0:00:10.5 Dakota Pawlicki: Hello and welcome to Today's Students, Tomorrow's Talent, the show about work and learning after high school brought to you by Lumina Foundation. I'm your host, Dakota Pawlicki, coming to you live from the podcast lounge at South by Southwest. We're so glad to have you with us today for one of three shows addressing a range of topics from climate change, AI, and American prosperity.
America is prosperous in many ways, though I wouldn't blame anyone who's been reading headlines and consuming social media lately that push back on that notion. We do have the largest economy in the world. We lead the world in several scientific fields, and on the whole, many Americans have access to high wages, home ownership, and opportunities for upward mobility. But—and the but in that sentence does a lot of work—American prosperity is not evenly distributed and is constantly at risk. Income inequality threatens families across the nation, especially with rising prices for food, housing, healthcare, and education. Political and social polarization limit our country's ability to effect long term economic plans at the local, state and national levels. And persistent gaps to accessing and completing high quality education and training programs are inhibiting our ability to build a workforce for today's global marketplace, let alone create ladders to upward mobility for people who need them most.
0:01:28.7 Dakota Pawlicki: So, what drives American prosperity and how might we create the conditions that allow for all Americans to thrive? To help me answer these questions, I am joined by some really excellent and very smart people, way smarter than me so I'm really excited to learn from you all. To my left, Courtney Brown, Vice President of Impact and Planning for Lumina Foundation. Archie Holmes, Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Texas System, and Kysha Wright Frazier, President and CEO of Corporation for a Skilled Workforce. Thank you all so much for joining me today.
0:02:00.9 Kysha Wright Frazier: Thank you.
0:02:01.0 Archie Holmes: Thank you.
0:02:01.0 Dakota Pawlicki: Yeah, Kysha, I'm hoping you can start us off. I think there's a lot of ways to think about and honestly a lot of ways that we measure American prosperity. We have GDP, we have wages and social mobility, quality of life, and I know you've done some really great work around the triple bottom line. As you walk into the conversation about what is American prosperity, what comes to mind for you?
0:02:23.1 Kysha Wright Frazier: Right. We've had a number of conversations with frontline workers and I'd say one of the biggest things we'll hear, all of those are important, but prominently to them are wages. We get wages in place, all the other pieces will be driven by that. And I also think that we can all agree that we want a better future for the generations ahead of us. So how do we make that happen? And when it comes to education and training, it's about accessibility, affordability, and alignment.
How do we do that? So, accessibility, how are workers and learners getting training? Is it online? Is it in person? Is it hybrid, asynchronous, synchronous? So how do folks assess the training? Is it affordable? Meaning, how are they able to pay for it? Are there Pell grants, workforce training grants, scholarships, employer subsidies, and state funding, which we've seen have worked really well. You got like Arizona Fast Forward, for example, Louisiana's boot your career. So, all of those things are very helpful. And then you think about alignment, alignment to the needs of industry. Are those credentials value within industry? So not only with industry, but are they aligned to student’s needs? And I'm sure, Archie, you'll talk a lot about this.
0:03:49.6 Kysha Wright Frazier: The needs of students are changing. Students are growing. Numbers of students are older, they're first generation, they have competing needs such as families, they're working. So, is the way that we're delivering education and training aligned with the needs of industry, but also align with the needs of students and their needs for today and the future?
0:04:13.0 Dakota Pawlicki: Yeah, Archie, bring me into Texas. I'm a contextual thinker.
0:04:16.3 Archie Holmes: Yeah.
0:04:16.7 Dakota Pawlicki: What does American prosperity in the land of Texas look like for you?
0:04:20.4 Archie Holmes: Yeah. So maybe I'll give a little bit of context about our system and how we think about this. So, we are the largest university system here in Texas. We educate about 260,000 students across our 14 institutions. And so, building off of what was said before, accessibility, affordability, and alignment are really key to the way that we think about this. We recognize that our students come from a wide variety of different backgrounds and life experiences that bring them to our door. And to assume that they have the privilege of being able to spend all full time for 4 years to get an education is something that we take very seriously.
So, on the accessibility side, we have really been, and it's kind of connected to affordability as well, we have really looked at what are the costs that we can control on our end? And so, our board has been very, very forward thinking about this. So, there's been a lot of what we call promise programs across the country. So, these are programs for those of you who are not familiar, which pay for tuition and mandatory fees. And so, our board just recently upped the ante on this.
0:05:25.9 Archie Holmes: And so, any student with an adjusted gross income, family adjusted gross income of $100,000 or less is able to go tuition free and mandatory fees free if they are a Texas resident at our institutions, which I think will be a really good game changer in terms of bringing them into the institutions.
But as you said, that's only part one, getting them into the door. The other aspect of that is then trying to figure out, well, how do we get alignment to the various credentials that we have? Our big push has been around the area of micro credentials. So, we have an initiative called the Texas Credentials for the Future effort. Kind of the tagline that I want to use here is what we call it as 'broadly educated and specifically skilled'. So, getting to the alignment issue, the specifically skilled is really focused on, what are those skills that I need to get that first job? If it's in project management or data analytics or whatever. Regardless of what my major or field of study is, how do we prepare our learners or our students when they go into the workforce that they are aligned to those needs? And we are able to then use labor market data to try to understand what those skills and needs are and make sure that our credentials are aligned to those.
0:06:34.0 Archie Holmes: But the broadly skilled is something I don't want to pass up. So just because I gave you those skills from day one, it doesn't mean in year five, those are the same skills that you ultimately need. And so broadly educated is there to help you transition to that, hopefully maybe means you come back to us in terms of that upskilling and reskilling. So that's really how we're thinking about this, Dakota.
