How to Align Academic Programs with Workforce Needs and Serve Nontraditional Students:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 260 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Kathleen deLaski

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast 260 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Kathleen deLaski 

How post-secondary education can evolve to meet the needs of today’s diverse learners.

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Guest Introduction

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Kathleen deLaski. Kathleen’s an education and workforce designer as well as a futurist and founder of the Education Design Lab in 2013. EDL helps colleges begin the journey to reimagine higher education toward a future of work. Her nonprofit has helped 1200 colleges, organizations, and economic regions design shorter, more affordable pathways for learners to achieve their economic goals.

Prior to starting EDL, she was on the board for the George Mason University, as well as now currently an adjunct professor there. Her background’s interesting to me, though she’s spent 20 years as a TV and digital journalist, including time at NPR, she was the ABC News White House correspondent, and the first woman Pentagon spokesperson.

She recently released a book entitled, “Who Needs College Anymore”, and she joins me today to talk about how post-secondary education can evolve to meet the needs of today’s diverse learners.

Kathleen, welcome to the program.

Kathleen deLaski: Thank you for having me.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure. I am looking forward to our conversation.

You have done some incredible things in your career over many, many, many years. Less than mine, of course, but I want to hear about them, especially talking about how you got into higher education. That is fascinating, and what you’re doing as part of the education design lab. So, if you would, share with our guests today, you know a little bit about your background.

Kathleen deLaski: Thank you. Thanks for asking.

[00:02:06] Kathleen’s Journey into Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: Well, you know, I came to higher ed accidentally. The first half of my career I was a journalist, mostly a television journalist. I had a stint, as the Pentagon spokesman for Bill Clinton in the early nineties, just as the Berlin Wall had come down and it was a whole new era, so these were interesting roles. And then I went back to journalism, I was intrigued by this little startup that was called America Online, that was in the mid nineties, and they were looking, I actually answered an ad in the Washington Post back when, we had classified ads, Oh yeah.

Kathleen deLaski: And, it said, looking for a national journalist to bring political coverage onto the internet. And I knew what the internet was because I’d been at the Pentagon. But, anyway, I went and applied and I got hired. I didn’t know anyone there, and that was quite a ride, but after that, I just had small children and I was looking for a, a job that was, maybe to use some of my varied skills, and I took a role at Sally May, which is the student lender, as an executive there. And what intrigued me about the job was they said, we need to start a foundation. We have $50 million that’s been bequeathed to the company, but we have to use it for philanthropic purposes and we need someone to kind of figure out what should we be doing in the education space. That really intrigued me, so I took the job and started their foundation and really started to learn about the whole “college is possible, college for all” movement and started to learn how many people were left on the wrong side of both the information divide about how to get to college and the degree divide. So that kind of started me on my journey. And from there, I had a series of roles in first in the K 12 space, working in the charter school movement, and , helped. A woman who was at the time kind of famous, Michelle Re, who had been the DC school superintendent, I helped her start a national nonprofit to push on some of those ideas. But eventually I found my way to higher ed and I think it took me to actually working in higher ed and I think what got me there was I was, I was appointed by Governor Warner, at the time, in Virginia, and then Governor Kane reappointed me to be on the board. The, they called them the Board of Visitors in Virginia, for one of the major universities. And George Mason University was my college that I served on the board for.

And that was really eye-opening to see, even at a college where the tagline is “where innovation is tradition,” and they were winning US News awards for top innovator.

[00:04:38] Founding the Education Design Lab

Kathleen deLaski: It was super hard to make innovation happen, , so what I ended up doing after eight years serving on the board was starting a nonprofit with the blessing of George Mason, and they agreed to incubate it, but the purpose of the nonprofit was to help colleges around the country disrupt themselves, if you will, and think about, “how do we serve a broader spectrum of learners than the ones who make it through the door”.

Drumm McNaughton: Is that the genesis, the beginning of the Education Design Lab?

Kathleen deLaski: Yes, absolutely. It really started, it started as a sort of kitchen cabinet project at George Mason University with the then president, Ángel Cabrera, who has now gone on to be the president at Georgia Tech, but he was a huge supporter of the early initiative.

Drumm McNaughton: So Education Design Lab has been around for about five years now, hasn’t it?

Kathleen deLaski: No, no. Actually, since 2013, so 12, 12 or 13 years now.

