What is Career Readiness?

In our inaugural episode, host Spencer Murray chats with the CCD Center's Board Chair Leo Reddy about career readiness, what it means and why it must be the first priority of the American education system--especially today. 

Learn more and find resources about career readiness on the CCD Center website, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for updates. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Coalition for Career Development Centers new podcast titled Career Readiness for all. My name is Spencer Murray, and I will be your host. I serve as the Director of Partnerships for the Coalition, and I am excited and honored to have the privilege of welcoming distinguished guests onto the show and talk all things career readiness. The mission of this podcast ties right into the mission of the center, which is to make career readiness for all students the first priority of American education.

Our goal is to ensure that all students secure productive employment in their chosen career pathway as cost effectively and efficiently as possible. I encourage all listeners to connect with the CCD center through its website at www. Ccd center. Org and reach out to me at smurray at CCD center. Org to collaborate on thoughts, innovations, and opportunities that can assist the center achieve its mission and goals. Now, rather than take up all the time with me talking about career readiness, what it means, why it is so important, and the details on why it should be the number one priority in American education.

Our guest is here to do just that. I am honored today to be joined by the chair of the Coalition for Career Development Center. Mr. Le, already a career public servant and public policy strategist, Mr. Reddy has helped build a variety of institutions designed to enhance U. S. National interest in both domestic and foreign affairs. Since 2006, he has served as chairman, immediate past CEO, President and founder of the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council. Mssc, an industry led 501 C three nonprofit MSC, is the nation's leading training and certification organization focused on the core technical competencies needed by the nation's frontline production and material handling workers.

Now, I did want to throw in some fun facts that I truly find remarkable and that's that Mr. Ready entered the private sector after a highly successful 28 year foreign service career with the US Department of State, a specialist in NATO and arms control affairs, he served on the NATO desk in the State Department. He also served in a policy, leadership and negotiator role on US delegations to NATO, the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the mutual and balanced force reductions negotiations for runner to the conventional force Reductions in Europe Treaty and the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by President Reagan and Gorbachev in ninehundred 87.

He headed the State Department successful INF treaty ratification Task Force in 988. I hope one day to have further conversations, learning more about that. It has truly interesting work leading up to what you do now, so I could go on and on about the experience and accomplishments he has. But at this point, I think we should go right into why we are here. So let's talk about the who, what, where, why, and how the CCD center came to life. So welcome, Leo.

Morning, sensor. I'm pleased to be here.

Yeah. We're happy to have you, Leo, and this. And we're excited for this first episode. So I think what we want to talk about today is how did the Coalition for Career Development Center come into existence and what facilitated the broad scope of industry and education leaders to become engaged in the work of the center?

Well, there is some history behind this, and maybe I should start more or less at the beginning, I guess. And in the period 19, 98 20 02, my organization, the Manufacturing Skill Standards Council, MSSC on a national competition under the National Skill Standards Act to develop the standards and certifications for frontline work, the advanced manufacturing. In the process of doing that, we work with hundreds of companies and all the industrial unions and a very large community of people. It was successful. And we went to work on that task.

But several years later, they're basically in 20, 13, 20, 14 framework. Some of our corporate leaders said you've been focusing exclusively on community colleges, which we did. We use community colleges as the delivery mechanism for our training and so forth instructor training. But they said they'd really be quite interested in high school students because high school students, for one thing, where they like to get them earlier on their careers, to get them into their company, to build a pipeline. High school students also sometimes more comfortable with it.

Some of the older people and they really wanted to cultivate the more strenuous pipeline from high schools. So looking into that, we decided to undertake a significant project, and we decided to also to team up with a society of manufacturing engineers. They were trying to do the same thing. They were trying to identify people in high school who might have future a career is as industrial engineers. So we teamed up and we commissioned a study of this whole situation. It started off with a survey of 1900 high school districts in cooperation with the Council chief state school officers.

And we asked them about the level of interest and certifications and the role of counselors and so forth. Now, the person who headed up that research was Jan Bray, who had recently stepped down as the twelve year chair and leader of the Association for Career Tech, EnActe, a very well known organization with 30,000 members. And Jan is very highly regarded. Her work. We thought it was a real cool to get her to help us look into this. And so as somebody in MSC Commission, Jan, others too, to the study, which resulted in a publication which we publish same called Transforming Career Counseling.

