The focus of the podcast is how states are working toward connecting education and training systems with the workforce. Three attendees at a recent NCSL meeting in Bozeman, Mont., joined the podcast to explain how states are working to understand the return on investment from state investment in education and training programs .
The focus of the podcast is how states are working toward connecting education and training systems with the workforce. State policymakers are keenly interested in measuring the return on investment or ROI that they can see from state investment in education and training programs of all kinds.
Our guests are Mary Alice McCarthy, founder and senior director of the Center on Education and Labor at New America, a nonpartisan think tank; Alabama Senator Arthur Orr and Utah Representative Norm Thurston.
All three joined a group of more than 30 legislators, speakers, and staff at a recent conference in Bozeman, Montana convened by NCSL. They discussed ROI and the related issue of career pathways and a variety of other topics and at how to align career and technical education, credentialed programs and apprenticeship opportunities with high-demand occupations.
McCarthy explained the concept of ROI as it applies to assessing the effectiveness of educational and training programs, the types of questions legislators have about this approach and the different types of data most useful to policymakers. Senator Orr and Representative Thurston offered different perspectives from their states and discussed what they saw as the most valuable data to consider in evaluating the success of programs.
Resources
ES: (00:12):
Hello and welcome to “Our American States,” a podcast from the National Conference of State Legislatures. I'm your host, Ed Smith.
MAM: (00:20):
So, as we're asking people to invest more and more of their own dollars in their own education or training or workforce development, it's fair for them to ask and what am I going to get out of it? And we need to be able to provide a clear answer to that.
ES: (00:36):
That was Mary Alice McCarthy, founder and senior director of the Center on Education and Labor at New America, a nonpartisan think tank. She's one of my guests on this podcast along with Senator Arthur Orr of Alabama and Representative Norm Thurston of Utah.
The focus of the podcast is how states are working toward connecting education and training systems with the workforce. State policymakers are keenly interested in measuring the return on investment or ROI that they can see from state investment and education and training programs of all kinds.
Mary Alice McCarthy, Senator Orr, and Representative Thurston joined a group of more than 30 legislators, speakers, and staff at a recent conference in Bozeman, Montana convened by NCSL. They discussed ROI and the related issue of career pathways and a variety of other topics and at how to align career and technical education, credentialed programs and apprenticeship opportunities with high-demand occupations.
ES: (01:38):
McCarthy explained the concept of ROI as it applies to assessing the effectiveness of educational and training programs, the types of questions legislators have about this approach and the different types of data most useful to policymakers. Senator Orr and Representative Thurston offered different perspectives from their states and discussed what they saw as the most valuable data to consider in evaluating the success of programs.
Here's our discussion starting with Mary Alice McCarthy.
ES: (02:11):
Mary Alice, welcome to the podcast. Nice to have you.
MAM: (02:15):
Happy to be here.
ES: (02:17):
To start, explain this concept of return on investment as it relates to education and workforce development programs. I think I get the general idea, but the devil's in the details.
MAM: (02:28):
Yeah, that's a great question and we are hearing a lot about return on investment, and I think it's important to unpack that term a little bit and understand what it is that policymakers and other folks who are talking about it are trying to get at. Generally speaking, the term return on investment to an educational workforce program refers to whether or not when the person completes that program, whether or not they're better off than they were when they started in the most simple terms. The devil in the details, as you said, is how we measure better off. And for the most part, the way we measure it is whether or not people are making more money than they would have been otherwise. Whether or not they're able to, in general, just sort of continue advancing in their career and have some economic stability and security. That's becoming more and more important to us today, I think, because for a couple of reasons.
MAM: (03:22):
One is just that cost of education, particularly higher education, just keeps going up. So, as we're asking people to invest more and more of their own dollars in their own education or training or workforce development, it's fair for them to ask, "What am I going to get out of it? " And we need to be able to provide a clear answer to that. That turns out to be a lot harder than you might think because actually being able to track how much people make and how much that's related to the education program that they completed is harder than it sounds, but that's the basic idea. I'll also say I think a lot of state legislators and policymakers in general are thinking about return on investment too in a broader sense. We can think about it for the individual who's picking a major or what college to go to or what program to study.
MAM: (04:13):
They want to have a sense of, how am I going to be when this is over and what's it going to do for me? And then I also think policymakers need to be thinking about as they're investing state dollars, taxpayer dollars, should I say public funds in institutions of higher education or school systems and generally what are they getting? What is the state getting back from it? What are the taxpayers, the people of the state or taxpayers if we're thinking about federal investments getting from these investments in education and workforce development generally?
