business and education together

Lessons From Collaboration Between Business and Educators During the Pandemic That Could Change Education Forever

Education systems are currently facing great barriers to preparing students for today’s world as well as the future. COVID-19 has made a unique impact on every community around the world, and even before the pandemic, many education systems lacked resources to provide students opportunities to thrive.

Yet, when the world went into lockdown in 2020, schools across the globe were tasked with reaching students through remote and distance learning. This exacerbated inequalities that already existed in the system, leaving at least a third of the world’s children (463 million) without access to remote learning. Educators took on the critical role of not only keeping students learning, but also ensuring the health and safety of students and their families while doing so.

Throughout this time, EY teams and 20 Teach For All network organizations began collaborating to equip teachers and their students with the proficiency, mindsets, and tools to navigate the shifting educational system. Together, we’ve learned a few key lessons on how collaborations between businesses and educators can help prepare students for the future of work. While each local context is unique, similarities in the nature of the challenges facing children from place to place mean that solutions often have the potential to be broadly applicable and to provide for improved learning outcomes well beyond the pandemic.

Corporate support can broaden connections and create opportunities for shared social action

The support that EY has given to Teach For All can serve as a model for how the core competencies of businesses can help equip educators with the needed skills and experience to tackle social challenges. For example, last spring, EY Lebanon professionals conducted a training for a group of Teach For Lebanon teachers focused on sustainable consumer products. The teachers collaborated to generate ideas around climate action and ideation in their classrooms. Inspired by this session, Teach For Lebanon fellow Fatima Shahrour organized a climate action activity for students at Sahaguian College in honor of Earth Day. Students explored and presented ways to protect the environment and create a sustainable impact in their schools. The students’ self-organized activism demonstrates how a shared vision to develop leaders who will take the future into their own hands was brought to life through EY support for Teach For All.  

EY also offers a mentorship program for Teach For All network partners’ teachers, which has facilitated cross-border sharing and collaboration. During school closures last year, Teach For Bangladesh teacher Anik Saha connected with a Teach For Lebanon alumna and helped him launch a community project in an underserved school in Bangladesh. A working group was formed; Anik worked with his mentor and EY Bangladesh volunteers to explore best practices and project planning tools to support the launch of the project, which is aimed at designing and providing individualized distance learning and psychosocial support to children.

As more and more organizations build the infrastructure for both in-person and virtual mentoring programs, they should consider how educators and other professionals might be included to collaborate on shared visions and social impact projects.

Collaborative projects can create new channels to reach more students

The pandemic pushed the entire education sector to reach new realms of learning and to use familiar channels in new ways in order to continue the school year and bridge the digital divide. In Nigeria, for example, Teach For Nigeria fellows taught on both radio and live TV while schools were closed, in partnership with the Ogun State government. This led to the launch of Teach For Nigeria Radio School. Inspired by this, a group from Enseña Perú supported a newly-launched educational program on a radio station in Ancash, a remote mountainous region of Perú, by providing content and production support. The Enseña Perú team is helping a local teacher who launched the show with lesson planning and production, as well as referring alumni and others to appear as guests on the program. These stories are an important reminder that old channels and learning methods can be revived to serve as a learning stopgap in times of disruption.

Around the world, teachers found inspiring ways to avoid this disruption—for instance, in Germany, one Teach First Deutschland fellow was able to tackle the digital divide with support from EY Germany professionals. The fellow worked with an EY professional to develop a fundraising and project plan to install Wireless LAN (WLAN) at his school, which provided more than 450 students and 40 teachers with access to the internet and allowed them to expand their computer literacy education programs. And in other parts of the world, some Teach For All network partners set up systems via social media apps where students and their families could access lessons on demand. To bring this to life, some teachers took the lead on building the infrastructure and communications needed to empower students and parents to access and use these resources. In each of these cases, actors in the corporate, nonprofit, and educational space teamed up to carry out a critical, time-bound action project with a specific target: to connect students with learning in a way that was readily accessible, or in a way that could be easily adopted by users.

Digital formats can allow students to be co-creators in their education

The shifting educational landscape also enabled many teachers to better understand the importance of enlisting the diverse perspectives of their classrooms to create better ways to teach and learn. Teach For India , with the help of EY India and others, worked to increase the accessibility of learning devices for students who had rarely used the internet prior to the pandemic. After shifting to online learning, one Teach For India teacher Akriti Sharma saw that her students exhibited more curiosity and ownership of learning.

Building on the excitement of a new format, Akriti was able to design lessons with her students and utilize the internet as a tool to develop their research skills. Akriti shared: “Our students did not just passively receive information in our classroom, but actively shaped their learning and knowledge. I have come to believe that students as partners in the classroom is the way forward.” When teachers treat students as co-creators in their classrooms, students build agency and critical thinking skills that boost their engagement and prepare them for their future.

Elsewhere in India, the shift to digital allowed students to co-create in another new way. Teach For India fellow Kavita Malik worked with Teach For Lebanon fellow Fatima Shahrour to facilitate a shared learning experience that enabled innovation and collaboration. Students in both classes engaged in a four-week unit that culminated in a final project in which they developed solutions to address global problems they all faced.

The future of work will be more interconnected than ever before. Providing students with opportunities to collaborate with peers from other communities helps them learn how to overcome cultural, language, and distance barriers and come together to solve challenges. Fostering connectivity deepens their understanding of the world as they learn not only about cultural differences but similarities too, leading to greater inclusivity and empathetic leadership.

Takeaways for the future

Prior to the pandemic, calls for greater collaboration between education, business, and nonprofits were abundant—but they were acted on typically through incremental, unhurried approaches. The insights we’ve gained throughout this period have shown that such a crisis can spur rapid, cross-sector collaboration which responds to urgent needs, and that disruption can lead to innovations and improvements that have staying power. We have seen that education can have a more flexible structure, that it can be inclusively designed and delivered across many channels, and that students should always be at the center of conversations around education and the future of work.

We have also seen that business can bring critical inputs to education, and that working together presents an opportunity to redesign how education can prepare students for the future, enabling them to thrive in a changing world. As the world continues to evolve and face new challenges, EY and the Teach For All network will continue to find ways to develop students as leaders who will solve for the world of tomorrow. Over 600 EY people have supported classrooms around the world, impacting more than 55,000 lives, including students, teachers, and their families, according to EY methodology. These numbers will continue to grow, and the lessons shared from this collaboration are replicable and relevant to other organizations that wish to do the same.

Updating and reinventing the complex systems that are preparing students for the future will require the collaborative action of many—this collective leadership can effect far greater, more sustainable change than any one organization could create alone. It will also serve as a valuable model for students who are growing up in an era that requires innovative thinking and rapid restructuring to respond to broad, interconnected challenges. Their leadership will inform the solutions of tomorrow, and it is their leadership that will drive the change we wish to see.

EY exists to build a better working world, helping to create long-term value for clients,

people and society and build trust in the capital markets. Enabled by data and technology, diverse EY teams in over 150 countries provide trust through assurance and help clients grow, transform and operate.

The global EY Ripples program aims to positively impact one billion lives by 2030. EY people, together with clients and other like-minded organizations, use their skills, knowledge and experience to bring positive change across three focus areas: supporting the next generation workforce, working with impact entrepreneurs and accelerating environmental sustainability. Learn more at ey.com/eyripples.

About Teach for All:

Teach For All is a global network of 61 independent, locally-led non-profit organizations (“network partners”) across the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific that together make up a network of more than 14,900 teachers (including more than 7,000 outside of the US and UK) and 88,000 alumni (former teacher participants) who are working to improve the quality of education for all children and enable them to learn and thrive. Across the Teach For All network, organizations recruit and develop future leaders to teach in their nations’ under-resourced schools and communities, which fosters leadership qualities in students. With this foundation, network organizations work with others to ensure all children are able to fulfill their potential.

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BASIC CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EDUCATION AND BUSINESS

Professor of Law, Charlotte School of Law

Understanding the connections between education and business matters. Questions concerning those connections abound, including: the extent to which higher education should make use of business methods; the extent to which education should focus on preparing individuals for jobs and careers, and if so how; and whether businesses, like educational institutions, should have both financial and social goals. Are the answers merely matters of ideology? If not, how can one reach answers that are well-founded?

In this note, I will examine the most basic connections between education and business. I will show that, at a deep level, education and business are inextricably interrelated. Through the examination, I will develop tools for understanding and offering well-founded answers to both practical and policy questions.

In a subsequent note, I will examine fundamental differences between education and business. In still other notes, I will apply the tools and analyses to issues such as: the problem of value in higher education; the reasons for education’s resistance to business concepts and methodologies; and the respective roles of accountability in education and business.

Common-Sense Views

Common sense says that there are and should be some connections between education and business. Education would seem to support business in certain ways and education would seem to draw on the methods of business in certain ways. This general outlook has long been with us. For example, in a 1903 essay, The Remote Relation Between Education and Business, the author argued for an important, albeit indirect relationship:

[E]xpert training for business or trades is hopeless in school. But some consolation remains in this, that the school is a good place for the harder and more disagreeable, but none the less necessary, training in manners, traits, and self-control. Business is system, organization, discipline, drudgery. A school rationally founded on these is better preparation for business than any other.

People continue to urge this type of indirect connection today, for example, with regard to the relevance of liberal arts education to career success.

To take another example, in a 1991 Harvard Business Review article, Does Business Have Any Business in Education? , the author challenged some prevailing assumptions, in particular “that school is school and work is work.” To the contrary, he argued that “in this new economy, school and work are necessarily intertwined. . . . Today more than ever before, school is about working and work is about learning.” People continue to urge this type of interconnection today, for example, as concerns apprenticeships and practical training in schools.

The common-sense view is rarely examined. But it immediately raises two sets of deeper questions. First, are the notions of education and business conceptually independent, like blue and square , so that any connections between them are merely contingent? Could there, for example, be no connections between education and business? Second, if the notions are not conceptually independent, can one identify connections more fundamental than those of common sense? If so, might those deeper connections explain or support the common-sense view?

People avoid the deeper questions or else struggle to provide satisfactory answers. One reason is the tendency to rely on paradigms: post-secondary education as the paradigm of education , and regular manufacture or sale of a good as the paradigm of business . But this is inadequate. Education and business are each considerably broader and reliance on the paradigms yields too narrow a focus. A second reason is that the notions of education and business are not fixed for all time. Each relates to and is influenced by a society’s current interests, beliefs, expectations, and needs. The scope and meaning of each is adaptable, like justice or common sense, rather than stable, like blue or round .