Now transformation is appropriate for because in that study, we discovered a number of important things. Perhaps. Just let me give you a couple of highlights. Number one, we do have career counselors in the country, of course, but they're vastly understaffed. There are about 500 students, 500 students for every career count for every student. It's very hard to have that level of impact with a few counselors. So it's pretty evident to us we probably had to double that number to really enable these people to do better work.

And we also discover the cultures because of our culture Journal, where he'd always given top priority to getting into College. It really goes back to the GI Bill, where you set up a whole per or millions of windows of Americans who get a four year College degree. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it was a strong focus on getting into College and securing the degree. However, it was pretty evident to us also that they were in focusing on College entrance as the top priority. They really were not developing as much time as we thought should be given to career counseling and career development for all students.

In the process of working on this paper, we also teamed up with a global pathways Institute at Arizona State University. There was a leader over there called Bill Simon who set up this global Pathways Institute. Bill was the author when he was back at Harvard of a very influential study called Pathways Prosperity, done in cooperation with some people from the Harvard Business School. I mean, extremely strong case that career readiness have been largely overlooked in American education. The whole notion of making sure, by the way, the kids would also have a successful career was way down the line.

So we look more deeply into this and we decided to look at all kinds of other data related to this. And let me just give a few points, I think, to also illustrate the the challenge. Number one. While over half of high school students go to College to start a career, to start into legit training of some kind, only 35 actually complete a degree. Now at least of the population does not have a degree. We have the world, by the way, the world's largest College drop operate.

Which helps to explain part of the problem. No, we're leaving out a large sector of the population. Now for those pursuing a degree, there was a very interesting and important Gallup Stratus survey, the released in 2018. And basically it was a time study of people, young people entering College and young people leave in College when they entered College, about 80%. We're highly confident they get a good job as a result of that College education er when they were leaving College four years later, only 30%, not the College had prepared them for a career pathway.

And so this is obviously the cut under us because it wasn't what happened. So they're not prepared than people graduate from College and they drift from one other short term job to another time trying different things to eventually they find their career pathway. They can be 31, 32 years old before they find the career pathway not a very efficient system. So in light of that we develop our paper. We began to convene a lot of organizations around the country based on our own contacts, including with the Chamber of Commerce or the National Government Association in particular.

So one outcome was in 2016, the Chamber of Commerce hosted a meeting at their headquarters in DC on this topic about.

Career readiness. And we were amazed by the turnout. It was sold out almost immediately. We had 250 people from 165 leading organizations that can very hilly interest in this topic. So that's a little background on where we came from and around that we built the coalition, drawing upon a lot of those organization. So today we have a strong coalition, which already has whole two summit Benes in Washington with the core of the coalition, about 60 plus national, highly influential organizations. And that's the way we've got this organized.

A little bit later, we decided to turn that coalition into a center of five one C three think tag in Washington, trying to pursue our major major goal, which is now to make a career readiness for all students, as you mentioned, the first priority of market education. So I think that answers your question about the background of experience and my engagement in the work of the center. Yeah.

It's great to see how many influential organizations and individuals that have really helped bring this to life, and that to show how important it is that not only that, it started some time ago, but here we are still continuing to grow and to still make an impact. So we talk about the term career readiness often throughout this, and I felt it'd be good. What is your definition of career readiness? And if people are listening, what should they understand about career readiness?

I think it's a paradigm shift. What we're talking about is infusing the concept of career awareness. Career readiness. Career planning comes from the beginning of school, even going back in the earliest grade. So in the elementary school, we're trying to cultivate a general an expansion of career awareness. What careers are all about? That mean they mean visits to companies in the area to have children. I have a better awareness what their parents do for a living. Maybe our briefers come in an occasional trip to a company, just generally awareness of the workplace and what careers are all about.

Now, when you're getting the middle school would want the students to begin to zero in a little bit more on identifying what they think their career priorities might be, what kind of career parties interest you? What do you like to do? What are you good at? What is your dream if you want to put in those terms, what do you think you would like to do when you grow up and you enter adulthood? That kind of exploration of a middle school becomes a little more formalized when you begin to get into high school.

