Employers for Student Retention and Persistence: Gates Foundation Business Convening

Michael Staton

The Gates Foundation has a goal of doubling the number of young people who earn a postsecondary degree or certificate with value in the marketplace by the time they reach age 26. You can learn more about their postsecondary education initiatives here.

I was honored to present Schools on Facebook, our Social Network for Student Retention, to major employers at the Gates Foundation Business Convening in Washington DC on March 23, 2010.

Bill and Melinda Gates speaking with college students

So, here is my editorialized summary of the takeaways from the meeting:

There is a necessity to reach and mobilize employers to help encourage postsecondary persistence and completion.  In particular, to promote completion:

1. Employer “Race-to-the-Top” – Engender the spread of companies creating, promoting, and adopting strategies to support post-secondary degree completion.  Have companies submit their strategies, tactics, and financial ROI estimates, and results in a standard format for easy search and comparison.  Award the top companies, and then create an incentive program for other companies to align their strategies and tactics to best-practices.  Keep a clearinghouse of submitted strategies and have sufficient metadata to allow companies seeking to innovate the ability to find relevant strategies.  One criteria of any award will be the need to redesign accounting practices to more clearly show return on investment.  A part of every plan should be clear ways to recognize employees that successfully take part in degree completion programs.
2. Mass Media Campaign with Employer Sponsors – Leverage or iterate off of the “Get Schooled” campaign to feature multiple personas benefiting from HR programs that encourage degree completion.  It can be a syndicated/licensed campaign, like Red, and the employers can fund their own advertisements that are associated with the mass media campaign.
3. Interactive Media Installations – Students must be presented interactive information that generates awareness of degree opportunities available to them that produce economic value in their communities.  Information on how and why to enroll and complete these degrees must be disseminated in places and in ways that will reach low-income students.  My personal proposal would be an interactive platform that will integrate local employment and education information and be on display in local consumer businesses like convenience stores and chain restaurants.
4. Industry and Corporate Credentialing as a Startup Idea – There is an opportunity for a consumer-focused startup that issues branded industry and corporate training credentials.  Credential should be packaged into larger credentials and degree, and learning should be self-paced.  Learning on the job can be credited through a nationally recognized “Personal Learning Assessment” – an assessment focused on competency rather than time in class, which can act as a credit voucher by recognized institutions and programs.
5. Eliminate the Cap on Pre-Tax Support by Employers – Right now the law of the land puts a cap on the pre-tax support employers can give their employees to pay tuition.  That’s dumb.

The Gates Foundation is poised to take a leadership role in creating a movement around postsecondary completion.  I look forward to playing a part, and I hope Inigral can help work towards that bold goal of doubling the number of students completing degrees.

In attendence was:

• Marriot Corporation – Global Language Learning Program provides language acquisition to
  workers. Program supported by small learning communities within Marriott properties. Provides career advancement opportunities and promotes parental involvement within children’s schools.
• UPS – Metropolitan College, a public/private partnership between UPS, state of KY, city of Louisville, KY Works (public WF), Jefferson Community Tech College, & Univ of Louisville. Created program to support education attainment for individuals and stable workforce for business expansion in the region
• Verizon Wireless – LearningLInk is an exceptional “earn and learn” model that provides education completion for individuals through strategies that support business goals of recruitment, retention, career mobility, and increased job performance. TAP program has 17,000 participants.
• Wal-Mart – Launching an initiative to develop supervisory and management talent that integrates on the job training with more structured learning. Identified education partner that is flexible, affordable, portable, and offers multiple option for learning delivery and degrees.
• Kindred Healthcare – Developed a career/education pathway to support attainment of CNA credentials and movement from these to nursing credential. Tuition assistance and reimbursement provided. Business outcome of decreasing turnover from 80% to 46%.
• Inigral, Inc – Uses social media to create continuous support system for “cohorts” of students to more closely tie them to each other and to their colleges. Purpose is to help students feel connected and find opportunities to become involved, overcoming 3 of 5 factors that contribute to college dropout rate
• Bright Horizons – Created education/career pathway in early childhood education that leads to AA degrees with community college partners in order to “grow our own” when fewer schools offer ECE. Also created education counseling resources for employees/clients to support ps completion