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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 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Career Education Report. I'm Jason Altmire. And of course, on Career Education Report, we talk about career education, and it would be impossible to follow career education and the news about it without knowing who the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce is and the work that they do. And we have talked about their work many times on this program. Certainly, people have read about it and understand the significance of it. If it's not the preeminent institution focusing on these issues, it's on a very, very short list. And we're very grateful today to have Jeff Strohl, who is the director of research, at the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. And we're going to talk about many of the issues that the Center looks at.
(00:56):
Jeff, thank you for being with us.
Jeff Strohl (00:58):
Thank you.
Jason Altmire (00:58):
To start, just give a little bit of an overview of the scope of the work of the Center.
Jeff Strohl (01:04):
Well, the Center was started in about 2008, and our focus has really been on that intersection between education, research, and labor market research. Historically, higher education researchers didn't look at the labor market, and labor market researchers really used education as a dummy in a regression. We've really tried to fill the space between the two, and understand career pathways, value of education, trying to get to the underlying skills, looking at institutions that help people lead to successful careers and opening up economic opportunity. And in particular, my work, we look a lot at socioeconomic bias and post-secondary outcomes. And most recently, my work has turned looking at, as we've moved into short-term Pell and other focus on training and skills, skills-based hiring, to ensure that we try to sidestep tracking by racing class that used to exist when we had a heavy duty vocational system. So, trying to avoid the sins of the past.
Jason Altmire (02:05):
Do we, as a nation, are spending a lot of time thinking about and talking about the role of non-traditional education? By non-traditional, I mean, we have, for so long, pushed people into the four-year pathway and have sort of intimated to folks that, if you take a different path, that that's somehow a lesser result or an unsatisfactory result. Well, thankfully, we have, I think, moved away from that, as a country, and people now recognize the value of career education.
(02:37):
What would be your overall thoughts as somebody who lives and breathes this every day of just the state of higher education in the contrary, specially as it relates to the role of career programs?
Jeff Strohl (02:49):
That's a really good question. I think we're at the cusp of major change where post-secondary, traditional post-secondary is going to have to accept that training, or career education is becoming an equal at the table and is a very necessary function.
(03:08):
So, if we look at the non-degree credential space, mostly defined by certifications and certificates, people don't recognize that even those with traditional degrees, use certificates and certifications fairly well. They need them, in many ways, to turbocharge their degrees. So, the separation of traditional post-secondary versus non-degree credentials is an artificial divide, because people with a BA get a certificate to try to get a skillset.
(03:36):
So, the real importance that we're facing today is the role played by career education in providing very tangible skillsets that are necessary, especially for entering a job, work readiness, and in particular on movement through the labor market. So, as things change in a very quickly moving globalized economy and task sets change, people need to go back to school to pick up something. Certificates, certification, and many of the career education are critical to this, so we have two pieces. One is to re-up your education so you stay current in the labor market, and the second is for people entering into the labor market is getting that... High school is not enough, so you need something, and I think that the career education pathway on this specific skillsets gives people what they need to get on the job and then to move through the labor market.
Jason Altmire (04:32):
We find that the role of employers is critical in that whole process, because employers, they see every day, the shortfall in skilled workers and the demand that exists for the services that they're providing, but they're trying to find workers that are skilled in those tasks. What do you see, nationwide, as the role of employers in letting education institutions know what skills are needed and how curriculums can be modified to meet that demand?
Jeff Strohl (05:04):
Well, I think the role of employers is extremely important. And as we move into this new stage and age, I think we need to have educators and employers rethink the social contract between the engagement that they both have. During the recession, there was a great survey done by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce, and they went and looked at institutions that had maintained investment in training in their workers, and found that the employers that had the least problems with skill shortages were those that maintained the training apparatus in their firms.
(05:40):
So, as we've moved forward, the role of the employer in providing the information for a curriculum development is going to be critical, so that we have work-ready students. And I think, on the other side of that, we really need to have the employer engage and commit even more, because the ideas... We talk about and hear about apprenticeships and internships, et cetera, they're very costly, and we need to find some kind of arrangement where the employer can help with the investment.
(06:11):
We've been through a period of time where some of that investment cost has been pushed onto the worker. And so, while the employers rightfully point to skills gaps problem and worker shortages, it's a little difficult for the worker themselves to fully make the investment. So, as we move forward, knowing that we need these very specific skillsets, what kind of arrangement can we get there, where the employer helps the employee or the prospective employee actually make this investment? We used to do it on the shop floor, but we've really moved away from that, and moved into the educational institutions, the career colleges and others, to help provide those skills, but it's not really clear to what degree the employers have helped with that investment.