Drumm McNaughton: Wow. And you’ve worked with community colleges, you’ve worked with baccalaureate colleges, all sorts of kind. What is the focus of the Education Design Lab? Because I think a lot of your work there at EDL has fed into your book, “Who Needs College Anymore?”, is that a fair assumption?

Kathleen deLaski: Absolutely.

[00:05:58] Focus on New Majority Learners

Kathleen deLaski: Pretty early on we began to focus on, what we dubbed or the moniker we gave to new majority learners, those are, you know, the learners for whom college was not designed originally.

Drumm McNaughton: Non-trad students?

Kathleen deLaski: Yeah. We don’t like the word, we don’t like “non any”, right? Everyone tries to get away from using the “non-language”, like if you’re kind of otherized by “non” words, right?

But new majority learners is a more positive spin on the fact that the types of the categories of learners we’re talking about actually form the majority of learners today. It might be folks, the categories include lower income learners, first in family learners, returning vets, single moms, people who have to work while they’re in college. So anyone who isn’t put in the backseat of the family SUV and driven off to the leafy campus and dropped off for four years. Right? So a majority of folks who fit into the new majority category, and I dedicate the book to them,these are the folks for whom college isn’t working. And college in its degree, particularly the four year degree form. We’re making strides, I don’t wanna suggest that we haven’t made strides in com in the completion agenda, we’ve certainly made strides in access to broader groups over the last 40, 50 years. We’ve made progress in completion, but it still stands that 62% of American adults do not have a college degree, and I really wrote the book to ask the question and try to answer the question, “What are we doing for them?” and what is the role of colleges beyond trying to get more people to sign up for the degree and to try.

Have we come to a time now? I say that we have, that we’re on the cusp of an era where we, you know, yes, let’s keep offering degrees and I’m not suggesting otherwise, and let’s keep helping a broader spectrum of learners get all the way there. But let’s not spit out the 40 to 50% of folks for whom it doesn’t work, and could we have offerings, could colleges themselves, have offerings for some of the folks who aren’t even trying to come to the door right now, because they think they don’t have the academic profile or the confidence to succeed?

And we can talk about what some of those alternatives are, but I try to lay them out because they’re there, they exist. But both our national narrative as well as our financial supports for alternative pathways to financial success are really subpar, substandard. We need to do better.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, there has been this push for more workforce development type initiatives and I think that’s great, I think there needs to be that piece with it.

[00:08:55] Skills-Based Learning and Workforce Development

Drumm McNaughton: But it was interesting and I just skimmed over the article, Scott Carlson from the Chronicle, with his article today, interviewed a researcher who talks about skills and skills knowledge. And it reminded me, trying to nail down what are the skills that are transferable.

If you’ve got the AACNU, you’ll take a look at working in teams or critical thinking, et cetera, et cetera, and this researcher seemed to me very astute, he says, “those are great skills, but they are very specific to a particular discipline”. And that reminded me, years ago when I was part of the Institute of Management Consultants, which is a standards body for consultants in the US, when we looked at consulting skills, there were consulting skills, but there were also technical skills that were required. So trying to do something devoid of particular industry, particular skills, whatever, it doesn’t work. And I suspect part of that is what you get into your book, “Who Needs College Anymore?”, the intersection of workforce development, the K 12 and the post-secondary.

Kathleen deLaski: Right. And so the key word in what you’re describing is context, right?

Drumm McNaughton: Perfect. Exactly.

Kathleen deLaski: When an employer is looking at a resume, they don’t wanna see learning outcomes. They wanna see skills and more and more colleges are gathering the tools to help students make that translation.

I profile one university, Western Governors, in the book, which creates with every student a skills profile, and they’re using this library, this huge library that has 150,000 skills that they have scraped from job banks. I think they’re working with Burning Glass Institute or Light Cast to get the data, and then each student, through their academic advisor, is coached on, “okay, you know, this might have been an English class and you might be interested in going into HR, and here’s how the critical thinking skills from the learning outcomes, here’s how they translate to a job, and maybe even a keyword that you’re gonna see on a job posting when you’re gonna apply”. And they’re making that connection with every class, and I think that’s, that’s what we all have to do. I teach at George Mason now, and I’m trying to make those connections. I teach design thinking, which the book is based in that methodology, and I teach higher education redesign, and I’m trying to map what we’re doing in the classroom. I give them learning outcomes, but then next to them I try to place skills, you know, here are the skills. And so at the end of the class, I actually surveyed people on, you know, okay, how confident or how comfortable do you feel with these skills? Which ones would you put on your resume now? And I got quite a range of answers. Like, I would give myself a B minus as to whether I did the job of helping them get through understanding the translation all the way to comfort with the skills. I didn’t get there.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, And that’s not easy to do, especially for “traditional academics” ’cause academics are not trained this way. You’ve got outside work experience. I do. I was in the military for 15 years, I was in industry for 10 years before I started in working as a academic, so I could relate real world experience, real world skills, to what students were learning. But not all faculty can do this, or they haven’t gone down that road far enough to where they are able to do it.

