Torree Pederson, the president and CEO of a nonprofit called Aligned, has a vision for Kansas. She wants to help students in K-12 schools and colleges get the right skills for jobs that are available in the state.
Aligned is based in Kansas City and works in both Kansas and Missouri. It’s led by business leaders who want to invest in the future workforce.
Right now, many Kansas college graduates leave the state for work. Pederson says Kansas businesses have more jobs than workers, and state universities are exporting 57% of graduates.
“We are an exporter of talent, and we have to figure out how to manage that,” Pederson said. “We have wonderful jobs, high-skill, high-wage jobs here in Kansas. And the disconnect is often that kids don’t know about them.”
To solve this problem, Pederson proposes creating a “workforce pathway system.” This data-collection system would collect information about students’ education and job opportunities and help match what students are learning with what jobs are available in Kansas.
“A data pathway system is something that we can use to kind of marry the workforce opportunities with the students’ engagement and education opportunities,” Pederson said.
For the past year and a half, Pederson’s organization has been working with government officials and lawmakers to make this idea a reality. They even introduced a bill in the state legislature (House Bill 2774) as an example of how it could work.
The proposed system would involve collecting education and workforce data about individuals. This data would be used to support what Pederson calls an “education-to-employment pipeline.” A new office in the Kansas Dept. of Commerce would oversee the project.
The bill didn’t get a hearing this year, but Pederson hopes it will gain more support next year.
“The idea was to get it out there and let people understand that creating the workforce pathway system is more than creating or buying software,” Pederson said. “It’s truly creating a governance structure, and a staff, an organization, to be able to ensure that these data systems are secure, sustainable, and that they produce information, reports and answers that will serve lawmakers, department heads, public, and you know, parents and students.”
This information could be used in many ways. For example, it could show if taking college classes in high school (dual credit courses) helps students succeed in two-year or four-year colleges later. It could also show what kinds of jobs students with individual education plans tend to get. It could also show which high school programs are producing more graduates than others.
The system could look at college-level courses too. But Pederson emphasized that this isn’t about getting rid of liberal arts or courses that people take for personal growth.
“We’re not talking about an employee factory here,” she said. “What we’re talking about is making sure that kids, students, across the gamut, where all students are lifelong learners, can have access to programs that fit with their personal values, along with their skill sets.”
This data-collection system could also help with job training programs outside of four-year colleges. These might include certification programs or other types of job training.
Pederson says this is important because of changes in the workforce. Fewer babies are being born, and the baby boomer generation, which is twice as large as other generations, is retiring.
“We really have more jobs than people — significantly more jobs than people,” she said. “And so we’re reaching a point where we need to make sure that everyone has access to the workforce in any way, shape or form they can contribute.”
Edited for Publication by Thomas White