ES: (04:41):
That's a really good segue into my next question, which is of course we're talking here with state legislators, legislative staff. What are the questions that those policymakers have about this issue? And you go around, you talk to people about this all the time. What are the kind of burning things that they want to know the answers to, and do they want to know if those questions can be answered, I guess?
MAM: (05:04):
Yeah. I think that the biggest question on the minds of state legislators is how do we get the information we need to be able to make to determine return on investment? How do we get the data? And also though, even beyond that, what are the criteria we should be looking at? There's a lot of decisions to make when you're coming up with, for example, some return on investment, like if you want a score or a number, what goes in it, what doesn't and where does that data live? And as I said, as you pointed to, the devil is in the details. While it sounds very straightforward, we're going to track how much a program costs and then we're going to follow a person after they complete the program and we're going to figure out how much they, money, first of all, if they get a job, what they're earning a year later, what they're earning five years later, what they're earning 10 years later.
MAM: (05:53):
Tracking that kind of data is actually quite difficult for states. We treat people's personal economic information very carefully. We have a lot of privacy protections for good reason. And then we also just have these data systems are complicated. They don't always speak to one another. The data that we need from a high school or college can be hard to match up with the data that you might get on people's earnings or their employment rates. So, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to figure out a return on investment. And then I think a lot of state legislators want help thinking through exactly what should go into that measure. What about liberal arts degrees? What about programs that maybe don't have an immediate payoff, but five or 10 years down the road, people are doing just fine. How do I think about the return on investment in relation to how much debt people take on too?
MAM: (06:44):
And that's an important thing to keep in mind and make sure is part of the measure. But another way is to think about what outcomes and for whom are you doing that? Sometimes states want to be very careful with how they direct public funds. They don't necessarily want to be putting taxpayer dollars in places where they're not needed to support a person's trajectory or sort of earnings and employment. So, they want to really target those dollars well. So that's another thing that they might be thinking about the return on investment in terms of like how much economic mobility are we supporting in the state? How much are we moving up sort of lower income kids into high income occupation? So, there's just a lot that goes into it. I'll just come back really zooming back big picture. In the United States, we really want education and training to be a source of economic wellbeing and economic mobility.
MAM: (07:45):
It's a fundamental value we have that like everyone should have an equal opportunity to sort of make their way in the world. Education is for many of us sort of the key ingredients in how you help somebody sort of become economically self-sufficient. So, it's really important for policymakers to be able to identify programs that maybe aren't doing that.
ES: (08:09):
Let me ask you about career and technical education, CTE. I'm old enough that I remember attitudes toward it were very different when I was in high school. Talk to me about how attitudes towards CTE have changed in the general public and what the role of CTE is in this discussion we're having here.
MAM: (08:32):
It would be hard to overstate just how much attitudes have shifted toward career technical education. Again, similar to you, when I was in high school, we didn't call it career technical education. We didn't call it CTE. It was vocational education and it was not considered something, a high value sort of set of programs or something that people would opt into. It was not something that students or families sought out. In fact, vocational classes were often treated as places to send students who administrators or faculty had decided had no real prospects of moving on to college or potentially even graduating high school. So, these programs were often of very low quality. They were often not aligned with real labor market opportunities. Many of them were dead ends and people knew it and stayed away from it. That really started to change in the early 2000s as the CTE community, the career technical education community really took on the challenge of improving the quality of the system and improving its reputation.
MAM: (09:31):
In fact, one of the first things they did was rebrand vocational education as career technical education to really emphasize that they wanted these programs to be the foundation or the launching pad for a career, not just sort of a job. So, they renamed it, but more importantly, they really focused in on strengthening the academic rigor of the program so that students who took CTE programs wouldn't get derailed from a college pathway. And they also got much more intentional about the careers for which the system was preparing people for. Broader CTE sort of reform community created this model of 10 career clusters. For example, mapping out the whole labor market, how do you want to prepare students for these different careers? What are the entry level skills? What do kids need to know to be able to enter these kinds of careers? So, it was much more intentional, much more structured, and then really focused on making sure the kids had the academic preparation that they would need to be able to continue on their education.
MAM: (10:36):
There was also a big focus on bringing CTE into the center of comprehensive high schools. In the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s, it really got marginalized to the edges of high schools. You almost wouldn't know what was there. And so, a lot of this focus on academic rigor and making sure that it prepared people for the full spectrum of careers also was part of sort of bringing it back into the center of high school and making sure that it was something that all high school students could access. So that was a big change to where many more students were taking now CTE courses rather than sort of the shop classes being off in a different part of the high school that many people never saw. The other big focus of the reform effort that was really important was turning career technical education into a pathway into post-secondary, into community college or four-year college or directly into careers that pathways mindset of like we're working with high school students, we're helping them identify their career interests.
