Andréa Rodriguez one of the report’s contributors and the director of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities
“The pandemic really forced higher education to rethink any barriers or challenges that exist in the institution,” said Andréa Rodriguez one of the report’s contributors and the director of USU, a president-led organization of 40 public urban research universities. “The report shows how institutions are now addressing workforce demands through collaboration and partnerships. And listening to students’ experiences.”
Titled “Building A Future Workforce for All Learners,” the report looks at three trends altering the higher education landscape: a quickly moving economy creating new training needs for workers; shifting student demographics as older, nontraditional students with prior work experience grow more common; and rising employer demand for “21st Century Skills” like data analysis.
“The higher education default can be to do things on its own, but given how much has changed in the pandemic, universities need to also change how they approach their work,” said Rodriguez. “We hope university leaders will see from this report how partnerships could create more opportunities for learners to develop new skills or upskill. No one has to do this alone.”
APLU, a research, policy, and advocacy organization for public and land-grant universities, has partnered with USU to launch in 2022 a learning community for universities to explore alternate learning pathways. Part of the goal is to help answer questions the report touched on.
“The big questions we hear from universities right now have to do with microcredentials,” said Rodriguez. “If you have someone with ten or more years of experience and a high school diploma, maybe some certificates, but not a bachelor’s degree, what can the university do to provide some kind of pathway to enable that learner to not take four to six years to get the degree? Could we give credit to prior learning or to someone’s work experience? What about military experience? These are the kinds of issues on people’s minds.”
Among the report’s example programs tackling these issues is a micro-credentialing initiative at Florida International University (FIU). The initiative started about a year and a half ago. Learners, including current students and community members, can earn badges in skills like financial literacy, thinking and communicating with data, and artificial intelligence.
