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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 (00:04)
Welcome to another edition of Career Education Report. I'm Jason Altmire, and we focus a lot on these podcasts on workforce development, the skills gap, labor policy in America. And what you find is when you travel around and you attend conferences and and you host a podcast like this and talk to a lot of people, there's sort of an ecosystem that exists of big thinkers and thought leaders. And we certainly have
One of the top today with Nick Beadle. And ⁓ many of you probably have heard of him or have seen his his writings. He's one of America's top experts on job policy, workforce development, and public investment. We're gonna talk about that. And he spent eleven years at the Department of Labor and served as chief of staff for workforce and communications for the department's good jobs initiative, which
you're probably aware as listeners that that involved billions of dollars in department investments in workforce development programs. And he also led across the department effort to improve the efficiency and outcomes of the department's workforce funding. So I'll be interested to hear ⁓ how you think that is going ⁓ currently and what was done during your tenure. And he's an expert on non-college pathways, skills-based hiring. He did a
Best in class guide for employers that are interested in in hiring the the best people and and and making sure that they're finding qualified workers. So Nick, I r you've just done so much. I really appreciate your being with us today to have a conversation about this. Start with ⁓ your current work, what you're doing with the good jobs initiative. You have a
Nick Beadle (01:45)
Pleasure to be here.
Jason Altmire (01:54)
consulting firm, but you also have a newsletter that is widely read throughout the industry. So could talk a little bit about what you're up to now.
Nick Beadle (02:02)
Yeah. So around a year ago, as the the Good Jobs Initiative in the Biden administration was starting to wind down, I ⁓ decided I wanted to go out, sit out on my own and and s keep building cool public policy things. So the newsletter is kind of my front door. And really what I'm trying to do is having been inside the government for a long time, I realized there's too much mystery about how this money gets spent, why it's spent the way it is, what it gets spent on.
And there's also kind of a lot of calcification, I'll say, around how we have conversations about workforce policy and why people end up getting in jobs. So the newsletter is a key part of that. Like I like to say everything is workforce because no matter everything that has happened into your life generally touches on what you end up doing for a living, you know, who what you had access to, what you didn't have access to, what experiences you had. Everything ends up impacting whether you end up able to get a job or not. And that's sort of, let's say, ⁓
know, cosmic gamble ends up having a big impact in America as to whether or not you have access to healthcare, have access to child care, have access to housing and food. So I wanted to kind of explore the the fullness of that. And ⁓ on top of that, I also am a consultant. So I work with philanthropies, I work with unions, I've worked with some some tech platforms in terms of articulating their jobs policy, which is something a lot of I have all of what I did inside the federal government
But also figuring out, okay, how can we do this stuff smarter? How can we really improve this? And then also how can we build things that still need to get built, no matter who is in charge in the White House or no matter what the federal government's doing, that we need this because the American labor market needs it.
Jason Altmire (03:43)
And
just for our listeners, ⁓ in in full disclosure, were you when you were at the department eleven years across multiple administrations, were you a political appointee or were you a career employee?
Nick Beadle (03:55)
I was career staff. I actually came in through the legal side of the house, the solicitor of labor. I joined in twenty thirteen during the Obama administration, ⁓ stayed for the first Trump administration and then was there through the end of the Biden administration.
Jason Altmire (04:10)
And with regard to the not just the good jobs initiative, but but your work with the money that the Department of Labor invests in workforce development programs. It's billions of dollars across the country. Where where does that money go? Does it go to schools, students, employers, workforce development stakeholders in states? There's so much money being spent, there's a huge gap.
in the jobs that are available and and the workers that are able to fill them. How is that money being spent?
