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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 [00:00:04]:
Welcome back to Career Education Report. I'm Jason Altmire. We're going to talk today about the skills gap, which we have talked a lot about, and the high demand for skilled workers and the fact that employers are having a hard time finding workers for the jobs that are needed. And when we talk about that, often we are talking about new workers, people in transition who are going through a life change, moving into a new profession. But today we're going to talk about how to interest young people in the skilled trades right from the start. And we have the perfect guest to do that. And it's Mark Hedstrom of the Skilled Trades Coalition. And they do amazing work.
Jason Altmire [00:00:48]:
Mark, thank you for being with us.
Mark Hedstrom [00:00:50]:
Thank you for having me, Jason.
Jason Altmire [00:00:52]:
Can you talk a little bit about the skilled Trades Coalition? Because I do think it's unique in this kind of ecosystem that's out there trying to solve the problems of the skills gap and expand the pipeline. And you're working with young folks in doing that. What does the organization do?
Mark Hedstrom [00:01:09]:
So the Skilled Careers Coalition focuses on a couple of things. When we step back and look at the opportunity that exists and we all can talk about the demand that's out there and the supply that's challenged with meeting that demand in the workforce, one of the things that we look at is how do we destigmatize the traits, right? So when we step back and say, you know, what's happened in the last 50 years, in the last couple generations that have kind of pushed people into two opportunities besides a skilled career, one is into the military, one is into a four year degree, we know there's some unique challenges now with both of those, right? Particularly four year degrees and the cost of higher education. Whereas we know there's a demand challenge here. So one of the things that we're trying to do when we talk to younger students, those that are in, you know, junior high, thinking about what they might want to do with their career, those in high school that are starting to actually get into a career is engaged them at that point in the conversation and in some ways destigmatize what even their parents might think about a skilled career or skill trade, right? That dirty, dark, dangerous job that people thought about 20 years ago, that's not what we're talking about here. And we all know that, right? There's some really important high skilled talent that we need to be bringing to market to fill that demand. The other piece that we focus on is around the ecosystem. So and what we mean by that is the recruitment, placement, ecosystem and it points to some of the community that you're talking to about those that are re jobbing, right, or retraining to get into a skilled career. There's a massive amount of work being done in the space, but it's disaggregated.
Mark Hedstrom [00:02:39]:
Right. So that ecosystem of recruiting young students or those that are in career transition into those jobs and those employers that need workers is unique and challenging. We're all kind of looking at our own silo, our own sector, and saying, well, how do we solve this problem here? What we think is possible is like bringing together those different industries and sectors, those that are in workforce development, those that are in government, those that are industry, and saying, hey, how do we find and solve for this problem by moving further, faster. So destigmatizing the trades, really harrowing the opportunity to those young students and then focusing on making sure that when that student is coming out into the workforce, that that recruitment, placement opportunity is just less frictionful, right. Making it easier for them to find a job in the career that they've chosen.
Jason Altmire [00:03:26]:
Talk more about this idea of de stigmatizing some of these professions. We have found it definitely still exists where there is a stigma. But we have found the great progress has been made in the idea of the four year path not being the ideal perfect path for every student. I think public perception has changed on that.
Mark Hedstrom [00:03:49]:
Yeah, it certainly has. So when we first stood up the Skilled Careers coalition back in 2022, right. We were challenged by the philanthropists that sit behind our work and understanding what was keeping students or what was happening in the conversation between a student, a parent, student advisor, student and school counselor around why they're being directed down two paths out of three. And what we found was in a lot of cases, when we look at our For Youth by youth content platform within the Skilled Careers Coalition called Skills Jam, students are very much open to exploring this as an opportunity. But when we did this research back in 2022, what we found was there was more openness amongst counselors and parents to the idea of a third way for a lot of their students or a lot of their children. But they didn't even know how to have the conversation, right? They didn't know how to go down that pathway with the student to say, hey, here's some opportunities for you out there. So I do think in general the conversation about skilled careers, and we pointedly point to skill careers because these are careers that have longevity to them, right. Whereas trades has that sort of, that sort of older vocabulary around what people are thinking but when we talk to parents and advisors, one of the things we're trying to change, right, is the trusted individuals in a young student's lives are the ones that we need to actually engage more in understanding that a lot of what's happening in the skilled career space is massively different from what they understood growing up, they themselves, and that there's a huge amount of opportunity for these young students out there.