0:06:54.0 Dakota Pawlicki: Yeah, Courtney, I mean, Lumina has had such a long history of helping establish conditions around the country for doing this kind of work. And as we're looking at the challenges ahead of us to make sure we remain a prosperous country, I know Lumina has been putting some more thinking into those things around wages, around what it really takes to align these kinds of systems. Update us on the latest thinking that's coming out of the great minds at Lumina.
0:07:21.4 Courtney Brown: So, for those of you who aren't familiar with Lumina, we're a national private foundation and we focus on increasing opportunities for access and success in postsecondary education. For the last 15 years, we've been working on an attainment goal for the nation and that is that by 2025, which we're in now, 60% of people in the United States will have a degree or a short-term credential certificate or certification as my colleagues here are talking about. And we've made incredible progress over the last 15 years with partners in Texas and across the workforce, partners across all kinds of state leaders. And when we set the goal in 2008, we were at 38%. So that's 38% of people in the United States had a degree or credential. As of today, we're about 55%. Amazing, incredible opportunity. But we know that we need much more talent in the United States. We know we need much more educated people to fuel our economy and fuel the jobs. And so even though we're at 2025, we know our work isn't done. But we had to take a step back because we had to think about, where are we going to go next? What should we really focus on? And this is a national goal.
0:08:36.2 Courtney Brown: This is the United States goal. This isn't Lumina's goal or Archie's goal or any individual person's goal. And so, we had to look at the data and say, what does the nation need? And we listened to people. We listened to students, current students, past students, people who have never touched higher ed. And what we learned were a couple of things. First of all, people want education after high school. They greatly value it. They want it for themselves. The vast majority, over 90% of people want it, and they want it for their children. The problem is they are losing confidence rapidly in the system that delivers it. So in about 2015, based on data from Gallup, about two thirds of Americans had a great deal of confidence in higher ed, which is fine. As of this past summer in 2024, that's about a third. So only a third of people have a great deal of confidence in higher ed. And worse, a third of people have no confidence in higher education, and that was 10% in 2015. So, we had to look at that and go, okay, why are people losing confidence? If they lose confidence, they're not going to go, and they're not going to fuel our economy.
0:09:46.7 Courtney Brown: They're not going to have good lives and good jobs as individuals. And we learned the things that Kysha actually, you just brought up, that it's not affordable and it's not aligned with the workforce, some of the work that Archie was just mentioning. And that's the problem. They feel like they're not going to get an ROI, a return on their investment. They're paying a lot of money. They're spending a lot of time. It's the opportunity cost for not working, and so they're less likely to go. So, when we thought about this, we thought, well, we need to rethink both how we're delivering and what somebody is getting. They're a consumer, they are consuming higher ed and they want something out of it. They want to make sure they're going to get a good job and have a good life. And so, as we thought about where does the nation need to go in 2040, we set a new goal for the nation that we're working toward. And that is by 2040, 75% of people in the US labor force will have a degree or credential that leads to economic prosperity. Because we believe everyone needs the opportunity to access.
0:10:48.8 Courtney Brown: They need to make sure that they have economic security, and then that there is economic prosperity both for individuals and communities. And we can get into the details of what that goal is and other parts of it, but we really needed to lean in on what Americans want and what our country needs.
0:11:06.1 Dakota Pawlicki: That is very, that's a great goal. There's a lot of challenges to unpack. I mean, what do you think immediately? How are you organizing yourselves around actually tackling some of the challenges do you think is going to be on the way to achieving that 75% goal?
0:11:20.9 Courtney Brown: Yeah, many challenges. And I'll let my colleagues also jump in on some of these. Yeah, I mean, the first one is affordability. We have to crack the affordability piece. And I love what, Archie, what you're mentioning, but it's not just the cost of attendance. It's the cost of living. It's the cost for a single mom who's trying to manage going to college and raising two children. And they're going to prioritize putting food on the table for their children over paying tuition or, they have to pay rent. So, you can pay my tuition, but how am I going to pay my rent if I'm a student? And so, we have to think of the total cost for students and in ensuring that it is affordable, that they have access and they can complete. We have 42 million people in the United States right now who started college and stopped out for whatever reason, many times that's finances. That's a crisis. So those are, some things we have to tackle affordability, and we have to tackle assuring that it's going to actually lead to a good job.
0:12:17.6 Kysha Wright Frazier: Dakota and Courtney, you mentioned trust, and that's a big factor in this, too. And so, students are questioning the utility of that experience. And so, what's the utility of the experience, be it 2-year, 4 year or something else? And then what's the payoff for that? And so, I think being able to message that clearly by using disaggregated data, like what does it mean for me, where I live, with that credential, it has to be clearly communicated. And then again, that alignment, employers then have to be able to show how is that utility used in that workplace, how is it not when I enter, but how do I advance with that credential. And so, a part of it is also messaging the importance of lifelong learning. Archie, you mentioned folks come back, and that's true. I was in a talk earlier today. One of the speakers was saying, no one person, now and especially in the future is going to get their income from one job. There's such a big gig economy, any person 15 and under will have some side job at this point, especially 2025. So, students understand the importance of being creative and having multi-interest.
0:13:38.0 Kysha Wright Frazier: They're multifaceted. And so, getting a credential at this place in time might be great for now, but having that curiosity and wanting to be that lifelong learner to learn a new skill. And so how do we do that in a way that it does not always take four years to do that? I can gain that skill in a shortened period of time, apply it, but then again, understanding immediately, what's the payoff for my investment of my time and resources into that credential? And the data has to be able to show that and be very transparent.