Nick Beadle (04:42)
I'm gonna give you the the classic lawyer answer, which is it depends. And so to kind of just lay it out at the top level, you of course have the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. I I tried to just say it's the most consistent source of workforce funding in the United States because it happens every year and it's typically run by the Department of Education and Labor. Now it's mostly over the Department of Labor. So that gets distributed to all the states via formula every year. ⁓ it's kind of been static, it's actually going down.
compared to inflation because after you're adjusted for inflation quite a bit, and it's got cut too. So you have that, and that's kind of your your formula dollars and that's the dependable stuff. On top of that, the department has a really varied and rich portfolio of grants that are discretionary. Some of them are authorized under WIOA, some of them are not. So it's everything from you know Youth Bill, which is a program that teaches young people who are lower income to
⁓ get into a job and into a skilled employment by building affordable housing to you know a program that everyone forgets OSHA has that helps set up trainings that are vital for people to get into a job. And you know, I was talking to somebody in Arkansas not too long ago. It was vital to their mining work because they were rely they rely on it to sort of help set up and do the training that they need ⁓ to get miners ⁓ doing the work. So I knew a lot of that money. I got to know all of it in my last job at DOL.
which was fascinating. And it goes a lot of different places. And, you know, a lot of this stuff comes about because someone in Congress gets a hair ⁓ and they decide, hey, we're gonna go get a program there. I figure you might know this. And we want a program to go this direction or this direction. And it doesn't always happen in a consistent way, but I do tell people from having looked at everything, the money can go to a lot more things than it does, and it can get a whole lot.
better impacts than it does. Because for a long time, you know, my joke about WIOA is it gets you to job. It doesn't let you get to the article a job. It gets you or a good job. It just gets you to a job as quickly as possible. The system is built on moving bodies and paper. So my work was trying to figure out, okay, for each of these programs, how do we make it better for the grantees to be able to get people to a good job? And, you know, how do we better address the issues? Because most of these programs end up going for
lower income, you know, workers, I could talk a little bit more about sort of the challenges of that, but it's typically kind of capped at a very specific population of workers for each of those programs that get served. So how do we address their needs in a way that's a little bit more human, a little bit more reactive to to what's going on in the labor market in their lives?
Jason Altmire (07:21)
And I I've found both in and out of government that when you start talking about money that's being spent, especially on issues for which people have a parochial interest, the first question, and if I didn't ask this question, I would hear about it when this podcast runs because people say, Why didn't you ask him this? But if somebody is out there representing a constituency somewhere in workforce development, whatever they're doing, and and they were interested in finding out
how to access some of this money that's out there? What how would they find out the opportunity and then presumably apply or go after it?
Nick Beadle (08:00)
I would say subscribe to jobs that work at jobs that dot work. ⁓ every week I actually list every workforce dollar I can find, particularly from the federal government. So a lot of this stuff gets lost on the ocean that is grants.gov, which is a big database where most people end up fighting their grants, although that's not never uniform because nothing ever is in government.
as well as sort of state state opportunities and there are things like that, which is something that I've been working with AI and and certain platforms, including one of my sponsors, to try to try to find more of because there are people in states that don't know it. And that's a lot of the reason I'm in this business is because it's really hard to find this money. And the thing I'm trying to do every week is, hey, here's the money and here's what you need to know about it.
Jason Altmire (08:44)
It doesn't seem like it should be hard to find billions of dollars with with a dedicated result. It's something that is supposed to go to and and if you're in that line of work, you should be able to at least find information about how to do it.
Nick Beadle (08:59)
yeah, it's wild. And I think about that a lot. And really a lot of the origin for my work, particularly the newsletter, came from when I was at the Good Jobs Initiative. I would throw up on my LinkedIn, hey, we just put out this thing. This is how we're working for good jobs right now. And this is what we have and how we're changing this program. And unintentionally, it turned into this resource for people. Like my LinkedIn following just jumped dramatically because people
Because it was how people found out about the money. And I'd get tagged and reposted and all these other sort of things. And I had one provider reach out to me. He's like, I didn't even think see a press release on this. How is how did you know about this? I'm like, that's it's my job. So it's a little ridiculous that's there. And I will say that, you know, this is not a Democratic or a Republican issue. It's a a government issue. It really should be a whole lot easier to find this money and to apply for it. And it's a lot of sort of
not necessarily thinking about the human and in the end user. And that was a lot of what I tried to do when I was at G the Good Jobs Initiative was how do we make this actually usable for our end user and and as much as we can, you know, in a system that has been built to be very complicated and not easy to find them the actual resources from.
