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Career education is a vital pipeline to high demand jobs in the workforce. Students from all walks of life benefit from the opportunity to pursue their career education goals and find new employment opportunities. Join Dr. Jason Altmire, President and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities (CECU), as he discusses the issues and innovations affecting postsecondary career education. Twice monthly, he and his guests discuss politics, business, and current events impacting education and public policy.
Jason Altmire (00:03)
Welcome to another edition of Career Education Report. I'm Jason Altmire. Today we're very fortunate to have a guest from the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce, and it is Zack Mabel. He's a research professor and the director of research at the center. And he has, I don't want to say, Zack, that this has become your specialty, because you do do other things, but this idea of matching credentials.
to the need in the workforce and really digging deep in the research on the disconnect that has existed on some of that. So we're excited to talk about that. Thank you for being with us.
Zack Mabel (00:42)
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy to be here.
Jason Altmire (00:46)
You've extensively on it and have done several reports. The one that I wanted to focus on that kind of caught my attention is called missed opportunities, credential shortages in programs aligned with high paying middle skills jobs in 55 US metro areas. And it talks about that very issue of the disconnect that exists and where there's need and what are the credentials that are
most needed and you do have a surprising conclusion, at least to me, on one of them that is not necessarily needed. There's more of a glut than a need. So do you want to just talk about what led to you wanting to do that missed opportunity study and what was the research that went into it?
Zack Mabel (01:32)
Yeah, it's the perfect place to start. you know, as you sort of ⁓ alluded to, we've been doing a lot of work at the center, looking at the alignment between credential production ⁓ and what the future demand for jobs is going to be and jobs requiring, you know, different levels of education ⁓ and what that looks like in, you know, different communities. So bringing that down to sort of the local labor market.
area and our first half at this was really just to do a high level sort of landscape review of what is alignment in the middle skills space look like so this is your you know certificate and associates degree production and how does that compare- to what the future demand for- ⁓ occupations you know requiring- ⁓ a middle skills credential what we found was you know a tremendous level of misalignment we have a report card.
called the great misalignment. One of the things that came out of that work was this appreciation that a lot of the misalignment was in jobs that may not be particularly desirable because they may be lower pay. So these are ⁓ your sales and office support roles. For example, there's a huge shortage of at least
When you look at what types of graduates are coming out of your middle skills, education and training providers relative to what the demand is. And, you know, what our takeaway from that was that alignment. Shouldn't be the be all end all goal, right? That shouldn't be the policy objective, but really where alignment can be helpful is as a tool and as a framework for understanding where is there unmet demand nationwide, but also in particular communities and.
where is that demand exist where it could really expand economic opportunity? And so that was sort of the motivation for this missed opportunities report because we were focused very specifically in this work on a set of high paying occupations for middle skills workers. So these are jobs that typically will pay people.
$55,000 or more in an annual salary, which is actually more than what your ⁓ early career bachelor's degree worker tends to receive. And so we were really interested in focusing in on these high prosperity ⁓ occupations and what the credential production looks like compared to what the future demand ⁓ for those jobs ⁓ will be over the next several years.
Jason Altmire (04:18)
So just to clarify on the definition, you're saying a middle skills occupation is ⁓ an associates or credential level education and a high paying middle skills occupation is 55,000 or more.
Zack Mabel (04:36)
That's right. So a high paying middle skills occupation by our definition in this work is an occupation where more than half of workers with a middle skills credential in that job earns $55,000 or more per year.
Jason Altmire (04:56)
And when you looked at the different Metro areas, I thought it was interesting. Did you find significant variation among different regions and metros of the country in the type of jobs where there were, there was more need than others?
Zack Mabel (05:13)
Yeah, absolutely. So there's quite a bit of variation that we see. So in the report, we take a look at what the credentials to jobs alignment looks like for these particular high paying occupations in the 55 largest metro areas in the country. So these are, you know, all of your relatively larger cities that have populations of about a million or more. And there are some places like Boston, for example, that
Generally speaking, we see really large credential shortages across ⁓ many of the occupational groups where these high paying jobs exist. So these are your skilled trades, your STEM, your STEM occupations, your protective services occupations, some of your management roles as well. ⁓ know, Boston's really struggling even more than some of the nationwide shortages that we see. But then there's other places like
like Chicago, especially when we're focusing on ⁓ STEM occupations in these high paying roles, where Chicago is actually producing more than enough graduates in these aligned programs. That's just one example of some of the variation that we see. As part of this work, we have ⁓ a accompanying data tool that's on our website. And folks can actually go and it's publicly available and you can select
a metro area that you're interested in or a group of metro areas where you can compare and you can actually see, you know, what does alignment look like in a particular occupational group and how in a particular location and how does that compare both within a city, but also across cities as well.