0:14:08.9 Archie Holmes: Yeah, that's a really, really great point. So maybe to level us out a little bit about the cost, because I 100% agree the cost of living is the biggest elephant in the room here. So, if we talk about what we're able to do at the University of Texas system, that's about a third, maybe 40% of the total cost. And those costs about rent and food and childcare are things that we do not control. So how do we help our students be able to afford those things is a really big issue. Kind of back to the issue of how do we build trust. One of the things that we have been really fortunate at the University of Texas system to do is to be able to partner with the Census Bureau and our Texas Workforce Commission. And so, what we have at our system is we know the labor market outcomes for our students based on what is provided to the Census Bureau and to the Texas Workforce Commission. So, we can show a student now, just as an example, I can show a philosophy student who graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas who is interested in living in San Antonio, Texas.
0:15:09.7 Archie Holmes: I can show her what other philosophy majors are earning 1, 3, 5 and 10 years out, we can show them the amount of average debt that they have. We can now also show them information about how does that compare to what you need in terms of a living wage in that particular area. And so, for us, it's really about how to build that trust, is really to try to show people, here are the folks that have gone down this path before you. Here is what it is that we're doing, and here's how we can try to help work to make sure that you know that so that as you go down this path, you are informed about what it is that you ultimately do. It's still a work in progress, I would say. I think most of our students use it at the end of their journey when they're doing salary negotiations and not at the beginning of their journey. But we can work on how do we integrate that more into the decision making that students are doing.
0:16:00.8 Courtney Brown: I think just to pick up on that, that that's one of the most important things that we can do is increase the transparency about, for students as consumers, what are they buying? What are they getting? What does it look like for somebody like them? I mean, I have more information on Amazon if I want to buy a new hairbrush, on if it's going to work for me at my age and my race and how long it's going to last than I have any idea what I'm going to get out of a degree and how long that's going to last.
0:16:26.1 Archie Holmes: In talking to students, and I'm going to use social work just as the example here. I don't know that folks who are going into social work are expecting to be paid like computer scientists. I think what they want to know is that they are able to get a wage where they will be able to support a family that they want to have and that they will be able to live. And as long as they can get to that point and we can demonstrate that the education with credentials that we add can get them to that point, I think most of them are going to be satisfied. And again, Courtney it goes back to what you said, this is about transparency. This is about being honest with folks about this is what this journey looks like. We are here to help you on this journey so that there isn't a surprise at the end thinking that it was something different than it was before.
0:17:05.0 Dakota Pawlicki: You know, Kysha, though, I want to go back to something because, I always joke on the show, I'm a tuba player. I'm a classically trained Tuba player. That was my degree. And yet here I am doing something wildly else than what I ever thought I'd do. I taught for a little while and then I jumped from one career and fell to the next one and fell to the next one. And here I am hosting a podcast. So, I guess I'm curious, along these lines around saying we need to make these things a little bit more transparent, we need to show what they're actually getting. How hard is it to do though, in today's environment where when you start on a traditional, even as a four-year degree or two-year degree, and you're thinking you're going to go into philosophy, but then you end up going somewhere else. How difficult is it for us to really understand someone's earning potentials when the pathway isn't necessarily direct anymore?
0:17:54.2 Kysha Wright Frazier: Right. I'd say similar experience. Thought I was going to be a college professor, so things change a lot over time and where you start may not be where you end. And people reskill. There's a lot of layoffs happening. People are thinking about reskilling. What's my next career going to be? I think part of it is thinking about how do we quantify the skills and the experiences people bring and where does that show up? What transcript does that show up on to be able to quantify that I've done this work, I've had this experience? It should matriculate into some sort of effort that is shown, and so how do we work with institutions, those who qualify and recognize those sorts of skills so that they are transparent and that the person can take them and use them and stack them and say, I've done this work, I've got this experience. What does it mean? What does it show for? And so, I think that will help people be able to move around, and it's just life, and I think that's a part of, sometimes we get in spaces and we don't understand that life happens around a lot of people, where they thought they started is not always where they might end because of life situations, because of interest and practical other reasons.
0:19:17.0 Kysha Wright Frazier: So, for one, it's how do you take that information and make it known? And it's valued by institutions, but also valued by employers. And so, what does that look like? One of the things we've been working on is competency-based approaches. And so, there's a national movement we've been working on called credential as you go. We've been testing it in some states, but it's looking at competency-based approaches in hiring. Again, how employers think about hiring. How do you help employers with occupational profiles that are competency based so that they're describing the work more accurately around competencies. And there's a 2023 Deloitte report, their human Capital report, Trends report talks about employers overwhelmingly. I think 92, 93% want to move and shift into competency-based approaches in hiring, but only 20% really know how to do it. How do we support employers in this shift in thinking, in this reframing as well is a broader question I have.
0:20:22.5 Archie Holmes: Yeah, I agree. Again, we're picking on philosophy majors, so I apologize in advance for all philosophy majors, but there's so many analytical skills that a philosophy major ultimately does. And so how is that articulated in such a way that when they go out into the marketplace, they're able to show the really quality analytical skills that one gathers as a philosophy maker, which would prepare them for so many fields that would look very, very far away from what you would imagine a philosophy major actually doing. And I think that's one of the really critical challenges that I think we have in higher ed to be able to show that. But also, then how do we articulate that to employers in such a way that they're able to recognize that investing in that philosophy major is the right next step for a long term?