MAM: (11:38):
We're helping them learn a little bit about what it means to enter a certain career and take their first steps towards it, but this isn't the end. They're not going to walk out of high school and not have another next step. They'll be prepared for their next step, whether it's a registered apprenticeship program or it's community college or it's four-year college. So today CTE is in high demand. I mean, these reforms have really paid off. These courses are often oversubscribed in high schools. Surveys of parents show very strong support for their children having career education while they're in high school. That is a huge shift from certainly when I was in high school. Surveys of students also show very positive attitudes toward CTE. And I think most striking surveys of students show sort of belief that CTE is just a regular part of high school.
MAM: (12:29):
It's not something different and it's something that it's good to take some CTE courses while you're in high school. Today you can take AP courses in career technical education classes. I mean, some CTE classes are AP, advanced placement, which was always the sort of blue-chip college prep course. And now there are CTE courses that are those. So, I think that there's just been just an enormous shift. It is kudos to the people who work really hard to turn this system around. Last thing I'll say though is I think these changes are also, they are absolutely a response to these changes in attitudes are people seeing that these programs have really improved. I also think the demand for the programs is because of this ROI question apart too, that people are glad to see families and students are glad to see more education around careers earlier in young people's lives because they're going to be making big decisions around what their next steps are and those decisions increasingly are just more and more high stakes.
MAM: (13:35):
So, more awareness of what your career options are and more self-awareness for students about where they want to go is just really a great thing.
ES: (13:43):
You talked a little bit earlier about how difficult it is really to create these ROI programs. And I wonder if you could talk, particularly to legislators, what are the big challenges they face when they're trying to figure out how to connect high school, post-secondary, the workforce just from a state perspective as you're trying to put together something that makes sense and at least get you started on this ROI road. Talk a little bit about that and what legislators should expect to find if they decide to dive into this.
MAM: (14:16):
We are seeing some really exciting efforts by a number of different states to sort of really weave together our sort of traditional education or academic education, career technical education, higher education, workforce development, economic development, apprenticeship systems so that programs or systems, I should say, have become very siloed over the years. And again, there's not a lot of connectivity. There's not enough connectivity. So, for example, how do you make sure that high school students all have a next step and to do that you need to be able to know that high schools are talking to colleges, that high schools are aware of what's going on in the labor market, that the state's economic development agencies is aware of what's coming out of high schools, what's coming out of colleges. So how do you think really systemically about this? And I would say it's not easy, but we are seeing it across a number of sort of big state efforts, whether it's the Blueprint for Maryland's future, Washington State's big career connect program.
MAM: (15:22):
Indiana has a statewide youth apprenticeship program. And Delaware also has been doing a lot of work of really thinking very big picture about what do we want from all of these systems. And what I would say is that the things that we're seeing that are really critical for having kind of a full systems approach where you're really like making sure that every young person has a path forward is that you really do need to be thinking about three things I'll say. One is just governance and leadership. As I said, these are K-12 systems trying to talk to higher education systems, trying to talk to workforce development, economic development, apprenticeship systems. What I think most states that have been successful at doing this is that they've really created a clear infrastructure where these agencies come together, sort of a convener, a leader of the movement that can really sort of bring together all of the key parties.
MAM: (16:19):
It requires a lot of collaboration and coordination across multiple agencies to make these things work and the most successful efforts build an institutional infrastructure that convene all of those players around a common clear vision and also give that some sort of entity, the authority and resources it needs to be able to move things forward. The second thing I would say is that you need to know what success looks like so that you can start measuring it along the way and you can start feeding that data back into what you're doing. It's critical to create some metrics to guide implementation to course correct. And just this question of are we succeeding? It's also critical for securing more resources. So, you need to decide what does success look like? What is it that we're trying to do here? And that again takes us stepping back from all of the very siloed systems and thinking about what would it look like if these were working together differently.
