Developing the Future Workforce: Revitalizing Postsecondary Education and Training after COVID-19. 2020 Solutions Brief. Sustaining Capitalism

Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board. 1530 Wilson Boulevard Suite 400, Arlington, VA. Tel: 800-676-7353; Tel: 202-296-5860; Fax: 202-223-0776; e-mail: [email protected]

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Postsecondary Education; Job Training; Educational Change; Distance Education; Online Courses; School Closing; Educational Improvement; Educational Innovation; Accountability; Agency Cooperation; School Business Relationship; Business; Leadership Responsibility; COVID-19; Pandemics

978-0-8237-1412-4

The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken all levels of education and training. As they struggle in the pandemic environment, colleges, job training programs, apprenticeships, and other forms of postsecondary training face many of the same health and service-delivery challenges as education providers at earlier ages. However, merely weathering COVID-19 would be a setback to the postsecondary sector. Long before the pandemic hit, it was in need of greater innovation and accountability for students of all backgrounds to help them develop and prosper from their talents. After a decade of slow recovery and expansion from the last economic crisis, too many working age Americans remained economically vulnerable and seemingly stuck in low-income jobs. And for too many students with low-income job prospects, time in the postsecondary education and training system represented a financial risk out-of-proportion to its likely benefits, given the costs involved and the odds of noncompletion. This report outlines how policymakers, business leaders, and educators must address COVID-19's near-term disruption but also transform how the future workforce is trained. Solutions in the national interest should move the country toward a system of broader, affordable access and improved individual outcomes--in which business, education providers, the government, and individual students more fully share in the cooperative enterprise of preparing and supporting the workforce. The report recommends ways policymakers and business leaders can shore up the US economy, prevent cuts in critical education services, reduce lay-offs, and mitigate long-lasting economic harm from the COVID-19 pandemic while strengthening the long-run effectiveness of education and training programs for a successful 21st-century economy.

ERIC

2020

ED607128