Volume 32, No. 2: Career Mapping
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Welcome to Vol. 32, No. 2, of Connections, the newsletter of the National Career Pathways Network.
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Career Pathways Leadership (CPL) Certification Institutes I and II (Introduction to Career Pathways and Deep Dive into Career Pathways)
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Dates: June 23–24
Location: Wojcik Conference Center at Harper College, Palatine, IL
(Special rates for attendees at Hilton Garden Inn in Schaumburg)
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Call for Proposals / Registration Open |
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NCPN CONNECT 2022 will be held Thursday–Saturday, October 20–22, at the beautiful Atlanta Marriott Marquis! Don't miss this outstanding professional development opportunity for adult, secondary, and postsecondary educators; workforce development professionals; and employers.
BE AN EARLY BIRD! Significant discount available if you register by June 1.
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Mapping Your Students' Career Pathway Opportunities
Debbie Davidson, Technical Assistance Director, CORD
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Each year new job titles and occupations emerge, and many students are faced with choosing a career they hope will provide advancement opportunities despite the uncertain landscape of the future workplace. Career pathway maps are planning tools that can help learners of all ages understand the opportunities available to them to learn and earn and realize success in the career paths of their choice. A “complete” career pathway map identifies entry and exit points aligned to credential attainment and advancing levels of employment and helps convey that a seamless pathway of stackable credentials is not only possible but critical to success in today’s labor market. |
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Equipping Career Pathways Leaders
Claudia Maness, Director, NCPN
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Success in designing and implementing Career Pathways programs requires strong leadership. To be effective, program leaders need some degree of understanding and expertise in multiple areas—counseling, alignment of programs from secondary to postsecondary, how to identify relevant business sectors and engage with employers, and how to form and maintain effective partnerships, among others. Sometimes people find themselves in leadership positions before they are quite ready to lead. Or they recognize the value of Career Pathways and would like to start a program but they don't know how to proceed. Or they already have a functioning program and would like to bump it up to the next level. If any of this applies to you—or if you would just like to sharpen the tools in your Career Pathways toolkit—please read on. |
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What American CTE Could Learn from European Vocational Education and Training
Recommendations from a new report
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A new report from the Center for Occupational Research and Development (CORD) and the Education and Employment Research Center (EERC) of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations examines vocational education and training (VET) in six European countries—France, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Finland, and Austria—with a view toward identifying strategies the U.S. system of skills training could learn from them. The report was produced with funding from the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program through Preparing Technicians for the Future of Work, a project of CORD, the parent organization of NCPN.
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Bite-Size Microlessons Explore Technician Skills of the Future |
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To function in increasingly complex employment environments, STEM technicians of the future will need skills in core content areas that transcend narrow job specialization. To help educators teach those skills, a project of CORD (the parent organization of NCPN) is providing instructional cards designed to help “future-proof” tomorrow’s technicians. The cards are a resource of Preparing Technicians for the Future of Work, a project of the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program.
The cards are organized under three broad skill areas described in the project’s Framework for a Cross-Disciplinary STEM Core: data knowledge and analysis, advanced digital literacy, and business knowledge and processes. Each card in the project’s growing library pertains to a skill set identified through consultations with industry experts as essential to STEM technicians of the future. Some of the cards focus on technical skill sets (e.g., digital twins, robotics, artificial intelligence), while others cover more general topics such as entrepreneurship and communication.
Each card provides a scenario-based microlesson supported by general information on the technology, vocabulary, a classroom activity, how the technology will be used in the workplace of the future, skills needed for high-paying careers in which the technology is used, associated cross-disciplinary skills, required education, future trends, and resources for further reading.
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Building State Career Pathways Systems: A Toolkit for State Policymakers, Human Service Agency Leaders, Community Colleges, and Partners
National Skills Coalition, December 2021
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"This toolkit is intended to help states create career pathways systems that integrate and expand partnerships between state human service agencies and postsecondary systems and institutions so that more people who want to train for a quality career can do so. Career pathways partnerships can help community colleges and human services work better and more equitably for working people by mitigating structural barriers that too often keep adults of color and those from low-income families from accessing credentials that lead to quality careers. The toolkit includes action that state policymakers, agency leaders, community colleges, and partner organizations can take to build career pathways partnerships that pair quality postsecondary education and training with support services."
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A Snapshot of the Shifting Landscape of Noncredit Community College Workforce Education
Rutgers, February 2022
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"Noncredit workforce education conveys work-relevant skills in a wide range of industries. Courses and programs are provided by community and technical colleges to an estimated five million students annually, and national survey data show that as much as one-quarter of adults hold a noncredit certificate, license, or other vocational award. Noncredit programs vary in length, and they may or may not lead to a non-degree credential. When credentials are granted, they are either awarded by the college through which the program was offered (often the case with certificates) or earned through an industry-sponsored assessment (more common in the cases of certifications or professional licenses). While there has been a substantial increase in interest in these programs among both students and policymakers in recent years, little research is available on their value or economic return." |
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Work Reimagined with XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling
XPRIZE, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges, recently announced five teams are advancing to the finalist round of the $5M XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling competition, a three-year competition reimagining the future of work and transforming how we train and educate workers. Launched in June 2020, XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling is sponsored by nonprofit venture philanthropy organization New Profit and incentivizes teams to develop and demonstrate the effectiveness of rapid training and reskilling solutions for individuals most vulnerable to employment loss. To learn more visit rapidreskilling.xprize.org or contact us at rapidreskilling@xprize.org.
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Joseph Fuller, Christina Langer, and Matt Sigelman, Harvard Business Review, February 11, 2022. "Two decades ago, companies began adding degree requirements to job descriptions, even though the jobs themselves hadn’t changed. After the Great Recession, many organizations began trying to back away from those requirements. To learn how the effort is going, the authors studied more than 50 million recent job announcements. The bottom line: Many companies are moving away from degree requirements and toward skills-based hiring, especially in middle-skill jobs, which is good for both workers and employers. But more work remains to be done."
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Emily Thomas, Workshift, February 17, 2022. "Five community colleges in North Carolina piloted a program to bring in new adult learners this fall. The number of takers exceeded expectations—and two-thirds of students completed or re-enrolled."
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©2022 CORD. Connections is published by the National Career Pathways Network (ncpn.info), an organization of CORD (cord.org). NCPN assists educators, employers, and other stakeholders in planning, implementing, evaluating, and improving workforce education programs. Questions? Mark Whitney, mwhitney@cord.org
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