The task is to move beyond these limitations and develop a well-grounded approach to understanding education, business, and the connections between them.

Social Domains

To begin, just what are we talking about when we talk about education or business?

Each is a broad and complex domain of social phenomena. Each encompasses a variety of types of interaction, system, and structure. Education , for example, may variously apply to: the activity of teaching someone how to use a sewing machine; a method used for teaching persons how to use a sewing machine; a class or a program that includes instruction in the use of sewing machines; or a school in which one can learn how to use a sewing machine. A quick review of definitions and synonyms of business confirms that similar observations may be made about it, too. This underlying similarity—as complex social domains—suggests that there may be deeper connections which observation and analysis can identify.

Observation and analysis shows that there are two key commonalities between the domains. First, each essentially involves the same fundamental form of social activity, exchange . Second, each, in its own way, promotes or enables important types of social order .

These commonalities, in turn, illuminate and explain two basic connections. First, education and business can, without contradiction, overlap with each other, and often do. Second, each can provide support the other with respect to the other’s social function.

This much is largely an elaboration on common sense. What is important, however, is that analysis shows these commonalities and connections not to be accidental or superficial and not tied to paradigms. The analysis also provides tools and a framework for understanding, assessing, or urging other, less fundamental, connections.

Commonalities

Exchange is a pervasive form of social activity and a universal anthropological concept. It is “the chief means by which useful things move from one person to another.” (Fn. 1) Because law and business are so influential in our society, we tend to view exchange as necessarily economic or contractual. The paradigm might be the sale of potatoes for cash. But there are many types of exchange in any given society, each with its own characteristics and functions. In our society, kinds of exchange include selling consulting services; taking turns in a car pool; issuing a life insurance policy; extorting a victim; and giving money to public radio during a pledge drive.

Educational exchange involves the transfer from one person to another of particular kinds of intangible things: knowledge, skills, culture, and values. This description accords with common definitions or understandings of education but highlights the fact that the core activity is a form of exchange. An educational exchange can relate to an everyday activity, such as cleaning a floor, or to a highly complex one, such as designing gravitational wave detectors. It can also relate to a fundamental social domain, such as business, religion, politics, or law. Hence the existence of law schools and executive education programs in marketing.

There is an important qualification. Education applies to exchange activity only when it either has a measure of complexity or involves continuation or recurrence. Giving directions to a stranger on the street, while an exchange transmitting knowledge, would not be considered education. By contrast, offering workshops for tourists on how to navigate the city would.

Business also involves exchange. However, the scope of business exchange is broader and little constrained by subject matter. What is transferred may be virtually anything useful (or potentially useful), whether a rutabaga, a piece of information, or a euro futures option.

There are two important qualifications to this characterization of business exchange. Just as with education, the exchange activity must either have a measure of complexity or involve continuation or recurrence. A one-off exchange by two children of a frog for a turtle would not be considered business. But if one of the children regularly catches frogs and exchanges them for money or other items, the activity could be so considered.

In addition, business exchange is marked by the lack of a certain primary intention. A business exchange is generally one that is not carried out primarily for benevolent purposes or for purposes of advancing a societal, as opposed to an individual, end. There can, of course, be secondary intentions in a business exchange. For example, a secondary intention in the sale of wheat by a merchant to an NGO may be to alleviate hunger in a particular country. Indeed, there are both popular and technical efforts to import benevolence or social good into business exchange and business activity. Thus, there may not be a razor-sharp line between business and nonbusiness exchange.

As I will explain in a subsequent post, neither business nor educational exchange is a conceptually or empirically fundamental form of exchange. However, it is not necessary for purposes of this note to analyze these types of exchange further.

Social Order

Social order is the ability of members of a society to “coordinate their actions and . . . cooperate to attain common goals.” (Fn. 2) It contrasts with disorder and is reflected in the “regularity, repetition, and predictability of everyday social lives.” (Fn. 3) Education and business are each means for achieving and maintaining social coordination and cooperation. Each does so through a suite of activities, methodologies, systems, and institutions.

Education promotes order over time, principally through exchange activity. The exchange of knowledge, skills, culture, and values concerning a subject enables cooperation and coordination both at a given time and as between past, present, and future. It ensures (to borrow from William Faulkner) that “[t]he past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (Fn. 4) Educational exchange activity may be informal (e.g., a parent teaching a child how to fish) or more formal (e.g., an expert teaching welding in a community college). It may relate to narrowly defined phenomena or systems (e.g., bowling) or to broader patterns or systems (e.g., not prying into another person’s private life). Education, in its more structured forms, may further contribute to social order by, for example, enabling enduring access to knowledge, skills, culture, and values (e.g., through books).

Business also enables coordination and cooperation, but in different ways. First, as noted above, business exchange is not a fundamental form of exchange. However, most often it consists of a fundamental form known as market-pricing exchange . This form of exchange is based on systematic use of a common, flexible, and divisible measure of value. (Fn. 5) The most important such measure (although not the only one) is money. The ability to exchange useful items based on a common and divisible measure of value enables markets, which are mechanisms for coordination. It also enables a wide range of other activities, structures, and institutions important to coordination and cooperation, such as laboring for a wage and owning and valuing real property.

A second difference is that the methods, systems, and structures of business are broadly applicable. They can be applied to support coordination and cooperation in connection with non-business exchange and other activity. For example, accounting and laboring for a wage can support philanthropic activity or activity primarily for the public good. Or, for another example, branding in its modern (highly developed) form can be used in connection with phenomena that do not involve (or primarily involve) business exchange. For example, it has been extended to practices of personal branding , including use in non-market contexts (such as politics or social influence). This broad applicability stands in contrast to education: education’s associated methods, systems, and structures have limited applicability to phenomena other than those in the educational domain.

Basic Connections

These commonalities explain two basic connections that are easy to see and, at a general level, part of common sense: overlap and reciprocal support.

The criteria for educational and business exchange are not mutually exclusive. A given activity or suite of activities may have elements of both. Indeed, this is quite common. To take a simple example, a housepainter may employ an assistant (business exchange) while teaching her painting skills (educational exchange) as part of the relationship. To take another example, the conveying of knowledge and skills via a coding school involves both educational exchange (in the teaching activity) and business exchange (in the provision of services for a fee).

This much does not seem controversial. However, exchange overlap implies a broader overlap that often does generate controversy. Exchange is never an autonomous activity. It always involves some social relationship between the parties (even where there is anonymity):

Giving something to someone always means something. It indexes an intention to engage in a social relationship, creates a relationship, sustains it, marks its continued existence and its current status, or modifies it. (Fn. 6)

Hence, where there is concurrent educational and business exchange there are concurrent educational and business relationships. This alone does not seem controversial. It is easy to see in the coding school example that there are both hierarchical teacher-student relationships (educational) and market-based school- student relationships (business). What can give rise to disagreements is the respective scope of the two types of relationship, and which (if either) is dominant in the overall structure of relationships. For example, it is well accepted that educational exchange through a school must be accompanied by business exchange so that the school can be sustainable. But one often finds resistance to a wide scope for business relationships in the educational context, and pressure to limit or heavily regulate it.

Reciprocal Support

Education and business can provide support for the other’s societal functions. The kinds of support differ, however. A business activity, system, or organization, if complex or ongoing, requires some educational activity or system. It is necessary in order to ensure the continuing availability of knowledge, skills, culture, and values relevant to the functioning and success of the business activity. This much accords with common sense. Disagreements, however, arise as to the nature of the educational activity or system that best supports a given form of business (or business in general). Liberal arts education and practical training are two possible answers. “[T]raining in manners, traits, and self-control,” according to the 1903 article, is another.

Conversely, educational activities, systems, and organizations may need support from the business domain, particularly from its broadly applicable methods, systems, and structures. For example, systematic educational exchange may need to draw on employment relationships and on organizational forms developed within the business domain. The greater the complexity or continuity of the educational activity, the greater the need for these methods, systems, or structures. The recurring issues here concern the scope and character of the business methods, systems, and structures appropriate to providing the support.

These, then, are the basic commonalities and connections between education and business. They result from what we understand education and business to be. With some further refinement, the understanding and tools developed can also be used to clarify fundamental differences between education and business. I will explore these differences and their roots in a subsequent post.

The understanding and tools developed here can also be put to use with regard to other connections and differences which, although less fundamental, are of great important for practice and policy. I will explore some of these further connections and differences in a later post.

1 John Davis, Exchange (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992) 1.

2 Michael Hechter and Christine Horne, Theories of Social Order (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2009) 1.

3 Edward J. Lawler, et al., “Social Psychology of Social Order: An Introduction,” ed. Edward J. Lawler, et al., Order on the Edge of Chaos: Social Psychology and the Problem of Social (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015) 1.

4 William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun , (New York: Random House, 1951) Act I, Scene III.

5 Alan Page Fiske, Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations (New York: Free Press, 1991) 15.

6 Fiske 33.

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When Educators and Employers Work Together, Students Succeed

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F or going on a decade and a half, much has been made of the chronic shortage of workers. Month after month, US employers post millions of jobs while millions of Americans are actively seeking them—and yet those positions remain unfilled. The situation appears only to be getting worse: Workers entering the workforce find that they are unemployable, educators worry that their students lack the technical and foundational skills that employers seek, and companies struggle to deliver goods and services to customers in the absence of workforce-ready talent.

This vicious cycle remains especially true of middle-skills workers: those with less than a four-year college education but more than a high school diploma. Workers who don’t have a four-year college degree or higher constitute more than 62 percent of US workers over the age of 25 . They work in critical occupations across virtually every industry and are the life force that keeps America’s economic engine humming.

So why is fixing the middle-skills gap so hard?

Recently, in depth and for the first time, we investigated this problem from the employer perspective. As part of our research, we partnered with the American Association of Community Colleges and surveyed presidents, deans, or provosts at 347 community colleges across the country. In parallel, we surveyed 800 business leaders. These surveys made clear to us that one factor has played a powerful role worsening the middle-skills gap: inadequate collaboration between employers and educators. In this article we’ll sum up our findings, which we published last year in a report titled “ The Partnership Imperative ,” and we’ll offer some suggestions for doing better.