Jason Altmire [00:05:25]:
And how do you define when you talk about skilled careers, what are the type of jobs that fall within that?
Mark Hedstrom [00:05:32]:
So some of the traditional trades, so construction trades, but we're talking about mechatronics, we're talking about drones, we're talking about, you know, video web production all the way through to, you know, health services. So depending on who you ask, right, there's anywhere from 120 to 130. I actually think there's a lot of opportunity. When you think about skilled careers, that it's pretty expansive. On top of that, what we're seeing is that things are moving much more rapidly, right? So everyone's talking about AI. Those are going to impact white collar jobs more than they are what were traditionally called blue collar jobs, these skill careers. But things are being disrupted rather quickly. So we need to kind of be future focused on our work, right? So there are still going to be needs for carpenters and masonry as well as plumbing.
Mark Hedstrom [00:06:20]:
But there's an expansive thing that's coming in terms of what's happening out there. So when you think about mechatronics, right, which is everything that's in automation or robotics or humanoids, there's a ton of opportunity out there. You talk to people in that space and we have some partners in that space. Like one of their big issues is actually service tax. Who's servicing these, you know, these systems that are distributing, you know, the pair of sneakers that you have on your shoes. So it's a bit of thinking about how do we engage that young student and show them what's possible, but also at the same time being, you know, in the opportunity to talk to their parents and their counselors about what's changed and what's coming.
Jason Altmire [00:06:57]:
You talk about engaging those students, inspiring the next generation of the American workforce. How do you do that? How do you actually get their attention and start to make them really think about these careers?
Mark Hedstrom [00:07:10]:
Well, I think, and look, I'm, I'm a certain generation, so I'm definitely not the expert in space. But we do spend a lot of time talking to young students. And I think the first thing that we found with skillshare, which is our for Youth by youth content platform, is it has to be authentic and it has to be someone that looks like me. Right. As a young student, I want someone who's talking to me about who might just be ahead of me in mechatronics, like how exciting it is and what they're doing with it and showing me that value. So that authenticity is incredibly important to young students. It is to every generation, someone that looks like me and talks like me. So that creates that authenticity.
Mark Hedstrom [00:07:44]:
It allows for someone to start exploring and trusting those people that are talking to them about these possible opportunities. I think the second piece is making sure that we're not just leaving an awareness campaign. Right. So I've run awareness campaigns in philanthropy for about 14 years. That's great. Those are very good things to kind of highlight an issue that's out there. But if we can't get young students aware of the opportunity to actually taking action against that opportunity, like I want to pursue this mechatronics pathway, then we're just creating a Rhinos campaign. So we've got to get them further down that path.
Mark Hedstrom [00:08:18]:
And my point around the authenticity, it has to be action oriented as well. So the two things we're trying to do is really make sure that it's an authentic voice that's talking to them and that those young students, however they're showing up, can explore that more if there's interest, like how do we get them further down that path?
Jason Altmire [00:08:36]:
And then once you generate that interest, you also help make the connection for them to take that next step. And how do you ensure that they're making the choice that is most appropriate for them? Because they could go, theoretically, they go to a trade union, they could go to a school. And then you have to choose what type of school and what's of interest to you. Maybe do an apprenticeship.
Jason Altmire [00:09:01]:
There's.
Jason Altmire [00:09:01]:
There's different ways you could do that. How do you make sure they're making the right choice?
