but doesn’t mean they’re signing up for that for the next 10 years.”

Even before college enrollment began to dip, educational and career pathways that culminated in certificates and associate’s degrees grew more quickly than four-year degrees between 2004-05 and 2014-15.

The electrical line worker program in Michigan, supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Consumers Energy , targeted areas where the power company had been successful in recruiting workers in the past. Students who excelled in the community college program pipelined into the power company to begin an apprenticeship. The arrangement yielded 124 new line workers over two and a half years who could look forward to a steep return upon completing their training, according to one of the initiative’s architects.

“They start at $28 an hour and move up rapidly,” said Sharon Miller, who oversees workforce issues for Consumers Energy, describing an income annualized at around $50,000. “I believe most are at $40 to $45 an hour. But overtime is prevalent, and that’s how they can get to six figures.” Miller said line workers retire in their mid- to late-50s.

The line workers face a somewhat lower ceiling on future earnings than college graduates with lucrative majors. The job is also relatively dangerous, with , but wages compare favorably with those of most graduates of four-year colleges.

What ‘schools don’t teach and labor markets don’t supply’

Despite an availability of middle-skills jobs in many occupations, challenges persist.

Employers and others have attributed shortages in some occupations to a “skills gap” arising from insufficient training, particularly where advances in automation have changed job requirements. CTE and other occupational programs have targeted these areas, though , or they describe it differently.

“The idea of the missing middle is overblown — it exists in wages but not in jobs,” said Clive Belfield, an economics professor at Queens College. “The trouble with the skills gap literature is that the people typically making this claim are making it in a bad-faith way. Employers say, ‘We can’t get anybody to fill our skilled technicians’ jobs,’ but that’s because you’re paying $10 an hour and they might as well be a barista and have more flexibility.”

But James Bessen argued in ��that changing technologies demand skills “that schools don’t teach and that labor markets don’t supply.” He contends that “employers have had persistent difficulty finding workers who can make the most of these new technologies.”

Sparks, the Ochsner executive, suggests the problem is more fundamental.

“We have students who don’t have internet at home, or don’t have computers, and the only way they interact is through apps, which is OK, but how are they going to work on a database, use a mouse, work on a laptop?” she said. “This is true of vulnerable populations that you’re trying to move into health care careers.”

Swinburn says that some families say they’re grateful to YouthForce NOLA for bringing career development back into school, but “the other half said, ‘I get what you’re saying, but my kids’ classroom has been named after someone who went to college and you’re saying they’re not going to college anymore,’” she said.

“We know and acknowledge the classist and racist history of vocational tech where kids did get tracked by income and race. But this is about building systems to overcome these inequities. This is about doing schools differently for all kids.”

Disclosure: This essay is part of a series of Future of Work stories sponsored by Pearson exploring how automation and evolving economic forces are impacting education from kindergarten through college.