Colleges nationwide are scouring their curricula to make sure the skills they’re teaching in the classroom line up with those that employers are demanding. But few are doing so with the precision of Texas State Technical College, a system of two-year institutions that, since 2013, has gotten a third of its state appropriations based on the salaries its graduates earn.
Working with a consultant who has spent more than three decades studying labor-market trends, the college system has created a software package designed to narrow the so-called skills gap.
Part of that gap, the developers believe, is due to colleges, employers, and students using different terms to describe the same skills. That leads to misunderstanding and frustration among both job seekers and recruiters, who frequently complain that they can’t find people with the skills they need.
The resulting service, called SkillsEngine, seeks to get everyone speaking the same language.
The developers compiled a library of specific skills needed for 900 occupations. Colleges can use it to align their curricula with local employers’ needs and to define competencies in their competency-based programs.
“Occupational titles don’t communicate what they used to,” says Rich Froeschle, the labor-market consultant who helped start the lexicon of job skills while working at the Texas Workforce Commission. “The range of skills and work activities they cover are all over the map.”
Starting this fall, interested colleges will be able to use an application to upload their curricula and have them analyzed against the skills lexicon to see how relevant what they’re teaching is for various occupations. Initially the app will be free, but it will eventually require a fee for certain advanced features.
“It’s not like education doesn’t want to be responsive to the labor market, but having a shared language that people can rally around and use is a missing element,” Mr. Froeschle says.
Students will also be able to use it to fine-tune their résumés. A demonstration site allows a user to upload a résumé or LinkedIn profile. The system then spits out a list of suggested occupations, along with hard and soft skills required, the particular wording that is likely to get potential employers’ attention, salary estimates, and projected openings by state.
Businesses can use the system to recruit graduates with the specific training they need. The program also helps pinpoint skills that can transfer into new positions, like wind-turbine technicians.
‘Realigning the Curriculum’
Placing graduates in well-paying jobs will earn more than the good will of alumni. In Texas, as in many other states, state appropriations for higher education are increasingly tied to outcomes measures like graduation rates and salaries.
Texas State Technical College is the only public college whose state appropriations for administration and instruction — about a third of its total state appropriations — are based solely on the starting salaries of its graduates. That gives it an extra incentive to place its graduates in well-paying jobs.
One challenge will be keeping the skills database constantly updated.
“We figured that if we could do a better job of understanding how skills are changing, we could do a better job of realigning the curriculum,” says Michael Bettersworth, vice chancellor of the two-year college system and executive director of its Center for Employability Outcomes.
Mr. Froeschle offers an example of how mismatches between applicants and employers can occur. A Toyota plant in San Antonio was having a hard time filling a $15-an-hour position for a “general maintenance skill team member.” Lots of applicants with handyman and maintenance skills were rejected.
When the SkillsEngine team ran the specific job requirements through the competency profile, it turned out that Toyota wanted someone with very specific skills in robotics and pneumatics to keep assembly lines running. That lined up with what technical colleges called “industrial machinery mechanics.” Locally, those workers usually earn around $22 an hour, meaning that Toyota was underpaying and thus attracting underqualified applicants.
The company found the results to be eye-opening, Mr. Froeschle said.
Among the employers welcoming the new system are Peter den Harder, who manages a plant in Temple, Tex., that manufactures industrial equipment. He says that as his processes have become automated, some skills he once needed are no longer relevant. At the same time, since shop classes have been phased out at many high schools, he can no longer count on high-school graduates to be able to do something as simple as using a measuring tape.
After he and other advisory-group members helped professors tweak the curricula of a couple of courses, he says, “the students coming through the program are a lot better prepared to do the job.”
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