What’s gone wrong

In our research, we identified three main problems that are contributing to the middle-skills gap:

1. The struggle to produce workforce-ready graduates

Eighty-four percent of the business leaders we interviewed told us that they hired from community colleges, but many seemed to feel that community colleges were not producing graduates with the right kinds of skills for today’s needs. Only 26 percent strongly agreed and 36 percent agreed that their local community college was producing work-ready employees. The challenge of closing the middle-skills gap in America is thus not just a problem of matching supply and demand. It’s also an issue of quality and the work-readiness of the students coming out of the community-college system.

“The challenge of closing the middle-skills gap in America is not just a problem of matching supply and demand. It’s also an issue of quality and the work-readiness of the students coming out of the community-college system.”

Faculty at community colleges are generally under-resourced and over-burdened, and they lack direct access to employers’ workplaces or relationships with their opposite numbers from the private sector. Not only that, but their institutions also can’t afford to buy the latest technology and software licenses that power employers’ processes. Students without access to such resources are simply not ready to become productive in the workplaces that their course of study is intended to equip them for. Just as important, the dialogue between employers and educators as to how to improve the system’s performance is insufficiently frequent or candid.

2. An inadequate playbook for collaboration

For several decades now, the pace of change in technology has outstripped the ability of educators to institute effective curricular change on their own—a trend that holds true across occupations and industries.

To synchronize this change so that it meets rapidly evolving needs in the workplace, employers and community colleges need to work in tandem. The community-college leaders we surveyed recognized this: 98 percent told us that they’ll need to partner with employers if they want to create programs that yield work-ready graduates. Business leaders, on the other hand, were significantly more ambivalent; only 59 percent deemed such partnerships very important and 30 percent considered them only somewhat important. Perhaps not surprisingly, given those numbers, only 16 percent of community-college leaders described themselves as very satisfied with how employers collaborated with them and only 28 percent of employers described themselves as very satisfied with collaboration efforts.

One reason for tepid collaboration is that there is no playbook for such partnerships. While much ink has been spilled on framing this problem, in our research we have found that no clear understanding exists of what such a partnership would actually look like. Everyone accepts that when it comes to talent, educators and employers need to work together to better synchronize the quality and quantity of middle-skills talent—but they have developed no shared action plan for making it happen.

In most cases, this means that community colleges and local employers have drifted to low levels of equilibrium in their partnerships, settling for superficial, weak relationships with no accountability and little impact. Most community colleges, for example, pride themselves on their business advisory groups—but many of their business partners are small businesses or retired business leaders, and the advisory services are ad-hoc and transactional.

3. Partnerships trapped in low expectations

Our survey revealed that neither educators nor employers are investing the time and effort necessary to make a partnership work and improve continuously. Most community-college leaders felt that they were doing what they could to improve the situation, but they also expressed doubts about whether what they were doing was actually producing better outcomes—most notably, in the form of more work-ready students. Employers, for their part, admitted to doing far less to foster partnerships with local educators and to applying less effort in doing so.

“Our survey revealed that neither educators nor employers are investing the time and effort necessary to make a partnership work and improve continuously.”

In our research across the country, we found only a handful of cases in which students were graduating in decent numbers from programs to start jobs in their field of study that paid household-sustaining wages with local employers. When we studied these cases, we found an underlying pattern. Unerringly, one or more local employers were deeply engaged across a plethora of actions: influencing the curriculum, providing apprenticeships, tracking data, synchronizing the hiring calendar with the teaching calendar, training faculty members, and constantly providing access to the latest technology. Whether it was Siemens’ partnership with Piedmont Community College in North Carolina; or Disney’s collaboration with Valencia College in Orlando, Florida; or the truck manufacturer PACCAR’s association with East Mississippi Community College’s Golden Triangle campus, the programs that offered a glimmer of hope for closing the skills gap relied on the sustained commitment of business leaders, often in senior positions, to work directly with community colleges to drive results.

It’s worth restating that all of the successful partnerships we have studied were initiated and led by employers. It stands to reason that this would be the case. Employers know the emerging requirements of work and, more important, control the most valuable currency in the labor market—jobs. During the past two decades, for example, as the nature of work has evolved so rapidly, community colleges simply haven’t been able to update their curricula at a fast enough pace to give their students the skills needed by cutting-edge companies.

A playbook for partnership

We can do better. America’s business leaders need to recognize that just as they use best practices to manage suppliers, develop new products, and allocate resources, they now need to develop a specific, data-driven approach to partnering with community colleges, their largest potential source of talent.

“Last year, in ‘ The Partnership Imperative ,’ we put forth a set of more than 40 best practices that employers and educators can use to develop a close collaboration.”

We know quite well what the actions are that have the most impact in closing the middle-skills gap. For educators, these include prioritizing job-placement rates over graduation rates as an outcome metric, committing to hiring targets for graduates, and creating customized programs that meet employers’ emerging needs. For employers, these include supporting efforts to offer English language courses to students who speak other languages, donating or leasing equipment or license software to community colleges, and committing to guaranteed work-based learning opportunities or job offers for graduates of approved programs. Unfortunately, neither group is investing time or effort in these actions.

Last year, in “ The Partnership Imperative ,” we put forth a set of more than 40 best practices that employers and educators can use to develop a close collaboration. As part of that effort, we identified three main goals and laid out strategies for achieving each.

1. Partner with each other to offer training and education that is aligned with industry needs.

Strategies: Cocreate and regularly update college curricula so that they reflect relevant technical and foundational skills based on industry needs. Codesign programs that fit with students’ lives and industry hiring cycles. Incorporate classroom experiences that simulate real-world settings and scenarios.

2. Establish relationships with each other that result in the recruitment and hiring of students and graduates.

Strategies: Dedicate staff time to managing employer-college relationships. Create processes for hiring community-college students and graduates. Develop commitments for hiring and recruitment.

3. Make supply-and-demand decisions that are informed by the latest data and trends.

Strategies: Collect and share data on the local supply of talent. Collect and share data on the local demand for talent. Build mechanisms to jointly monitor and improve the supply and demand for talent.

If these goals and strategies and practices sound simple and rooted in common sense, that’s because they are. Solving America’s chronic skills gap doesn’t have to be as hard, expensive, or complicated as it seems to be. It will just require a mutually supportive and focused emphasis on collaboration—an effort that in many ways is led by business. Companies that rely on middle-skills workers have the most at stake in resolving the shortage of workforce-ready workers, and by investing in improving the performance of community colleges, they can strengthen their talent supply chain and ensure their ongoing competitiveness. In doing so, they can ensure better outcomes not only for themselves, but also for community colleges and all aspiring workers.

The bottom line is this: We know how to fix the broken employer-educator ecosystem. It’s now time to get serious about doing it.

This article was originally published by HBR .

Joseph Fuller is a professor of management practice and a faculty co-chair of the Project on Managing the Future of Work at Harvard Business School. He also cochairs Harvard’s Project on Workforce, a collaboration among members of the faculty at the university’s schools of business, education, and government.

Manjari Raman is a senior program director and a senior researcher for Harvard Business School’s US Competitiveness Project and the Project on Managing the Future of Work.

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Transforming the Role of Business in Education

An intensive one-day conference hosted by FSG, the Shared Value Initiative, and Stanford Social Innovation Review  

October 29, 2014 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. paul brest hall munger building 4 555 salvatierra walk stanford, ca.

Click here to learn more about the Shared Value Initiative  

Event Hosts:  

Sponsor: .

Quick Links Program Overview  | Conference Sessions  | Schedule  | Confirmed Speakers |  What Your Conference Fee Includes | Facilities and Location | Lodging | Rates and Registration | Privacy Policy | Contact Information | Co-Sponsors and Partner

Program Overview

Companies across industries—including technology, financial services, agriculture, and more—are beginning to play a new role in education. These companies are tackling education issues through their core business strategy and operations. In doing so, they are finding new ways to become essential partners for schools, nonprofits, and governments in helping to raise levels of student and workforce achievement.

This one-day conference, hosted by the Shared Value Initiative, FSG, and Stanford Social Innovation Review , will bring together business, education, and nonprofit leaders eager to explore new models to help address the world's educational needs. Through this conference, attendees will:

• Explore trends driving companies to engage in education in a new way.
• Discover how business, nonprofits, schools, and governments can create partnerships that improve education at scale.
• Gain practical recommendations for how corporate, government, and civil society leaders can work together to create greater value for society.

To learn more about how companies can create shared value in education, click here .

Conference Sessions

Morning General Sessions

Keynote Address: Introducing the New Role of Business in Education Sir Michael Barber, Chief Education Advisor, Pearson

The opening keynote will explain why we’ve come together to discuss the new role of business in education. The keynoter will review how traditional corporate engagement in education has left value on the table for both business and society and illuminate the trends that are driving business to engage in education in a new way. He will then discuss how Pearson is making this shift and argue why this transformation is critical to meeting our global education needs.

Panel: Can Companies, Government, and Educators Create Shared Value in Education? Dr. James Applegate, Executive Director, Illinois Board of Higher Education; Karen Cator, CEO, Digital Promise; Dean Florez, President and CEO, The 20 Million Minds Foundation Moderator: Eric Nee, Managing Editor, Stanford Social Innovation Review

This panel will explore how business, government, and education leaders can work together to improve the effectiveness of education systems at scale. Speakers will discuss two distinct approaches to shared value creation— building the workforce of the future and innovating for student success—and why these models are particularly worthy of our attention. Speakers will weigh the benefits and trade-offs of these approaches, and offer recommendations for how to effectively leverage the power of business to help improve educational outcomes.

Afternoon Breakout Sessions (Running Concurrently)

Breakout Session I:  Innovating for Student Success Diane Tavenner, CEO, Summit Public Schools; James Bernard, Senior Director, Global Strategic Partnerships, Microsoft Education

This session will focus on the shift that education and technology companies around the world are making to deliver products and services that have a measurable, proven impact on learners’ lives. Speakers will discuss the benefits and challenges of adopting this approach, and explore what it will take for more companies to integrate student success into their business strategy moving forward. Audience members will then engage in small roundtable discussions to further unfold these questions, and the session will conclude with speaker Q&A.

Breakout Session II: Building the Workforce of the Future Suzanne Fallender, Director, Global Girls and Women Initiative, Intel Corporation; Eric Johnson, Workforce Development Lead, Office of Education, USAID

This session will focus on how companies can evolve from passive consumers of talent to catalysts for developing a skilled workforce—and, in doing so, increase employability and economic mobility in their communities. Speakers will discuss the key ingredients needed to undertake this shift, from taking a broader view of workforce needs, to building cross-sector collaboratives, to aligning curricula with the skills needed for employment. Audience members will then engage in small roundtable discussions to further unfold these questions, and the session will conclude with speaker Q&A.