(06:57):
So, we need it, but we also have to ask how we're going to pay for it and make the investment. And I think we're working that out, especially when you're in a labor shortage and a skill shortage where the employers are more and more willing to say, "You do this, and we're going to help you progress through the labor market." So, we're getting there, but I think we are in a big change in the labor relation between employees and employers. It's going to be very interesting, as we move forward.
Jason Altmire (07:25):
The Center is always quoted on these topics, and you issue reports, and you and your colleagues speak all over the country on these issues. What is your observation of the role of career schools as it relates to training?
(07:43):
So much is talked about with regard to outcomes, and outcomes are measured not just in the student graduating and fighting a job, but how much money they're making once they get that job. But the problem is, and you kind of touched on this, is employers are looking for workers, but the societal value of some of that work results in, those are just, sometimes, not high wage jobs. They're not high paying jobs, but you need to be trained, you need a certificate of some sort to get that job. And as a student, hopefully, you like it, you like the work that you're doing, you're enjoying it, but maybe you're not making as much money as would show favorably on an outcomes report. What's your observation of that dynamic?
Jeff Strohl (08:30):
It's a very tough call. As we think about education, I think the whole call it for all movement, which is really meant, BA for all, has missed that college education. There's a lot of variation in outcomes, and one of the values that we find as people look at career education is that, specific skills really help align with specific jobs. And so, the difference between low and high wage jobs, really, I think, is going to come down for the worker or the student, developing our career counseling system.
(09:08):
So, you can train, but if you don't know what you're training for, in the sense of a high wage versus a low wage job, well you could end up in a low wage job. And so, as we move forward, I think it's going to be extremely important that we focus on career counseling for students, to help them understand what type of jobs are going to lead them to economic opportunity, and then what kind of education is going to get them there so that they don't have a false bill of goods, right?
(09:40):
So, this is going to be very important as we move forward, because regretfully, there are many low paying jobs in the economy, and we don't want to mislead students and say, "If you do this program, you're going to end up at the top of the earnings distribution." So, we need better information to really help students sort through that. And we don't have enough. And one of the other pieces that we don't have enough information about, and this is something I'd like to work on more, which is, "First job, next job, best job" is sort of a quote from Reich when he was the secretary of Labor.
(10:16):
And so, oftentimes, people see the first job as being not very good, but if you actually look more deeply into the data, it opens up an awful lot of opportunities within their industry, occupation, and field. And I think we need to look at that more so that all of the varying education levels, we have an honest assessment. We need good, clear information to tell people that, if you start in that job, it's dead end, or if you start in that job, it actually leads you to a lot of economic opportunity and opens up a wider set of opportunities. And people don't often look at that and they don't know, and so we need to make this investment so we give good information to the students.
Jason Altmire (10:57):
And speaking of good information, the Center has, for years, put out an annual report of the highest value colleges and universities, and I think there's four and a half thousand or 5,000 schools that you measure, pretty much everybody, and you look at outcomes and the financial results, and you rank the schools from first to last based upon the value that they provide to students. Can you talk about what your findings have been when you do those reports?
Jeff Strohl (11:28):
That's a big question there. First of all, I think, from the perspective of those that we really want to impact with this information is that, there's tons of variation that you just shouldn't accept reputation of institution as a marker of being the right thing for you. So, the ranking that we've done at the institutional level is just the beginning of unwrapping a whole bunch of information. And in that, just looking at an institution, you're getting the average or median earnings that the institution have. But if you look even deeper, which we're starting to do, you see the variation based on program.
(12:06):
And so, what we want the students to do is, first, to look at that ranking and understand, if you're in an area, and you want to do a particular program, and school A average median earnings is 40,000, and school B, the median earnings is 60,000, well, you should take a look at it, but the ROI perspective is also helping you balance out the cost. So, in your region where you're starting to look at school, we want students to say, "How do these two schools rate in how much I have to pay? And what I'm going to get out of it?"
(12:39):
But the next layer in this is to also look at the underlying program, right? So, if you're going to take French literature at Harvard, and make $60,000 a year, or if you're going to do French literature at the local state school and make the same earnings but pay a 10th of the cost, that's very important. So, the ranking is really a way to get people to start looking at what they're getting for their dollar paid.
Jason Altmire (13:05):
We've noticed, when these come out return on investment and high value institutions, there's a wide cross section of types of schools. But as you know, we, as an association, represent a number of for-profit institutions, and a lot of our listeners are interested in those issues. And we always find, among the top, very, very top. I'm talking the top 10. And schools are for-profit institutions. I remember St. Paul's School of Nursing in New York, I think, was number two, overall, one year. I think West Coast University was in the top 15 or so this past year when you did it, and there are many others.
