Creating a Future-Ready Workforce

What does it actually mean to create a future-ready workforce? In this episode, we speak with Daphne Dor-Ner, VP of Product Management at Lightcast. She will share labor market information and how it can help institutions of higher education advance strategic priorities. If you are curious about how your institution can ensure you are creating credentials of value for your students, this episode is for you.

Transcript

Matthew Sterenberg (00:01.318)

All right, I’m here with Daphne Dor-Ner, VP of Product Management at Lightcast. Daphne, welcome to the podcast.

Daphne Dor-Ner (00:09.506)

Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Matthew Sterenberg (00:12.596)

So Daphne, I think we should maybe set the table a little bit. What is Lightcast and what is the work of Lightcast and what drives your organization?

Daphne Dor-Ner (00:23.16)

Sure. So, Lightcast is a labor market analytics company. We gather labor market data from a bunch of different sources and collect it and make meaning out of it to help our customers inform key decisions that they make. In the education space, which is sort of where we’ll spend, I think, most of our time today, we help institutions make

choices with labor market data in mind, and we help institutions help their learners make choices with labor market data in mind. And so what that looks like on the ground is institutions deciding new programs that they might offer or how they might evolve their programs based on labor market demand for the kinds of graduates that they are going to produce.

We help them figure out the innards of those programs. So what kinds of curriculum and skills make sense to include? What kinds of external credentials make sense to include or prepare for? And what are the occupations that those learners are emerging into the market to take on? How can we best prepare them for that? We also, as I said,

help institutions help their learners. So we help learners to establish a career ambition and then to make decisions with their interests and skills and that ambition in mind, but also with labor market realities in mind so that they don’t sort of wind up with a mismatch of expectations or outcomes that plagues them later in life. The last

We do many things. But one last piece that I’ll highlight, and I can talk a little bit about how it all fits together, is we help institutions measure the career outcomes of their learners. So we really help them understand what happens to learners not just right after graduation, but as they progress into their careers. And that kind of information

Daphne Dor-Ner (02:34.594)

First of all, they can hand it back to learners and it can power that good decision making and good outcomes for the next generation of learners who are coming. But it also helps them with that first piece, with making sure that their programs are well aligned to the labor market if the outcomes are not what they expect. Sometimes that can be in a great way, right? Like sometimes they can find out that learners of particular programs are emerging into outcomes that they didn’t anticipate.

and they can think about how to evolve that program to double down on that outcome and to even better prepare or maybe to talk to prospective learners about, you this is where our learners from this program go. And that’s distinct from what you might encounter in a program that looks like this from the outside at another institution. Sometimes it’s not what they expect in a not great way. And they want to think about sort of how to get graduates of the program.

back on track or back in working in a career or a domain that they expected or using skills in the way that they expected. But really understanding those learner outcomes and how those outcomes evolve over the course of a learner career, without it, you’re flying blind, right? You’re sort of making guesses and maybe relying on anecdotes. And it’s…

it’s really, really important. So that’s another big part of our work in education is sort of on that outcome side.

Matthew Sterenberg (04:02.296)

That’s fascinating because we often don’t get that feedback loop, right? You see the billboards when you’re driving down the highway. It’s like central Michigan where I live, you know, places 95 % of graduates or whatever, like, yeah, in your first job. And I think about my own experience. I went to a liberal arts college and I’m as a history major. I’ve been working at a software company for 11 years, you know, like that’s not a traditional pathway. And I think a lot of that’s just hidden.

Daphne Dor-Ner (04:10.702)

Yes.

Matthew Sterenberg (04:30.44)

And we don’t really, like we talk about pathways a lot on this podcast and credential innovation. And so often I think we’re trying to map like A to B, right? Like this degree will match to this. And it’s like, well, we know that a history major is, there’s not like a clear linear path unless you’re going to immediately go back and to get your PhD in history and you want to be a professor. It’s like, where does that?

Daphne Dor-Ner (04:41.614)

Super.