0:21:08.6 Dakota Pawlicki: Yeah, I think the thing that… I'm sorry, I think the thing that I'm curious to get both of your perspectives on is that a lot of times we are relying on labor market data, though, to inform the economic ROI. And so, the work I've done around labor market data, it always, I'm left feeling wanting constantly. And so, I guess I'm curious, how do you address that situation? We have the data that we have that says if you earn these kinds of credentials, this is typically what people are getting on their way out. What other kind of data sets do you need to start bringing into the conversation to give people a more accurate picture as they are venturing out throughout the world?
0:21:40.2 Courtney Brown: Can I… Let me just touch on this first and then my colleagues can. So, we have data and we use the data and we know from the data that philosophy majors do really well 10 years out. We know from the data, we know that a degree pays off and we have that information and we yell it at students constantly or we yell at people that are never going to touch higher ed. You need a degree because you will make more. You'll make a million dollars more over the lifetime than you would without. And it's not sufficient yelling this, continuing to say, we have the data and here's the data, and this is what it's going to do for you doesn't put food on the table. It doesn't help them navigate all of life and get the credential they need, or they may feel like they're not college material. And we're talking about certificates, certifications, anything, any learning beyond high school. And so, we have that. And then, we still have this part where people feel like they're not getting the skills, that it's not translating to the workforce. And often we're talking about analytical skills where you can, show somebody you can do it.
0:22:45.7 Courtney Brown: But a lot of the skills that we need, that we all use every day are nothing that I can quantify. It is working in a group. It is providing leadership. It is providing a listening ear. It is getting along with other people. And I think one of the things that we can do better as higher ed is helping students see what they're learning. These are really important skills. We're going to do group projects all the time in higher ed, but students don't understand the value of those in the workforce. Helping them understand, telling them what the learning is and then how to help employers see that they have that learning. So, it's some of just, even though it's been happening, we can do a much better job at explaining how that translates to the workforce and how to talk to employers about it.
0:23:32.3 Archie Holmes: Yeah. So, to build on what Courtney just said. So, if I look at a transcript today, what do I get? I get a list of courses that have grades that maybe mean something to me, but maybe not, because I don't know how those grades compare to anything else at different institutions or even in that institution. So, if we were able to broaden that and say, for example, in this particular course, here are the projects that that student did. Here is they worked on a group project where they got skills in terms of interpersonal communication and how to work with diverse groups and how to be a leader and all that other sort of stuff, if we could figure out how to articulate that sort of information, I think that we could get a lot closer to pairing those skills that a student has with what an employer ultimately wants. Because we're using proxies. The proxy is that if I got a bunch of A's, I'm going to be a good employer. I don't know that that proxy is a good one anymore. It probably worked for a while, but it certainly isn't working today.
0:24:31.6 Archie Holmes: And we need not just proxies. We need better direct evidence.
0:24:35.3 Kysha Wright Frazier: And one other thing I want to say, getting back to a data point that I was talking about earlier. Nearly 40 million people with some college, no degree or credential, how do we show they've got, they've done some things and most probably have done a lot more. You see folks, they've got more hours than they need, but it just didn't add up. They switched majors, they switch fields. How do you show for and honor and validate some part of what they've done? And how do you give that some sort of credential or some sort of just validation. You spent 120 hours, but it didn't show for anything yet because you took some classes here, you took some classes there. So how do we… That's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's somebody you know, more often we all know somebody there. So how do we work with that group? They want to go to college, they want a degree, they want some sort of credential. How do we work with that very large group of people and be able to award some sort of recognition for what they've invested in?
0:25:43.6 Courtney Brown: Can I pick up on what Kysha just said? So, yeah, 42 million people started college and for whatever reason stopped out. They are an untapped population, and from our data, we know that they're the least happy population. They're about on equal parts with people that did not graduate from high school. Having a certificate, you're much happier you find purpose in your life, purpose in your job. And so how do we help those people pull their competencies together? Because you're right, many of them, it wasn't just one class they tried, they were in for a few semesters or something and they hope to go back. Most of them want to go back, but they can't. They're crippled with debt and other things. And so how do we help them rather than paying for it all over again, bundle those competencies. Because just doing that, putting them together in a certificate or certification helps them have purpose in life, have a better job, a better life, and a more prosperous community.
0:26:41.8 Archie Holmes: And that's where we in higher ed have to take a look in the mirror and be able to say, how are we going to do things differently. Because if you look at our model, our model is you spend four years with us in a set of courses that are somehow coherent, and then we will give you a certificate. We don't say, for example, after 30 hours you might get something because that may be where it is that it makes sense for you, and then you are going to depart because of life circumstances. How do we make it then easy for you that when you are ready to come back and get to that next stage, that you can easily come back into our institutions and do this? So, we need to think more about how do folks enter into higher education? How do we recognize the learning if it doesn't add up to 120 hours or whatever we decide a degree ultimately is? And how do we provide those entry points and exit points? And I think that that is a really big challenge that we're going to have to take on as an industry to better support those 42 million folks, Courtney, that you were talking about.
0:27:38.6 Archie Holmes: Hybrid learning is also going to be another big one. A lot of those folks are not going to come back to a traditional higher education. So, we have to meet them where they are. So online, in hybrid, and a whole bunch of other ways of being able to do that are going to be really critically important.
0:27:51.5 Kysha Wright Frazier: And I just want, that was one of the frameworks with credential as you go is to think about how do I learn as I go, stack as I go, transfer as I go to be able to bundle that learning into something that's recognizable.