Jason Altmire (10:14)
Give that website one more time for the newsletter.
Nick Beadle (10:17)
Newsletter is at jobshat.work. So that's the URL HTTP slash slash jobs that dot work. And I ⁓ will have have a resources section that also helps people understand and know the programs that are out there, including basically an encyclopedia I'm building or an almanac I'm building, whatever you want to call it, of every federal dollar ⁓ that I can find that can end up touching workforce.
Jason Altmire (10:42)
So you mentioned that the money is not spent wisely in all cases. You didn't put it that way, but that I think is a fair characterization. And there's such demand in this country for skilled workers. And there's a national debate about the value of a college degree versus taking an alternative path. And I know you've done a lot of thinking and writing about those issues and the skills gap that exists and two million unfilled.
construction jobs in the country, you know, 80,000 shortage of truck drivers, 200,000 shortage of nurses all the way down the line. Why is there such a disconnect between the effort and the funding and the talking about the issue that's happening all across the country? And it just seems like we're not closing the gap.
Nick Beadle (11:34)
Will say one of the things that frustrates me the most, and not to take aim at the hill with a former congressman, but I will take aim at the hill with a former congressman, which is there's what I like to call a relatability gap. And if I talk to people on the hill, they will tell me how we get people to a job is not a top issue. And then the actual process by which we connect people with resources to do that is not the issue. It's kind of a, you know, a nice to have thing that is thrown in on the conversation. And this has honestly been the
Problem I've been engaging for the last six to eight months is that I keep noticing that policymakers don't really pay attention a lot to, you know, how we are doing it or understand the challenges that a lot of workers are going through or even what employers go through. So ⁓ you know, I think that is a tremendous challenge in terms of of what we do. And I also think that, you know, to be perfectly honest with you, I'm a big fan of hey, we need to actually expand this money. We need a whole lot more resources to it because we spend way too little and
That money has dropped off and we spend far less than any developed country in the world in a lot of ways and actually on workforce development. Where we are right now is we need to have more ⁓ sort of thought in terms of what we are offering people instead of just trying to offer people everything. Because we tend to just throw a bunch of options at people and that overwhelms employers, that overwhelms workers, and we need to spend like we damn well mean it, SSA awful and often a lot.
If we're going to actually fill these shortages, because right now we just kind of sit there's some lip service and some money thrown that direction, but there's not a lot of, you know, we talked just talked about how hard it is to find the money. There's not a lot of thought about the actual implementation process and what's getting the money to the people, let alone investigating those issues and figuring out how do we build policy to actually solve those problems.
Jason Altmire (13:21)
How much of it is an opportunity problem versus a stigma problem when you're talking about skilled trades? You could say people have the opportunity to choose a pathway that will lead them to a good job that exists on the other side. But the argument can be made that people don't want to pursue those careers for a variety of reasons, one of which is those jobs.
have a stigma associated with them that somehow they're lesser than someone who might have taken the four year path. And of course we work very hard to correct that perception. And I think you are seeing some progress made. But do you think that is still a problem with getting people interested in going in that direction?
Nick Beadle (14:07)
I think that we really have to focus on recruitment. And something I have noticed, especially over the last few months, is there's a lot of conversation about the need that employers are seeing, but not a lot of interrogation or quite frankly curiosity as to why workers aren't ending up in that. And I think that is a complex set of issues. Now I am from rural Alabama. I I grew up in a very sort of working class high school. I I'm a like say I'm first generation ish going to college. My mom and I were racing.
