1. Connecting college curricula & careers
My goal is…in 15 minutes or so….to address how and why the old models of curriculum development in postsecondary education, often disconnected from career pathways, are changing and in what ways. These changes require, among other things, reliable and valid labor market data for students, colleges, and employers to play on the same field so that students can major in career-relevant majors, employers can rely on a talent pipeline, and universities can develop programs that bridge the gap for students and employers. EMSI’s role for UMUC has been to help us garner the right data so that we can use it in our work.
Marie A. Cini, Ph.D.
Senior Academic Innovation Fellow, UMUC
EMSI Summit 9/17

2. OLD models don’t apply
“I…want to say one word to you…just one word…plastics…there’s a great future in plastics.”
Mr. McGuire to Ben in ”The Graduate”
Higher Ed used to develop programs that were more internally focused; less focus on connections to careers. This is changing rapidly and dramatically. Remember the 1967 film with Dustin Hoffman? He has graduated from a college back east. We never know his major but we are led to believe something in journalism. A friend of the family suggests his future be in plastics. No asking him if he has an interest or an aptitude.

3. Why is the model changing?
Pressures
Parents
College
Public
Students
Many changes in the relationships among employers, colleges, parents and students.
Students and parents focused on career pathways
College without applied learning is not in vogue
Employers increasingly unhappy with new employees’ skills
High cost of postsecondary education creates emphasis on ROI
Careers are more complex and require specific competencies—both content and soft skills
Employers

4. Solution: Curriculum and Career
Labor Force Needs and Outcomes
Curriculum Development/Career Pathways
Career Counseling
Job Placement and Skills Gap
Virtuous
Cycle….
Georgetown University Center’s on Education and the Workforce in a report entitled Career Pathways: Five Ways to Connect College and Careers suggests improvements in
Education projections, business expansion, and workforce quality
Program alignment with labor market demand
Curriculum alignment with workforce requirements
Counseling and career pathways
Job placement and skills gap analysis
1. We need a new scalable solution to identify employer needs, align programs, and develop curriculum. This must include a feedback loop for continuous program updating and improvement
“The First Step to a modernized system of work and learning is greater transparency in the alignment of postsecondary programs and career pathways.” –Jamie Merisotis, President & CEO of the Lumina Foundation.

5. Cybersecurity at umuc MS in Cybersecurity Operations
Subject matter experts (e.g., those working in cyber across industries)
Industry and government models (e.g., National Initiative on Cyber Education—NIST; National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers & Studies—DHS; NSA Cyber Ops Center of Excellence)
Advisory boards—e.g., Cyber Think Tank; Curriculum Advisory council
Academia—Internal experts who study Cybersecurity
Cyber is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation
Goal is to provide a state-of the art curriculum based on real-world scenarios, hands-on tools, and immediately applicable to today’s organizations
UMUC has several flavors of cyber degrees at the undergraduate and graduate levels
Recently Restructured an MS in Information Technology with a concentration in information assurance to a graduate degree focused entirely on Cybersecurity Operations as a standalone MS.
Began with validation of program outcomes and course objectives from
Subject matter experts in the field (e.g., those working in cyber across industries)
Industry and government models (e.g., National Initiative on Cyber Education—NIST; National Initiative for Cybersecurity Careers & Studies—DHS; NSA Cyber Ops Center of Excellence)
Advisory boards—e.g., Cyber Think Tank; Curriculum Advisory council
Academia—Internal experts who study Cybersecurity

6. Establishing Employer demand
Keyword searches in target markets
Job postings produce the top careers we are targeting:
Information security analysts/Cybersecurity Analyst, Cybersecurity Engineer, Information Security Manager, Security Architect
Projected growth for these jobs is 9.2% nationally and 6.1% in MD.
Large gap between job postings and number of hires.
EMSI provided employment projections for the DC Metro area for and found the growth strong for these jobs.
Increasingly necessary to establish demand for the program prior to designing it.
EMSI help
Keyword searches in target markets
Job postings produce the top careers we are targeting:
Information security analysts/Cybersecurity Analyst
Cybersecurity Engineer
Information Security Manager
Security Architect
Projected growth for these jobs is 9.2% nationally and 6.1% in MD.
Information Security Analysts were found to have the highest rates of growth
Large gap between job postings and number of hires. Example: ISAs: posted jobs = 30,153 and hires = 4,072 in an average monght in our area. 4/5 jobs are left unfilled.
EMSI provided employment projections for the DC Metro area for and found the growth strong for these jobs.

7. Developing Career pathways: Student needs
80% of Online College Students Cite A Career-Focused Reason for Enrolling
Learning House, 2017
Student Needs:
A recent Learning House survey of over 1500 online college students titled Online College Students 2017: Comprehensive Data on Demands and Preferences reports that nearly 80% of online college students cite a career-focused reason as their primary motivation for enrolling in their program.
And in choosing what school to attend, 35% of students indicate that the program pages and other pages on the college’s website were their primary source of detailed information.
Furthermore, a 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research study recommends that colleges increase “the salience of information about labor market outcomes” to improve students’ prospects.

8. How umuc addresses career connections
Web Site
Advising
Program Content
Applied Learning
Career Services
Pre-Admission: Web site with clear information about programs and career outcomes
Advisors able to discuss career pathways
Admission: Students enroll into a program
Program Content:
Experiential
Applied
Career Development activities in curriculum (e.g., early courses emphasize learning more about the field and assessing personal skills gaps)
Focused on competencies so that students can transparently report what they can do
Practitioner faculty

9. Job placement and alumni connections
Career Pathway
Employers
Alumni
Career Services
Student
Many and Varied
Relationships
In a recent article, Jeff Selingo points out that colleges and universities need to focus more on the career development of their students. Jeff goes on “If they don’t, they will be yielding the field to outside ventures and losing a vital opportunity to create a life-long—and essential—connection with alumni.” By leveraging Career Services and building out continuing and professional education offerings to meet alumni where they are in their careers, colleges and universities can close the loop to create a virtuous circle and life-long relationships with alumni.
At UMUC our students are likely to already be on a career pathway and are likely employed. Our adjunct faculty are predominantly practitioners from our many employers. Our students become alumni and may mentor current students. Our alumni come back for more education and may influence their employers to create relationships with UMUC. Career services maintains connections with our alumni, their employers, and provides services to students at every stage. Our current students can utilize mini-internships with employers.

10. Where are we heading?
Digital Systems to link Employers to Competent Students and Career-Focused University programs
Soft Skills considered Power Skills
Enhanced Experiential Education
Data Collection and Rapid Reporting of real-job Job Market Information
Need for systems that link needed career competencies to curriculum. And curriculum competencies of students connecting back to employers (digital portfolios are emerging that will do this)
Clearer understanding of the need for “soft skills” by employers and more specifically what that means to them. Not the same as “general education outcomes.”
More creative use of experiential forms of learning; improved methods of program design using backward design
Technology systems that will collect this data in real-time, parse it and send it to those who need to have it (universities, employers, students etc)

11. Let’s continue the conversation…
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