0:28:05.9 Dakota Pawlicki: I mean, I really appreciate that point. Higher ed does need to change in some ways to modernize, to fit this system. But I also, we've been talking about something that I'd like to shift ourselves to, which is to employers, both the, I mean the private sector, the public sector and the nonprofit sector as employers, it seems to me time and time again that they also need to make some shifts. In my normal 9 to 5 job, when I'm not hosting this podcast, we do work with a lot of employers. And the things we are always hearing is they don't leave your education programs with the skills that they really need to start from day one. And then even when we do match that, it then shifts to, well, they don't have the soft skills. People aren't showing up on time, they don't know how to write emails. How realistic is it for an employer to expect someone to exit a training or education program certificate, certification, degree, whatever it might be, and walk into a job and be 100% performer on day one. And I'm also asking this, not only from your levels of where you're operating, but also you are all three organizational leaders that hire a lot of people.
0:29:09.4 Dakota Pawlicki: What's your personal experience with that as you're hiring folks? Do you expect them to come in on day one and be the perfect employee for that exact fit?
0:29:18.5 Archie Holmes: Well, that's a really tough question, Dakota. So let me try to unpack it at least a little bit. I think from my view is that employers can do that, but they're going to have to be much more involved in the education than they currently are. And what I mean by that is, if an employer really wants their graduates to be ready, where are the internships that those students can do with that employer where those students get to understand and get that training? We can work with them in terms of figuring out how does that fit in to an educational system. But for them to want something very specific, they're going to have to be, in my opinion, going to have to be much more involved in that training. And it probably can't just be one summer right before they graduate. That has to be a more continuous process. I don't think in higher ed we're going to be in the business of saying that I'm preparing graduates to go to company A versus Company B. We want to be more general than that because as we've already said, our students are going to change their mind.
0:30:16.1 Archie Holmes: And if we prepared them very well to go to one company and now they want to do something else, we want to make sure that what they've gathered is very general. And so, for me, it's really, what are the employers going to do in that? From my own experience, my personal hiring philosophy is I want somebody who's going to be great five years after I hire them, not just one year walking into the door. So, for me, it's always a development process. And so, you have to figure out what are the skills or what are the talents that I want to see in that person when I hire them, recognizing that I'm going to have to do some development, they're going to have to grow in the position. But I want to be five years down the line, I want to say, wow, that was the greatest hire in the world. I don't want to say that on day one all the time. And I think the employer is going to have to think about that somewhat too now, maybe five years is too long for them, but I don't think day one is the right answer either.
0:31:03.4 Kysha Wright Frazier: I completely agree with what you're saying, Archie. I think educational institutions, they supply the knowledge and skills that the training provides us. Whereas with employers you have to be able to apply that context of learning and skills someplace. Employers have to create those spaces for folks to apply that in a contextual setting, in a real time setting. And so, apprenticeships, internships, on the job training, all that's crucial and it's going to be important. Of course, personally, every employer has their own nuances, their culture and their organizational way of doing things. So, you'll learn that as you go. So, I don't think exactly on day one is reasonable, but if we were to be able to provide more real time, contextualized types of learnings that are integrated with learning and on the job types of training, you'll get that at a quicker pace as well as, there's a job shortage. 69% of employers in big relevant fields like IT education, skilled trades need workers. It's a big shortage. How do we fill that gap? And I think if we do more on the job training, apprenticeship opportunities, we're going to be able to fill that gap job or that gap quicker.
0:32:20.3 Kysha Wright Frazier: And folks feel more confident when they come on the job. Then they're able to say I understand what's needed day one a little bit more. And yeah, I agree. I don't think employers want to wait five years. But within six months or those 90 days, the person feels confident, employer is happy because they've had that integration with work and learning from the start.
0:32:42.4 Courtney Brown: Yeah. Can I pick up on something else Archie mentioned about the work-based internships, those are so crucial. They're so crucial for many reasons, not just the alignment with workforce, but they're also crucial to keep students retained. We know that students that have those opportunities are more likely to complete their degree. They're more likely to feel like they belong at their institution and that they can get a good job afterwards. But we have to make sure they're paid. We continue to have unpaid internships which continues to have the haves and have nots in our society. And usually, it's the people that are better networked that have those opportunities. So, I know every employer can't bring in, we can't fill all those positions, but we need to find other opportunities and universities need to get more creative on how students can have those real-life working opportunities.
0:33:36.6 Archie Holmes: Yeah, one of the things that we have been piloting at some of our institutions, I'm going to call out UT El Paso specifically, but others are doing the same thing, is how do we take work study activities at our institutions, and structure them in such a way that we can start to help students understand the skills that they are gaining from those work experiences that will translate into a job. So, we have things that we do on our end in terms of employment at the institution that we also need to figure out how do we tie it into those skills that ultimately needs in order to be able to be successful. So, we have a lot of work to do there. I know UT El Paso is doing it, but some of our other institutions are doing it that as well.
0:34:13.2 Kysha Wright Frazier: I just want to pick up quickly on the notion of on-the-job training and apprenticeships. How do we expand them beyond typical, maybe trade jobs as well, IT, which as we talk about the haves and have not and who's left out, typically those jobs are very much male dominated and white male dominated as well. So how do we think about affording those paid internships, those on the job training opportunities beyond, so we're talking about education, careers or social work we talked about earlier, just, beyond the traditional trades or IT or engineering or those sorts of things which are all very important, not to say, but just expand it so that there's greater opportunity for folks of various demographic communities and various interests to also have those opportunities to learn and gain wages as well as they learn. So just wanted to talk about it.
0:35:07.1 Courtney Brown: Even the philosophy major needs an opportunity for the internship.