MAM: (17:13):
And then the third thing I would say is I really think it's important to have public buy-in. State leaders need the public to understand what they're trying to do and why and how what they're doing with all of these different agencies and stitching together, all these things, how it's actually responding to what they're hearing from constituents about what they want for their young people, for their children, just what the state's needs are and the people living in the state, what is top of mind for them. It can't all just be about fixing things. Sometimes you can get into some of these conversations and with the different agencies talking to each other and it all gets very technical very quickly and you can get really lost in the weeds of how are you measuring CTE concentration, how are you measuring completion? And it's just always really important to be able to communicate the why to the public as this really important kind of plumbing work is going on and kind of fixing the plumbing, but to never lose sight of the fact that that's not the goal.
MAM: (18:11):
The goal is to be able to sort of build a system that is really responsive to the needs of the residents of the state.
ES: (18:19):
There's a number of things, apprenticeships, as you mentioned, dual enrollment, CTE as we discussed earlier. Certainly, these things fit together, but do they always fit together? Are they sometimes separate pieces?
MAM: (18:32):
I would say these are different things. They are definitely complementary. And I do think that you get your strongest sort of pathways effect, you say your strongest sort of return for an investment from them when they're combined thoughtfully. But let's unpack sort of what the different pieces are. So, our career technical education system is supported by federal and state funding. There's a whole policy infrastructure. There's a law that Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act goes back actually to 1917. It's our oldest federal education law, but it is a whole system that supports career technical education, and it has a clear purpose to help students prepare for careers in high school and in community college and it has a policy infrastructure and resources to support that goal. So, it exists in every state, in every public high school and every two-year college. There are resources that come from the federal government to support career education and in most states, they add on to this and have their own investments.
MAM: (19:33):
So ,that's a system and it's universal for the most part across states and again, within public schools, high school and two years. It provides backbone for all of these pathways efforts, for career pathways, efforts for youth. And that backbone then is something that states can then build on as they wish, but it's a very strong backbone. So, then if we go to dual enrollment, that is a strategy for easing transitions from high school to college. It's a way to kind of blur the line for high school students. So, rather than having to think about like, do I want to go to college, you actually start going to college and high school and next thing you know, you've completed half a semester. There's a lot of evidence that this is a very effective way for increasing college going. Dual enrollment for CTE students has been come along a little bit later and it has also showing really great promise where a lot of dual enrollment is just for high school students is sort of in general education courses.
MAM: (20:35):
But dual enrollment for CTE students is really a way to make sure that when a high school student starts down a CTE concentration like a career focused concentration, they're preparing for a particular career. They can take a set of courses and then continue on seamlessly. They can start taking them in high school, college CTE courses and then when they move over to the community college, they will be able to finish an associate's degree relatively quickly and without having lost any time on that. So, it's a great way to really sort of bring into life the real pathways model for CTE where there's a direct connection between high school, college and career. Youth apprenticeship, which is something that my organization, New America, focuses on a lot through our partnership to advance youth apprenticeship. Youth apprenticeship is sort of the blue-chip model for career education. It provides even more structure and support to students who want to start their careers when they're in high school.
MAM: (21:38):
It provides structured, paid, work-based and classroom learning so that students are literally launching their career while they're completing high school rather than having to wait until they graduate either high school or college. The states that are doing this youth apprenticeship at scale, states like Indiana, North Carolina, Washington state, I would say, they are also building that on the backbone of their CTE system in high schools, leveraging CTE courses for the classroom instruction piece of the apprenticeship both in high school and in community college, often through dual enrollment strategies. So again, pulling that strategy in and then also leveraging the employer relationships that their CTE system has to be able to create those apprenticeships, those which essentially are jobs and to be able to find employers to take their apprentices to really build those relationships. So, state CTE systems are sort of the natural home and foundation for youth apprenticeship.
MAM: (22:40):
I would say too, they also often a lot of state CTE systems have been in conversations with their state registered apprenticeship systems, which serve more adult apprentices. So again, they're just sort of a natural place to start that conversation. So, to be clear, CTE coursework and pathways are valuable on their own and CTE dual enrollment doesn't have to connect to youth apprenticeship, but when they all come together, they're especially powerful.
ES: (23:06):
Mary Alice, as we finish up here, maybe the most important question, what kind of data do we need? What kind of data do legislators need, data sets or other information so that they can actually evaluate these programs and as we talked about before, determine whether or not they're having success
MAM: (23:24):
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think the most important data probably are the long-term earnings outcomes. Those are certainly essential that's sort of the easiest way to tell how people are doing. We have those data, IRS has data on all of our earnings and making sure that states can access those in ways that are safe and protect privacy. I think it's part of creating a sort of seamless feedback loop to our education system about how we're doing. There's other variables too though that can be very important in terms of how people are doing, measuring their wellbeing, things like home ownership and family formation. We don't think about those as much and they're not in this sort of one-to-one relationship, but earnings can be a little bit tricky because some people are going to go on to have very high earnings and it might not have anything to do with what they studied in either high school or college.