Matthew Sterenberg (04:59.218)

major often go? it teaching? Is it research? What is it? And then, it turns out it’s a lot of different things. go to law school, you become an attorney, whatever it may be. I think that’s fascinating. Going back to your labor, sorry, go ahead.

Daphne Dor-Ner (05:13.346)

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say that kind of long-term career outcomes measurement is particularly compelling in the liberal arts space where it’s a little more mysterious. I also have a liberal arts degree. can be a little more mysterious what you’re going to wind up doing with it and how it plays out and also justifying it, right? Saying that our liberal arts degrees may take a little bit longer to pay off or a little bit longer to look linear.

in terms of the career progression. And so the sort of historic emphasis on a first destination is important. And we do that too, right? We will help you run your first destination survey. If that’s sort of the starting point for looking at alumni data, it’s a really important place to start. But we also want to look much longer and capture that sense of progression and advancement and value that folks feel out of getting a degree.

Matthew Sterenberg (06:16.088)

think that’s really, w you know, colleges right now are grappling with the last mile problem, right? We are, we now feel like we’re responsible for helping our students, our learners get a job. And it’s this mapping skills to, you know, the job descriptions and that’s, that’s a big part of it, right? But I do think there’s an element and this is

kind of an aside, but one of the themes that I keep seeing is it turns education into a very transactional experience, right? And so I don’t think we’re going to solve this in the next 30 minutes, but I think it is interesting how I think because of the cost of higher ed, is this like, how are you going to help me get to the very next thing? And that is a really tough bar, right? Because to your point, that first job you get is maybe not where you’re going to end up in 10 years. And if we solely focus on what your first job out of college is, we might be missing the point, right? Like, hey, we helped you get this job. And it’s like, well, that might be a job I’m only satisfied with for whatever reason for a few years, right? Like, how do we keep the long tail view of all of this while also tackling that last mile problem?

Daphne Dor-Ner (07:33.016)

first time.

Daphne Dor-Ner (07:41.666)

Yeah, no, I think I understand the transactional criticism and I understand that increasingly it is what learners are looking for from their higher education experience. It’s not all they’re looking for, at least I hope and believe it’s not all they’re looking for, but it is a critical component. And when you ask them later, you know, when you…

when you ask them later their sense of sort of the ROI that they got out of their investment of both time and money in their higher education experience. It really matters whether or not they feel like there there was career preparation opportunities and whether there was an institutional investment in career. And

That doesn’t mean that that’s the only thing they want. It doesn’t mean that if you just said, you know what, forget the degree, we’ll just give you a job. Some portion of people might go for that, but a lot of people want a more well-rounded experience. But it does mean that without the job, when they look back on their experience, they don’t think of it as valuable or as delivering on what they went to it for. And so I do think that institutions have an obligation. I think it is a responsibility to be aware of that expectation on the part of their learners and to be interweaving that career focus and that career preparation throughout the academic program. And there are lots of ways that they can do that. We help with some of them and not all of them.

But we have identified what we think of as the high impact career practices that are coming out of our National Alumni Career Mobility Survey. And when you say them, they sound really basic. It’s about understanding career opportunities. It’s about developing a career plan. It’s about helping them to envision career options and sort of what they look like on the ground. It’s about faculty engaging with them about careers.

Daphne Dor-Ner (09:54.542)

And then it’s certainly about developing the skill set that they need to pursue the careers that they’re interested in. It’s not rocket science, right? But it is regularly talking about career over the course of enrollment, not a resume review and career services at the very end.

Matthew Sterenberg (10:16.34)

And from your website and just looking at all the resources that you put out there, I will make a plug to anybody listening. If you want to just learn about labor markets and what the future looks like, definitely check it out. I was reading through your paper, The Storm is Rising. So a nice light read. I got to be honest, I walked away being like, oof.

Daphne Dor-Ner (10:38.19)

Mm-hmm.