0:35:11.4 Dakota Pawlicki: You just touched on something too, which is wages. I think that's the other part of this equation. Yes, employers should, if they're interested in creating a sustainable talent pipeline for themselves, they should participate more actively in the education process by providing paid internships, apprenticeships, these kinds of things. And as we talked about at the very beginning, the cost of living is so high and employers have a major part to play in that. How do the wages part of this conversation has to… I guess I'm just curious, how do the wages come into this? How do we get more employers to increase their wages? And I'm also thinking that's directly tied to Lumina's new goal. I mean, when we're talking about economic prosperity, if I'm right, Courtney, please correct me. The early thinking, I know we're still doing some more thinking about it, but we're talking about is it 10% of a wage premium?
0:36:00.4 Courtney Brown: So, it's a 15%. So again, our goal is 75% have a degree or credential that leads to economic prosperity. And how we're going to measure that out of the gate is on wages, and comparing it to the national average of a high school earner alone, that's an individual has to have that degree or credential certificate, certification and earn 15% over that average high school earner. Our work, because we focus in higher ed, so our work is on better aligning, helping institutions better align the work to make sure there's a job on the other end, really thinking about affordability and other things. We're not tackling the employers and pay and increasing pay and those sorts of things, but with the hopes that more institutions will develop partnerships with employers that that will come and that that credential should provide a 15%. If you are spending your time and your money to get a credential, you shouldn't come out of in the same place you started. And so, we want to make sure the credentials that students are buying, let's be real, we're buying those credentials, we're spending our time and energy to invest in them, that they're going to be worth it.
0:37:14.6 Courtney Brown: And so that's where we're focusing our efforts.
0:37:16.8 Archie Holmes: So, Courtney, I'm curious, did the 15% come from what people expected in terms of that ROI? I mean, I'm curious as, 15%, 10%, 25. I'm curious as to why 15% was the number.
0:37:28.3 Courtney Brown: So, a few things. First of all, the 2025 goal that I spoke about earlier, we went back and kind of learned from it. You know, what made it successful? 49 states adopted a similar goal, which is pretty amazing. And so, we asked those states, we asked organizations, what did you like about the goal? And one of the things that it was simple. Don't create something complex. Because for a while, I was looking at the data and I thought, all right, let's make it 15% for certifications, 17% for certificates, 20% for associates, 25% for… And then it just became a hot mess. So, we're not saying it's only 15%. 15% is the minimum. When we disaggregate it by the types of credentials, you can see that bachelor's degree earners are earning way above that 15%. And so, by doing that, you see that. But we needed to create a baseline. And so, the 15% was what was recommended by labor market economists saying 15%, especially over time, really builds up. It really does begin to provide that building of wealth and security that will ultimately lead to prosperity.
0:38:36.0 Archie Holmes: The only other thing I would bring up in this area, so if I could wave a magic wand, I think one of the things that I'd love us to all think about is how do we grow the pie of eligible employees who have the skills to work in a particular industry? What I mean by that is it's very easy for me as let's say company A, to really be focused on who I need to hire to meet my needs. But could it be better for me as a company if there were a large number of folks who had the skills that I ultimately needed and I was working with a wide variety of different people to make sure that we had that strong, stable workforce? Even if I at a particular time wasn't directly benefiting from all of that? That would be a nice dream for us all to think about is how do we grow that ecosystem in place? Because I will benefit from that, I think in the long term, even if my short-term gains aren't what I would like them to be.
0:39:25.2 Kysha Wright Frazier: I think that gets to thinking the triple bottom line philosophy. Prior to coming to workforce, I did that work in the private sector. And so, thinking about your people, your planet, your profit, and so employers, it's their benefit to invest in their workforce. That's what's going to help them be competitive into the future. And so, making those investments, creating things internally, great practices around culture, around career ladders. So, you understand, I get this certificate, this credential, whatever it might be, then that's going to bump me up to the next ladder and that's going to increase my wages by X percent or amount of dollars. And so, all of those things help to increase the wages. But again, it's the transparency. Folks want to know if I do this, what does it result in? Employer, if I do this, this is what this is going to mean.
0:40:16.7 Kysha Wright Frazier: It's not just, learning is great for learning’s sake. I'm not saying it's not because lifelong learning is good, you might transition to something else. But I still want to understand what did that learning get me in terms of dollars. And again, getting back to the conversations with frontline workers and what's driving them, wages is the main piece, most important piece in terms of prosperity that's driving them or will drive the other indicators. So, understanding the value of my education as it links to the dollar. And the value of that dollar is what's important in terms of workers right now.
0:40:53.4 Courtney Brown: Can I bring up the elephant in the room that we haven't talked about, though? So, wages are really important. And that's what… When we ask people, why do you want to go get a degree, whether they're already enrolled, they stopped out, or they've never touched it, they want a job. So that's the main reason. And so as much as faculty have pushed back, it's not about employment. It is. That's why people are investing. But the elephant is debt, college debt. And so, we have to, we've talked a little bit about affordability, but the cost is becoming way too high. Way too many people are going into debt. And the problem when we think about things like prosperity and having good jobs, good lives, is we know that when people have debt about, based on our data, we have a Lumina Gallup partnership. And so, we collect a lot of data from students. And we know that about two thirds, about, maybe more, at 70% of students, students have delayed a life event because of debt. And that's $10,000 in debt. I'm not talking about the story we hear from our great aunt's cousin's friend who's living in the basement who has 200,000.