(13:44):
So, that would sort of, I think, maybe be surprising to critics of for-profit higher education. And I can't think of anybody better to ask the question, what does the data really show about the variation among type of institution? And in particular, how do for-profit universities fare when ranked by value?
Jeff Strohl (14:06):
This is a great question. And I want to be clear that the data that we present is sort of like the outer layer of an onion, and we first of all, want everyone to look more deeply beneath it. So, it doesn't answer all the questions. I want to be very clear about that. But what it does do is it helps inform the beginning of the query of what you're getting for your dollar.
(14:28):
And so, the for-profit institutions, in general, have been very good about focusing in on high valued occupations and the corresponding programs. Now, they do have a bad history where we have outliers, is on a percentage of bad actors in the field, and that has sort of sullied how some of the for-profits are looked at. But if you focus in on the high value occupations, and been able to deliver, and one of the delivery mechanisms has really been able to parse into the skillsets necessary for the job, and they've moved, to some degree, to high wage labor markets. So, in combination, I'm going to say, cherry-picking, and it's not a bad thing, so that they're able to go in and find where value lies, and then provide the education for it.
(15:20):
We need to, again, just continue to be careful, because we've been through, at least, two iterations of gainful employment type of regulatory efforts that were primarily focused against the for-profits. And so, we cleared out a number of bad actors. And along the way, they tended to move towards these high value labor markets. And as we do it, we have to dive under the value of the institution itself and start to look at the programs, and discontinue as the student looks at them, just... Again, it's the entry point, so if this institution delivers a good return on investment, well, that's one good marker.
(16:02):
But for the students themselves, they need to go one level deeper. They should really be looking at the programs, and ask themselves, "Is it going to deliver what I want?" And so, keep going for the transparency. And the regulation that we have in the field right now is going to be accountability, to ensure that the programs can deliver on the cost. And they tend to be going fairly good, but like any other sector of institutions, there's going to be a lot of variance.
(16:30):
So, the thing that we really want the students to do, and the practitioners, and anybody funding is to understand the variation as a combination of geographic labor market. How does it align with the local labor market? Which is really important. How does it align with the cost of living of the area? And just be wary of programs that don't meet what someone wants in payback. So, the variance factor, I think, is really important now.
(17:00):
So, many of the for-profits have done quite a good job, and this is, I think, historically, they specialize, right? And so, the ones that are doing really good are most likely, I don't have any examples, focused in on a narrow set of specializations that can lead to some good outcomes. So, it's not a bad business model, right? You cherry-pick and go for the ones that are good.
Jason Altmire (17:23):
You often find the IT programs, the cybersecurity programs, certainly the healthcare, nursing programs that we talked about, and there's a niche that they're focused on, that's very valuable in society.
(17:38):
One of the issues that's very important to us on the legislative side is the short-term Pell Grant. We really believe there's a valuable role for that, were to be offered to students, and it would be of great benefit for all the reasons that we've talked about. And I know that the Center has spoken and written a lot about the short-term Pell and the value that you see. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jeff Strohl (18:04):
This one's a big paradigm shift, as they might say, or as Dilbert said, "Paradigm shifting without a clutch", right? It's really going to change the landscape. And this is one of those items that's bringing training and education to be almost equals at the table. And this is going to be a very interesting phenomenon.
(18:24):
Now, many people that I know, and ourselves included, because of the lowering of the floor, of the number of hours are insisting, and I think rightfully so, that we measure the outcomes. We really need to be sure that people are getting value from these programs.
(18:45):
There's good reason to be cautious. Historically, short term programs haven't necessarily led to high value, but the cost is low. And so, by opening it up in a world where we're moving to skills-based hiring, and having these short bites of education, they have a lot of potential to meet employer demand and meet the needs of the student who are trying to move quickly through the labor market. So, a four-year degree, as much value as I think it can carry, can't react to a change in, let's say, a standard programming language in a six-month frame, right? You can't do it. You can't react on six months if it takes four years.
(19:30):
So, many of these short-term certificates that'll be funded under Workforce Pell will help our labor market and the workers become that much more flexible. But on the other hand, we need to be extremely careful. Work by Harry Holzer, work by Amy Laitinen have all looked at and have raised the red flag of, these could really be open for a lot of poor programs. So, as we move forward, especially in the first period of an acting Workforce Pell, I think we need to be doubly careful. The for-profits need to be careful. The public need to be careful that it works, right?
(20:06):
And going back to my cherry-picking or my creaming, I really hope that we see these programs focused on bona fide winners. We want to see this work. We don't want this to fall back into the old battles that we've had of training versus education, dead end jobs, having no mobility, where if we look at people's use of short-term certificates and certifications, they use them to little bites. It's like, putting your degree on steroids. It's adding just enough so that you can move quickly through the labor market, and that's what we would want it to be.