Mark Hedstrom [00:09:05]:
Yeah, and I think that's to the second point around, you know, the ecosystem and trying to, for lack of a better way, streamline that opportunity. Right. So when you think about a student's journey from sixth grade, when they're starting to explore what they want to do, they like a certain subject matter, they like to do certain things in their lives. Through to actually that taking action point, we've got an opportunity to collapse down and provide them more information. And I think the last thing to say about where students are showing up, at least in our space, you know, those from 13 to 24, they're spending time in social media. So we've got to meet them where they're at and then show them pathways through. Right. So it's not going to a website.
Mark Hedstrom [00:09:49]:
They don't spend any time on websites. So if we're providing them content and you know, a lot of social media platforms, you know, there's a clear downside, but there's a clear upside as to how do we leverage those to get that student further down that pathway. And to your point around. Okay, well, what opportunities exist in Des Moines, Iowa? For me, I'm interested in, you know, being an auto mechanic. Well, what does that look like? What are the schools in my, you know, in my general area, what kind of conversations should I be having with my parents and my advisors about these opportunities? I think that's the connective tissue that needs, quite frankly, a bit of work simply because, you know, students are kind of at this point, much like I said about the research you do with parents is they are open to the idea of pursuing a skilled career, but they don't know where to go. Right. And that works well in some environments and it doesn't in others. So how do we create that connective tissue so a student can continue to explore? But then if they're taking action, well, what kind of programming is available in my backyard? What kind of apprenticeships, what kind of work based learning opportunities do I see and making sure there's a little bit more connective tissue for lack of better saying it between discovery and taking action.
Jason Altmire [00:10:59]:
Your organization, Skilled Careers Coalition, you talk a lot about the supply and the demand. Supply being the interested individuals, the students who are out there, and the demand being what we've talked about the skills gap. How many people are we talking about? What, what is the number of students that you believe are in this supply area?
Mark Hedstrom [00:11:22]:
Yeah, it's a great question. So I think there's a couple, couple things to that, right. Which is how big is the gap? And it depends, right. You can talk to the manufacturing industry and they'll say it's X by Y date. You know, there's 2.4 million jobs are going to go unfilled by 2035 in manufacturing. Okay, let's understand that. But in context of the larger issue is like how big is the gap and where is it happening? Right down to type of job and locality of job. Right.
Mark Hedstrom [00:11:49]:
So you talk to John Deere in the state of Iowa. They have a welding program is designed around making sure they have enough welders to work in their factories. So they've taken a very specific approach. But I think when you lens out on those questions of how big is the problem, right, what's that demand that we're trying to fill? It's anywhere from 6 to 8 million unfilled jobs. And that's not even including the disruption that I was talking about earlier. That's coming, right with jobs are changing and we need to be future focused on how do we get students into careers that are coming. So if you're sitting at about 6 to 8 million in that demand, right, that need that we have out there in market, the one of the largest generations out there right now is Gen Z. We look at, you know that from a census perspective, about 65 million students between the ages of 13 and 24.
Jason Altmire [00:12:37]:
65 million.
Mark Hedstrom [00:12:39]:
65 million. So around that issue are also things, you know, people coming out of army, right? So veterans, those that are coming out of the prison system, how do we get them into jobs? Those that are re jobbing to some of the, the audience that you're talking to often. So in that whole catchment area is about 70 million individuals. So just to do the math again, we think it's about 6 to 8 million given on who you talk to and the research you look at, that's the hole we have to fill. You have about 70 million open to employment, right. Right now you only have about 10 to 11 million CTE students in America. The math on that simply is if we can find that 6 to 8 million, that's basically taking 8%. So moving from 16% of that total population to 24%.
Mark Hedstrom [00:13:31]:
So what we're really trying to do with our work in the coalition and then our partners is to say, hey, we have this demand issue we have to fill. We've got a huge population that we could be inspiring and then getting them into them jobs. And we just need to do that at a higher success rate. So how do we market to right through things like skills jam, but then how do we fix that ecosystem so they get to the right job at the right role at the right time so that it's, it's simple math. But the real challenge is you've got to have a bigger top of funnel and you have a population of 70 million that you could be talking to. It's just a better job of converting them to skilled careers.