Afternoon General Session

Plenary: A Call to Action Bill Goodwyn, CEO, Discovery Education; Dr. Juan "Kiko" Suarez, Vice President of Communications and Innovation, Lumina Foundation; Jamie McAuliffe, CEO, Education for Employment Moderator: Mark Kramer, Cofounder and Managing Director, FSG, and Senior Advisor, Shared Value Initiative

The afternoon plenary will offer a vision for how companies and their partners can open up entrepreneurial and innovative solutions to addressing educational issues and realize opportunities to impact education through new thinking, new business models, and cross-sector collaboration. The speakers will share their stories of creating quality education for all and answer questions from the moderator and audience.

Closing Keynote David L. Kirp, James D. Marver Professor of Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California Berkeley

Networking Reception and Cocktails We will end the day with an open reception for networking and knowledge sharing.

TOP OF PAGE

Wednesday, October 29, at Paul Brest Hall:

Confirmed Speakers

Dr. James L. Applegate, Executive Director, Illinois Board of Higher Education

Sir Michael Barber, Chief Education Advisor, Pearson

James Bernard,  Senior Director, Global Strategic Partnerships, Microsoft Education

Karen Cator, CEO, Digital Promise

Rick Cruz, Director, FSG

Suzanne Fallender, Director, Global Girls and Women Initiative, Intel Corporation

Dean Florez, President and CEO, The Twenty Million Minds Foundation

Bill Goodwyn, CEO, Discovery Education

Eric Johnson, Workforce Development Lead, Office of Education, USAID

David L. Kirp, James D. Marver Professor of Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Mark Kramer, Cofounder and Managing Director, FSG

Jamie McAuliffe, President and CEO, Education for Employment

Eric Nee, Managing Editor, Stanford Social Innovation Review

Dr. Juan "Kiko" Suarez, Vice President of Communications & Innovation, Lumina Foundation

Diane Tavenner, CEO, Summit Public Schools

Matt Wilka, Associate Director, FSG

What Your Conference Fee Includes

• A full day of sessions and networking in a beautiful conference center
• Delicious, primarily organic and locally grown food: Breakfast buffet, gourmet boxed lunch, afternoon networking reception
• A list of conference attendees with contact information
• Access to additional post-conference resources and photos on sharedvalue.org
• Free Wi-Fi at conference center
• Free shuttle from the Sheraton Palo Alto hotel and Caltrain to the conference location
• Discounted parking

Conference Facilities and Location

The program will be held at Paul Brest Hall, a state-of-the-art facility located on Stanford University's campus.  View a Google map of the Stanford campus with the conference venue pinpointed.

Stanford is located between San Francisco and San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. The campus's 8,100 acres reach from the rural foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. Stanford is conveniently located between two major airports—25 miles south of San Francisco International Airport and 20 miles north of San Jose International Airport. Mass transit is available from both airports to the Stanford campus and area hotels: Find information about the free Stanford Marguerite Shuttle here. Find information about Caltrain here. Find information about Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) here.

The campus and surrounding areas offer a myriad of opportunities for recreation and sightseeing. World-class shopping and dining are located only a mile away at the Stanford Shopping Center . A half hour drive north brings you to San Francisco . A two hour drive south brings you to Carmel-by-the-Sea , where you can take in breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean. To find out more, visit Stanford’s Visitor Information Services .

The Sheraton Palo Alto The room block reserved for attendees at the Sheraton Palo Alto is no longer available. 

The Sheraton Palo Alto is conveniently located next to the Palo Alto Caltrain stop. Paul Brest Hall is a 30 minute walk or a short, free shuttle ride away by taking the Stanford Marguerite Shuttle "Y" from the Caltrain station (next to the Sheraton) to campus. View a list of other nearby lodging with a variety of price ranges. We do not have room blocks at these locations.

Conference Rates

Registration for this conference is now closed.

_________________________

Important Registration Dates July 22: Registration opens September 26: Early Bird rate deadline September 27: Regular rate begins October 22: Deadline to request refund with cancellation October 26: Last day to register online  

Transfers, Cancellations, and Refunds: A registration fee for the program may be transferred to another person one time with no penalty. A refund charge of twenty percent of the registration fee will be assessed for any cancellations received by October 22, 2014. Effective October 23, there will be no refunds for cancellation. Refund requests must be submitted in writing by October 22 and will not be processed until after the event. To speak to SSIR about transferring or cancelling your registration, please contact Devin Briski at [email protected] or call (650) 497-7620.  

Privacy Policy

Stanford Social Innovation Review,  FSG, and the Shared Value Initiative are committed to your right to privacy and to the ethical use of information online. We adhere strictly to the following privacy practices. We do not rent, sell, give, exchange, or otherwise share contact information with unrelated third parties.

This conference may be audio or video recorded, podcast, photographed, published, and archived. As such, participants and speakers grant  SSIR,  FSG, and SVI permission for recording and use of images.

Contact Information

If you have questions about registration, the program, or logistics: Devin Briski Stanford Social Innovation Review Email: [email protected] Phone: (650) 497-7620

Carrie Pogorelc Stanford Social Innovation Review Email: [email protected] Phone: (650) 724-3309

Co-Sponsors and Partner

FSG  is a mission-driven nonprofit organization specializing in research, strategy consulting, and evaluation. Through its field-building activities, such as the Shared Value Initiative and the Collective Impact Forum, FSG works to advance knowledge and practice among a global community of partners dedicated to accelerating social progress. Learn more at www.fsg.org .

The Shared Value Initiative is a global community of leaders who find business opportunities in societal challenges. Guided by FSG and a global network of funders, the Initiative was created in 2012 to drive the adoption and implementation of shared value strategies by organizations around the world. The Initiative connects practitioners in search of the most effective ways to implement shared value through four primary activities: peer-to-peer exchange; market intelligence; strategy & implementation; and advocacy. sharedvalue.org

Stanford Social Innovation Review ( SSIR ) is an award-winning magazine and website that covers cross-sector solutions to global problems. SSIR is written for and by social change leaders in the nonprofit, business, and government sectors who view collaboration as key to solving environmental, social, and economic justice issues. Published at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, SSIR bridges academic theory and practice with ideas about achieving social change. SSIR covers a wide range of subjects, from microfinance and green businesses to social networks and human rights. Its aim is both to inform and to inspire. www.ssireview.org

Partner The Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (Stanford PACS) develops and shares knowledge to improve philanthropy, strengthen civil society and effect social change.  Stanford PACS is a research center for students, scholars and practitioners to explore and share ideas that create social change. Its primary participants are Stanford faculty, visiting scholars, postdoctoral scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and nonprofit and foundation practitioners.  As publisher of SSIR , Stanford PACS informs policy and social innovation, philanthropic investment, and nonprofit practice. pacscenter.stanford.edu

SSIR.org and/or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and to our better understanding of user needs. By closing this banner, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to otherwise browse this site, you agree to the use of cookies.

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Why Higher Ed and Business Need to Work Together

• Michael D. King

Smart partnerships can help students get the skills they need.

Over the past decade, business has changed dramatically. As a result, workforce skills and requirements have also changed. There are jobs today that didn’t exist 10 years ago — data scientist, social media manager, app developer — and in five more, there will be new roles with new requirements that don’t exist now. But while this has happened, one sector has lagged behind: higher education.

• MK Michael D. King is the Vice President and General Manager of IBM’s Global Education Industry. IBM’s Education portfolio includes consulting and IT services, analytics and other software, as well as cloud and high-performance computing.

Partner Center

Related Expertise: Higher Education , US Public Sector and Government

How Higher Ed and Employers Can Partner to Power Talent Pipelines

October 19, 2022  By  Sacha Litman ,  Lane McBride ,  Tejus Kothari ,  Claudia Newman-Martin ,  Ruth Ebeling , and  Frank Breitling

• Drive higher-ed–employer partnerships from the top, via a trusted relationship built between the CEO of the employer and the president or chancellor of the college or university.
• Let company employees work at the institution—and let faculty work at the company. Willing employees can teach or train in colleges, which can reduce burnout and improve retention. Faculty can engage in real-world problems, seeing current industry issues up close. In both cases, the students can benefit from instructors’ corporate experience.
• Tap into economic development funds. In the US, states have allocated about 15% of their 2021 federal recovery funding to workforce development, economic development, and education.

Relationships with colleges can help businesses land great talent, but they can be tricky to establish and navigate. Taking seven actions can make them work.

Partnerships between higher-education institutions and employers can be invaluable for helping businesses respond to growing talent needs. They can offer employers a reliable way to cultivate an educated and trained workforce. They can cut employers’ training costs. And they can improve productivity as well as retention. At the same time, they can help states and regions become more competitive.

For all their benefits, though, higher ed–employer partnerships can be challenging to implement and sustain. Higher-ed institutions and employers often speak different languages around timelines, urgency, structure, and governance. In some cases, they may point fingers at each other over who is responsible for the talent gaps. And they find themselves guessing when it comes to predicting future market needs.

The reality is that there is far greater potential for closing the talent gap when both parties work closely together. To make sure that the opportunity doesn’t get lost in translation, higher-ed institutions and employers need to create partnerships by engaging in a mutually beneficial and transparent design process, anchored by data that includes projections of workforce demand, pro forma financial models, and the identification of capacity bottlenecks on both ends. And most important, both parties must consider the perspectives of students—not only what kinds of job opportunities they’re looking for but also what types of academic programs and financial aid packages will ease their transition into the work world.

• Education as a Catalyst for Climate Progress
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• Higher Education
• Reach the Next Level by Learning How to Learn
• Call for a New Era of Higher Ed–Employer Collaboration

In this article, we discuss how to enable these partnerships and avoid pitfalls from the perspectives of leaders in higher ed and business.

The Growing Demand for Talent

Even before the start of the Great Resignation, organizations in every industry faced growing recruitment and retention issues. According to a 2020 BCG survey, these issues are especially troubling in digital fields , where 40% of employees were actively job hunting and 75% of employees expected to leave their current job in the near future. However, other industries are also facing these challenges. In 2020, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics flagged the need for more nurses, estimating an additional 3.7 million new hires in the ten-year period from 2020 through 2030. Furthermore, the half-life of skills —the time it takes for a skill to lose half of its initial value—has dropped to less than five years.

To secure and expand talent pipelines, employers have the choice to go wide or go deep.