For a while because she got went back to school when I was in high school to get a nursing degree. But everyone before me were like laborers and and sort of skilled workers. And a lot of the people I went to school with ended up in that direction. So is there a stigma there? Yeah. Is that where people end up getting routed to, or that's sort of the thinking among sort of people in the education systems, like we need to route them to like, you know, the constellation prize career when these are really good jobs that pay a whole lot?
Yeah, we need to address that. But we also need to understand how we're communicating with people about these opportunities and going back to where we're talking about before, how the heck to find them. Because very frequently it's really hard for people to find out about this stuff. And, you know, the population I think I'm most about usually isn't the youth population. It's the population a little bit older than them. So people around the 25 range. Because when I talk to community colleges, those are the folks they rave about in terms of them having their life together.
in a way that they know what they want to do and they have done the odd sort of the survey of everything they need to know about what type of career they want. So usually th those guys have a ton of interest in it. They want those jobs, but it's really hard to find those jobs. And it's really hard to recruit people into those jobs because it's just sort of a information void, which seems bizarre in this current environment.
Jason Altmire (15:51)
When you were at the Department of Labor and you literally oversaw the billions of dollars that are invested in these workforce development programs, it was your role you to live and breathe that every day. What was your experience with regard to the understanding of people within the department, within government, but also on the ground across the country in the value of those expenditures and those programs? And
Trying to figure out how to how to access them and more importantly, maybe policies that could improve the process.
Nick Beadle (16:29)
I think that is a really hard question to answer. And I think I will say, you know, something I try to say a lot. Like I say, is everything is workforce, but everybody is in jobs for different reasons. And everybody has a different perspective on this stuff. So, you know, in terms of respect for what the department does and respect for those types of careers we're talking about a moment ago that do have that have had some stigma of them, like in terms of the trade, stuff like that, like I think you will not find
You you may not find bigger fans of those outside of DOL because we have a very big appreciation for them because those are the things we see on the enforcement end, particularly OSHA and IMSHA and those sorts of agencies that deal with safety. You know, those work they're the workers that frequently deal with things like wage theft. And those are typically the jobs that we spend a lot of money trying to get people into over on that end of the world. Where I think we really have an issue is, and this is something that I honestly say it's a leadership thing as much as it is.
A person thing is it's really hard to set the tone that we need to make this as easy as possible to kind of get into this money, think about our end user, but also how we set our expectations for what this is doing. And I think for a very long time, because we owe a get you to job, we have not necessarily had a high bar in terms of what we expect. We're spending money out there and we're not necessarily thinking about
Hey, where is this going to end up? And are we actually setting up something that's actually good for them? We'll give them economic mobility. We'll not let them not just get by, but get ahead. And that hasn't necessarily always been part of the calculus. And that was something that was kind of, you know, revelatory as I was doing this work for the Good Jobs Initiative, because I literally met with every program to figure out, okay, how can we make this work with you? And for some of them's like, we have been trying to figure out how to articulate this for a long time.
vote, the law was leading us one direction. How do we get there? So I think it's a complex question. Like bureaucracy is bureaucracy. I don't love bureaucracy despite having been a bureaucrat. And I'm a big fan in terms of practical bureaucracy that's that's focused on the end user. But I think that in terms of leadership and expectations, we really got to set it that we are getting people when we're investing the government's dollar, it makes more sense to invest in them getting ahead.
instead of them just getting by or getting to the next sort of lower wage opportunity that may not necessarily feel needs we have in the labor market right now.
Jason Altmire (18:50)
Where do registered apprenticeships come in? That that's a Department of Labor program. There is about seven hundred thousand or so at any given moment. I know they want to grow that number across the country. Is that something that you see as a critical part of of growing this effort in the future?
