'07 Forecast: higher education
Bridging the skills gap
By Bruce Mendelsohn
Concern about the region’s ability to retain college graduates reached a peak in 2006. News of Massachusetts’ shrinking population and workforce makes the call to arms for Central Massachusetts’ 15 institutions of higher education more urgent in 2006.
Massachusetts faces the loss of thousands of skilled baby-boom generation workers as they retire, and the net out-migration of skilled young people, with Bay Staters aged 20-29 declined 25 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to Census data. Those left behind have less mobility and less choices, partly because of their lack of skills. In 2006, the state’s higher education sector increasingly focused on how to bring the state’s workforce to a skill level that will incentivize businesses to grow and stay here.
A statewide problem
If we lose young talent, we’ll lose both new business and our competitive edge, warns Kevin O’Sullivan, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Biomedical Initiative, which has two business incubators in Worcester and a third under development. Remedial training may help bridge the skills gap, he says, though other important variables are essential to keeping the state’s young people, such as an updated transportation infrastructure that reduces commuting stress.
The state’s education system can’t control the high cost of living, often blamed for the young worker exodus. But the education sector can be instrumental in filling employers’ needs for a skilled workforce, to keep them here.
Long-term planning in a short-term business environment
Part of the challenge is improving communication between the business community and the higher education community, says Mark Bilotta, newly-appointed CEO of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium Inc., a non-profit association of 13 public and private accredited colleges and universities in Central Massachusetts.
Bilotta says business leaders must communicate their workforce training needs four or five years in advance in order to identify the gaps in the workforce and determine how higher education can work to fill those gaps. Educational institutions will take their programming cues from what business leaders say they’ll need, he says, whether it’s training certificates or more vocational training. With that much lead time, he says, the preparation begins in high school.
But these long-term preparations are at best an unpredictable art. While continuing education and adult education divisions can respond quicker to the demands of the market, other institutions may take longer. And the rapid pace of change in businesses makes it difficult for business leaders to predict their future employee qualifications. In short, businesses can’t – and won’t – wait.
While business leaders can project general workforce needs four or five years out, when it comes to specifics, the preparation timeframe is much more compressed, says Paul Kennedy of Kennedy Affiliated Industries in Worcester. "Because the world is changing faster than anyone can predict, businesses have to keep revalidating our predictions to keep pace." The challenge of constant predictions can confound employers, and, if they guess wrong, can negatively affect the bottom line.
Proactive expansion
Gail Carberry, newly-arrived president of Quinsigamond Community College, is positioning QCC to become even more proactive in its role in workforce development than it has been in the past. This year, QCC’s outreach activities include the manufacturing and life science sectors.
The two-year school has submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation for a three-part initiative with Worcester Technical High School and regional manufacturers, to inform young people of the potential career paths in manufacturing. It has also expanded its health, radiology and dental hygiene programs this year, and is seeking to make its LPN program into a bridge to an RN program, to establish career ladders and address the shortage of skilled health personnel. It has also tapped the insurance and finance sectors to determine their needs for workers with finance backgrounds.
Why the skills gap is a problem |
The current skills gap took decades to develop, says John Lipa, chair of the Massachusetts Workforce Investment Board Association. The current workforce model is built on the workforce needs of the 1950s and 1960s, he says, and it doesn’t take into account worldwide competition and the needs of the knowledge-sector economy.
Rep. Daniel Bosley (D-North Adams) agrees. Bosley, House Chair of the Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee, says the shift in manufacturing has outpaced the skills being taught to people entering the workforce for the first time. The shift to new technologies requires a skills upgrade of the existing workforce in order to keep up, he says.
Regionally, the skills gap is apparent than at Worcester’s Workforce Central Career Center, often the first stop for recently unemployed or new job seekers. Every day, Director Don Anderson sees evidence that they need help. New technologies "have outpaced their skills," he says, and they have to learn new, more marketable skills simply to find re-employment, much less switch careers entirely.