I think at that point, killed in the grade 910 arena, every student, every single student in every school in the controversy a public private. We don't care what it is. Every school has a personalized career, an academic plan with a PCAP, and that plan is based upon a lot of hard work, guided by professional career counselors or experts in the labor market. They know what the actual jobs are. They know a lot of the companies to introduce the students to so in grade eleven. Then another major step is to secure summer internships.

Now, think about this for a moment. Every single student in the country goes into a summer internship for about eight weeks in their chosen career pathway. Whenever the career pathway us, they're already talking to employers. We also feel very strongly that the employer community in the interest of the students, but also in their own self interest, should fund those summer internships. So employer funded summer internships is also has important implications for our equity. Populations are more at risk in terms of financial resources. It's very hard for them to simply take the summer off.

I can't afford just to take the summer off. All those people have to get part time jobs doing almost anything, bringing a little cash in the summer. But if you have the employers pay, this solves the problem takes the problem off the books. So we think that summer internship employerfunded is very important. Now, when you go through high school, then you can either go right to work. And there's nothing wrong. That's wonderful. If you have a career pathway that does not require post secondary education, but especially if you started working a Credential or a care apprenticeship program or something, you can go right to work.

There's nothing wrong with my right to work, start to earn a living right away. Raise a family right away. Why wait? There's a lot to be said for it. But if your gross and pathway requires post secular education, if it requires post secular education rather than you take post secular education. Now, obviously, for more advanced technician type jobs, that'll probably be a two year College for being an engineer. It takes four years. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer and things postgraduate degree, so it all depends on we don't care.

What it is is when you pick your own career pathway, you choose it. You follow the education required with our career pathway. But the point is that when you're through, you go immediately to work, it helps to address the problem of the current problem. People graduated in College, I know what they want to do, and they drift around, try different things. We want to get rid of that home. And then when people go right directly to work on their career pathway, amazingly upon when they finish their education, that's the basic concept of career witness.

And I think if there's ever a time more than ever, especially after this pandemic to get people back to work, we're readiness certainly should be at the forefront of getting people to unemployment right whenever they are ready and when they're done with their chosen career path and their interests. And I really like the definition as well for career readiness because it's not one shoe fits all for everybody right. Everybody can choose their path. But the goal is to get employment at the end in the most cost effective and efficient way, like we've talked about.

So now that we've kind of defined what career readiness is, what does making career readiness the number one priority in the United States look like? How will you know how will we know? How can the country know when this vision is achieved for the better?

Well, I think you named it. Put your finger on it. See more. I think the the main thing is the the most important driver is this word all applies to all students. It changes our culture, which began going back to GI Bill and is really focused primarily on getting into College, being the main objective of education, into making career witness for all students. Everybody the first priority. I like the comment from Jan Bray, who now is the CEO of our center. I mentioned earlier said, you know, that 99% of students when they go to College or not have to find a job when they graduate, everybody has to be interested in getting to game work when they finish College.

That's the whole idea when they finish College or not, but will answer your question about how do we know when we're successful? Believe me, people will know when we reach the point because we definitely have to involve our whole community to be successful and enabling all students to get in their current pathway. So parents, students themselves. Employers play a critical role. Schools, of course, play a critical role. State and federal agencies play a critical role. Really, our whole nation basically has to be involved in making that transition.

It's really quite transformational and requires a nationwide effort to make to make it work. One thing the center is doing, which I think is very important since state governments play such an important role in our educational life. The driver generally throughout the country, the driver, most of the funding believe the critical role. We have a director of research. Dr. Solberg is an expert in this area, is going to be publishing the first draft of a report going to happen this January called The Condition of Career Readiness in the USA.

And they're going to be identifying certain indicators of career readiness and kind of give a profile for each of the 50 States against those criteria, like a report card, basically on how all of our state governments are doing. That'll be a very influential report, a very powerful one if we do it. Well, I know we'll do it well. So I know that's not how we'll know, but this is succeeding.

