The Job
By Paul Fain
issues
The Job: Financing Training
As income-share agreements are becoming toxic amid unflattering headlines and regulatory pressure, outcomes-based loans appear to be on the rise.The nonprofit Social Finance has used this form of lending as part of its mix of $350M in investments since launch…
The Job: Frontline Workers
As more companies offer employee education benefits, some are adding education startups as well as college partners, in an attempt to better serve frontline workers.For example, Amazon recently tapped EnGen, a language learning platform, as an education provi…
The Job: Reader Survey
Thanks for reading this newsletter. I'd like to hear from you about how to make it better. Likewise, my colleagues and I are looking to expand coverage from Work Shift, The Job's sister publication, and we want your input on what content would be most interes…
The Job: Paper Ceiling
A new national advertising campaign will seek to influence employers to look beyond the four-year degree in hiring, with the message that a “paper ceiling” holds back half the U.S. workforce.The ads from Opportunity@Work and the Ad Council are slated to start…
The Job: Local Solutions
The federal government has increased its spending on workforce-focused education and training programs. And some new federal money is flowing toward apprenticeships and career-connected high schools.Yet most of the big-ticket proposals to help younger America…
The Job: Major Shift
In a bid to encourage students to consider vocational education, Colorado Mesa University is slashing tuition in those programs by almost 40 percent.Colleges tend to use standard tuition rates across their academic offerings. During the online pivot early in …
The Job: Student Centered
A recently formed group of six colleges and universities is taking the mantra of “listen to students” to the next level—by tapping learners to solve higher education’s biggest problems.The pandemic and related enrollment collapse have prodded many in the indu…
The Job: Hybrid Coaching
The two biggest challenges facing any alternative to traditional college that’s aimed at working learners are: Will it actually attract students?Does the model provide the sort of support lower-income students need to succeed?Hybrid colleges are explicitly de…
The Job: Essential Roles
Government attempts to tie funding for colleges to measures of how their graduates fare in the job market are controversial and tricky to design. Similarly, the student success performance formulas most states now use to fund public colleges can be ineffectiv…
The Job: Transfer Credit
StraighterLine went live in 2009, well before the “year of the MOOC” a decade ago.The online course provider is not accredited. But its low-cost, subscription-based courses have been reviewed and recommended for credit by the American Council on Education. Th…
The Job: Foundation Funding
If alternative paths to college degrees and good jobs are going to work for meaningful numbers of lower-income working learners, the growing consensus holds that both employers and colleges need to be at the table—often with an intermediary organization.A new…
The Job: Work Commitments
The pandemic helped show that money is hardly the only reason why lower-income Americans pass up college. Many lack time to pursue a credential. And they want to have confidence that college will lead to a good job.Employer-sponsored degrees could help more s…
The Job: Sponsored Degrees
Instead of paying staffing firms $25K or more to replace each employee in high-turnover fields, a new project seeks to redirect that corporate spending toward a college degree completion program aimed at hiring more diverse—and loyal—entry-level workers.The e…
The Job: Time Poverty
Hardly a month goes by without a major corporation rolling out a free college benefit for workers. But amid all the hubbub, some question whether the small share of employees who take advantage of these benefits will rise.Only 2 percent of employees who are e…
The Job: Course Sharing
As they struggle with historic enrollment declines, many community colleges are reassessing their online and hybrid programs, including what worked and what didn’t during the pandemic-driven pivot to virtual learning.Online content sharing across a consortium…
The Job: Bypassing Degrees
Opportunity@Work has had a PR bonanza with its campaign for employers to drop degree requirements. Now the group wants to “rewire the labor market” by helping workers without degrees land good jobs.This week the nonprofit rolled out a pilot project with Young…
The Job: Quality Control
The latest Congressional push to open up Pell Grants to short-term programs faces an uphill slog. But it probably won’t be the last attempt.The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment last month that would allow students who enroll in some programs …
The Job: Paths to Degrees
Amazon is working directly with colleges on its growing free college program for front-line workers—a lot of colleges, fittingly.The company announced today that it has partnered with more than 140 colleges and universities through Career Choice, the educatio…
The Job: Reboot in Tech
Google’s new $100M tech training fund is the latest in a series of substantial investments by big tech in education programs that are aimed at recruiting and preparing workers for millions of unfilled, well-paying jobs in tech.The new spending typically inclu…
The Job: Community Hubs
A nonprofit group that was a pioneer in helping more community college students get to graduation is expanding its focus to include social and economic mobility, with a goal for two-year colleges to be community hubs for an equitable economic recovery.The piv…