MAM: (24:16):
They came from already good circumstances, and their career options were available to them independent of what they studied. There's a lot of nuance into how young people go from education into a thriving life. And so, we need to think about what are some of the other components of that employment, obviously employment stability, whether or not people are moving or experiencing bouts of unemployment, things like home ownership. Although again, you have to be careful about what part of the country you're in and just how expensive, how much of a gauge that is. But we need to think broadly about that and not put all of our chips on earnings alone. And I would also say I would like to see more, I think we need to build in maybe more qualitative data on pathways and really sort of do more to ask people about the pathways that they create for themselves.
MAM: (25:11):
I think we all know that our own personal career paths are not necessarily linear and sometimes they can be quite winding, but that isn't necessarily a sign of failure and I think we need to understand a little bit better mostly what we want to know is how do people get on a path, a good path and then where do they go from there, but sort of where do they take it from there and have we given them the tools necessary to create their own successful path, whatever it might be. And it might be that they studied like I did anthropology in college and went on to a completely different roundabout sort of path or it might be that they prepared for a career in healthcare when they were in high school and they started that and then ended up in business in their 40s. So, I think we really need to get into the complexity, but what we're trying to do here with all of this pathways work is empower people to be the authors of their own lives and we want them to be successful lives.
MAM: (26:14):
How do we start to bring in some of that other information to inform what we're doing here?
ES: (26:21):
Well, I think that is a really great note to finish up on. I do think the complexity of people's life journeys can't be reduced just to whether they own a home or how much money they make. So, I think you make an excellent point, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, Mary Alice, and take care.
MAM: (26:40):
Thank you. I appreciate being here. It's been a great conversation. I'll
ES: (26:45):
Be right back after this short break with Representative Norm Thurston of Utah.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
When it comes to election policies, do you know how laws are different in each state? There's one easy resource to find out. NCSL, partnering with the US Election Assistance Commission, has compiled a comprehensive review on those election policies in the new soup to nuts reference guide, Helping America Vote, Election Administration in the United States. All of the topics are there, voter ID, post-election audits, voter list maintenance, recounts, you name it, the book covers it. Hard copies are available to legislators and legislative staff. If you want one, send an email to elections-info@ncsl.org. That's elections-info@ncsl.org. Order yours today.
ES: (27:53):
Representative, welcome to the podcast.
NT: (27:56):
Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.
ES: (27:59):
So, we're here at the Career Pathways for Higher Returns meeting in Bozeman, Mont. And I wonder if you could talk about your interest in this topic and why it's important to you and to your constituents.
NT: (28:11):
Well, from my perspective, both as a policymaker and as an economist, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how can we streamline the process for allowing people to do the jobs that they've been trained to do. So, the precursor that of course is that they have to be trained to do those jobs and had a lot of conversations with the education community about, are we really focused on training people to do jobs or are we just providing this nebulous service called education and people are left on their own to kind of cobble together whatever they need? And I understand there's a philosophical part to that, but from a practical perspective as a taxpaying entity, we want to make sure that we are putting the money behind productivity because that's what drives our economy is people being able to do jobs. The more they can do and the better they can do them, the better off our economy will be.
ES: (29:06):
So, there's a lot of focus here on return on investment for education and workforce programs. And I wonder what that means for you in Utah. As you're looking to try to measure this, is it earnings, employment, meeting employer demand or some other factor?
NT: (29:23):
Yeah, that's an interesting question. And there are a lot of ways that you think about value. Does this person help businesses make more money or does this person provide services that are in high demand by consumers and by our residents? So, you can think about that in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day, I think what's really important is that we're focusing on alignment, growth and progression and productivity. And weirdly enough, you can kind of measure all three of those things with just increased wages. So, if somebody is being productive, more productive, they should be having higher wages, if they are progressing in their career path, they should be making more wages. If they are aligned with industry needs, they should be making higher wages. So, a lot of the measurement can be captured just by looking at wages. Now that doesn't capture everything, but it is the flagship measurement that we probably would be looking at in our state is just are we doing things that help people participate in a labor market in a way that generates more value and more value leads to higher wages?
NT: (30:29):
So, you can look at it that way if you think about it from an economic perspective.
ES: (30:35):
I know there's a lot of discussion certainly at this meeting and generally about these different pathways, education and workforce pathways, CTE, dual enrollment, apprenticeships, community college and more. How about in Utah? What's getting the most attention there in your state?