And that's a great place to start. I'm really looking forward to Scott and his team completing that work because it could only continue to grow from there, which will be great. And the next question that we really have here is where is the best place to start? And I know one of the answers is we have our center that we've developed now, and we are working towards the vision of making through readiness the number one priority in American education for all learners. But if you were someone else outside of the center, whether you're an organization, an individual, a school state, where is the best place to start to make these appropriate changes in this new direction of career readiness?

Well, I do have to go back what you said about the center, because the place to start, the place we have started basically building up on the membership of the center. The center has some over 60 national organizations, very influential organizations. And if you put together all those organizations, they touch almost every sphere of our national life. So, for example, the variant active participant in the center is the National Governors Association. So we're talking about all the state governments. We have very heavy input by industry. One thing that makes the center unique.

It is really as an industry led organization, it's not another educational reform group is of industry. We industry driven because industry understands the high stakes for them and have our education system to be more efficient and more successful. And, you know, we have an addition to the Chamber of Commerce. We have the business roundtable of the National Association, manufacturers, a large number of companies participating in our committees and so forth with Snap on there, which is a legendary company in the way it develops its own employees.

Great company. And Amazon is with us. Google is with us. Microsoft McDonalds recently joined us. Very, very powerful companies. In addition, we're reaching out to the federal agencies, congressional committees, the counseling organizations around the country, the student groups it's really through those organizations have a megaphone effect that really will touch almost everyone. Almost everyone belongs to a school system. They're in student groups. So every ending will begin to have an opportunity to weigh in and try out and try to see as we try to implement these different measures in building our paradigm will be involving thousands and thousands of the whole country in many, many ways.

I should also add that in terms of I think, will be a very critical point for us if we're not working towards a summit meeting. We've had two summits so far in DC, but this will be our highest level summit next May, inviting the President and Mrs. Biden, Mrs. Biden herself. It was an activist and a long term community College teacher very actually involved in the education arena. And I'm excited about this because I was very, very pleased. Back in 1989, when President HW. Bush Bush had a meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia, all the sheets will education summit, that wild summit, all the governors and many of the top CEOs of the country to go over these this whole concept of what kind of new directions can we sent for our education assistant and be more effective it was a very effective meeting.

So I kind of see this as another equivalent, except even more important, because we're talking about the entire population here and having this big meeting in the next day. So we're looking forward to them.

Well, it seems like the center is doing a great job of really building the content and building those relationships and starting to highlight and show all the good work that people are doing across the country in the realm of career readiness and really looking forward to continuing those conversations. And I think one thing you talked about which is great is that the relationship between education and industry. So I think it's great that this is an industry led coalition to really draw drive that conversation and relationships. So the CCD Centers framework presented in the white paper that was put out Career readiness for all identifies five pillars.

So I know we just kind of talked about where is the best place to start. But I know that there's kind of a set framework that the CCD center already has to try to drive results. So what are the five pillars? And how does the CCD center intend to support the implementation of those five pillars?

Yes, as you can see, we have certainly high purpose and a great ambition and trying to create a national consensus around making who rents the first part. And, of course, how do you actually do it? How do you carry that out? What are the major functions that you have to perform? So to do that, we collected various ideas, a lot of good ideas into kind of solutions framework with what we call five pillars in the framework, I guess we're trying to describe an image of a temple or something, a temple of wisdom or whatever with its five pillars.

But the first one, again, for every student to have a personalized career and academic plan, that's sort of the starting point. I referred to that earlier. Secondly, to advise the students and to make sure that's successful, we need a new Chandra of career counselors, especially trained to work on the workplace, to make help every student to find their summer internships, to make sure that the companies are more actually involved to organize career days, company visits, a constant focus, the career written as part of things. And we need a new whole new country of those people.

That's another. It's getting us back to the original thing of doubling the number of counselors. That's what we want to achieve that as well. Double. But add into that doubling people who are very sophisticated about the labor market and can really help do this good work. The third one is a much stronger emphasis on work based learning. So the students really in their work. They have a much more of a tactile sense of what it's like to work in these different workplaces can be any workplace.

But then the actual experience of being in a workplace, and it's there that we like to see store emphasis on certifications upon apprenticeships and that sort of thing, but particularly summer internships and where these different places can play out also. But we have a especially can interest an employer funded summer internships, as I mentioned earlier, so that's certainly part of it. Then we have the fourth pillar is using how to use technology. How do students find the right search mechanism? There are some wonderful apps out there.