Lipa says the solution goes beyond retraining. "It runs the gamut from entry-level workers – who in some cases lack the basic skills of reading, writing, working in a group, and even dressing for success – all the way up to senior management problems."
In their 2004 book, The Jobs Revolution: Changing How America Works authors Steve Gunderson, Roberts Jones, and Kathryn Scanland predict that the skilled worker gap will reach 14 million by 2020, and by 2030, 41 million workers will enter the workforce while 73 million will retire. If the supply of skilled workers doesn’t keep up with the demand, skilled workers will earn far more than unskilled workers, increasing income inequality and in turn, reducing national demand for policies such as free trade or deregulation that help stimulate economic growth.
B.L.M.
Enlightened self-interest
Concerned about the potential out-migration of their new graduates because of a shortage of skilled jobs, Fitchburg State College and Mount Wachusett Community College, banded together with the North Central Massachusetts Development Corp. to create the North Central Massachusetts Economic Development Council. The two colleges are also the region’s two largest employers by headcount. Because research shows that graduates of publicly-funded schools are more likely than their privately-funded school counterparts to remain in the area after graduation, FSC and MWCC want to recruit more business to their region to provide good jobs at good wages.
David McKeehan, CEO of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce, says the priority this year is establishing a regional economic development infrastructure, including developing a website and broadening a database of industrial and commercial properties. Gov. Mitt Romney’s recent round of 9-c funding cuts put the launch date of the effort in question for now, but the picture may become clearer when the Legislature reconvenes in January.
Examples of what’s working
While experts concur that the Commonwealth is suffering from a skills gap, several promising initiatives bode well for the future. These include:
• Gateway Park: This 63-acre commercial industrial district is being redeveloped by Gateway Park LLC, a partnership between the Worcester Business Development Corporation and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the park’s anchor tenant. Its first building, the WPI Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, is scheduled to open in early 2007. WPI will occupy 75 percent of the space.
• The Commonwealth Information Technology Initiative is a public/private partnership formed in 2000 to increase the number of "information technology-fluent" workers needed for Massachusetts’ knowledge-based economy. In the past two years, CITI made available more than $500,000 in grants to all educational levels.
• The state’s Mathematics, Science, Technology and Engineering Grant Fund (STEM Pipeline Fund) seeks to increase student and qualified teacher participation in programs that support careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics; and to improve these subject offerings in public and private schools. STEM recently called for proposals for grants of up to $350,000 to fund regional PreK-16 Networks. These are collaborations among public and private PreK-12, public and independent higher education, business and industry, not-for-profit organizations, regional competitiveness councils, and workforce investment boards. The fund, created in 2003, was recapitalized this year for an additional $4 million.
• The new Worcester Technical High School, which opened in September 2006, has entered a tripartite pact with the state and two unions in pipefitting and sheet metal work to create 16 pre-apprentice and apprenticeship programs for students who will be able to enter the HVAC field.
A shared investment
"The key is to have a partnership between our educational institutions, the government and our business community," agrees Rep. Daniel Bosley (D-North Adams), House Chair of the Economic Development and Emerging Technologies Committee. "This hasn’t really existed in the past. Government needs to stay involved and work at the pace of business – which is much faster than we’re used to working. There’s a potential return on investment for all of us."
Workforce Central’s Don Anderson cites "pressure points" throughout the skills-attainment continuum. The state’s high schools, he says, place more emphasis on academic achievement and preparing for the MCAS than on preparing for work. He calls for businesses to do more to expose potential employees to their companies, and to work with the public sector to promote employment opportunities.
While the government funds K-12, "Industry is willing to step to the plate, because it’s in their best interests," says MBI’s O’Sullivan. "A lot of companies understand that they need to provide further education to their employees to maintain their competitive edge."
John Lipa says improving the state’s education system will cost "a lot more than is budgeted. ... I’m not sure the government can afford the whole thing. We should do it on a phased approach; it’s not improper to ask businesses to share in the burden. After all, they’re ultimately going to benefit from having better trained workers."
Bruce Mendelsohn is a freelance writer. He can be reached at brm90@aol.com.
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