Matthew Sterenberg (10:43.988)

I am sad because it’s, you know, but to your point, like that’s why colleges and K-12 need to start thinking about like, what are we doing here? Like definitely go read it. Go to lightcast.io and check out the storm is rising. Cause if it’s not even related to just higher ed or K-12, but you’re going to learn a lot. And I think you guys do a really good job and it’s all based on know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and all this other stuff. I really, sorry, go ahead.

Daphne Dor-Ner (11:17.038)

One of the things that our marketing team did that I think is so cool is they made it an audiobook. So you don’t even have to read it if you don’t want, you can have it read to you by some of the economists and other folks at Lightcast. But it is really powerful. Parts of it are quite worrying. But I think we’re better prepared for understanding the realities that are coming and thinking about how we can most effectively position institutions, learners, graduates in order to deal with what’s up ahead.

Matthew Sterenberg (11:56.114)

And I think like there’s a number of different solutions you put out. Essentially the gist of it is that we’re going to have labor pressure, right? And the thing that stuck out to me was over the last decade, there’s been a huge emphasis on, you know, college attainment and essentially where we’re leading is like, yes, but that’s going to add its own type of pressure for the jobs that are available, right?

And so as institutions think about, you know, number one, what their mission is, what type of institution they are. It’s like, well, what jobs are our students actually going to? Where do we want our students to go to? And what programs do we have available to them? So I guess when you were talking about helping institutions assess where they’re at and where they want to go and what’s reality versus what’s maybe visionary.

Like I guess the challenge is what type of institution are you? Like where do you, every institution wants to say our graduates are doing the most amazing things. But I think there’s an element of like, what do we really, what students are we serving? And I think that’s maybe a difficult thing for institutions to grapple with. Cause everyone wants to be prestigious in a certain way. But from reading the report, it’s like, there’s this need here and it’s kind of like middle skill.

Daphne Dor-Ner (13:21.998)

Yes.

Matthew Sterenberg (13:22.952)

job shortages. So I don’t know if you can just tackle like how you do an assessment with the university of like, who do you want to be? And versus like what the opportunity is.

Daphne Dor-Ner (13:35.48)

Right. So first of all, I’ll just say you’re sort of echoing something I’ve thought about for a long time, which is that institutions are continually striving to be sort of their aspirational peers. And they’ve been chasing each other up market in a variety of ways, right? And that might be sort of campus facilities to the program offerings to the kind of learners that they strive to admit and enroll.

And I understand why they do that. We all do that to some degree in various ways. But I do think it has created a kind of a pressure and also a kind of opportunity to think about how to address labor market opportunities and realities in a different way. In terms of how we help institutions, I would not say, you know,

I hope our professional services people won’t disagree with me. But I would not say we’re the place to sort of figure out your mission. I think there are consulting companies in higher education that do that kind of work. I think what I hear more often when I talk to our customers is some amount of clarity on the mission and often a lot of work and a strategic plan that’s really compelling relative to that mission.

Matthew Sterenberg (14:42.29)

Right, right.

Daphne Dor-Ner (15:04.15)

And then sort of questions about how to translate that to looking at their portfolio of programs and how well does that portfolio of programs position them to address that mission, right? And how well does it support, to your point, the student body that they typically enroll? Do they have the right things for the folks who are showing up at their door? And are they thinking strategically about how that portfolio will evolve and address those needs over time.

And on that front, we do work with institutions, both in a professional services capacity and within our software, provide ways to sort of look at your portfolio of programs, look at how that relates to labor market demand for the kinds of graduates that those programs create, how that demand for folks in those in those particular careers or with those particular skill sets is evolving over time, right? If you have a program that is oriented around a particular set of skills that are in decline, right? Does that mean that there’s sort of, there’s no hope for the program? Sometimes it might mean that, but often it might mean that the skills that you have are being replaced by a different set of skills, right? And you need to understand what those are and how the industry is evolving and requiring a different set of skills so that you can shift what you’re teaching in the program. I think one of the biggest challenges to me about higher ed is the very, very long cycle time for feedback, right? So we talked about the measurement of graduates.