Kathleen deLaski: Right. Where you see it work really well, ’cause I teach in the honors college at Mason, so I have students from all majors, which makes it really interesting to see how it’s working differently, and the majors that are tied to licensing, like nursing and teaching, for example, and then some of the engineering ones, it’s much easier, I think, for those professors to connect specifically because they know exactly where the bar is for the job that their students have come to this college to prepare for.

And that actually, you know, really gets you thinking, “okay, if we have that kind of mapping, the skills mapping, in fields where there’s a license, why can’t we do that in other fields”? And I think it’s not completely the college’s job and I’m actually discussing this with my dean right now. Like we’re looking at, “okay, what about if you were an English major or a history major, or you’re not in a field like that. How do we give you that same bar, and how do we get those answers from the employers who hire”? And I think where I went with this in the book, is to suggest that we need to kind of call for what I call a skills genome, which has to be driven by employers, and you see it in certain professions, and you see it because those professions have had shortages. Right? And they had to come together, they were incented to come together, ’cause they were just poaching each other’s, applicants or employees. And if you come together and actually map a ladder of where people can go it’s a much more organized way to expand a pipeline, really.

And that’s really the genesis of skills-based hiring, this movement that is, I talk about in the book and which is, you know, having some success. Although I will say that the skills-based hiring, the idea that employers are gonna hire based on skills not degrees, it’s slowed down a little bit right now, I think because of the softening economy.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. It’s also too, this expert that Scott interviewed was talking about skill-based learning. And it’s unfortunate, but it’s true that more students are expecting colleges can drop them as graduates off at the front door of business and be ready to jump in. And frankly, that, that’s like me graduating from the Naval Academy with my physics degree and walking out to my first command and saying, “Hey, I’m here to be a pilot”, without going through all of the training and everything else needed to be a pilot. You know, you learn the basic piloting skills, all navigating instruments, et cetera, and you get your wings. And then you go to the, we used to call it the replacement air group, the RAG, to learn how to fly the specific airplane that you were supposed to. So it could be anywhere from 18 months up to two and a half years starting flight training, until you make it out to your first command.

Are we asking unrealistic things out of colleges to be able to do that type of thing?

Kathleen deLaski: Well, your listeners might not want to hear this, but what you are doing at the Naval Academy or wherever you got your undergraduate training, is that you were being asked to do a degree and kind of build the theory, and then you were being asked to do an apprenticeship, in effect, where you learned how to do the job. That’s a lot to ask, particularly at the price points that we’re asking students to do that today. Some of them are going to do that for medicine or for, flying planes or nursing. We have very high risk and high, high intensity, skill roles that will require that and people, only the hardy will sign up for it. Right? But we shouldn’t do that for every role. We need more of a step ladder approach where you can earn and learn as you go. And so why can’t, just to kind of build on the example that you gave with learning to fly a plane, why can’t a person do one or two years of theory and then do an apprenticeship, start to get the hands-on experience without having invested so much at the front end.

[00:16:59] The Future of Higher Education

Kathleen deLaski: I think that is the model that in the last chapter of the book called “The Great College Reset” I lay out 10 design principles and probably the core one really is this idea that colleges need to think more in the mental model of a stepladder approach. And I describe how the lab, for example, is working with a hundred community colleges to do that, and we don’t have a lot of data yet about outcomes. We’re starting to get a little bit, and it’s very positive. But that model, for many careers, makes more sense in this day and age.

Drumm McNaughton: So give me an overview of what higher ed or a “college reset” could look like mid-century. How should colleges be going? And I’m not saying this is all colleges, but I think it’s got to be tailored toward specific careers and specific skills.