Jason Altmire [00:14:09]:
And are you able to quantify the success that you've had in doing this?
Mark Hedstrom [00:14:14]:
We're actually in the midst of that. So one of our things that we're looking at now is that ecosystem minerals like placement part of the challenge, and I think to your audience, right, is those that are job ready in the next six to 12 months. So some of our work right now is actually working on specific areas I mentioned earlier of service techs. So those that are managing the automated floors that are occurring in these distribution centers all across the US So starting to fill those roles quicker and we're just, we're testing and learning right now. So. No. Have we taken a big chunk out of that 6 to 8 million? No, but I think what we're, we're trying to do with our partners is to make sure that we can start solving for that problem, for what we know is out there and then showing that not only are we inspiring or raising awareness, but we're actually solving for that middleware, that ecosystem, we can get people into jobs quicker.
Jason Altmire [00:15:05]:
You said something earlier that struck my interest when you said some of these young people, or I think you said all of the young people that they're not perusing websites. Websites aren't the way to reach this audience. And it struck me when I was preparing to talk to you today. I went to your social media and I went to your website too, but I went to your social media and just as an example, you have something called the Skills jam, which is kind of, I would encourage people to look at it, kind of a glitzy presentation to strike attention. You say you've got 13 million views of that. Maybe talk about that concept of how you're taking these new techniques to reach an audience beyond the traditional, what you and I would consider to be the traditional way of doing it through a website.
Mark Hedstrom [00:15:54]:
Right. And so while we do have the Skilled Careers Coalition website that is not geared towards young students, that is geared towards folks like myself, industry, others, that we're trying to have this larger conversation around the ecosystem and how do we solve for that demand issue. So that's always going to be there. But what I mean by, you know, where younger individuals are spending their time is it's in social media. So you've got to meet them, where they're at. If you're trying to get them to a website that has an older user interface layer that you and I are used to, they're not going to engage, you're going to see a massive amount of drop off. So you've got to figure out a way to get them into a space where you're having conversation on platforms they already exist on and they're already spending their time on. And then how do you do? And I think that's one of the challenges here that we're talking about with how do we get people into jobs quicker is how do we work with other organizations that have to, you know, manage service techs or welders to say, hey, how do we do a better job of it's as simple as gamifying, right? How you show up to a potential employee who's younger and consuming their content on social media.
Mark Hedstrom [00:16:59]:
They're not consuming it on the Internet in the same way. So we spend our time on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. That's where we spend our time because that's where we know the students are. So our skills jam platform is very much youth content focused. Meeting them to where they're at. Our website is for folks like myself, like, that's having the larger workforce development conversation. How do we bring people together to then engage those students in a way that they want to be engaged?
Jason Altmire [00:17:27]:
There would seem to be great interest, I think, of the schools. We have 800 campuses in the US and we're aligned with Canada. So we have 1300 campuses that we consider under our purview with Canada. And I think there would be great interest in this concept of how to reach people through social media. Because most of the people who lead schools, and there are many that are innovative and doing new and unique things, there are some that are still thinking about it maybe differently is part of what you do, working with schools, institutions of higher education and career colleges to help them get better at reaching that audience.
Mark Hedstrom [00:18:08]:
It's part of our work. I mean, most of most of the team, you know, has come out of the space of either philanthropy or I spent a long time in marketing, right? So I've been in philanthropy and marketing for a number of years. And then brand and equity and building that brand and pivoting to where people are consuming information is incredibly important. So when we think about storytelling, which sits at the base of all of this, storytelling is incredibly important, right? That authenticity, something that looks like me talking about those types of issues, that's going to be critical to how you reach that new audience. And it's just the reality of, look, there's certainly challenges with social media. I spent time in men and boys mental health for a long time, so I understand the downside, adverse risks to social media. But it's the way that things are marketed now, right? So when you want to buy a new pair of shoes or something, often it's marketed through social media platform to get you to engage and then purchase their product at the same time, I think one of the other things to think about and flipping it, it's on its head is if you look at what's now being termed the tool belt generation, right, these younger students, to your point earlier, that are more engaged, more interested in a skilled career, one of the things they're going to need to have in that toolkit is a social media presence to market their service. Right.