The graduate outcomes that you are measuring this year are based on decisions you made, not just when they started the program, but when you designed the program several years before that, right? The amount of patience that it takes to figure out if an evolution that you made to a program design or a program curriculum is paying off is really, really challenging, right? And I think it’s part of why there’s this focus on

Daphne Dor-Ner (17:27.59)

on first destination or on your very first outcome. It’s the first measurement that you get of that graduate population out in the labor market, but it’s insufficient. And so even as you start to say, okay, I want to look five or 10 years out, now you’re increasing that cycle. So thinking about the early indicators that you’re on track and keeping up, you know, sort of regular check-ins as part of program review.

In terms of are the programs that we’re teaching today and the skills and competencies that are inside of them, are we keeping up with that alignment? Are we evolving them over time? Some programs will need to evolve quite quickly. Others can stay quite stable. So again, when you’re looking at that portfolio mix, thinking about where you need to be updating regularly and where you can have a more.

Matthew Sterenberg (18:15.252)

Thank

Daphne Dor-Ner (18:24.014)

You know, maybe what feels like a more realistic or reasonable pace for updates. That’s important too. But we really do see institutions think about, you know, vision and mission as applied to their program selection, how it’s going to evolve over time, and as applied to the population of learners that they’re serving. We also work with institutions that are particularly in the community college space that also answer to sort their service area, right, and their economic region and the employers in that region and thinking about how to stay in tune with that as it evolves over time.

Matthew Sterenberg (19:08.828)

That’s an interesting point because, you know, it’s not just we can look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. this job, but like, what is it within my region? You know, a 50 mile radius of my community college. And so a lot of this ends up being local. I think that’s a really interesting component. So what have you seen be successful for institutions like in your work?

Working closely with institutions, what are some things that you hope other institutions replicate? What are some success stories you can give us of how programs have evolved to meet the needs of their students and also of the market at large?

Daphne Dor-Ner (19:42.734)

Mm.

Daphne Dor-Ner (19:51.97)

Yeah, no, it’s a great question. We do see institutions that are sort of really effective at setting up the processes that enable that kind of feedback loop. And so that’s an important part of the evolution, right? We also see a lot of institutions that think of it as sort of like a big bang project we’re gonna align.

And that turns out to be a struggle. It’s a really big project. takes a lot of focus and attention and resources to think about researching each of your programs and thinking about where they ought to go and what kinds of skill components are a part of them. What’s the competitive landscape around them? So to try and do it.

As a one offer at Big Bang is really challenging. Institutions that know that it’s going to be part of their regular cycle, institutions that integrate research and labor market analysis as a part of program review, we’ve found that to be really powerful. Institutions that have figured out how to engage their faculty in labor market data have found that to be really powerful to sort of use

Both the faculty expertise, whatever infrastructure they have set up around program advisory councils and direct relationships with employers, and then to contextualize that with broader labor market data. And not to say it’s one or the other. We’re orienting away from faculty expertise and toward labor market data. I don’t think that’s good idea.

But to figure out how to integrate those different perspectives in a way that lets you be really thoughtful about the decisions you’re making about the programs you have and the programs you’re evolving, and also lets you back it up, provide that rationale and the data around the decisions that you’re making and why. These are high stakes decisions for institutions. If you’re going to launch a new program, that’s a really significant investment.

Daphne Dor-Ner (22:13.578)

in building out curriculum, establishing faculty roles, potentially in establishing facilities and labs and other infrastructure that you need to support a new program, it is not no big deal. And it is worth doing your homework and being really thoughtful about it and then being able to explain to stakeholders inside the institution and outside the institution. A lot of institutions need to engage with.

Board of Regents or other state body in order to justify the desired investment in a new program.

Matthew Sterenberg (22:51.652)

I also think for the K-12 folks, like this is huge because we looking at your report, a lot of the shortages do not require a college degree. Right. So, you know, one of your suggestions was to basically workforce development, skilling people up. Like when we have tons of, you know, supply for these positions, it’s like, we’ll find somebody and we don’t have to worry about skilling them up. But when the supply is low, we really need to think about how we’re going to get these people in, train them up. And again, going back to like, this is a just so everybody knows college positive podcasts. Okay. But, there is this element where it’s more people are going to college and we’ve seen this, like the wage premium dropping.