NT: (30:51):
Well, we've had a lot of growth efforts over time in different areas. I mean, there certainly are a lot of people who are super excited about what we call concurrent enrollment or dual enrollment so that you get college credit for your high school work. There's a lot of interest in apprenticeships, whether that's an apprenticeship through one of our higher ed institutions or whether it's a private apprenticeship through an employer, because those are ways that you can learn specific skills probably better than in a lot of other ways. CTE, I think as I've come to learn through this experience here, CTE means a lot of different things to a lot of people. I thought of that as just simply high school curriculum that is focused on specific career areas such as health occupations or businesses or computers, but it can mean a lot of things. It can just simply mean education that prepares you for making decisions in the future.
NT: (31:47):
So, I think all of the above is interesting in Utah and have champions and people who are working on it. Industry recognized credentials, has people who are interested in it. There are certainly a lot of people who are interested in progression in your educational process. So being able to get in at the ground level and then build your way up. We have a program at Utah Valley University in Culinary Arts where you can come in basically from a trade perspective and learn how to do basics, food handlers permit, back of the house, prep stuff, but then you can take more and more classes and you can work all the way from nothing to having an MBA in hospitality management. And you can take that at your own pace. You don't have to do that all at once. You can take time to go work, entry level jobs, come back, then get some more skills and then try to get a job as a supervisor or as a manager, come back, take some more skills and then get a job maybe as an executive chef or however that plays out so that you can go from where you are, which is nothing, to the full potential, which is maybe being even the owner of a fancy resort somewhere.
NT: (32:55):
I mean, there's a whole range of possibility of what you could do within that industry and in that sector.
ES: (33:02):
As a legislator and someone with a very deep background in economics and statistics, I wonder what sort of information you and your colleagues really need to make decisions about the value of these programs. Are they being successful or what do they need to be successful? And I wonder if there's particular types of outcome data, labor market information, student success measures, other data sets that you find particularly useful in trying to make those valuations.
NT: (33:32):
I haven't really thought a lot about that. The last day and a half have caused me to think a lot more about that, about what should policymakers be looking, what should we be looking at when we're evaluating, for example, a particular associate's degree program that's costing us money, we're paying for it. What do we want to know before we decide this is great, let's keep it, or you know what? Actually, let's refocus and shift those resources to something else. That's kind of a big question that has been talked about the last day and a half or so. So, I really want to just hit the pause button and go back and talk to my local colleagues and say, "Well, okay, how is this going to work?" I know that we have an effort right now looking at a lot of these programs at credentials, at CTE, at our APEX programs, at associate's degrees and so on.
NT: (34:19):
And we really need to think about, okay, what is the metric that we're going to use to make decisions based on future funding, future resource allocation and future prioritization? And I don't have an answer for you today as to what that looks like, but I do know that it's going to require at a minimum data on individual student success. We're going to need to see what happened to Johnny or Susie who participated in this program, where do they end up three, five, 10 years down the road? And then we can use that to analyze was that program effective in producing the kind of results that we want for our economy
ES: (35:02):
Well, this discussion reminds me of so many I've had about different policies over the years. We are in a culture of instant results, and these are not instant results. These are things that take a long time and you need to get together with colleagues and talk about them and try and figure out, as you were just saying, "Oh, that's a question we need to answer and that's not something we have the answer to right now." Big picture, what do you see as the biggest opportunity or challenges in connecting these education and workforce systems?
NT: (35:33):
For sure the biggest opportunity is alignment. I've asked this over and over again, which is, does our higher ed system understand and connect to our economy? What are we trying to do here? Now, there is an argument to be made and people will make it that the higher ed system is not supposed to be connected to the economy, that they're supposed to produce people who have these inherent skills for being a successful citizen, a desire for lifelong learning and surely those are all great things, but if we're going to invest taxpayer money into a system, we should expect some connection to what we are working on, which is the economy. As legislators, that's how this works. We need revenue to provide services. That revenue comes from economic activity, so we want to make sure that we're paying attention to the goose that's giving us the golden eggs that we can then use to fund social needs, public safety, health and human services, et cetera, so that we've got the resources to do our job, but we've got to have the revenue source be strong as well.
NT: (36:49):
So, I think there has to be a lot of thought given to why do we have a higher ed system in the first place? And then the second part of that is why are we subsidizing with taxpayer money? And those are not necessarily the same question, but they are related and we have to think about them at the same time.
