It’s no secret that our education system is struggling to inspire and train the next generation of the American workforce, and this problem is especially pernicious for rural districts. The Rural IL CTE Project has just concluded its first year, focusing on research, showing that rural and small school districts across Illinois are struggling to offer and sustain career and technical education programs. These are no longer simply “elective” courses, but key stepping stones for students interested in all careers, professions, and trades to begin learning what it takes to work in their interest area.
The Daily Yonder, a nationally acclaimed digital rural newsroom, recently published an article titled “Rural Student Qualifications Don’t Align with Local Job Markets” by Nick Fouriezos, editor of bi-monthly rural higher education newsletter Mile Markers, telling precisely this story out of rural Eastern Kentucky and with implications for rural Illinois. In the piece, Fouriezos recounts major industries drying up and a lack of programming at schools. “Students had a limited vision when it came to their future education and career goals: when all you know is what’s in front of you, it’s hard to imagine what else is possible,” Fouriezos writes.
Fouriezos’ piece draws from a study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW), which terms this lack of opportunities to learn locally relevant professions the “Great Misalignment.” According to the CEW, the “Great Misalignment” describes the extent to which degrees and programs offered by community colleges, trade schools, and other post-high school training institutions (which they call “middle-skills providers”) are not aligned with labor market demands. The study underscores that this is especially an issue for rural areas as we have fewer of these institutions than urban and suburban areas. The result is that rural areas seem to be greatly misaligned, offering either more “middle-skills” credentials, meaning two-year degrees and certificates, for occupations than there are open positions asking for those specific degrees and certificates, or even degrees with no direct career connection at all. This finding has strong merit, and the results from the Rural IL CTE Project bear it out as well. Across Illinois, our rural districts are struggling to offer CTE, and the same can be said for our community college network. Looking at Georgetown’s data for Illinois, we can see that, aside from the Decatur metropolitan statistical area, the rest of the state is anywhere from 40% to over 70% “misaligned.” Bluntly put, we are failing to grow rural programming fast enough to enable our students to thrive in every career field that our local communities need. The solution, according to the study, is that upwards of 40% of current credentials at community colleges and trade programs need to be reworked to fit local labor market needs.
However, are the conclusions of the “Great Misalignment” misdirected? And is there a misunderstanding about the role of these rural “middle-skills providers” leading the study to miss the deeper issue at hand? While there are no doubts that rural students lack much needed training opportunities, suggesting that the problem rests with, essentially, poor program design at rural community colleges is a tenuous analysis and potentially dangerous for three key reasons:
First, is the actual role of the “misaligned” degrees conferred.
The CEW study talks at length at how the number of middle-skills credentials offered for, in particular, education, healthcare, or even “no direct occupation” far overshadow the number of middle-skills positions in those fields. However, as Fouriezos suggests in his Daily Yonder piece, that’s simply not how many rural students pursue community college degrees. Certainly, some view community college as the end of their academic career, from which they will enter the workforce and gain on-the-job training to advance their careers. Far more often though, two-year education, healthcare, and general studies degrees are not terminal; at least, students don’t view them as such. They are an entry point that should seamlessly transition students from high school and on into a four-year degree program. Furthermore, the study suggests that community colleges and other middle-skills providers need to offer more “aligned” programs like semi-truck driving, retail stocking, and office support occupations. Yet the time and money that students would need to spend to learn these trades at a community college and that the institutions would need to invest to offer these programs does not make sense, in part because:
Second, relatedly, is the actual role of rural “middle-skills providers,” especially community colleges.
As the CEW rightly points out, the vast majority of rural labor markets are served by one or two of these middle-skills providers, if any at all. As such, these institutions are an invaluable stepping stone for rural students to find local, budget-friendly opportunities to begin their higher education journey, and also complete technical training. It may be the case that many of them offer far more education, healthcare, and general studies programs than the local labor market needs. However, the role of the community college is as much to allow rural students to save resources early at an accessible local institution so that they can be on a more equitable footing with their peers at other institutions of higher learning as it is to offer terminal programming in highly specific “middle-skills” occupations. The suggestion that the glut of education and healthcare programs, by and large the most popular pathways for rural students going to community college, need to be redirected would effectively sever an already weak pipeline for much needed rural educators and healthcare professionals; not to mention whether a community college is actually the optimal provider of commercial drivers license training and retail shelf stocking in the first place. Absent these crucial transitional degrees and institutions, we are further crippling the ability of rural students and communities to compete. But perhaps the biggest reason is:
Third, the real misalignment at play here is not necessarily with middle-skills degree conferral, though there should be more conversation about community college programming, but rather the lack of substantial and sustained funding for K12 CTE.
If our argument is that incoming college students are not embarking on “in-demand” degree pathways, or that colleges are not doing enough to offer trades programs, then we’ve missed the point entirely. Before those students even consider college, they have had at least six years, if not more, of opportunities missed to begin investing in a career through early skills training, industry credentialing, and on-the-job internships. We seem to say at all levels that we want to build a 21st-century economy, but we are still trapped into using a 19th century education model to get there. This is in large part because of the lack of genuinely adequate funding and support for rural schools, administrators, and teachers to innovate and transform their offerings to suit what the local labor market needs, and not coincidentally what students want as well. If our concern is, rightfully, that we’re not doing enough to train students for the real jobs in our communities, then we need to get more serious about bolstering funding for middle school and high school CTE programs, and community college CTE departments for that matter too to confer that training earlier before they enter the workforce or have to pay for college for basic skills.
The findings of the Rural IL CTE Project have confirmed that there is indeed a “great misalignment” in how we’re preparing our children to take the reigns of society and the economy in the decades to come. But rather than pinning the issue on the few, under-staffed, and under-resourced rural community colleges, we need to be talking to our policy makers and budget setters. If we collectively agree that all students, college or career-bound, need tangible professional training that aligns with the local labor market, then we need to generously fund and rigorously support those institutions charged with the duty of shepherding those students for thirteen years before they take their next steps into the labor market or college. As the CEW itself admits in the study, it is impractical to assume that we can redirect all the credentials conferred by middle-skills providers, but what AIRSS and the Rural IL CTE Project does believe to be possible is the transformation of our K12 public education system to serve students, communities, and teachers equally well. Aligning our professed beliefs with our public budgets is one sure-fire way of reaching that goal.
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John Glasgow is the Program Director for the Rural IL CTE Project, a joint effort between the Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools, the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Western Illinois University Seymour Center for Rural Education. To learn more about the Rural IL CTE Project, and the research and technical assistance it is conducting, please reach out to John: john@airssedu.org