Daphne Dor-Ner (23:36.462)

you

Matthew Sterenberg (23:45.48)

Right. It’s just more and more people go, well, there’s more and more people with a bachelor’s degree. Now you’re competing against way more people. And so we see these other jobs. And if you have a job in construction or a skilled trade, you know, Grand Valley State University to the mission point earlier, they’re not going to look at that shortage and go, we should, we should have our graduates go into those. They’re not going to fulfill that need. So for the K 12 folks out there, I think this is.

Check out the report because I think this is a huge opportunity to really get your students on the right pathway. And for the community colleges to partner with them to create those pathways, I think is a massive opportunity.

Daphne Dor-Ner (24:29.486)

I completely agree. Also college positive, also sort of higher ed positive. But that doesn’t mean that higher ed needs to look the same for everyone or that we should be sort of chasing the same kind of experiences and offerings for everyone. I think we’re all better off when there’s sort of more variety of the type of opportunity, the level of investment that it requires.

Whether it assumes you’re full-time engaged with it for four to six to eight years or doing it in pieces and parts alongside a career. I really think in sort of implanting in the public consciousness, this vision of what college looks like that is quite specific and narrow, we’ve done a disservice and that we can start to expand on that view of what it looks like to get additional education after K-12 that is much more varied and interesting and sort of career driven and purpose built than maybe what some of us are picturing.

Matthew Sterenberg (25:37.66)

One of the things that struck me to just reading all the data was I think we don’t want to accept some of these data points because it’s counter to maybe the way we think it should be. And so I’ll just share my own example. So my dad, mom didn’t graduate from college, right? They had largely blue collar jobs, right? I graduated college. It’s like great. And it like, essentially what the data suggests is like, no, we will always need middle skill jobs. And I think we’ve always kind of just like, there’s always going to be this growth. Like you graduate from college and then your sons and daughters were graduated from college. And it’s like, well, there’s still going to be this need that we have to fill. And I think we just want to think of like stepping up the ladder. And I think we need to change our perspective on like, what is success look like?

Daphne Dor-Ner (26:34.402)

would matter. No, I, you know, first of all, sort of feel that acutely as I as I think about my own kids and I think about everything I know about higher education and sort of try and probe what you know, what would I want for them, which is obviously separate from what they want, which is important. But, but I do think, you know, one one of the things that we have worked with institutions on is is sort of

Matthew Sterenberg (26:36.508)

And what the latter is, that’s a great point.

Daphne Dor-Ner (27:04.914)

redefining graduate success in a way that doesn’t rely solely on salary. And salary is only one part of the latter, but it’s often a piece that people are thinking a lot about. And that if an institution is oriented toward increasing the salary of their alumni, it will make them make choices about programs that

Matthew Sterenberg (27:29.928)

Right, you’re gonna have like, you’re gonna invest in your econ program, right?

Daphne Dor-Ner (27:33.422)

You’re going to invest in your econ program. You’re going to under invest in your in your childhood education program. You know, you’re going to make a series of choices in order to sort of optimize the thing that you have incentivized or articulated as as an institutional goal. And so I think it’s really important that we think really carefully about those goals and about, you know, to your point, sort of the vision in our heads about what it looks like to progress.

And what it looks like to feel good about your career. One of the things that I love about the NACM survey, that’s the National Alumni Career Mobility Survey, is that it asks people how they feel about their job. Do they feel like there is meaning in their work? And it asks about salary in a very particular way. It asks whether they think they are better off than in the household where they grew up.

Right? they feel like they’re hard? Right? Rather than saying sort of, you make as much as you thought you would or, you know, are you progressing in a way that there is some external perspective that you ought to be? It’s sort of, how does it feel for you? And, you know, how does the meaning in your career make you feel about your career? It also asks, how does it make you feel about your institution?