0:42:01.9 Courtney Brown: $10,000 of debt is keeping people from buying a house, buying a car, starting a business, getting married, having children, major life events because they have $10,000 in debt. So, we really have to continue to crack this affordability piece and help people on the path. It's not just about getting those wages, but if they're earning and they're still paying a large amount of money in debt, then that's not leading to prosperity. So, we have to crack that.
0:42:35.3 Archie Holmes: Hear, hear.
0:42:36.3 Dakota Pawlicki: I'm glad you brought that up because that was one of my questions around using wages as a method of measuring prosperity. Does that 15% cover the debt load incurred in order to earn that 15%?
0:42:49.5 Courtney Brown: So not yet. So, we are starting with what we have, with what data that we have. And so, we have data that is national. We can disaggregate it by state. We can disaggregate it by gender, race, ethnicity, income. And so, we can look at wages out of the gate. We can't look at a national level at debt, how much somebody takes on. States have really good systems. Texas has a great data system where they can examine some of these things a little bit more. But one of the things that we are starting immediately at Lumina is, where can we get this data? Where what. What data system can we build out that already exists, that maybe we can begin to collect this because it's such an important piece of the puzzle. It's not just about how much you're earning, but it's also how much you had to invest to get that earning.
0:43:34.9 Archie Holmes: So, Dakota, here in Texas, as you said, we have a really good data system, and our state coordinating board has really set a goal or a metric that says manageable debt is 10% of your expected starting earnings. Now, we can argue whether that's the right number, but at least it's a starting point to be able to have a conversation about where do we draw a line and try to say, obviously, no debt is better than any debt, but what is that amount of debt that can have that does stop somebody from delaying those really important life choices? And so, I think we've been thinking about that across the state of Texas and trying to figure out how do we build that into our systems and expectations.
0:44:14.6 Dakota Pawlicki: I want to cast ourselves a little bit in the future. We've been talking a lot about alignment. Jamie Merisotis wrote about this, I think at least twice in his two books that a good number of jobs that we have today or even tomorrow haven't even been thought of yet. And that does create an alignment challenge for education and training programs that are trying to equip people with the competencies and the skills and the knowledge and abilities to fill demand. How have you seen folks address the issue of the future of work? Later on, we're going to have a show around AI and another one on climate change. And both of those questions are in there because there is a growing sentiment that pretty much every job role needs to have some kind of training around AI and probably the same when it comes to climate and resiliency. So how are we really working to make sure our education and training programs are responsive to the future demands that are honestly very hard to predict?
0:45:13.9 Archie Holmes: Can I even make the problem more complicated?
0:45:16.4 Dakota Pawlicki: Absolutely.
0:45:17.4 Archie Holmes: I think the industries driving those jobs also don't exist, or the companies that will drive those jobs also don't exist in a large debt as well. And so, I think one of the things that we can do is, I think I want to go back to the entrepreneurship that you had mentioned. If we have really talented, creative students who are not in a position because of debt or other aspects to start that new job, that will start that new industry that will build the next generation of jobs, we are losing a really important driver for economic prosperity in this country. And so, we need to think about the fact that we're not just preparing students for jobs that don't exist. We're preparing them to create those jobs in those industries that don't exist too. And they will be the drivers in that area. And it may not be, the big employers today may not be the ones who are driving all those decisions in the future.
0:46:04.8 Courtney Brown: I think one of the things, so looking at Georgetown center on education and the Workforce says that by 2031, over 70% of good jobs will require some form of education beyond high school. And a lot of those are bachelor's degrees because bachelor's degrees allow you to be more nimble, allow you to move from, from job to job and use those critical thinking skills, those working skills. And so, I think those are the skills of the future regardless of where we go, that ability to be nimble and constantly learn. The future is going to be, as you guys already said, adding more and more learning, more certificates and certifications. Even over the last 10 years, we've seen a huge increase in the number of certificates and certifications that are provided, in the number of people that are getting them, but they're getting them on top of degrees because it allows them to get that promotion, to get that other job to be nimble in the marketplace. And we're going to continue to see that grow. And so, in the future, as industries change, as more entrepreneurs create new businesses, we have a learning community that are able to take those credentials, stack them credentials as you go to build that knowledge and ability.
0:47:13.8 Kysha Wright Frazier: Yeah, and I think AI, it's not going to replace all workers. It's just every worker is going to need to understand how to work with it and integrate it into their work. And an important component of that too is with education and learning is how do we start now to integrate AI, different types of tools and tech tools and things like that into that sociology, psychology field major as well? You're talking about, AI as coaches and in career navigation, all that, like that's here, is that integrated into other fields as well that aren't just tech? And so how do we start integrating that into the curricula, but also how do we start really listening to learners? The workforce of tomorrow, which is kind of here now because folks are 16 and under, 16-year-olds have jobs. The workforce of the future does not look like today, it's predominantly brown and black. And so, listening to these learners and these students and these workers and saying, what's your interest? How do you approach this? Human centered design approaches, I think are really going to be important as well as we think about what's the workforce of the future.
0:48:28.0 Archie Holmes: Yeah.
0:48:28.6 Dakota Pawlicki: And it's also hard, I think, to have a conversation about what the future of the workforce looks like given today's polarized climate. As we opened up, one of the barriers to US prosperity is, the polarization and the divides that we currently have, and of course, right now, our current, I think a lot of folks who don't live in the spaces that we live in and focusing on education and employment and the kind of workforce element, I think a lot of folks are really learning on a daily basis how interconnected and globally all of our workforce and employment and industries are really connected. So, I guess I'm curious, how difficult is it from your perspectives for us to create some kind of national cohesive vision that allows us to build a workforce that allows America to be prosperous in a time where it's very difficult for us to have a national identity that's not completely divided and polarized.