What can employers do to secure and expand their pipelines of new talent? They have the choice to go wide—to recruit workers from across regions who will work remotely. They can also choose to go deep—to build talent partnerships with higher-ed institutions in their locales.

The growth in remote work means that some employers no longer have to limit their recruiting efforts to their local market. The benefit of going wide is that it opens up vast pools of talent for jobs that companies need to fill. Going wide also allows those who choose to work remotely to do so, which can improve retention. And this approach can help extend the recognition of a company’s employer brand to other regions.

Yet going wide calls for careful planning: companies must excel at selecting the hard and soft skills that they need from a far wider pool of talent that many are not used to navigating. And it can be challenging to build and strengthen loyalty among a widely dispersed, remote workforce.

The option to go deep includes expanding partnerships with higher-ed institutions in areas where the effects of a company’s local brand awareness, selection processes, affiliation opportunities, and alumni network can be highly advantageous.

A 2020 BCG-Google survey of business leaders shows the need for closer collaboration between higher-ed institutions and employers:

• Only 36% believe that higher-ed institutions give their graduates adequate training.
• Seventy percent think that higher-ed providers should be more involved in job training, disrupting private recruiting and training companies.
• Eighty-one percent believe that better aligning educational curricula with job openings and skill gaps could resolve many of the skill mismatches that employers face.
• Eighty-eight percent think that higher ed could help potential hires acquire advanced technical skills, soft skills, and industry-specific knowledge.

A Higher Ed–Employer Partnership, Defined

What exactly is a higher ed–employer partnership? It is an agreement between a higher-ed institution and an employer to address talent shortages in key job categories, such as data science, digital technologies, nursing, programming, and renewable energy. Some employers partner with multiple institutions.

The particulars of such agreements differ depending on the organizations, but the employer typically commits to hiring a certain percentage of graduates in one or more disciplines (providing a clear demand signal), while the institution commits to increasing the number of graduates in one or more disciplines over time. These agreements also typically involve a set of joint activities. For example:

• Workforce Planning. The institution and the company work together to forecast talent baselines—the number of students that the institution expects to graduate in one or more disciplines and the number of graduates that the employer expects to hire in those disciplines. The institution and employer also identify and prioritize the hard and soft skills that these graduates will need.
• Academic Program Design. The two parties codesign the curriculum and jointly appoint faculty for their program. They determine the number and purpose of employer-sponsored internships and applied training programs. And they figure out the facilities, labs, faculty, and support services needed to accommodate an increasing number of students and to establish joint research or innovation hubs that involve students.
• Student Recruitment. The institution and employer outline the steps required to increase the number of graduates, including performing market research on target student populations, securing funding for student financial aid, and recruiting students.

East Tennessee State University’s partnership with BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is an example of an agreement to increase the number of students graduating with technology degrees. (See the sidebar “A Tennessee Partnership Builds a Pathway to Tech Jobs.”)

A Tennessee Partnership Builds a Pathway to Tech Jobs

And a partnership between Michigan’s Grand Valley State University (GVSU) and BHSH System showcases an agreement to increase the number of graduates with a degree in nursing. (See the sidebar “A Michigan Partnership Is Set Up to Solve the Regional Nursing Shortage.”)

A Michigan Partnership Is Set Up to Solve the Regional Nursing Shortage

Some talent partnerships include new or expanded student incentives. For example, some employers offer students forgivable loans if they finish the program and take a job with their company. To have a loan completely forgiven (or paid in full), a student must remain employed at the company for a certain number of years. If a student leaves before that time, the amount forgiven is prorated.

Why It’s Hard to Develop Talent Partnerships

Forming solid partnerships between higher-ed institutions and employers is more complicated and takes more time than typically anticipated. We see several primary challenges.

Workforce and Timeline Disconnects. Many employers struggle to make workforce projections—specifically, the types of skills that they will need and the number of employees with those skills who they will seek to hire. As a result, many organizations default to just-in-time hiring via staffing agencies or outsourced partners. Unfortunately, that approach not only favors lateral, experienced hires (rather than new graduates) but also makes it very difficult for higher-ed institutions to anticipate the number of qualified graduates needed in various fields.

Meanwhile, higher-ed institutions typically require at least three years to build new talent programs. The timeline usually includes one year to design or adapt an existing program of study, obtain state accreditation, and hire program leadership. Then, the institution requires a year to recruit the incoming group of students and another two to four years to graduate a cohort. That pace is typically too slow to earn the commitment of most employers that have not engaged in serious strategic workforce planning.

Decentralized Engagement. Currently, most higher ed–employer partnerships require the company to work with various administrative and academic departments across the institution to arrange internships, recruiting events, joint research projects, and corporate sponsorships. For example, an institution may have one recruiting schedule for MBA graduates that is coordinated through the MBA program, another for undergraduates that is arranged through the undergraduate career office, and another for PhD students that is set via a virtual recruitment office. Employers are often just as decentralized: business units may have their own recruitment projections and processes, with little if any coordination among them across the company. Such decentralization can be a significant deterrent to effective partnerships.

Many colleges want to help fill talent pipelines, but they are frustrated by businesses’ inability to provide only broad job categories.

Difficulties Describing the Competencies Needed. Most employers have not created consistent skill taxonomies or, if they have, kept them updated. As a result, it is difficult for them to articulate the competencies needed and give feedback regarding an institution’s curricula and whether it is meeting their needs. For their part, many community colleges and public regional four-year institutions want to help fill employers’ talent pipelines, but they are often frustrated by the inability of many businesses to describe what they need beyond broad job categories, such as software developer.

Compounding these challenges is the short half-life of technical skills—employers struggle to anticipate the evolution of skill sets. For example, while Python is now the standard programming language for data science, the standard was R a few years ago, and SAS or other object-oriented programming languages before that. As a result, university deans must make their best guesses about what competencies will be in demand.

Pushback from Stakeholders. It is possible but often difficult to gain agreement on forming a partnership among the administration, staff, faculty, and board members of an institution. For example, university faculty members sometimes voice the concern that accepting more students into a given program will increase teaching workloads, leaving less time for research.

Another concern—which can come from a variety of stakeholders—is that accepting more students will mean accepting weaker students, thereby adversely impacting school rankings. Yet, it’s possible to overcome such resistance. Says Philomena Mantella, president of GVSU: “[Agreement] often comes from appealing to faculty’s student-access mission.”

Uncertain Student Demand. College admission offices know how to fill the applicant pipelines for their current programs. But these offices are less clear about how to attract students (including adult learners and those who already have a degree) to the new or modified programs; they do not yet know the messaging and financial aid that will best resonate with prospective students in order to maximize enrollment. As a result, it’s not unusual for employers and institutions to guess at the size of the demand or to assume that if they build the program, students will come.

Actionable Strategies for Designing Successful Partnerships

So, what are the ingredients for a best-in-class higher ed–employer partnership? What does it take to build the linkages that keep filling talent pipelines year after year? BCG has identified seven key actions.

Ensure leadership and honest dialogue at the topmost level. We have found that the most successful new higher ed–employer partnerships are not delegated to a division at a company and a department at an institution. Rather, they are driven from the top via a trusted relationship built between the CEO of a company and the president or chancellor of a college or university.

GVSU’s Mantella notes, “Many CEOs and presidents say they are committed to addressing the talent pipeline but do not make it a personal or institutional priority.” Connection, trust, and time between these two parties are critical to successful partnerships. Also, the top executives on both sides should not shy away from tough issues. Adds Mantella: “It is important to ‘get to no’ early instead of engaging in lots of discussion. Nonstarters must be defined early on.”

It makes sense to build on an existing relationship between a CEO and a college president, but that doesn’t guarantee a solid, enduring partnership. “The new partnership will demand leveraging the strengths of the relationship and navigating the challenges,” says Leeanna McKibben, the chief of staff in the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. “This can be helped by clearly defining the partnership, understanding the needs and capabilities of each other, establishing complementary and mutual goals, and carefully identifying the necessary resources and requirements.”

Build a clear business case using hard data and specific, measurable objectives. A higher-ed institution and an employer that are considering a partnership often already have some sort of talent pipeline between them. Each side should start collecting data for the business case to further support that pipeline. For example, it would be important to know the number of graduates that have been recently hired by the employer, the programs they were in, and their roles when they joined the company. Ideally, the data could continue to track those graduates deeper into their careers so that the employer can speak to their retention and performance.

Additionally, both sides should collect qualitative input, including feedback from career services and academic units on the higher-ed side and from HR and hiring managers on the employer side. This information can help provide a baseline sense of the strengths and challenges in the relationship, as well as clarify specific forward-looking opportunities. Qualitative input can also spark open and honest conversations about each side’s responsibilities.

From here, each side should voice clear aspirations for what the partnership will deliver. BlueSky Tennessee Institute’s executive director Bradley Leon puts it this way: “Businesses need to step up to better define their needs for future strategic workforce talent and ‘skilling’ in order for higher ed to be able to respond effectively.”

Each side should share its data and jointly develop a business case for the partnership and include measurable objectives.

Next, the parties should clearly and candidly exchange information, including data about strategic workforce planning and skill gaps on the employer side, and on the higher-ed side, market research on the size and motivations of the target student segments. With each side sharing its data, both can jointly develop a business case for the partnership. That case should include specific, measurable objectives—for instance, the number of students who will complete the new or enhanced academic programs and be hired by the employer each year. There may also be specific objectives related to the diversity of students hired, the mix of roles they are hired for, and the expected retention and performance of new hires once employed.

The business case should also lay out a clear set of financial projections that cover the upfront and ongoing costs for the employer and for the institution, as well as the student enrollment and employment targets that would need to be met in order to be financially sustainable. Higher ed–employer partnerships can involve significant financial commitments to cover the expansion of facilities, faculty, and internships, as well as some form of student financial inducements paid by the employer. For example, loan reimbursements can reduce students’ concerns about heavy financial outlays and opportunity costs. Because partnerships can cost tens of millions of dollars, it is crucial to be able to quantitatively show a return on their investments.

Of course, it’s unlikely that the business case can be built on perfect data. That should not be a barrier to getting started. In fact, the business case can include market research and test-and-learn pilots. The market research should seek to understand the extent of student demand and what messaging will best resonate to maximize enrollment in these employer-aligned programs.

Assign a joint, nimble team to oversee the partnership. Instead of expecting the various internal departments of each partner to figure out how to proceed, the CEO of the company and the president or chancellor of the college or university should create a centralized engagement team. This means standing up a joint, nimble team, with representatives from each organization, to navigate relationships across the relevant departments and stakeholders on each side.

