Building an education-to-employment system centered on adult learners

Complete report

As the future of work continues to evolve, more adults will face career transitions that demand the acquisition and demonstration of new skills, creating cycles of learning and earning throughout life.

Despite the rapid changes in work, the pathways to employment through education and hiring have not made as significant or important a leap. Traditional pathways to employment were designed at a time when a degree or certification led directly to a first job, and that first job acted as the foundation for a career with a clear and generally linear path forward. If you chose that path, you could feel confident that success in education would yield long-term employment and promising opportunities.
But today, career paths are much less clear and much less linear. There are fewer guarantees of long-term success from any starting point.

Discussion of the “future of work” may give a false sense of security today by suggesting that we have time to prepare for that future. The reality is that the future is here. There is urgency to change the way that we educate, hire, work, and support one another for all workers to have a chance to succeed in the future.

The pathways to employment through higher education or vocational training that we’ve long relied upon are not designed for today’s workforce or labor market. They are siloed, opaque, and slow to change in a market that demands connectedness, transparency, and flexibility. The result is a disconnect between education and employment, and more importantly between job seekers and job opportunities.
This disconnect is evident in current labor market data, which show there are 7 million unfilled jobs in the United States and more than 11 million unemployed or underemployed individuals. Employers seeking to fill those jobs report that they struggle to find skilled labor to meet their needs. Individuals seeking job opportunities may not see a clear path to achieving their employment goals, and as a result, they could remain stuck in jobs that do not meet their needs or may give up looking altogether.