Jason Altmire (06:57)
Yeah, it's an incredible tool and we'll direct people to it at the end, but interactive, the ability to search and compare regions and credentials and so forth. Very, very interesting. Just to walk through some of the major findings that you have. I think the first one that you highlight would not be a surprise to anyone, but it's very interesting in the way you categorize it. And that's nearly all the metro areas face a severe shortage of credentials aligned to blue collar.
occupations. So, so much has been written and said about that around the country. It's a focus of attention. You're talking about high paying middle skills, blue collar occupations in particular. What's the difference between just the general idea of blue collar professions versus the high paying middle skills profession?
Zack Mabel (07:47)
Yeah, I I think in many cases, you know, what people make might gravitate to when they're thinking about a blue collar occupation may in fact be a high paying blue collar occupation. But the types of jobs that we're talking about are electricians, your plumbers, your your heavy machinery operators are just just a few of those examples. But, you know, you're you're sort of junior level ⁓ construction worker.
⁓ is is probably earning less than that fifty five thousand dollars a year and so- ⁓ that the blue collar occupation but doesn't reach the earnings criteria that would qualify according to you know our definition of what a high paying middle skills occupation is.
Jason Altmire (08:31)
Would a welder fit into that category?
Zack Mabel (08:34)
It does. It does. Yes. So that is a, that is a high paying role. Um, and so in that subset of those high paying skilled trade roles, uh, yeah, we see a massive, massive shortages on the level nationwide that what current credential supply looks like, uh, in terms of the programs that are training people for these jobs, it's currently projected to meet only 13 % of what the demand every year.
is projected to be over the next several years, which really amounts to an annual shortage of graduates coming out of these programs on the level of over 300,000 short every single year. So that's a huge pipeline problem when it comes to making sure that our employers
have the talent that they are looking to rely on. And it's also a huge pipeline problem in terms of thinking about the pathways to expanding economic opportunity in our country because these are such high paying roles and there's such a great demand for it. And as you said, mean, we're all very aware of how severe some of these shortages are and yet we're increasingly having challenges.
recruiting people to enter these professions.
Jason Altmire (10:01)
Let's think about that for a second, because when I'm out speaking about these topics, I get asked the question, so many people are talking about it. Businesses are taking these programs under their own umbrellas, apprenticeships, community colleges, high schools, the work that we do, private career schools, all across the country. There's so much attention to this issue, especially as it relates to blue collar workers.
Why aren't we making progress? Why is it that we are so far behind on the skills gap as it relates to blue collar trades?
Zack Mabel (10:38)
It's a great question. And I think part of it is scale, right? So if you think about sort of apprenticeships, a really promising model, and we know that it is ⁓ really quite resource intensive on the part of employers to invest in that. And there's also lack of public funding when it comes to the ability to expand some of these programs. So that's one dimension or one part of the conundrum here is
how do we expand these successful models at scale? But another part of the challenge is really one about changing consumers' mindsets. So these are your youth and young adults who conceptualize a professional career for themselves ⁓ in a skilled trade, which for decades now,
you know, we've really been operating under this college for all mantra. And when we say college for all, we're really talking about the bachelor's degree for all mantra since that has been sort of stood up as the gold standard. And as a result of that narrative that we have ⁓ perpetuated, people are generally ⁓ not interested in rolling up their sleeves and doing
literally labor intensive work that is quite physically demanding, but at the same time, people are compensated highly for that work. so, you know, I think this is the resolution of this shortage, particularly when it comes to the skilled trades, I think is really going to require a concerted effort to ⁓ market these professions to young people.
differently and to really change the narrative about what a prosperous pathway after high school looks like and dispelling the notion that the bachelor's degree is the be all end all pathway to achieving economic prosperity. That is not to say that we should be, you know, funneling everyone away from the bachelor's degree. And there's a lot of, you know, the bachelor's degree in many ways is under attack right now.
But I think we are still experiencing challenges with getting enough people attracted to the skilled trades as a result of this decades long narrative that we've painted.
