It takes a village

Over the past decade, the increasing demand for tech talent has led to an explosion of new training providers. Nearly all of them claim to be faster, cheaper and more job-aligned than the traditional degree pathways laid down by two-year colleges and four-year universities. Many have built their reputations on the idea that the current higher education system isn’t working, and their model is better.

Some of these startups have documented evidence of success working with talent leaders to upskill their employees. Many others have not.

There’s no doubt that we need more education and training to increase access to opportunity in the tech industry. But as it turns out, the best way to solve tech talent shortages — and build economic mobility for workers — is not to make an end run around the traditional systems, but to work with them. Partnerships between colleges, companies and training providers can quickly and efficiently create the tech talent we need to better serve local and regional economies — and create new pathways to economic mobility.

Despite reports of recent layoffs by tech giants such as Amazon and Meta, U.S. companies still added more than 80,000 new workers to their tech teams in September 2022. Tech industry employment is running 22 percent ahead of where it was a year prior. As demand continues to increase, it remains clear that colleges simply can’t produce enough graduates to keep up. Not only that, but even when they are training computer programmers, institutions can’t change their curricula quickly enough to educate learners in the cutting-edge skills required to work in today’s tech jobs. 

Companies need skilled and highly trained tech workers now — not in two years or four years or longer for senior positions that request advanced degrees. Moreover, rising skepticism of the value of a college degree exposes the enormous disconnect between what colleges are producing and what companies are demanding.

But what higher education institutions and companies need isn’t a totally new approach that ignores the old systems — it’s someone to act as connective tissue between them. Fortunately, an emerging cadre of education providers are doing just that: developing the curriculum to help students earn industry-recognized credentials that can help them get good jobs right away in high-demand fields, and then working with universities to get that curriculum to their students.

The environment seems ripe for this type of collaboration. A 2020 survey of business leaders found that 70 percent think higher education institutions should be more involved in job training. Nearly 90 percent say colleges and universities could help their students learn industry-specific knowledge and advanced technical skills. 

And promising examples of these kinds of partnerships between colleges, companies and training providers are already beginning to emerge.

Four universities announced in October that they will partner with Google to offer advanced, specialized and industry-specific credentials. These low-cost online programs that blend industry and academic expertise are hosted by Coursera and can be completed in less than five months. One of those institutions, the University of Michigan, will offer a four-course series that teaches data analytics fundamentals for those interested in working in the public sector.

In Chicago, the University of Illinois Discovery Partners Institute — an organization devoted to developing a tech workforce and growing the city’s tech ecosystem — introduced a new program this past fall that will prepare as many as 2,500 city residents over the next five years for high-demand tech jobs in data science, digital marketing, UX design and other related fields. The tuition-free 12-week training program will be led by tech services firm Interapt. CVS Health, the lead corporate partner in this venture, has signed on to hire more than 200 program graduates over three years.

Also this fall, seven universities across the U.S. partnered with SkillStorm to launch Upskill Together, offering their students instruction that leads to high-demand industry-recognized credentials from tech industry leaders like Amazon Web Services, CompTIA, Pega and Salesforce. As an authorized training provider for those major companies, SkillStorm — which works with universities and employers to develop highly skilled, specialized tech talent — provides online instruction leading to in-demand credentials in cloud, cyber, automation and robotics. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas and five Florida institutions, including Florida State University and University of Central Florida, are founding members of this initiative.

In an effort to explicitly address equity gaps — an issue that has bedeviled the tech industry since its founding — Upskill Together is also offering a matching scholarship program: For every learner who earns a credential through the initiative, SkillStorm will provide the same training to someone with demonstrated financial need. This scholarship program hopes to support women, veterans and members of other groups who have been historically underrepresented in tech — and, in doing so, to simultaneously tackle the intertwined challenges of widespread talent shortages and persistent equity gaps. The colleges themselves will be closely involved in this work, helping to reach out to their communities and offer free training opportunities. But employers have a role to play too, because the match scholarships can also be used to upskill their existing workforce. Today, a growing number of businesses are offering tuition reimbursement for employees in SkillStorm’s university programs, which unlocks access to scholarships for the exact same industry credentials through Upskill Together. It’s a unique approach to both accelerate their digital transformation and build a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

At a time of increasing economic uncertainty, the growth of the tech industry has remained steady — as has the need for skilled workers. Against that backdrop, colleges, companies and training providers have a unique opportunity to work together to address tech worker shortages and create more opportunities and upward mobility. When they join forces like this, they can each bring their unique skills to the table and create a more effective approach to building and future-proofing the tech workforce.