Kathleen deLaski: Right. I’ll mention one. The big idea of the book in terms of the college reset is that by mid-century, most colleges, and or universities, you know, the elite institutions don’t need to change. They can keep doing what they’re doing because there is a demand, at one level for that product. But most institutions need to be thinking about how to serve a continuum of learner types with a continuum of offerings. So I, what I describe is can we be by mid-century, be at a point where the term college, or the institution, is an umbrella that is housing a range of services, if you will or offerings, for learners ranging from a degree, which we all know. All the way to much shorter form industry certifications. Services where you might help someone who’s coming outta the military, for example, just get credit for what they already know how to do, so assessment services.

There would also be, apprenticeships. We are working now and others are trying to get, you know, how can we help community colleges, for example, become apprenticeship facilitators for employers and for states. There’s some progress there.

And what about boot camps? Now, boot camps haven’t done that well with colleges, the private boot camps. I have a chapter called “The Rise and Fall of Boot Camps”, but what boot camps were trying to do makes a heck of a lot of sense in an age where technology changes or shortens the half-life of skills and to bring in practitioners to teach. It makes a ton of sense, and the only reason it’s failed, is because, students they can’t use their federal financial aid to do it, also, there’s not, the programs aren’t evaluated, so we don’t have the data, but if they were brought into the family as it were, and funded accordingly, it would make a lot of sense for many roles.

Potentially including the one that obviously the military is its own, that’s really the largest training institution in the world possibly, but for many careers it would make more sense to do an apprenticeship, then build maybe a boot camp in, where you’re getting that traditional college experience, and then you go to work for a while, and then you come back and build to the next thing. Or you do it alongside your job so that the college becomes your training partner throughout, your life, your working life.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. What I’m almost hearing you say, and the synapses are firing in a major way as you’re talking about this, is the role of a university could and should be different than the role of a college versus a community college, et cetera, and they all lead to viable careers. But what happens within each of those, and even going to like a regional public or something like that, is different than an R1, something like that. So it, it’s almost a segmentation of the path rather than everyone inspiring to or striving to be in the top 100 US News and World Report.

Kathleen deLaski: Right. If what you’re summarizing here is that different institutions will offer different versions of college, I would say “Yes, and…”, you know, there’s no reason, so I teach at an R1 and I think that we should be offering short-term boot camps. We have 30,000 students, the enrollment’s actually growing, but if we are in effect the regional university for Northern Virginia, we should be offering a broader range of things than just a four year degree. And our community college we partner with, Northern Virginia Community College, but there’s no reason why the university, particularly in the areas where, they have more expertise, should be offering short form training, and not just like executive education that they’re selling to companies.

Part of the problem is that universities and colleges are not set up to market beyond that 18-year-old who’s coming in through one pipeline, which is high school. Right? That is the marketing strategy. Right? And you know, everybody hired has continuing education departments where they were supposed to go out and get sweet contracts with companies to sell executive education. That was like supposed to be the cash cow, that hasn’t worked so well. Or OPMs, where we are, building our digital footprint. These were all strategies that make a lot of sense and we’re good at the time, but I, I’m asking us to think more holistically about, in a way that businesses do, which is, “what’s the segmentation strategy and how are you then going to acquire those customers?”

Drumm McNaughton: Oh. Education Alert. Talking about marketing strategy and segmentation. Not good. Not good. Computers gonna crash.

I know, but I mean I think about it in business terms, not because I’m trying to make money off the students, but because, like many, I just see the 62% who were being, left at the doorstep or spit out. Mm-hmm. You brought up something very interesting in the book. You talked about 10 attributes institutions need to have to be sustainable into the mid-century. For this audience, what do you think the most important one of those are? Besides money in, money out.

Kathleen deLaski: Well, I think I’ve already said it, which is the idea of the stepladder approach. That is definitely, I put affordability first because I think that is the number one reason, obviously, that learners are choosing or looking, even though it’s not very clear what else they might do besides trade school.

You know, the national narrative is very fuzzy and vague for what non college- going, learners who want their version of the American Dream. Like what are they supposed to do if they’re not going to college, trade school’s there, and that’s a good option for some people, but the other options aren’t there.

So you know, my recommendation to colleges and universities in terms of design principles is probably No. 1, affordability, that we need options that people in this day and age won’t do the cost benefit analysis and say, Wow, four years, that price tag, no!” You know, even though there’s discounting there, they don’t know there’s discounting. A lot of people are walking away from it.

