Starved for skilled labor, employers across Texas are looking to higher education institutions to produce more workers — who also are better-prepared.
At the same time a projected “demographic cliff” is expected to decrease the number of students graduating college, and entering the workforce, by up to 15% in the next five years — raising the stakes for increasing educational attainment.
But higher education leaders from across the state have some ideas and optimism about their abilities to level up educational attainment to meet the needs. Leaders from multiple universities spoke Friday on a panel at the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival.
Harrison Keller, who served as the commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for years and recently became president of the University of North Texas, pointed to the shifting necessity of a college degree.
“It used to be that higher ed is something you did to advance your standard of living, and [now] it’s more and more existential,” he said. “If you want to get a good job, if you want to have a productive career and live a healthy and productive life, you’ve got to have education training beyond a high school diploma.”
Currently, however, only about half of working age Texans have degrees and certificates, and only slightly more have workforce credentials, he said.
“That’s not sustainable if we’re going to be competitive,” he added.
The rapid disruption and automation made possible by artificial intelligence is also accelerating the need for specialized workers in skilled fields, like computer science and engineering, Keller said — with current graduates filling only a fraction of that need.
“We need many, many more people educated to higher standards than we’ve ever achieved before,” he said during the panel.
Amy Bosley, who has been the president of Northwest Vista College in San Antonio for just over a year, said the rising cost of higher education paired with an antiquated view of workforce preparation keep some first generation students and their hesitant parents from even considering higher education.
Coincidentally, that misconception exacerbates their situation, keeping them from higher paying jobs and more opportunities and adding to the skilled worker shortage.
Bosley said overcoming those misconceptions will be key to helping more families obtain college degrees or credentials — which have become a necessity to obtain most jobs in the modern workforce.
“You don’t have to go into debt to get a high quality education,” she said. “You could do that right in your backyard, with high quality faculty.”
The lines between workforce preparation and a classic liberal arts education have also been blurred, she said — with employers looking for well-rounded individuals with foundational critical thinking skills as well as job-specific training. Getting that message out could be key to getting students into the classroom.
“All jobs need [us] to both educate people liberally so that they can be good, informed, engaged citizens and provide them the skills necessary to go to work,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a choice anymore.”
With that in mind, the higher education experience doesn’t always start with a degree program, she said, pointing to the approach taken by the Alamo Colleges District.
“Doubling our workforce programs looks like adding credentials of value that are incremental in nature, so students can come in, get a credential, get to work [and] earn a better wage,” she said. “Then the employer will pay for the next level of the credential.”
Looking to the future, she sees that cycle moving the needle on educational attainment in San Antonio and across the state.
“This becomes a really wonderful kind of a nurturing cycle where we can continue to help people achieve higher levels of education,” she said.