ES: (37:08):
As we wrap up here, you mentioned before questions you want to go back with. I wonder what is the big question or takeaway that you're going to go back and talk with your colleagues about in Utah?
NT: (37:19):
I think the biggest thing that I need to discuss when I get back is what is our plan for having a robust data system in place that will allow us to do these analyses? And if I could pick part two to that thing is then, okay, Nan, how are we going to use that data? What are the programs that we're going to evaluate? How are we going to assess the value? How are we going to measure the ROI? But you can't even ask those questions until you know what your data source is going to look like. So, we have to get the data piece figured out and I think we are on track for that, but we need to get serious about having the data piece solved so that we can do that second part.
ES: (38:03):
Representative, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about this and sharing not only your perspective on it, but also coming to the meeting and learning some other perspectives. So, thanks very much.
NT: (38:17):
I'm so happy to be here. I've learned a lot. In fact, I learned a lot more than I thought I was going to learn, but it's been a great experience and we're going to go back and make some difference with this.
ES: (38:29):
I'll be right back with Senator Arthur Orr of Alabama.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
When it comes to podcasts, only one organization NCSL keeps a focus on the people, policy, and politics of state legislatures. Each episode of our podcast offer behind the scenes insights into the legislative process. First, the program Our American States provides in- depth discussions twice a month on key state policy issues shaping our nation or explore bipartisan dialogue with our special series Across the Aisle, where diverse political perspectives converge to create constructive conversations in state legislative chambers. And for history buffs, we also produced a six-part series called Building Democracy: The Story of State Legislatures. Listen to learn more about the creation and development of the first branch of government in the United States. Stay connected, stay informed. Subscribe to these programs now on your favorite podcast platform. Learn more at ncsl.org.
ES: (39:57):
Senator, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you on.
AO: (40:01):
Thank you so much, Ed. Good to be with you today.
ES: (40:05):
So, we're talking here at the Career Pathways for Higher Returns Meeting in Bozeman, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why this is a topic of particular interest to you and why it's important for your constituents there in Alabama.
AO: (40:19):
Well, it's extremely important to those of us in Alabama but also across the country. One of the not so good statistics that we have in Alabama is that our workforce participation rate is extremely low among the lowest in the country. And so, one of the questions that we grapple with in the state is how do we get more people engaged out into the workforce? Is it a lack of skills training that they have so therefore they just choose not to participate? Is it the young person coming out of high school that's obviously not going to go to college, but they don't want to flip burgers either and sometimes get in trouble or get pregnant or whatever and they don't transition into the workforce as a high school graduate or is it a college graduate who got a college degree and a major that quite frankly, there's not enough demand out there for them to become gainfully employed in their area of newfound expertise per their certificate or diploma they got from their college or university.
AO: (41:30):
So, all those things working together, we see a real need to emphasize our workforce and workforce development in the state. We've taken some steps to address the issue, but now it's time to try to execute those steps and those plans and make sure that we reach our goals.
ES: (41:53):
Well, as someone with a degree in English literature who had to figure out a way to make a living, I certainly appreciate that point you made. There's a lot of focus here on the return on investment for education in workforce programs and I wonder what that return means for you in Alabama. Is it earnings? Is it the number of people employed? Is it meeting the demand employers have or is it something else?
AO: (42:19):
Well, that's something that we discussed several, several times here at the conference and there are states that are examining their return on investment. I chair the appropriations committee in Alabama and consequently seem to or tend to look at things through the fiscal lens. And when I look at our colleges and universities, one of the things that my ears perked up was the ROI on our students that are graduating, how are they benefiting the state? And of course, themselves, it's not all about the state, but that's something that I plan to go back in Alabama and examine what is our return because we give hundreds of millions, billions over the years to higher ed institutions and we hope that they do well. We hope that they're getting students prepared. They each have individual boards of trustees that are supposed to be watching that factor. But my fear is a lot of times those boards are getting glowing reports from a college president and all as well and our budget is balanced and we're doing a great job here as opposed to really looking under the hood and saying, "What kind of product are we creating and how are they turning around and impacting our state in a positive way?" And to your question about what is ROI, I think we do have to be careful and not get too caught up in the earnings.
AO: (44:02):
If it's all about the paycheck that an individual gets after getting their diploma or credential or whatever, that can be a little shortsighted because there are a lot of areas that we need skilled individuals and we want them to pursue vocations that appeal to them, but they may just quite frankly may not pay that much. And I'm thinking of a schoolteacher. We try to pay starting pay of $50,000 plus benefits in Alabama and that may not sound like a lot to those in California or New York, but it's a decent living. But then over time, 20 years, they may be at the whopping salary of $65,000 or $67,000 20 years later, not that much wage growth as you would see in the private sector.