Nick Beadle (19:09)
It is. And I mean, where rich apprenticeship fits in is really almost a Zen like question at this point. And rich apprenticeship, I will say I'm a big fan of apprenticeship because I think it makes a lot of sense for what I hear from employers and workers. For workers, the calculus is pretty straightforward. It's I'm getting paid while I'm learning to get to a better life and my wage is going up. That is built into the model. For employers, I hear a lot about skilled needs, but I do think there is a huge misunderstanding of apprenticeship.
You know, I hear sometimes from manufacturers, I don't want a third of a worker. I want a whole worker who s solves my needs right now. And they kind of misunderstand that, hey, that apprentices is in your building and they are literally doing the job to learn how to do it, and they're going to get better over time. So that value side is really tough. But I think registered apprenticeship is is something that needs to grow. Where the challenges have been on this, and and I'll say I I have try to have a I have like a nuanced view of this is like one.
I'm not always sure that the employer interest has been there, even if the political interest has been there. And I think we kind of need to do some sort of translating there. And I think workers need to know about the opportunities. And that's as as much of a problem, or or it's getting close to as much of a problem as like the bureaucratic side of this, which is what I you typically hear about, ⁓ and where it's very hard to get movement on doing some streamlining and changing.
Jason Altmire (20:30)
And lastly, good portion of our listening audience are trade schools, career education providers. And I was wondering your thoughts on all of this effort that's going towards job training and filling the skills gap. What what is your advice for trade schools in their role in all of this and how they can best position themselves for what's coming in the future?
Nick Beadle (20:56)
I would say a couple of things. One, if you are going after a let's talk about the money. Let's talk about the practical side of that. What I tell people all the time is this is a volatile funding environment. What I what I would do more than anything is not build toward a grant or particular funding line. I would build toward the project I want and figure out how that grant fits you because that's actually something that's really strong. So let me give that sort of very practical advice. Where I think trade schools and the people who I think are doing the best jobs that I talk to out there are doing.
Is they have almost co equal relationships with employers and they have done their research to try to figure out how they get their people into not just eliminating what's called trade and prey, like training someone in skills and not knowing if an employer needs them, but also matching that employer to sort of get their needs filled ⁓ and also make sure their students get into good jobs and get ahead. And that is not an easy process. But like, for example, I've I've talked to community colleges that I knew.
do tremendous amount of research and and relationship building just to do that. And, you know, I know that's really hard when you're running an entire enterprise, especially like a trade school, to do all those things and and then also build upon it. But I think in terms of long term success and where Washington's eye is, which is still very much on efficiency and accountability, it's in your best interest to figure out how you make that sort of hand to glove fit and get your people hired and keep making adjustments to get people hired in real time.
So I I think there's that. I will also say, because we are in the age of AI, ⁓ and we're also in the age of AI panic, think of AI as a pencil, not as a person. AI is something that's going to make people's lives easier and where the actual jobs are are not in building the AI. They're in helping figure out how to integrate AI into current systems. And that's sometimes generalists, sometimes not. But I would be making sure that, you know, if I am say teaching carpentry.
I'm using AI to help sort of figure out my measurements or figuring out how to make things better or help me write reports or sort of take away from things that can slow me down on the job. So figure out how to enable more people. Cause I think there's a ton of talent out there. It just often doesn't get to where it needs because of the inefficiencies we already talked about, but also because there's tons of barriers. And I think AI could be useful for getting rid of that by removing barriers for people with disabilities and then the folks who just are underutilized now.
Jason Altmire (23:17)
We talked about your newsletter, but if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, they they wanted to learn more about what you can do to help or just get your opinion and advice on things, how would they find you?
Nick Beadle (23:29)
Shoot me an email at Nick at jobstat.org, or you can also check out my consulting page, which is on my website at jobsthat.org.
Jason Altmire (23:38)
Our guest today has been Nick Beadle. He is the founder and CEO of Jobs That Work Solutions. Nick, thank you for being with us.
Nick Beadle (23:46)
Appreciate it. This is a blast.
Jason Altmire (23:51)
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.