Expand early hands-on opportunities for students. One particularly promising step that effective partnerships take is to systematize and grow their applied training programs (including internships, apprenticeships, and cooperative education initiatives) with their higher-ed partners.

Offering applied training programs as part of the curriculum benefits the employer, the institution, and the student. The programs expose potential hires to a job, increasing their chance of being chosen and reducing the employer’s training burden later on. They eliminate as much as a year of onboarding time, boosting the employer’s productivity and closing talent gaps faster. And they prepare and screen potential hires, reducing employee attrition and the associated costs. For institutions, offering hands-on opportunities improves their value proposition to prospective students, which helps increase enrollment.

Let company employees work at the institution—and let faculty work at the company. Talent partnerships may focus on students who follow the path to becoming employees of the company, but win-win opportunities exist for the company’s employees and faculty members too.

For example, the company may have employees who are qualified to teach. This is often the case in the health care industry . Institutions can tap into this resource to support increased enrollment. The University of Pittsburgh’s McKibben notes that many successful partnerships jointly appoint willing employees at the corporate partner to take on teaching or applied training responsibilities. This practice can reduce employee burnout and improve creative thinking. It can also improve retention by letting employees develop a new competency, gain the prestige of being appointed to the adjunct faculty, and, sometimes, raise their salary. Students benefit from the richness of the real-world experience of corporate educators.

Enabling company employees to teach and letting faculty members have roles at the company benefits them and the students.

Similarly, enabling faculty from the institution to take advantage of opportunities at the company can also have significant benefits, according to Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, a popular digital career-services platform for students. Such opportunities can include joint research, advisory roles, or more informal shadowing. “It engages faculty beyond academia, giving them exposure to industry where they get to see the problems people in industry face and can incorporate those examples into the classroom from their own experience. It also provides faculty with direct feedback from their alumni on what curricular lessons have been most useful on the job.”

Design partnerships with scale and replication in mind. It is unlikely that a single partnership will meet all the needs of either the employer or the higher-ed institution. So, it’s important to consider not only how a partnership may grow but also to think about roles for other prospective partners. A case in point: BlueSky Tennessee Institute currently partners only with East Tennessee State University, but BlueSky’s Leon says his organization has always been open to the idea of working with other employers too.

Large employers, such as hospital systems or technology companies, often require varied types of partnerships with multiple higher-ed institutions to fill their talent gaps. Multiple partnerships also reassure corporate leaders that they are not betting everything on one institution’s ability to expand.

Many-to-many partnerships—where multiple employers are working with multiple higher-ed institutions—can also be highly effective for the participating organizations. And from the standpoint of a city, county, or state, these partnerships can be key elements in an ecosystem strategy, especially when coordinated by a central entity, such as an economic development corporation, a nonprofit, or a business council.

In addition to considering one-to-many and many-to-many partnerships, companies and higher-ed institutions should think about how they could form future partnerships more efficiently—where could they follow a consistent template to more easily replicate the process. Creating a partnership agreement, building the business case, assigning a joint team, and expanding hands-on student opportunities can all benefit from that template. In some cases, structural changes to the form of the partnership can enable nimbleness and impact. GVSU’s Mantella says that her previous institution, Northeastern University, created a 501(c)(3) organization to enable faster scaling of partnerships.

Tap into states’ economic development funds. In the US, many states have received federal funding, including from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. They are using the funds to drive economic vitality in several ways, such as to spur higher ed–employer partnerships and workforce reskilling programs, as well as to offer financial incentives to encourage students, higher-ed institutions, and employers to stay local. In recent years, site selection for businesses has been much more influenced by access to local talent. Economic development teams know that, and they understand clearly that in the world of remote work, talent is more fluid than ever. Accordingly, states have distributed roughly 15% of their ARPA State Fiscal Recovery Fund allocations to workforce development, economic development, and education. Businesses and institutions should keep an eye on what funding their states have available for economic development and understand how they plan to use it.

To close talent gaps strategically and thoughtfully, it will be essential for businesses to enter partnerships with higher-ed institutions. Such partnerships can enable employers to expand their talent pipelines, improve employee productivity and retention, and boost competitiveness. At the same time, these partnerships can enable higher-ed institutions to show a more compelling return on investment for prospective students, thereby increasing enrollment and tuition revenue.

However, higher ed–employer partnerships are no overnight fix. They require true commitment to avoid structural and process missteps. They need a data-supported business plan and a financial arrangement that works for both parties. And most important, they must put the needs of prospective students first.

The authors thank the following for their contribution to this article: Philomena Mantella, president of Grand Valley State University; Bradley Leon, executive director of BlueSky Tennessee Institute; Leeanna McKibben, chief of staff in the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh; and Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy office at Handshake. This article builds on a panel discussion held at the ASU + GSV Summit in April 2022.

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Future Business Leaders of America

Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) is the premier business education association in the country. The mission of Future Business Leaders of America is to bring business and education together in a positive working relationship through innovative leadership and career development programs. A national association of middle school, high school, career and technical, community college, college, and university students interested in business and business-related careers, FBLA has nearly 250,000 members and more than 15,000-chartered chapters throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Europe. March of Dimes and FBLA have enjoyed a successful partnership since 1970. In this time, FBLA has raised millions of dollars for us and, in turn, we’ve reached hundreds of thousands of young people with health education and mission messages. March of Dimes is FBLA’ s only national charity partner and attends all national and regional FBLA conferences. FBLA generates more than $250,000 annually through March for Babies participation and year-round fundraising in schools and communities. They also collect personal care kits for families that end up in the NICU.

Are you already a member? Visit the Volunteer Learning Center for ways to get involved.

What is FBLA?

The future of business.

FBLA is where you find leaders worth following.

Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) is the largest and longest-serving student business organization in the world. In more than 75 years of service to schools and communities in Nevada, the United States, and around the world, FBLA is the place where the world’s business finds its leaders.

The Business Educator’s Top Choice

Each year, nearly 7,500 business educators at the collegiate, high school, and middle school/junior high levels make FBLA a powerful tool for teaching business leadership to the next generation of entrepreneurs and executives. FBLA is a global leader in Career Technical Education (CTE). Founded in 1942, FBLA is the second oldest of all Career Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs) after The National FFA Organization (Founded in 1928).

Goals of FBLA

• Develop competent, assertive (aggressive) business leadership
• Strengthen the confidence of students in themselves and their work
• Create more interest in and understanding of American business enterprise
• Encourage members in the development of individual projects which contribute to the improvement of home, business, and community
• Develop character, prepare for useful citizenship, and foster patriotism
• Encourage and practice efficient money management
• Encourage scholarship and promote school loyalty
• Assist students in the establishment of occupational goals
• Facilitate the transition from school to work

Mission of FBLA

FBLA-PBL’s mission is to bring business and education together in a positive working relationship through innovative leadership and career development programs.

Code of Ethics

• I will be honest and sincere.
• I will approach each task with confidence in my ability to perform my work at a high standard.
• I will willingly accept responsibilities and duties.
• I will seek to profit from my mistakes and take suggestions and criticisms directed toward the improvement of myself and my work.
• I will abide by the rules and regulations of my school.
• I will exercise initiative and responsibility and cooperate with my employer and fellow workers.
• I will dress and act in a manner that brings respect to me and my school.
• I will seek to improve my community by contributing my efforts and my resources to worthwhile projects.

I believe :

• education is the right of every person.
• the future depends on mutual understanding and cooperation among business, industry, labor, religious, family, and educational institutions, as well as people around the world. I agree to do my utmost to bring about understanding and cooperation among all of these groups.
•  every person should prepare for a useful occupation and carry on that occupation in a manner that brings the greatest good to the greatest number.
• every person should actively work toward improving social, political, community, and family life.
• every person has the right to earn a living at a useful occupation.
• every person should take responsibility for carrying out assigned tasks in a manner that brings credit to self, associates, school, and community.
• I have the responsibility to work efficiently and to think clearly. I promise to use my abilities to make the world a better place for everyone.

Our Chapters

Fbla chapters.

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Spanish Springs High School

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TMCC High School

Valley High School

Wells High School

West Career and Technical Academy

West Wendover High School

Yerington High School

FBLA-ML Chapters

Adobe Middle School

Jerome Mock Middle School

Spring Creek Middle School

The Nevada FBLA Chapter was granted to the Nevada Department of Education in 1971 by the FBLA-PBL, Inc. National Board of Directors.

The heart of FBLA-PBL in any state is the combined leadership and service of local teachers and students who are advisers, chapter officers, and members of the organization. Together with the support of school administration, districts, and school boards, FBLA is a vital component of a school’s strategy for preparing graduates to be successful in the world of college and careers.

Board of Trustees

Meet Our Board of Trustees >

The Nevada FBLA Board of Trustees is the policy-making body of the Foundation composed of dynamic leaders and key stakeholders representing both industry, education, and community leadership. The Board includes alumni, higher education representatives, executives, the State Chair from the Nevada Department of Education, State President, and the Executive Director. The Board of Trustees works to ensure the success of the Nevada FBLA-PBL mission and works with and provides support to State Officers, State Staff, and Local Advisers.

Management Team

Meet Our Management Team >

The Nevada FBLA-PBL state staff works on the day-to-day operations of the organization, including conference and event logistics, financial management, marketing and communications, membership services, state officer leadership program, and technology infrastructure. They also work closely with the Board of Trustees, FBLA-PBL National Center, Nevada Department of Education, State Officers, and local advisers to help local schools build premier business and leadership programs.

State Officers

Meet Our State Officers >

The Nevada FBLA-PBL State Officer Team is comprised of students from all across the state. Members have the opportunity to run for a state officer position at the State Business Leadership Conference in the spring and serve one year terms, from April to April. State Officers represent the student voice of the organization with the State President serving on the Board of Trustees and Board of Advisers. State Officers develop an annual strategic program of work based on the strategic priorities of National and Nevada FBLA-PBL and serve throughout the year to improve program quality and opportunities for members throughout Nevada. The State Officers participate in a rigorous leadership development program and earn college elective credit during their year of service. State Officers work with local chapter officers to plan conferences, visit chapters, and expand membership opportunities for students throughout Nevada.

