This report sets a vision for the role of education and training providers through aspirational use cases, building on the prior skills-based hiring report which described the role of employers and job candidates. It lays out these use cases to examine potential points of failure and priorities to mitigate them. Education and training providers, including employers who provide these services (we’ll refer to them as providers) can consider what use cases to pursue. Tech vendors can inform their roadmaps, policymakers can identify ways to incentivize participation, employers can inform their partnerships with talent suppliers, researchers can connect and expand their work, quality assurance providers can consider outcomes-based accountability, and workforce intermediaries can facilitate change and collaboration. Education and training providers serve a group we’ll call learners, which includes students, workers, job candidates, and anyone else who is learning from providers, keeping in mind that many learners are working, caregiving, and looking for work all at the same time.
It will take well-designed collaborations across the public and private sectors to seize the best opportunities for innovation while avoiding the pitfalls. A systematic exploration of the complementary roles of education and work is needed to design accessible, affordable, and effective solutions to reverse a shrinking middle class. Education, training, and recognition for skills learned across all settings are now an imperative across the lifetime of learning that careers will demand.
