Looking for the Missing Links Between Learning and Work? Check Your Chamber of Commerce

Chambers represent a regional microcosm of CAEL's national mission. As a trusted and impartial intermediary, CAEL fulfills that mission at the intersection of learning and work. Chambers of commerce also spend a lot of time in the niches where education and employment ecosystems overlap. Such spaces are becoming more common – and critical – as the need to align education and training outcomes with labor market needs grows.

That trend is reflected in chambers' growing representation among CAEL members. Recently, one such member, the Detroit Regional Chamber, joined CAEL for Building Bridges to Prosperity: Chambers' Impact on Education, Workforce, and Economic Growth. During the webinar, Christi Taylor, the Chamber's senior director of talent initiatives, and Meghan Schmidbauer, senior director of Detroit Drives Degrees, explained how the Chamber leads collaboration among employers, educators, and other stakeholders critical to the success of adult learners and workers.

Their insight, especially on overcoming gaps between educators and employers, resonated with the audience, which included other chambers and several colleges and universities. "A lot of times, education and industry are not speaking the same language," said Taylor. "There is, I think, mistrust on both sides."

Bridging The Talent Gap

The Detroit Regional Chamber serves an eleven-county region representing southeast Michigan. The Chamber assists its member companies on issues related to policy and advocacy, convening, and data collection and analysis. Education and training are longtime priorities within each of these functions. In fact, the Chamber began using Bridging The Talent Gap several years ago. The survey tool created, by The Graduate! Network, is now available through CAEL. Its parallel surveying approach is a nationally proven strategy for engaging employers to help grow a skilled and educated workforce.

The surveys are often sponsored by a chamber of commerce, but they are also effectively used by higher education institutions, workforce organizations, and employers to boost worker enrollment in education and training programs, strengthening regional partnerships among diverse stakeholders in the process.

BTTG has proven essential to the Chamber's sector strategies. The Chamber deployed BTTG surveys for a major health care system that had requested help identifying entry-level workers who wanted to take advantage of education and upskilling opportunities. Findings inspired the creation of the Chamber's Regional Health Care Talent Collaborative. Four health care systems, several colleges, universities and K-12 educators, and other community organizations comprise the Collaborative.

The BTTG surveys showed that most employee respondents aspired to complete a bachelor's degree. Under the status quo, health care providers were simply poaching workers from each other rather than addressing the systemic issue. Thanks to the Collaborative, said Taylor, successful models have emerged. They are helping entry-level, nonclinical workers navigate a career progression that allows them to earn a wage while completing credentials that qualify them for clinical roles also in high demand.

Taylor said the successes show that a targeted, sector-based approach can maximize the Chamber's impact. It also runs an automotive and mobility partnership and hopes to stand up similar models for other sectors.

“Sixty by 30”

Sector partnerships are a key facet of the Chamber's broader education and talent portfolio, which is itself a testament to an overarching focus on increasing access to upskilling and reskilling opportunities. In 2016, it adopted a "Sixty by 30" goal, meaning 60% of adults have a college degree or meaningful credential by 2030. The goal also calls for cutting the racial equity gap in educational attainment in half during the same time frame. Schmidbauer calls it the Chamber's north star.

In 2020, the Chamber launched Detroit Drives Degrees to help achieve it. The initiative runs on the collective work of 35 partners, which include businesses, government and philanthropic entities, and primary, secondary, and postsecondary education and training providers. Detroit Drives Degrees encompasses Detroit Reconnect, which is dedicated to helping Comebackers complete their credentials. It benefits from agreements from three area colleges to forgive institutional debt for returning students who maintain a minimum GPA.

The Chamber's education partnerships also support completion through improved transfer and credit for prior learning (CPL), a tandem that is a frequent focus at CAEL and the inspiration for one of its own communities of practice. A regional coalition of eight colleges collaborates through the chamber to improve credit transferability, credit transcription, and the award of CPL credits. The coalition includes two- and four-year public and private institutions.

Ethically and economically imperative

The Chamber's core business membership requires a pragmatic approach to boosting access to education and training, which Taylor stresses is "important and worthy and the right thing to do. But we also know as a business-serving organization, we really need to make a business case for investing in talent development."

Data, both national and in the Chamber’s customized local reporting, is key to making that case. In 2000, Michigan ranked 18th among states in per capita income and 34th in postsecondary education attainment. By 2022, the state had fallen to 39th in income while maintaining its rank in education attainment. "We are shifting to a knowledge-based economy, and it's no longer enough to compete in our region with only a high school degree," said Taylor.

The Chamber also uses data to create a transparent definition of a meaningful credential. "People are getting credentials that don't necessarily have high demand in the labor market, and employers are looking for skills and training that people don't have,” said Taylor of a problem she emphasized is national in scope. To address it, the Chamber analyzed all the occupations in Detroit and applied filters based on wage growth and quality as well as labor market demand. It then mapped those occupations to the credentials required to land them, and the education and the regional education and training providers that could confer them.

Credit mobility equals economic mobility

The work produced a series of career pathway maps focused on priority occupations, another Chamber effort that reflects CAEL’s national strategies. For example, CAEL recently designed career pathway maps customized to help workers and learners succeed in top technology occupations in south-central Pennsylvania. A hallmark of career pathway maps is on- and off-ramps to underscore the range of credentialing opportunities available to learners as they progress through careers.

"We know the data tells us that the clearest path to a high-paying job is a bachelor's degree," said Taylor. "But we also know that not everybody is at a place in their life where they want to go directly into a bachelor's degree program ... We were really interested in showing the on and off ramps related to these occupations."

The pathways include starting wages instead of the usual median wage metric, a level of transparency that Taylor says diminishes disillusionment. The pathways also list the institutions that grant the credentials needed for each occupation. Details include typical completion time and costs.

Further setting the pathways apart are their ties to the Chamber's credit mobility work. "For each of those maps that we've created, we also created a supplemental document that we're calling credit mobility dossiers," said Taylor. "We also wanted to highlight where articulation and transfer existed so that if somebody gets an associate degree and then realizes a few years into their career that they're at a dead end and they need that next credential, how can they maximize the credit they've already earned to get that credential more quickly." A list of institutions that offer CPL is among the information the dossiers curate.

Adult learners: the labor shortage solution hidden in plain sight

The pathways represent key outcomes the Chamber can point to in building coalitions that bridge educators, employers, businesses, and industry groups. Just as is the case with CAEL partnerships, adult learners and workers are the common denominator.

"When you look at K-12, the students are in the schools," said Taylor. "That's where you find them. That's how you engage them. When you look at adult learners, the learners are in workplaces, at our companies. That is where we find these learners. That is how we engage this population at scale. And so, we're really interested in working with companies to advance incumbent worker progression, lean into tuition assistance, provide education benefits, [and] contribute to barrier mitigation for their workers, which we know solves a challenge for employees, but also solves a talent challenge that employers are seeing."

The webinar also included discussions about the Chamber's support of students moving directly from high school to college, such as Detroit Promise, a scholarship program it administers. Not only does it encourage Detroit residents to attend institutions in their community, it focuses on completion, financially incentivizing participants to use college coaching services. The program began in 2013 as a philanthropically funded endeavor but is now permanently funded through tax revenues.

Additional webinar topics included the Chamber's hosting of apprenticeship partners and the publication of its annual State of Education and Talent report, which compiles metrics critical to measuring and managing progress toward educational attainment and equity goals and how it relates to business success. The webinar recording can be viewed at cael.org.