I interviewed a number of folks and the number one reason is fear of debt. Right? But then the second issue is, well, what if you could offer them lesser versions of the offering. Meaning, short-term credentials, we call them micro pathways in the community college work we’re doing. Short-term pathways that are designed to get you to a particular role and to get you there within six months to a year. And then you paint a picture of a full degree and what the stepladder would do for a learner, and then you help them get started. We don’t have a lot of data yet on whether they would come back for the next piece, but if you make it manageable in terms of fitting into their lives, and then they see the salary bumps. There’s no reason why we can’t create this system, and I actually think this is one of the things that AI makes easier to create the visibility of career pathways for learners and employers.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, Michael Crow has done a lot of this at Arizona State and his comment, the reason for doing that I thought was brilliant. He says, “we try and sell somebody one time. We’ve already got their loyalty. Sell them multiple times throughout their lifetime, whether it be advanced degrees, whether it be new skills learning, et cetera”. It makes perfect sense.

Kathleen deLaski: It does. I think, as somebody who has tried to help my university figure out, “okay, how do we bring alumni back in the door for more learning?” The only group that’s figured that out is the advancement office. Right? And it’s for a different purpose, it’s not purpose fit. And I think if you’re going to try to do it for additional chunks of learning and training and support, you have to make that visible to your students the first time they come to you. Right? They have to see it as, you know, it’s almost like a gym membership. Right? Which is how some colleges are starting to move to that financial model. Where, you understand why you would come back, and the pricing is set up in a way that’s enticing.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah, well that gym model doesn’t have anything to do with climbing walls and lazy streams.

Kathleen deLaski: No. Yeah, that’s overblown. Yeah. No, I’m very sympathetic to the financial situations, that universities find themselves in terms of both needing to increase tuition, and the services that they have to offer. More and more is expected of them. And so I’m very sympathetic on that end.

 I think that the ecosystem owes it to individual colleges and college leaders to push on the advocacy side around new funding models. And I don’t mean just more money for the degree, but more money for more flexibility in how you use your dollars and how you train and educate, you know, a workforce.

Drumm McNaughton: I think that’s so critical, and when you throw in internships, externships, that’s where we’re moving toward this skilled base learning so that people can learn the theory and then put that theory into practice and learn the actual skills that they need, not necessarily in a classroom, but in a setting to where they’re using those skills all the time.

So Kathleen, thank you. This has been a fascinating conversation for me.

[00:27:43] Three Takeaways for University Leaders

Drumm McNaughton: I appreciate your coming on the show, as we always do, three takeaways for university presidents and their boards. What can they do to help with the same type of things that you’re talking about in your book?

Kathleen deLaski: I would say number one, think about while you have students there, what other learning services can you offer them. For example, industry certifications, you know, as colleges are starting to bake those into their courses, like how can you set students up for job hunting success, for example? What other kind of services can you provide to build that loyalty?

Secondly, I would, think about the structure of your org chart and ask the question, “are we looking out or are we looking in?” And in this age, I feel like collaboration, breaking down the silos between K to 12, employers, workforce development is more critical than ever. So, thinking about, “do we have single points of contact for people who want to bring in innovative ideas? Do we have employer engagement officers who are really helping to scale the access to apprenticeships and internships?”

Those are two of the things I would mention. And then the last one, we joked about talking about, words like product. I would say don’t be afraid to weaponize business practices on behalf of your students. If we’re there for student success and serving the needs of students, it’s okay to think that way. You may not use the language, but it’s okay to think that way.

Drumm McNaughton: Very true. Thank you. Those are great takeaways.

[00:29:25] Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Drumm McNaughton: What’s next for you?

Kathleen deLaski: Well, I don’t know. I’ve been on this book tour for a couple of months and it’s generating a lot of wonderful conversations across business, across higher ed, you know, meeting with accreditors and, also like parent groups. It’s been really interesting. So. I’m trying to figure that out. I don’t think I have a good answer. Yesterday I got asked, “oh, would you be willing to do some writing for our publication”? So, you know, maybe I’m gonna come full circle back to being a journalist.

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. Well, I have no doubt that whatever is next for you, you’ll excel in it. So thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been great to get to know you and I look forward to next time our paths cross.

Kathleen deLaski: Thank you very much.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you for listening today and a special thank you to my guest, Kathleen deLaski. Kathleen, thank you for a wonderful conversation, you gave me some great things to think about, and I look forward to the next time our paths cross.

To my listeners. Thanks again for listening. We do this because we enjoy being able to provide you this information.

We’ll see you next time.