Matthew Sterenberg (28:33.908)

That’s a great question. Yeah.

Daphne Dor-Ner (28:59.894)

Right, and whether they prepared you for kind of the life that you’re leading and the career that you’re growing.

Matthew Sterenberg (29:06.994)

Yeah, that’s a really, we need like, there’s so much that we want hard data. And then we’re also like, what are the gaps in the hard data of the salary? The wages are going down and be like, yeah, but people are working less and their quality of life could be better. You know, they’re spending more time with their kids. You know, there’s so many different things you could lean into, which makes this an inexact science, even though in many ways it is, you know, hugely data driven.

Daphne Dor-Ner (29:25.795)

Yes.

Daphne Dor-Ner (29:35.084)

Yes. And how to be, you know, we really work in that alumni measurement space, you know, some things which are really sort of, do we ask them for their salary? Yes, we do. Do we try and estimate their salary based on the career that they’re in and how long they’ve been in it? Yes, we do. But we also try to add that sentiment, which helps to round it out. There’s no, there isn’t a silver bullet.

Right, for any of this kind of information. But sort of diversifying the sources of information that we gather about where alumni are and how they’re feeling about it, I think is really important. I’m personally uncomfortable with something that sort of puts salary at the very top of the list and doesn’t add that additional content.

Matthew Sterenberg (30:25.63)

So the title of this episode is creating a future ready workforce. I think what, I mean, you’ve convinced me that we need to start with like, what are you doing today and looking at what your alumni are doing? Because if you don’t have that, you don’t know what your gaps are. you have to know that. Well, why would you want to improve something that you don’t know what the problems are?

And so for institutions, just thinking about where are our graduates ending up? What does the reality look like? And then how do we think about our programs to fit a need that we maybe want to fill and what the future of the labor market looks like? So I think that’s a really fascinating way to look at it is, well, how do you know what you’re doing today and where your learners are going?

Daphne Dor-Ner (31:20.608)

Matt, your audio is dipping out a little bit for me.

Matthew Sterenberg (31:25.012)

All right, check,

Daphne Dor-Ner (31:28.462)

Say something longer.

Matthew Sterenberg (31:31.868)

the arsonist had oddly shaped feet.

Did that get through?

Daphne Dor-Ner (31:37.582)

It’s like just a little bit garbled.

Matthew Sterenberg (31:43.194)

It might come through fine on the final recording. So let’s just sit tight for a second. Can you understand and make it out?

Daphne Dor-Ner (31:47.126)

Okay. Okay.

Daphne Dor-Ner (31:55.246)

No.

Matthew Sterenberg (31:58.044)

So hold on one second. We’re good now.

Daphne Dor-Ner (32:01.243)

that sounds better. I think so.

Matthew Sterenberg (32:05.286)

Okay. Well, we’re about at 30 minutes anyways, so I’ll do this. Let me just cue you up for, you know, parting thoughts or any, is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you want to make sure we highlight?

Daphne Dor-Ner (32:19.758)

we covered a lot of ground. I think, I think you were saying that, that I’ve, I’ve convinced you that it’s, that’s important for institutions to start with, with measuring their, their alumni outcomes. And I do want to say that, like, we recognize that that’s really hard, right? So, so it’s not that, it’s not that institutions haven’t been trying or haven’t been working at this problem.

And coming at it from a bunch of different directions. We recognize it’s hard, which is why we set out to try and figure out how to help and how to bring in additional sources of information and perspectives that institutions can use. But I want to make sure we acknowledge the challenges that exist there and also the opportunity to drive the right kind of investment within the institution to more effectively support your current learners and your prospective learners by showing them what happens to your alumni and helping them make really good choices and sort of facilitating that continuous improvement feedback loop that comes with regular measurement of where your alumni.

Matthew Sterenberg (33:36.638)

Daphne, really appreciate you joining me.

Daphne Dor-Ner (33:39.554)

Thank you for having me.

There’s always more to learn.