EDUCATION WINS:
SIX GAME-CHANGING CHAMBERS LEAD THE WAY
MEETING REGIONAL WORKFORCE NEEDS BY RAISING
POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION ATTAINMENT
By Will Burns
T
he U.S. economy has added 11.6 million net new jobs since 2011. More than 99 percent of those jobs
went to workers with at least some college education. For the first time ever, workers with a bachelor’s
degree or higher make up a larger share of the workforce than workers with a high school diploma or less.
Given these trends, strategies to increase economic opportunity and boost regional competitiveness must focus
on education attainment.
In many regions, chambers of commerce are leading the way, developing regional solutions to produce the
talented workers needed to ensure stronger local economies and more vibrant communities. Here are examples of
higher education attainment programs from the six winners of ACCE’s 2016-17 Award for Education Attainment.
Award winners received a one-time $40,000 stimulus to bolster their established efforts to increase postsecondary
attainment in their region.
Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce (Mo.)
Austin Chamber of Commerce (Texas)
The Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce is an active
partner in the Springfield Higher Education Project 2025, a
Lumina Community Partnership for Attainment that seeks
to raise postsecondary education attainment to 60 percent by
2025. In support of this goal, the chamber is working with local
employers to encourage the use of tuition assistance programs,
providing resources and in-person support. In addition, the
chamber partners with the region's four largest post-secondary
institutions to identify individuals who have some college or no
degree that could benefit from tuition assistance or employer
support programs. To engage students while they are still in
high school, the chamber launched the Greater Ozarks Center
for Advanced Professional Studies (GO CAPS). This innovative
year-long, immersive career exploration program for high
school juniors and seniors helps nearly 200 students navigate
college and career pathways in target industries. The chamber
is working to improve its efforts by hosting tuition assistance
start-up seminars, enhancing one-on-one consultations with
employers, and organizing a cohort of adult learners seeking
degree or certificate completion for mutual support.
The Austin Chamber of Commerce leads the Direct-to-College
Achievement Plan, or DTC70, which is a multi-chamber, multischool district, multi-business compact committed to enrolling
70 percent of 2016 high school graduates directly in higher
education. The chamber and other business partners work to
identify strategies to increase college going rates, coordinate
outreach to help families complete the financial aid process,
advocate policies to support DTC70 goals and track progress
on DTC70 goals. The chamber improved access to real-time,
actionable data for high school counselors through a regional
College Ready Portal. Despite the success of the portal, the
data is only accessible to councilors, not parents or students. In
order to advance the goals of DTC70, the chamber is working
to develop a parent and student facing portal that will track
key college enrollment milestones, provide targeted support
to students and parents and standardize and automate data
uploads to track state aid applications.
Chamber Executive
Winter 2017
25
Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce (Texas)
JAX Chamber (Fla.)
The Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce formed a collaborative partnership between business, government and academia
to increase postsecondary enrollment, persistence and completion rates. The goal of the partnership is to increase the number
of students in the El Paso region who complete the Free Application for Federal Students Aid (FAFSA) to 70 percent by 2025
in order to help the region increase its higher education attainment rate. To do this the chamber is expanding the reach of its
FAFSA Nights program, a program that helps thousands of high
school seniors in the El Paso community complete their FAFSA
applications each year. In 2012, 47.4 percent of high school seniors (5,346) completed FAFSA. In 2016, that figure was 58.8
percent (7,120), the highest completion rate in the state. The
chamber is working to build on its positive momentum by developing a new marketing campaign and mobile app to provide
high school seniors and their parents targeted information and
reminders related to their financial aid applications and upcoming FAFSA Night events.
The JAX Chamber launched its Earn Up program in 2014. This
ambitious collaborative, includes more than 25 regional partners
working together to address northeast Florida’s workforce needs
by promoting higher education attainment. Earn Up’s goal is
to increase the percentage of workers holding a postsecondary
certificate or degree to 60 percent by 2025. Military veterans are
one of Earn Up’s target audiences. Nearly 3,000 service members
transition out of the military in Jacksonville each year, many
with no college degree. Earn Up seeks to provide transitioning
service members and their spouses with useful information
about regional education and job opportunities. Together
with local military leaders, the JAX Chamber has formed the
Northeast Florida Military Veteran College Network, a large
working committee of Earn Up, to develop resources for veterans
and advocate for expanded and unified use of prior learning
assessments to help service members earn college credit based
on military experiences, training and coursework. To further
assist business, education, community and military leaders,
the chamber plans to create an institution-neutral education
concierge to help answer questions and guide veterans in their
education choices.
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Chamber Executive
Winter 2017
27
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28
Chamber Executive
Winter 2017
Provided in partnership with Principal®.
The Charleston Metro Chamber is working to ensure that
high school graduates are college and career ready and that
local higher education institutions offer degree and certificate
programs that meet the talent needs of the region’s high
growth industries. The Chamber worked with community
partners to develop more than 60 career academies in the
region. Career academy students can apply for an Accelerate
Greater Charleston scholarship, which covers two-year tuition
and books at Trident Technical College (TCC) to earn an
associate’s degree in their career field. The program has grown
from 12 scholarships in 2014 to 75 scholarships in 2016. In
addition, the chamber’s Youth Apprenticeship Program is a
two-year program that provides high school juniors and seniors
dual credit and work-based learning opportunities through
internships with local employers. Upon completion, students
earn a high school diploma, certification in a specific field from
TCC, credentialing from the U.S. Department of Labor and two
years of paid work experience. With the growth of its efforts,
the chamber is planning to hire a scholarship manager to help
provide guidance and ensure student success.
The Business Council of New York State
The Business Council of New York State (BCNYS) and its
affiliated organization, the Public Policy Institute of New
York State (PPI), have established a long term goal to address
the state's skills gap. As a result, BCNYS established the
New York State Pathways in Technology Early College High
School (NYS P-TECH) Leadership Council in 2013 to scale
innovative P-TECH 9-14 schools. The schools bring together
K-12 education, higher education and employers to offer an
integrated six-year program. Participating students master
professional skills while earning a high school diploma and an
industry-recognized, two-year college degree at no cost. In 2016,
BCNYS increased participation to 2,000 ninth grade students
entering P-TECH programs in 37 schools, with the support of
nearly 300 employer partners. To achieve this growth, BCNYS
helped employers become better partners by hosting regional
sessions on how to partner with NYS P-TECH schools and
other education partners to offer effective work-based learning
opportunities to students. It also created an enhanced online
version of the NYS P-TECH Work-Based Learning Toolkit that
includes additional tools for employers.
In 2016, for the first time ever, workers with a
bachelor’s degree or higher outnumber workers
with a high school diploma or less.
100
13%
80
Share of workforce
Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce (S.C.)
23%
Bachelor's
degree or
higher
60
30%
Associate's
degree
Some college
40
20
26%
HS or
less
34%
8%
0
2016 (January)
Source: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data, 2007-2016.
Note: Employment includes all workers age 18 and older. The monthly
employment numbers are seasonally adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau
X-12 procedure and smoothed using a four-month moving average.
Will Burns is ACCE’s community advancement director.
Contact Will at [email protected].