Career search apps. They're a long list of them and introducing it. Let me make sure the counters and students are aware of high quality apps and in terms of the career search function that's part of there are many aspects of technology, but that's a key factor that as a tool we can provide to our counselors and our students to help them find the right career pathway using technology and the final that's just accountability. We do think that we should hold the schools responsible, not just for getting kids a degree, which is their current responsibility.

We've done our job. Once we give the kid a high school diploma, we give them a degree from College. We're finished. We don't think that's the right paradigm, but the school has to be a full partner also through much more active career advising, having very skilled career advisors in the schools and many schools have these, but it's not yet a general in the national practice. So those are the four pillars of five pillars. If you put those together into dynamic action plans, we really achieve what we're trying to do because we are talking about a fundamental cultural change to ensure that all students.

This includes equity of students also are able to find their correct or pathway in the course of doing that will also close the skills gap. There will be a much closer connection being what employers are looking for. The students are prepared to perform skills gap is a huge problem, also reducing student debt substantially, because I think about that for a moment, the student already knows their career pathway. So if they need to go to post secondary, then they focus their studies. As far as work concerned, almost entirely 100% on their career pathway related studies.

If they do that, they can finish College faster, fewer courses. The course is going to be focus and concentrated on what exactly what they have to know to be whatever that is need to be into College could be X ray technician. It can be all the way up to an Egyptian archaeologist. You want to be an Egyptian archaeologist, takes two PhDs, most festival and so forth. But the main thing, they can economize the amount of time and the focus of their education, which will really drop students out quite dramatically.

We think so. You put it all together. You got a lot of win win here for students, for parents, for employers and for society. In this paradigm. So we're quite excited that this is a newer lock that fits in very well with the Bi administrations have very strong emphasis on equity. You heard that now from all the departments of government related to education and training. Certainly, we're serving equity challenge populations. If every student, including every student in a city, for example, has a career plan, they know what they're doing.

They can see the pot of going at the end of the road. Then they're being counseled and advised and they meet employer committed there. They have a future. They can see their future much more, a much better definition. That's currently the case. There's a lot of goodness in this for all aspects of the community. We think, which is why somebody was involved in and thank you for your hard work and your passionate dedication are so passionate about this because we think it has a great positive impact for the country.

Yeah.

It's really a great five pillars that have been put together, focusing on the areas that need them. And like you said, I am extremely passionate and excited about this work. I think you can see there really is a movement out there across the country, and people are really doing things thinking outside of the box and really looking at the issues and beginning to address them in the appropriate ways. And it's really exciting to see the growth of the CCD center, all the individuals and organizations who have come on board to support it.

We are excited and looking forward to more people to join us in this mission. And I see nothing but great success coming from it down the road here, as we kind of close out here, just a recap. We kind of talked about how the center was created, what's the definition of career readiness? What does it look like? Where is a good place to start? And as we talk about a good place to start as one of these five pillars, Leo, is there anything else that you feel you'd like to agree and talk about the CCD center for anybody, for all of our listeners out there, how to get involved, you know, best practices, anything along those lines that you feel we haven't touched upon yet.

Well, I think a lot of that's going to play out in your subsequent podcast. Are they going to be talking to other people? I've tried to give us kind of an overview of the man features of the program and our ambitions and our goals. But I think tuning into your podcast flow give people a lot more detailed information on the ways in which they can intersect. So maybe on the top, I agree.

And I appreciate the plug. That's great. And I'm looking forward to the next episode and our next guests that are coming on to talk about the different ways and different areas that people are working within. These five pillars to improve career readiness across the board. So I really want to thank you, Leo, for taking the time today again. As I mentioned, please follow us. Check out our website at www. Dot. Ccd center. Org. You can reach out to me through my email and please join this mission and movement moving forward to make a career readiness for all students.

And we always emphasize all across the board here to make the biggest impact that we can for the country. So thank you, Leo, and I hope you have a great day and we will be talking soon.

Thank you for the opportunity. Similar I appreciate it. Sponsor some. Thank you, Robert. By Leo thank you. Bye bye.