Mark Hedstrom [00:19:18]:
If they're an entrepreneur, independent contractor, like that's a place that they're going to get business. It's not going to be in the back of a newspaper. In most cases it's going to be by targeting their local community. I'm a plumbing your community. This is what I do. Here's my work. They're going to get better traction out of that marketing through social media than they would in some of the more traditional older ways of approaching marketing. So social media itself to reach an audience.
Mark Hedstrom [00:19:42]:
But also in the case of these young students, that's where they're going to be marketing to their customer base.
Jason Altmire [00:19:47]:
I really like your focus on jobs that are going to be here in the future. One of the issues that we run into, all levels of higher education, K through 12, on up through post secondary, is we sometimes still focus on educating and training people for jobs that were here in the past. Not thinking about what it's going to look like in the future. I know you've been asked this question probably a thousand times, where does AI fit into all of this? It would seem like these are careers that you're talking about that are either less impacted by AI or fit right in with AI. Being someone who knows how to use it and can be assisting in that way.
Mark Hedstrom [00:20:34]:
In general, AI, you know, advanced robotics and humanoids, the stuff that I've seen in some of our partners who are in that space, there's going to be disruption across the board. I think there's going to be an interesting shift in how jobs show up. I think it's going to be more disruptive to our traditionally white collar jobs, but there will be disruption. But I think in that disruption is opportunity. Right. It's like moving from having a horse drawn buggy to the first Model T, right. That was a huge disruptor, changed things quite quickly, but no one saw it coming. So I think one of the things we've got to challenge ourselves with is the amount of change is happening in a more rapid fashion.
Mark Hedstrom [00:21:10]:
And that's why we're kind of future focuses. You look at a traditional job like carpentry, carpentry is going to change at a slower pace than something like mechatronics because things are moving so rapidly in mechatronics in advent of things like AI, the reality is the talent or the skill level required in places like mechatronics, when you introduce things like AI is only going to be that much more important to understand what's coming and how you train for that. So some jobs may disappear in the way that we've traditionally seen them. I don't think it's going to be as disruptive as it is in the white collar space. But the reality is the amount of talent and technical education you have to have and accreditation you have to have to service some things in mechatronics or automation is going to be that much more important. So how do we find the ways to help younger students explore, but also give them access and exposure to what's coming? One tactical observation I've had on the ground at CTE programs across the country, and that's high school through to community colleges and otherwise, is in some cases because we've largely not funded CTE program is country level, a lot of the students are working on materials or on on actual equipment that's 20 years old. Right. We need to move that stuff forward as quickly as possible.
Mark Hedstrom [00:22:30]:
We need to reinvest not only in CTE education, but we need to reinvest in how and what the students are working on.
Jason Altmire [00:22:36]:
Well, we've covered a lot of ground and I'm sure there's a lot of schools and employers and maybe even students out there who would like to get in touch and hear more. If someone wanted to learn more about the Skilled Careers Coalition and the work that you how would they find you?
Mark Hedstrom [00:22:52]:
They would go over to skilledcareers.org and if you want to understand what we're doing in the youth space, you can find us on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok at Skills Jam or at the Skills Jam across those platforms. So you'll see us pop up and that'll give you a sense of what we're doing in terms of talking to students in authentic voice and then how we're looking at this at a coalition perspective across the board.
Jason Altmire [00:23:15]:
And I would encourage people to do that because I did stumble across that. And it's just incredible. The technology that you're using and the way that you're doing that outreach to young folks. I'm sure it's very effective. Our guest today has been Mark Headstrom of the Skilled Careers Coalition. Mark, thank you for being with us.
Mark Hedstrom [00:23:35]:
Thank you, Jason, for having me.
Jason Altmire [00:23:38]:
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 C-E-C-U-E-D. Thank you for listening.