Local Advisers

Local advisers are an integral part of FBLA-PBL. Local advisers are high school teachers, usually teaching in the field of business, accounting, design, information technology or marketing. These teachers take on the dedicated task of serving as advisers for their school’s chapters, which includes organizing members, determining logistics of events and competitions, integrating FBLA and classroom concepts, and overall supporting the efforts and goals of their school and members. Based on school district policy, several FBLA chapters also utilize co-advisers (other school staff, alumni, parents, and industry volunteers) to support the local chapter program of work. Teachers interested in becoming a chapter adviser do not need to have prior FBLA-PBL experience. Advisers receive annual professional development training through Nevada FBLA and additional adviser mentors are available to assist.

Local Chapter Officers

Chapter officers are key to an exceptional FBLA-PBL experience. FBLA is intended to be a student-led organization and chapter officers serve at the forefront of connecting FBLA opportunities to student needs and college and career goals. Chapter officers are members of their local chapters who are elected/selected each year to serve their fellow members. Once elected, the officers work together along with their local adviser(s) and State Officers to ensure that the goals of the chapter are fulfilled. Becoming a chapter officer is a great honor and a great opportunity to both develop and apply business leadership skills in a real-world environment. While the structure of each chapter is different, chapter officers usually include a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and parliamentarian. Chapter officer teams often specialize positions to serve in specific roles like vice president of membership, vice president of service, vice president of finance, vice president of competition, vice president of public relations, and more.

Invest in the Lives of Nevada’s Future Business Leaders

The New Green Jobs Coalition: How Business and Higher Education Must Work Together to Meet the Moment

Posted April 16, 2024 by Frank Avery and Madison Myers

The Green New Deal Is Bringing Jobs and Skills into Existence

The term “green skills” isn’t a new one. But its presence as a driver for policy, workforce investment, job demand, and higher education alignment is roaring back. The implications of today’s movement are more wide reaching across sectors, occupations, and impacted skills with significant resources and new challenges for business leaders, higher education, and regional policymakers compared to past investments. With more than $1.5B in federal funding being infused into clean tech and clean tech-adjacent jobs, these changes also represent a unique opportunity for innovators and leaders to capture the momentum, leverage a record wave of resources, and deploy long-lasting, sustainable partnerships (pun intended) that yield benefits for businesses, workers, learners, and the communities they serve.

Changing the Green Skills Conversation

Historically, policy leaders have looked to workforce development strategies as a way to negate the human impact of transitioning from a legacy technology such as coal-fired power to a more modern one such as solar. For example, in 2015, the Obama Administration launched Solar Ready Vets to increase the use of solar energy and decrease American dependence on carbon-based energy. The program aligned veterans, industry-recognized credentials, and the government’s need for clean energy on its own assets, such as military installations, to strengthen the solar market, establish a training ecosystem, and create a pool of talent ready to deploy clean energy. The program, like many at the time, was a closed-system model. First, investors and policymakers identified a legacy technology. Next, they committed to a plan to retire and replace the technology. Finally, they designed and deployed a workforce solution to (hopefully) align workers with new demand, often incentivized through existing infrastructure projects. While these strategies can be productive for ad hoc initiatives or selected communities, they don’t quite meet the current moment: massive structural re-alignment for a new clean national economy. 

Green Skills Are Increasing in Demand Nationally and Regionally 

Today, we know that the green jobs revolution is broader and deeper than ever.

Our analysis of Lightcast job postings demonstrates that nearly 1,000,000 jobs requested some variation of clean energy skills over the past year, a nearly 33% increase since the same period in 2018. Job listings are showing more and more explicit demand for skills like “clean energy” (+148% increase), air quality (+125%), solar energy (+105%), and water energy (+102%). Meanwhile, “climate change” as an explicit skill request has surged in demand by nearly 400%. Certainly, some of this growth may be because employers didn't have the taxonomy to discuss green skills in order to solicit the skill through a job posting, or because the skills simply didn't “exist” in 2018. However, the sheer growth nationally shows how deep and cross-cutting green skills demands are and will exponentially affect jobs in the future.

As we continue to see dispersion of green skills across sectors and occupations, a recent report from our colleagues at Jobs for the Future and Burning Glass Institute offers framing for how to consider the impact of green skills across three jobs based on whether it is additive, blended,  or job changing.

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A National Imperative with Regional Distinctions to Develop Green Skills

As we look across the country, we can see just how many unique regional economies and industries are being impacted by the influx in green skills demand by looking at three states:

• California, a state that has long operated under a “green” culture
• Iowa, a major manufacturing and ag-tech hub
• Maryland, home to a massive public sector workforce for its own state operations, federal agencies, and as part of the nation’s third-largest MSA (Washington-Baltimore)

Key Regional Sectors with Demand for Green Skills

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Business-Higher Education Forum Analysis, Source: Lightcast data, 2024

California’s Professional Services Sector Is Demanding Green Jobs In California’s labor market, one of the sectors that we see notable increases in the demand for green skills is in professional scientific and technical services areas, including jobs like project managers, engineers, and environmental planners and scientists. In 2012, California had the highest number of green jobs in the country , boasting roughly 338,400 jobs or 2.3% of the state’s total employment share. Since then, we have seen continued growth in demand for green skills across sectors including 13% growth in the professional services sector. Higher education in the state has been on the forefront for years. For example, California Polytechnic State University has been a leader in the sustainability space through academic programs like their Environmental Management and Protection major, research, and institution wide initiatives, like their 4.5 MW Gold Tree Solar Farm that generates 11,000,000 kWh per year and is used for applied research and classroom projects. Cal Poly earned a STARS Gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education with a score of 75.14% in 2023.

Iowa Is Seeing a Green Manufacturing Boom In Iowa, manufacturing has long been one of the state’s leading industry sectors, and we see a major increase in green skills demand. As manufacturing firms and their supply chain partners quickly move to electrification—for regulatory, economic, or market share reasons—green skills are growing. What may be surprising, though, is the scale. In a comparison of job postings from 2018-2019 with postings from the same period in 2023-2024, we see a 31% increase in number of manufacturing jobs in Iowa that request some green skills. Across the sector, manufacturers are listing new green skills for job safety specialists, technicians, and electrical and mechanical engineers. At the same time, more “traditional” green jobs are also booming. As Mak Heddens of PowerUp Iowa notes , “Iowa has a greater share of wind energy jobs per capita than any other state in the nation,” and the state is also a major ethanol fuel provider with anticipated job impacts coming in the near future.

Maryland Is Deploying Public and Private Investments In Maryland, the state has deployed an aggressive combination of public and private investments to secure and accelerate wind energy as a key driver of energy production with an anticipated $3B in economic impact over twenty years for the Baltimore/Central Maryland region alone. Along with those jobs, the state and its counties have deployed an aggressive growth strategy for hiring state resources to analyze and administer clean energy programs and integrate sustainability principles into jobs such as urban and transportation planners, environmental scientists, and state policy analysts. These efforts are on top of the thousands of jobs expected to be delivered through major initiatives like the state’s $23M Good Jobs Challenge investment into off-shore wind jobs.

Building Pathways into Green Jobs Requires Collaborative and Tailored, Yet Scalable Solutions

Today, the proliferation of green skills comes with a series of new drivers: new market demand for skills, unprecedented accelerators from industrial policy, excellent timing for an industry well-known for high job quality, and low barriers to entry.

Picture3.png

Recent analysis from Brookings emphasizes that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act are pumping $1.25 trillion across a variety of projects over the next five to 10 years. And this doesn’t even begin to include the green skills needed for the anticipated 642,000 manufacturing jobs expected to be created by the CHIPS and Science Act nor the emerging impact of the $3B in American Rescue Plan Act funds invested into clean energy projects through the Commerce Department’s Good Jobs Challenge and Build Back Better Regional Challenge, among other included investments. While green jobs were already rapidly growing, recent federal investments have sent them into overdrive. However, with record funds, comes record challenges for collaboration at the regional level between employers, higher education, and community partners.

The Opportunity Ahead 

With a major economic growth opportunity under way, forward-thinking partnership practices have never been more important in closing record talent gaps by activating wider swaths of the workforce. The U.S. Department of Energy has highlighted the need to “standardize education and training” for clean energy demand and to “connect the dots between education, training, entry-level jobs, and long-term careers in the clean energy sector by aggregating resources at regional scale.” This leaves a major opportunity for business-higher education partnerships to take a lead in regional talent development in the clean tech solutions. Here are four ways to do so:

• Establish a Regional Clean Energy Talent Map: With the wide variety of green skills applications, it’s critical for regions to create a shared understanding of their green skills future. Through smart use of customized labor analytics, businesses and higher education institutions have a unique opportunity to define how the growth of green skills in their leading-edge sectors can be used to enhance their region’s competitive economic advantage—similar to how BHEF helps its members analyze major emerging skills and their anticipated impact on the workforce .
• Activate Sector Partnerships for Shared Vision: Sector partnership models can help businesses, higher education, and their supportive services networks come together to fully activate their workforce and recruitment efforts. Anchored with a strong intermediary and using a refined, evidence-based process, these partnerships can help ensure clear understanding of regional data needs and then align their regional efforts to meet the unique demands of their green skills ecosystems. In BHEF’s work, we’ve seen similar “cross sector” challenges with emerging demand for data analytics, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence benefit from a robust methodology and dedicated staffing from a regional or national partner to get momentum going. 
• Launch Purposeful Partnerships for Equitable, Demand-Aligned Pathways: As green jobs evolve, and disperse across most occupations and industries, business and higher education leaders can create equitable and responsible green skills training and literacy that is accessible to all. Through purposeful partnerships, business and higher education can work together to design equitable talent pathways aligned to in-demand roles similar to how we’ve helped Business Roundtable member companies create equitable regional pathways through higher education as part of our national Workforce Partnership Initiative .
• Refine and Scale National Best Practices: Industry sectors and communities across the country are designing innovative programs to meet the influx of demand for green skills. Federal investments created the resources to bring these programs to life, but it will be crucial to share best practices to refine and scale the successful efforts nationally. Networks like the Business-Higher Education Forum’s member and national collective of strategic partners can enable early-adopters for promising practices to better export, refine, and enhance opportunities for workers and learners across the country, much like how our member partner Accenture has done through the Chicago Apprentice Network ’s focus on fintech and professional services roles as it scales and replicates to cities across the country.

The current moment creates an unprecedented opportunity to close immediate workforce gaps for businesses, connect learners to high-quality green and green-enabled jobs, and create lasting sustainability benefits for the country. It just needs the right leaders with the right vision and ready-to-deploy tools to get there.

