In order to close the skills gap, Northeast Ohio must create an educational ecosystem centered on learners, says Kirsten Ellenbogen, president of the Great Lakes Science Center, speaking at the City Club of Cleveland on Friday.
CLEVELAND - Discussions about the mismatch between the skills job seekers have and what employers are looking for often focus on what schools should be doing to better prepare students for the workforce.
Such discussions should be refocused to include what role area institutions and organizations should also play in closing the skills gap, Kirsten Ellenbogen, president of the Great Lakes Science Center, said Friday, speaking at the City Club of Cleveland.
"Education is neither a practice nor a responsibility that is limited to schools," she said, speaking on workforce transformation. "When you look across the entire lifespan, looking just at waking hours, you find that formal education only accounts for about five percent of a person's time. There is an abundance of time that we spend in other pursuits in other places.
"To truly be transformative -- and I would argue to truly grow the talent of Cleveland's youth -- we need to reframe our understanding of education as an ecosystem," Ellenbogen said.
The ecosystem of which she speaks could be developed to include the interconnection between a variety of entities, such as the Great Lakes Science Center, museums, PBS, youth groups, afterschool programs and businesses.
She said the ecosystem would revolve around the learner.
"(When) you put the learner at the center, and you follow the learner, you start to see extraordinary evidence of a lifetime of learning," Ellenbogen.
The issue, she said, is for these entities to not just see themselves as operating in individual silos, but as part of a greater community effort. Ellenbogen said traditionally, much of workforce development has been splintered.
There have been clusters of "top-down mechanisms" whose efforts have led to such developments as technology parks. She called it the "If you build it, they will come business approach."
Ellenbogen said there have also been more grassroots efforts, including those aimed at emerging technology entrepreneurs.
She said both tactics have strengths that could fully-blossom using an "ecosystem approach of taking some of the top-down things that have been created and integrating in some of the bottom up pieces."
But basic tenets in order to have a healthy educational ecosystem, Ellenbogen said.
"Ecosystems require a lot of coordination," she said. "They require transparency, trust and an ability to set aside organizational difference and agree upon some common things."
Ellenbogen said the creation of such an ecosystem is pressing.
"Across the workforce, we know we have a serious skills gap," she said.
For example, she cited 2013 Cleveland State University research relating to the skills gap. There were about 11,200 openings in Greater Cleveland for computer and Information Technology workers, but only about 1,300 people locally in 2012 who had received credentials in that field.
As the statistic illustrates, the skills gap is often seen in science technology engineering and math, or STEM, fields. Ellenbogen said any effort to address the skills gap should be racially and ethnically inclusive. For example, she said only one of every 14 Silicon Valley workers is black or Hispanic.
"Cleveland should be able to outpace Silicon Valley," she said.
The changing nature of the labor market is another factor heightening the need for an ecosystem, Ellenbogen said. Today's younger workers will spend an average of three years in one job and have three different careers.
She said workforce development has often focused on creating a pipeline of workers. But with the increasing need for workers to seek additional education or training, perhaps a few times during their entire careers, the need to tap into area institutions and organizations to remain marketable is becoming more prevalent.
"What you start to see when you step back and follow the learner, is actually a winding pathway that takes learners in and around and back again to these organizations," Ellenbogen said.
"A singular linear pipeline to success seems to hold far less potential than an ecosystem that has many pathways of opportunity," she said.
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