0:49:27.3 Courtney Brown: So, can I just start with the data? Because I love data. So going back again to the Lumina Gallup research that we've been doing, everyone values postsecondary education. We desegregate it by political party. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, all want higher education. They all value it. They all want it for their children. And so, we actually are united on much more. And they also are questioning the value of it or questioning the confidence in it. And that's again, across all political parties. So, we have to again, listen to the people. We are united on this. We are united on the power of more learning after high school. We just have to improve how we do it. And we're actually united on the problems that exist, the affordability and the alignment with the workforce.
0:50:12.6 Archie Holmes: Yeah, but Courtney, I think the area where we're not united is where whether we see higher ed as a public or a private good. In other words, is this something that we as a society collectively should invest in to ensure that everybody has access and opportunity, even if, as a collective or is this something we say, your individual student will get the benefit and your individual student need to decide whether you take the risk and all the other sort of stuff? I mean, my sense is that we don't have an agreement on that particular aspect.
0:50:44.9 Courtney Brown: Yeah, I think yes, yes and no. We agree. When it comes to your own institution, that it's a public good. But we don't agree when we're talking about somebody else's institution or the institution three states away. So it is, it becomes very personal there. And states invest. So, it's moving from the nation to the states perhaps. But you're right, we need to invest more. It's far too important.
0:51:07.4 Kysha Wright Frazier: Yeah, I think we build regionally and we've seen some collective coming together like sector strategies, for example, and competing employers even understood the need for industry to have workers, like I mentioned, the gaps in IT and engineering and skilled trades. They understood the need for that region and state at times to say let's come together to build a workforce and pull and grow that workforce so we have folks to pull that talent from. So, I think it's done. It's there. We just need to build up from regions to states to federal to fill that 69% shortage, skilled worker shortage. I mean, I get back to thinking, COVID is like five years ago now. It doesn't seem like it at times, but people were upset because they couldn't get a haircut or go to a restaurant. Just imagine if we don't have roads, water, like infrastructure, real infrastructure. A piece is not in play. Health care, all the major things beyond getting a haircut if we don't have folks skilled and ready to take on those jobs. So, we have to figure out a way to come together as a nation.
0:52:19.5 Dakota Pawlicki: Yeah, Kysha, we'll just as we close out here, I agree. I'm very much a believer that change happens middle, bottom up. But I know that can be difficult in a country like ours. So, leave us, I guess I'm going to ask each of you the same question as we're closing out here, what's the most important thing that either higher ed or employers or policymakers, whoever you wish to direct your statement at, what's the most important thing people could do to make a more prosperous nation?
0:52:49.1 Kysha Wright Frazier: I'll start with the three points I said earlier. Access, affordability, alignment, and then policy to help fund that and bring that together, bring education with workforce, with industry together to have those conversations to make all those things happen. So those are the three things that are prominent in the work at CSW and what we think are key factors to help drive prosperity for the country.
0:53:17.3 Archie Holmes: I think for higher ed we need to think about what is the learning that we privilege over others. And what I mean by that is we really privilege if you sit in a classroom three hours a week for 15 weeks and we give you a grade we don't privilege credit for prior learning. We don't privilege a wide variety of different ways that other folks bring in knowledge and skills and abilities that can help propel them towards wherever they want to go in terms of a certificate or a degree. And so, I think we need to look in the mirror and try to think about what are the learnings that we think are really valuable for folks to have and how do we pair those collectively with our traditional model, but well with these other models in order to help people get to where it is that they want to go professionally and personally.
0:54:00.0 Courtney Brown: I would say there's no silver bullet and no one industry can do this alone. One of the things we learned about increasing attainment to 55% was that we needed everyone. We needed community members, institutions, people, policymakers, national, state, local, all at the table to actually drive this change. And we're going to need it even more as we think about this next national goal and focusing on prosperity. Because every American deserves an opportunity. Every American deserves an opportunity to access and succeed so that they can have security in their lives. And only in that will we have individual prosperity and a national prosperity. But it's going to take all of us really working together. I'm going to continue to think of the glass half full and that this is possible. I believe it is.
0:54:54.2 Dakota Pawlicki: Well, I at least think that the four of us need to come back together maybe on an annual basis and have this conversation, do a little bit of a check in. So, consider this an open invitation to the show anytime you all want. Maybe we even get started about coming back here already, though I know, Courtney, you've been at South by Southwest. You're going to basically move in here to Austin. So, I know you've been here for a while.
0:55:14.0 Archie Holmes: I'm here, so that's all good for me.
0:55:15.1 Dakota Pawlicki: There we go. Already pretty local.
0:55:17.1 Archie Holmes: Yeah.
0:55:18.2 Dakota Pawlicki: Well, thank you and my thanks to our guests today, Courtney Brown, Archie Holmes and Kysha Wright Frazier. This special edition of today's Students Tomorrow's Talent is produced by Amy Bartner, Domi Raymond, and Dakota Pawlicki with supports from Matthew Jenkins and the team at Site Strategics, engineering and audio support came from the wonderful audio professionals here at South by Southwest. Debora Humphreys, Kevin Corcoran, provide leadership for Lumina's strategic engagement efforts. I hope that you check out our other live records recordings here coming from the podcast lounge at South by Southwest and subscribe to wherever you get your shows, your podcast today. Thanks for listening and we'll be sure to see you next time.
0:55:57.0 Kysha Wright Frazier: Thanks.
0:55:57.5 Archie Holmes: Thank you.