ES: (44:58):
There are a number of education workforce pathways. I know you've been discussing at this meeting CTE and dual enrollment, apprenticeships, community college and I wonder if some of those are getting more attention than others in Alabama right now.
AO: (45:13):
Yes. Well, I can say, quite frankly, all the above. We started a grant program for career tech facilities for bricks and mortar and equipment across the state and it's $100 million, now it's $150 million and continues to grow that's focused just on that particular need. We're requiring school systems to join with a sister school system somewhere in a continuous school district. So, we have some economies of scale, so they'll share the resources. Not every school district needs their own freestanding brand new $20 million, $30 million career tech center and that's certainly something that's new in our state forcing this, I'll call them shotgun marriages to have these school systems join forces and share those resources. Apprenticeships, I'm a big fan of apprenticeships and getting the business community involved by sponsored legislation that's passed that gives tax credits to have or host apprentices and have them on the job site and working to improve their skillset and also keep them working and keep them getting some kind of salary so they're not starving while their education continues.
AO: (46:42):
We've done other things. We've changed our Department of Labor to a Department of Workforce and combined more workforce development responsibilities in that new department of workforce. And so, we're making a lot of changes and we're trying to set a foundation that hopefully will pay off in the years ahead with a better skilled workforce, which of course it's about attracting businesses, helping businesses to expand, increasing commerce, which increases tax revenues and other things that allows state governments to pave more roads and build more educational institutions, whatever the needs may be
ES: (47:24):
We as a society are awash in data and I'm wondering what sort of information, what sort of data or other information that you as a legislator need to make decisions about the value of programs along these return on investment lines. Is it labor market information or student success or some other kind of outcomes data that you as legislators look to as most valuable?
AO: (47:48):
Well, personally, I don't have the time that a researcher may have to accumulate or assemble all the data that may be out there, but I do want to tip my hat to an organization like NCSL and their ability to aggregate data, pull it across the country, point out the differences between the states as far as here's some policy decisions that this state made and it's having a real impact and here's the data to back that assessment up and that it is having a positive impact on the citizens of a particular state. So, all that to say the importance to me is to make sure the data or the sources are reliable and that we can depend on it As
ES: (48:40):
We wrap up, I wonder what the most important takeaway is from this meeting. It might be a question you're going back to Alabama with, or maybe it's something else, but what would you say to that? What's the most important takeaway for you?
AO: (48:53):
It is. And again, I appreciate NCSL having a focus on it. So much of the time we give a lot of attention to the college graduates, oh, we're so proud and they deserve all the accolades that they get, but we forget that's still a minority of the population, less than 50%. And helping all the others get skilled, getting conversant with going to the workforce if they are a young person, challenging them, "What do you want to do? What's your passion? What are you interested in? Is it agriculture and we have programs for that, or is it mechanics and some engineering type? Is it construction?" All of those things we need those young people and people, adults, adult learners plugging into our state's economy. They're very, very important. But again, for so many years, the emphasis was on the college track and universities even in the high school, it was all college preparatory information kind of coming at the students and career tech was not given the level of interest and attention that it needed.
AO: (50:14):
So, we've done a real shift, and I think other states are certainly doing that same shift and it's important as a country if we're going to continue that we build up our workforce and give it the dignity and respect that it deserves and always should have. And I think unfortunately starting maybe in the ’60s, ’70s and up to a decade or so ago, it lost a lot of that. I don't know why, but it did, but we're given the attention there where it needs to be. And that's again, something that maybe didn't learn in a seminar, but it just shows by NCSL having a conference on this very issue the importance of it, just like the workforce pill that the feds passed recently, how that will impact credentialing and training, et cetera, for workforce skills. And the government needs to be a partner with business and industry in preparing people for the workforce.
ES: (51:21):
Senator, thanks so much for taking the time to discuss this. I think that's a good point about the focus on college. There certainly are a lot of other pathways for people to take. Take care.
AO: (51:32):
Thank you, Ed. Good to be with you.
ES: (51:37):
I've been talking with Mary Alice McCarthy, Representative Norm Thurston, and Senator Arthur Orr about the value of measuring the effectiveness of education and training programs. Thanks for listening.
Search for NCSL podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast, Our American States, dives into some of the most challenging public policy issues facing legislators. Our occasional series Across the Aisle features stories of bipartisanship and check out our special series, Building Democracy on the History of Legislatures.