Jason Altmire (13:15)
One of the things that I found interesting on another finding that you had was related to STEM occupations, because for a long time, the STEM occupations have been kind of the opposite of what you just said, where people were dissuading people from going into the trades and saying that the four-year degree with regard to, to STEM occupations, that has been where people have been led and told.
this is where the future is, this is where you're gonna be able to do well, technology is gonna change the employment outlook. But you found something interesting as it relates at least to middle skill STEM occupations. And that was that most metro areas are already producing enough of those STEM occupations, which seems a little counterintuitive. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Zack Mabel (14:09)
Yeah, so there really there's an interesting Metro non-metro ⁓ distinction here when it comes to the credential production in fields that are aligned with the high paying middle skills STEM occupation. So as you as you said, most metro areas ⁓ are producing enough of these credentials today to fill the future demand for.
these high paying middle skills stem roles, but there is a shortage nationwide, right? So what that means is that it's the non-metro areas where we're seeing meaningful shortages. And in many cases in the metro areas, you know, and I think this is also about ⁓ students sort of gravitating towards where economic opportunity in their minds is highest. And it's because of the sort of awareness that
you know, the biotech industries, ⁓ the computer industries are where you can make your money. So you see that student interest has swarmed to those fields, which has essentially created a surplus in the labor markets where those ⁓ jobs tend to be most prevalent, right? Those surpluses aren't necessarily a problem if, you know, your graduates from
New York City are able to move to other local labor markets and help fill some of the unmet demand in some of the smaller communities throughout the country. Where surpluses do become a problem is if ⁓ folks are looking for a job locally, they're not interested in moving somewhere else. And if the skills that they are acquiring are not necessarily translatable to other
jobs in the local community that are in greater demand. so that's where alignment can be tricky. And not all surpluses are bad, but it's really a question of ⁓ whether or not how those surpluses are being used and whether they're actually ⁓ being ⁓ used to fill gaps elsewhere. ⁓ Or if it just means that the graduates in some communities are sort of underemployed relative to
⁓ what folks who are being trained in those fields and have jobs in field are earning and what the students themselves expected to earn when they entered those programs.
Jason Altmire (16:44)
I don't want to take for granted that everyone knows what STEM means. realize we didn't define it when we started this conversation. Can you talk about what is a STEM job, but what is the distinction between a middle skills STEM job and what people might think of as more of a high tech related STEM job?
Zack Mabel (17:05)
Yeah, so in the case of these sort high paying middle skill STEM occupations, you know, these are computer systems analysts, computer systems administrators, in some cases, software developers. You know, I think the important thing to keep in mind, and it's really sort of to help people broaden their understanding about occupations is in many occupations, there is a large distribution of the levels of education that workers hold.
Right. So, it's in many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases, it's a fallacy, you know, to say that this job is a BA level job. And this other job is a high school level job, because in many cases, one job will have 30 % of the workers have a high school diploma and another 30 % of the workers have some middle skills credential. And, you know, then maybe even 40 % of workers have a bachelor's degree.
Now those, those workers in those occupations may in fact be working in roles that require varying levels of skill. And they may in fact also be compensated differently because they're bringing a different skill set to those jobs. ⁓ but we don't define. in our work, we're not defining an occupation as being entirely made up of workers of, of a single education level. Right.
we're defining an occupation to be a high paying middle skills occupation when we're looking at what the earnings for middle skills workers who hold those positions are. And so, you know, in some of the examples I gave, ⁓ and this is particularly true in the STEM, there's going to be lots of, you know, computer systems analysts that have a four year degree or higher, but there's also a meaningful share of workers in those roles who do have.
⁓ certificate or an associate's degree and it's those workers who are the ones who are earning- quite quite well especially relative to. Middle skirt skills workers in other fields.
Jason Altmire (19:17)
And just for those who wonder about the acronyms, STEM as an acronym stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. But I wanted to focus on the healthcare results, which were the most interesting to me. And I bet you've had the most commentary about this because especially as it relates to providers, nursing in particular, you hear about the
vast and incredible nursing shortage that we have all across the country and the vacancies that exist and the coming retirements and the huge problem that this creates in our healthcare system with an aging population and all the rest. You found that healthcare is the only occupational group with a projected nationwide oversupply of credentials that lead to high paying middle skills jobs.
So how do you explain that result?
Zack Mabel (20:14)
Right. And so you're right. It's a ⁓ nuance to ⁓ the general understanding that we have. And it's not actually in conflict with the fact that there is a massive shortage in nursing and in many healthcare roles, broadly speaking. That is true. The question is, which workers are we seeing fill those roles?
And if we project out what the changing demand for workers based on their educational requirements looks like, we see that the job opportunities for middle skills workers in these high paying healthcare roles has been eroding for decades. And again, if trend continues, those opportunities will continue to erode over the next several years.
And as a result of this shrinking number of job openings that we expect to be available to folks who don't have a bachelor's degree, if we look at what the current production of graduates in healthcare fields that align to these high paying occupations, which includes your registered nurses, also your MRI technicians, your sonography technicians, some of these other roles, but it's really dominated.
by your registered nurses. What we're seeing is that the current production of RNs with only an associate's degree outpaces what the future demand for RNs with only an associate's degree is expected to be. And that's because in generally speaking, licensure requirements in many States are now mandating that.