(20:45):
But what we have to be careful of is the bad actors in the field, right? And this isn't just for-profits. For-profits are not the only people who put out a bad program. We have to be pretty careful. And the other piece that we need to be very conscious about is, even if we have the best program in the world, if it's not aligned with labor market demand, it's going to lead to unemployment, right? So, we really have to be conscientious about how it aligns with projected demand. So, the trade adjustment, the community college trade adjustment work that was done to you. I forget the actual initials. They really had a lot of thinking about new program development having demonstrated projected demand. And I hope that, as we move into Workforce Pell, that the providers really take a look at the labor market and say, "We know that this is needed, so we're going to invest in this program." Because labor market conditions are often the driving factor if something has value. The program could be super, but if there's no jobs, you can have unemployment.
Jason Altmire (21:49):
And as you know, the Congress added in debating the short-term Pell, very strict accountability measures. All the concerns that you raised and others have raised are absolutely true. But both the House and the Senate had accountability measures that it would be very difficult to qualify for the short-term Pell if you did not run a quality program.
Jeff Strohl (22:11):
Yes, that's right. Now, this is one of the best things that has happened in the last 10 years, is laying down transparency and accountability. Under the Trump administration, gainful employment was pushed towards being a transparency metric, right? So, the idea that the market's going to function well with better information, and we move to regulatory framework, it's going to be the same type of tool, right?
(22:37):
And so, all of the stuff, as gainful employment, as a regulation, really is about moving the market through information, underneath college scorecard and other mechanisms that are less punitive. They're still about information driving the market, and hoping that people see the transparency part, that the information says, "It's not a good program, don't do it." And hopefully, we'll be able to get that signaling out there.
Jason Altmire (23:03):
We've always argued that we are, as a for-profit focused association, we're certainly not opposed to accountability measures, we just think they should be applied universally to all schools and all sectors, so that all students can have the benefit of that accountability on institutions. I don't want to speak for the Center. Is that something that you all are aligned with?
Jeff Strohl (23:26):
I believe that we need transparency and accountability across the system. I think we need to be careful about applying a generalized metrics to programs that are different. So, let's take a stackable certificates program. So, if a stackable certificate gets its value at the eighth certificate, if it has eight, should we measure the first one? Oftentimes, in a gainful employment framework, we'll be measuring the first one. So, I think we need to weigh that out, the same with a bachelor's degree.
(24:06):
There are many bachelor's degree programs that are the entryway to a graduate program, which is necessary to get to the job. So, yes, I do believe that we need to think about transparency and accountability across the spectrum when it comes to public investments. We want people to understand that they're getting value. We need to have the information to follow this through.
(24:32):
I think that there's a lot of nuances, both for the for-profits as well as a BA or a PhD or whatever, that get lost if we stop at earnings. I think we need to start with earnings because it's going to be a good ROI metric. Cost X gives you Y, right? Simple math. But we need to also figure out what the next layer is that we need, so that we're providing the students with very good information. And I think a lot of this is, how well does it help you move through the labor market? How well does it provide you access to full-time versus part-time work? Which is going to be a big driver on the earnings that we see.
(25:11):
So, unwrapping. So, every time we start to use these instruments, these metrics, we should refine them so that they're giving us better information. And we're not there, yet. I hope we'll move in that direction, but we're not there, yet.
Jason Altmire (25:27):
If somebody wanted to learn more about the Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce, how would they do it?
Jeff Strohl (25:35):
Well, I mean, generally, you could look at our website at cew.georgetown.edu where we have a lot of reports. We're always open to emails, people asking questions as they dive more deeply. And we recently have been building out a number of data tools, which I think are really opening up personalization of the data. So, when we talk about the return on investment by program and institutions, we have data tools where you can actually look up your institution, and we're going to be building in your program so you can start to really customize.
(26:09):
And that's something we'd love to hear from people in the public. Is it useful? I mean, how to use that? And this is always the struggle. And you're talking, first, we have the institutional level. How does this institutional player, fare? And what kind of information do they want? And then, the other side, we've got the students that we want to serve. And so, how do we get information and what kind of information is important to them?
(26:34):
We hope our website and the work that we do addresses both. We tend a little bit more, I think, as you do, which is, think from the institutional and the policy level. But ultimately, the consumer, the student should have access and be able to make use of these data.
Jason Altmire (26:51):
Our guest has been Jeff Strohl. He is the director of research at the Center. Jeff, thank you for being with us.
Jeff Strohl (26:58):
Thank you very much. Pleasure.
Jason Altmire (27:02):
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.
(27:12):
For more information, visit our website at career.org, and follow us on Twitter @cecued. That's @C-E-C-U-E-D. Thank you for listening.