If you’re interested in learning more about how the impacts of green skills in your community are impacting your labor force—and early insights into how you, your business, and your regional higher education partners can activate their collective power to capture the economic benefits of the green skills movement for your workforce—email Frank Avery at [email protected] .

Search Utah State University:

Reimagining Business & Society: Transforming Business Education, Together

June 26-28, 2024

Location: USU Logan Campus

An Invitation to Co-Create the Future

We invite you to join us at our upcoming convening of the Undergraduate Consortium, "Reimagining Business and Society | Transforming Business Education, Together."

• CONNECT with fellow educators from a diverse set of institutions, with your own sense of purpose and with the unique place of our convening
• INSPIRE each other by sharing novel teaching methods that challenge convention and breathe new life into our classrooms
• LEARN practical strategies for leading change in teaching, research, and impact
• ENVISION possibilities, challenge assumptions and chart a course toward a future where business education is a catalyst for positive change

• Future Business Leaders of America

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

FBLA is the premier business education association in the country. The mission of Future Business Leaders of America is to bring business and education together in a positive working relationship through innovative leadership and career development programs. A national association of middle school, high school, career and technical, community college, college and university students interested in business and business-related careers, FBLA has nearly 250,000 members and more than 15,000-chartered chapters throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Europe. Though divided into five regions, a state chairperson and FBLA advisers primarily govern FBLA at the state level. In many states, the State Department of Education employs all three of these individuals who act as the statewide administrators for FBLA.

Membership FBLA is the largest business career student organization in the world, accepting members into three different age group levels: • Future Business Leaders of America – Middle Level (FBLA‐ML) designed for junior high and middle school students is the newest division of FBLA, with nearly 18,000 members • Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) designed for high school students and has over 216,000 members. • FBLA Collegiate  is the post-secondary division, reaching over 11,000 college students. In addition, over 11,000 advisors oversee chapters throughout nation.

Partnership March of Dimes has enjoyed a successful partnership with FBLA since 1970. In this time, FBLA‐PBL has raised millions of dollars for March of Dimes, and in turn, March of Dimes has reached hundreds of thousands of young people with its health education and mission messages.

March of Dimes is FBLA‐PBL’s only national charity partner, and attends all national and regional FBLA‐PBL conferences where applicable. FBLA‐PBL has generated almost $500,000 for several years through March for Babies participation.

FBLA Links To Get Involved

• Register for March of Dimes Advocacy Action Alerts
• Offline donations need to be mailed in with this form: FBLA Donation Form – 2023
• Volunteer for March of Dimes
• Connect with your local March of Dimes Market about leadership opportunities

FBLA Member Resources

• Learn more about how you can get involved with March for Babies:  March for Babies Pep Rally Presentation
• Build personal care kits for NICU families with this FBLA Volunteer Engagement Activity
• Learn more about getting involved with the Workshop Presentation  
• Give hope to NICU families with this FBLA Notes of Hope Toolkit
• Review the National Conference Workshop Presentation
• Get involved and build your advocacy with Prematurity Awareness Month (November)

March of Dimes Staff Partner

Meredith Repik – Director, Strategic Volunteer Partnerships Email:  [email protected] Phone:  843-614-3355

FBLA Recorded Messages

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CTAE Delivers: 2021-2022 Annual Report

Career and technical student organizations.

Career and technical student organizations (CTSOs) are co-curricular organizations with leadership programs and competitive events that reflect current curriculum standards and competencies for the instructional programs they serve. Teachers infuse the CTSO's activities into the instructional activities, thereby helping students see the real-world value of their academic studies. 

CTSOs are a vital part of Career, Technical, and Agricultural Education. They play an integral role in preparing students to become college- and career-ready members of society who hold productive leadership roles in their communities. CTSOs are committed to the growth of students in all CTAE career pathways.

Note: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted CTAE program delivery and data collection. Some numbers on the 2021-2022 annual report website may not fully reflect all CTAE effort due to data collection challenges.

Career and Technical Instruction

CTI provides meaningful leadership and employability experiences for students with disabilities through CTAE courses.

CTAE Programs: All CTAE Clusters and Pathways

Distributive Education Club of America

DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management in high schools and colleges around the globe. DECA’s core values and attributes are competence, innovation, integrity, and teamwork. These values are central to DECA’s mission and purpose in classrooms around the world.

CTAE Programs: Business Management and Administration, Finance, Hospitality and Tourism, and Marketing

Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America

FCCLA promotes personal growth and leadership development through family and consumer sciences education. FCCLA focuses on the multiple roles of family member, wage earner, and community leader. Members develop skills for life through character development, creative and critical thinking, Interpersonal communication, practical knowledge, and career preparation.

CTAE Programs: Culinary Arts, Education, Family and Consumer Sciences, Human Services, Interior Design

Future Business Leaders of America

FBLA brings business and education together in a positive working relationship through innovative leadership and career development programs.

CTAE Programs: Administrative/Information, Computer Systems and Support, Financial Management-Accounting, Financial Management-Services, Interactive Media, Computer Networking, Small Business Development, and Support Computing

Georgia FFA

The mission of the FFA is to make a positive difference in the lives of students by developing their potential for premier leadership, personal growth, and career success through agricultural education.

CTAE Programs: Agribusiness Management, Agriscience, Agriculture Mechanics, Animal Science, Forestry and Natural Resources, Plant Science and Horticulture, and Veterinary Science

Georgia FIRST (FIRST)

Georgia FIRST's mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills that inspire innovation and foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

CTAE Programs: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Georgia SkillsUSA

SkillsUSA’s mission is to help its members become world-class workers, leaders, and responsible American citizens. SkillsUSA is a partnership of students, teachers, and industry working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. SkillsUSA helps each student excel.

CTAE Programs: Architecture and Construction; Arts, AV/Technology and Communications; Human Services/Family and Consumer Sciences; Law, Public Safety; Corrections and Security; Manufacturing; and Transportation, Distribution and Logistics

Georgia Technology Student Association

The Technology Student Association fosters personal growth, leadership, and opportunities in technology, innovation, design, and engineering. Members apply and integrate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics concepts through activities, competitive events, and programs integral to the curriculum.

CTAE Programs: Energy, Manufacturing, and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Health Occupations Students of America

The mission of HOSA is to enhance the delivery of compassionate, quality health care by providing opportunities for knowledge, skill, and leadership development of all health science technology education students, by helping students meet the needs of the health care community.

CTAE Programs: Health Science

Source: Georgia Department of Education

For more information on Georgia's CTSOs, visit https://gactso.org/home

• Majors and Minors

Future Business Leaders of America/Phi Beta Lambda

Contact or visit us.

Ray Romero Smith-Curtis, 230E rromer [at] nebrwesleyan.edu (rromer[at]nebrwesleyan[dot]edu) (402) 465-2207

Future Business Leaders of America/Phi Beta Lambda (FBLA-PBL) is a chapter of the international nonprofit education association.

FBLA-PBL is the oldest and largest national organization for students preparing for careers in business and has over a quarter million members and advisers worldwide. Its mission is to bring business and education together in a positive working relationship through innovative leadership and career development programs, and to help students prepare for professional careers in business.

The NWU chapter of PBL works to accomplish these goals by giving students the opportunity: to assume leadership positions at the campus, state or national level; to attend local, state and national leadership conferences; to participate in PBL competitive events that help to develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities that are part of today’s business curriculum; to hear and meet leaders in the local business community by hosting speakers on a regular basis; and to participate in community service activities.

COLUSA FBLA

Success Starts Here!

Colusa FBLA: bringing business and education together for over 20 years!

We are the Colusa High School chapter of California Future Business Leaders of America. We have nearly 80 members in our chapter and, for the last 24 years, we have worked tirelessly to earn the Gold Seal recognition, an award given to the top 15% of chapters in the state!

Our mission is to bring business and education together through a variety of activities, projects, and competitions that allow young leaders to better understand the vastness of the business world. When a student joins this organization, they gain access to opportunities that help to build their knowledge, confidence, and even their resume. FBLA has substantially impacted the lives of thousands of young leaders around the globe, and we encourage you to join our ranks.

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The Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Qatar and AACSB International Partner to Advance Business Education

Tampa, Fla., USA (January 25, 2024) —The Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Qatar (MOEHE), represented by the National Committee for Qualifications and Academic Accreditation (NCQAA) and AACSB International (AACSB) have entered into their first-ever agreement to advance business education in Qatar. Through the agreement, both organizations will work together to improve mutual understanding of their respective global accreditation activities, explore synergies, and collaborate through shared events.

At the forefront of educational policymaking and innovation, MOEHE is the leading force in driving educational excellence within Qatar. MOEHE plays a critical role in shaping the nation's educational landscape, ensuring that it evolves to meet the needs of Qatar's dynamic society and economy. Through its strategic initiatives and forward-thinking approach, MOEHE is committed to providing high-quality education that empowers individuals and contributes to Qatar's continued growth and prosperity. Hosted in MOEHE, NCQAA was established in 2022 to lead the nation’s efforts in the areas of qualifications and academic accreditation.

"We are thrilled to be signing this first agreement with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Qatar so that together we can continue to build and enhance the quality and value of business education in the region,” said Stephanie Bryant, global chief accreditation officer of AACSB. “The depth of experience and coverage of the MOEHE in Qatar will truly complement AACSB’s work in global business education.”

“Our partnership with AACSB International marks a significant step forward in advancing business education in Qatar,” said Mazen Hasna, chairman of the NCQAA. “This collaboration directly supports our commitment to academic excellence, as outlined in our recently established institutional accreditation standards. By joining hands with AACSB, we are set to enrich our learning environments and ensure that our future business leaders are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in an ever-evolving global economy.”

The agreement is in effect for five years, with an opportunity for renewal at the end of the period.

About AACSB International

Established in 1916, AACSB International (AACSB) is the world’s largest business education association, connecting business schools, business, and lifelong learners to create the next generation of great leaders. With members in over 100 countries and territories, AACSB elevates the quality and impact of business schools globally. Learn how AACSB and business schools from around the world are leading boldly in business education at aacsb.edu.

About The Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Qatar

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE) in Qatar is the government entity responsible for overseeing the nation's education system. Established in 1973, MOEHE guides the country's educational journey through its ambitious Education Strategy 2023-2030. This comprehensive framework prioritises equal access to high-quality education across all levels, from nurturing young minds in preschool to empowering graduates in post-secondary institutions. By promoting continuous learning and innovation, MOEHE prepares future generations with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in an ever-evolving global environment.

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