Registered nurses have a bachelor's degree. And even in cases where it's not mandated to have the BA. Employers increasingly are looking to hire graduates from. BA nursing programs for their roles. And so what we're really seeing is that our middle skills, education and training providers are.
reacting too slowly to the changing employment dynamics in the high paying middle skills healthcare space. So just to sort of repeat, there is an overall shortage in these healthcare roles and in particular in nursing, but that is being driven by the inadequate supply of nursing graduates from bachelor's degree programs, not from our associates degree nursing programs, unless
you see a really dramatic change in the willingness among employers to hire registered nurses from associates degree programs, which is certainly possible given sort of the momentum and enthusiasm that we see around skill first hiring, for example. It hasn't materialized yet in terms of real meaningful changes in who is getting hired at scale. the future
is always unknown. We're basing our research findings on projections based on the past and what previous trend looks like. if you carried those trends forward, there can certainly be a change in practice, a change in technology that could disrupt what the future looks like, which could certainly result in a different reality than the one that we're forecasting. if
everything sort of continues as it has been over the last several years. That's where we expect to see that we're going to have too many graduates coming out of RN Associates degree programs and way too few coming out of our RN Bachelors degree programs.
Jason Altmire (24:19)
So it's been your observation with the research that even though there are vacancies, there is a shortage that employers, especially in states where it's not mandated that they have to have bachelors or above registered nurses, that employers are still less likely to hire mid skill nurses. They would let that vacancy
Continue rather than hire someone below a bachelor's degree.
Zack Mabel (24:52)
You know, I think that's a, I don't have enough sort of on the ground experience, truthfully, to be able to speak to that. My understanding with talking to some people in the field is that it's, it's really sort of position dependent. ⁓ and so some of the, some of the nursing roles that are going to require facility with, with more technology and some of the higher order skills are, you know, might leave a position open. ⁓ but certainly I think they're.
could be an appetite for, you know, catch as catch can. But what is clear when you look at the surveys of employers in the healthcare industry, that they are overwhelmingly looking to hire nurses with bachelor's degrees and that they are not looking to hire those with an associate's degree. And if you just look at the composition of the nursing workforce, it is very, very clear that
the profession has shifted dramatically from a workforce that predominantly had a middle skills credential to one that predominantly has a bachelor's degree. And I think that's a largely a reflection of the fact that workers are responding to what employment demand looks like, right? And so I think just the workforce numbers are a pretty strong indication that shift.
it has been ⁓ occurring for quite a long time and there's no sign that it's dropped off recently at all.
Jason Altmire (26:23)
It's really interesting. could probably have done the entire show just on that topic. Just to close, we talked a little bit earlier about things that can be done to address this issue. What are some solutions? Do you want to close by adding some recommendations that you might have based upon what you've seen?
Zack Mabel (26:43)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think, you know, so we've been talking a lot about alignment, which I think can be thought of as, ⁓ we just really need to move people who are already pursuing certificates and associates degrees from one field to another, right? We just need to sort of realign our system. And I would say that that sort of alignment, taking people from oversubscribed programs, ⁓ and moving them into fields that would supply some of these jobs.
would be beneficial, but it's never going to address the scale of the shortages that we're seeing. And that's because a big part of the solution really needs to be about boosting the capacity in these programs. And, you know, it's not, it's not an easy fix. ⁓ and part of, part of the reason is because if we were just to take the existing set of institutions that are producing the talent in
these fields. May, you know, in the the skilled trades, for example, almost every metro area that we looked at is experiencing a very, very large shortage. And over 90 % of the providers in those metro areas would have to more than double their credential production in order to fill the gap that exists to expect that institutions are going to have the capacity themselves to boost.
to boost that credential production is really looking at like a Herculean effort that would be required. And so I think in many cases we're talking about, we need more providers in many of these markets to come online. We just need more programs available. We need more seats available. and we need more people to be attracted to entering those programs. As we mentioned, you know, a sort of a sustained marketing campaign in order to.
convince people that these are attractive programs.
Jason Altmire (28:46)
Our guest today has been Zack Mabel, research professor at the Center on Education in the Workforce at Georgetown University. Zack, thanks for being with us. If somebody wanted to get in touch with you or learn more about the center, how would they do so?
Zack Mabel (29:02)
You should go over to our website where you can reach me, which is ⁓ cew.georgetown.edu. And if you want to learn more about ⁓ this research in particular, you can find more about the report that we produced and the data tool at cew.georgetown.edu backslash high dash paying dash middle dash skills.
Jason Altmire (29:28)
Zack Mabel, thank you for being with us.
Zack Mabel (29:31)
Thank you so much. was a pleasure.
Jason Altmire (29:37)
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Career Education Report. Subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information, visit our website at career.org and follow us on Twitter @CECUED. That's at C-E-C-U-E-D. Thank you for listening.