Transcripts For CSPAN3 Education Secretary Betsy DeVos At WS

CSPAN3 Education Secretary Betsy DeVos At WSJ CFO Annual Meeting July 14, 2024

Street journal cfo conference here in washington, d. C. [ applause ] secretary, thank you for being here with us today. Thanks, lauren, its a pleasure. I talked to a lot of companies, heads of hr and other executives and they all talk about the skills shortage. And its not only about low unemployment. This was coming up six years ago when unemployment was around 9 . They tell us they cant find the people they need for the work that needs to get done. Clearly theres some kind of a breakdown. Sometimes its about soft skills, technical skills. Tell us where you think that break down might be. I think its sort of across the board. It starts with k12 education and the fact for too many young people theyre not beginning to think about what next until late high school. And that, frankly, is i think too late. I believe we have to start exposing students as early as Early Middle School to a variety of opportunities and pathways and giving them the opportunity to hear from and experience what some of those things might be like to give them a broader view for what might come after high school. And high schools k12 in general is simply walled off in too many ways from higher ed, from a traditional fouryear experience or a Community College or a technical experience, and we need to really be intentional about taking those walls down, taking those silos down and for business in particular, i think theres been a giant silo between business and education for too long. And im seeing now many places where the communities have really come together and business and Industry Leaders are introducing themselves to educators and vice versa and saying how can we Work Together to mean our longterm needs for this community. I see a lot of those kinds of partnerships popping up and i think its because Many Companies realize government is not going to do it all or we cant rely on the government to do this kind of training. And theres a lot of innovation happening right now which is exciting. What do you think the government can do to facilitate more of that. There are some things we can do on the margins at the federal level. I think states have a much larger role to play in this regard, but we have advanced a few ideas that we think will help to provide young people different opportunities, pell grants today are not available shortterm certification or credential programs. We think that this is a good step to look at expanding those opportunities. The reauthorization of perkins 5 provides states a lot of flexibility in creating new onramps for students in career and Technical Education. And were encouraging that this is a with the perkins 5 reauthorization, this is a really important point where point in time where industry can come together with educators to create something new and different. I think it authorizes 1. 3 billion in spending for career and Technical Education. Right. And theres not been i dont think as much enough focus on or if the federal government is going to invest in Higher Education, there should be more focus on supporting the multitude of pathways and recognizing that for a lot of students today coming out of high school, the opportunities are great for a highpaying challenging career from which they can grow and advance while not taking on a bunch of student debt. And yet we continually talk about Fouryear College or university as the past that students should really the messages around that are very mixed or sort of confusing to parse out. On the one hand, student debt is at a record level, i think its 1 1 2 trillion dollars right now. There are a lot of people who Start College and drop out and get nothing for that investment. On the other hand, the college premium, the amount your wages will be higher than somebody who just graduated from high school is higher than its ever been. Theres a good reason why people think of college as the best next step. But do you think there are too many young people going to college today . I think there are too many young people that are starting a Traditional College with no idea of what they really want to pursue and they are taking on student debt. And after a year and a half or two years theyre dropping out and having to start over with nothing to show for it. With 1. 5 trillion in student debt, it is an important time to take a step back and look at how we can message differently and encourage young people to explore what theyre what theyre really wired up to do much earlier on in their life. And not wait until graduating high school to say, okay, well, i guess the next thing for me is that Fouryear College. I have no idea what im going to do or want to do. But, again, really winding it back and helping students know and understand what their ennate aptitudes are and getting a good idea of what they might want to pursue is something that communities have to take responsibility for in a major way. I just visited a really interesting place in texas last week. Its a very Large Industrial Construction Company that is not having nearly enough success in finding workers who are skilled for the jobs that they have. They have welcomed veterans, they have welcomed unemployed. Ive met a number of previously unemployed young women, one of whom had earned a Fouryear College degree and couldnt get hired anywhere. They went through a 16week program and now theyre earning a great wage. They have every opportunity to continue to build on those skills and advance in this company with no end in sight in terms of what they might be able to do and thats just one of many places that ive seen really thinking creatively and taking matters really into their own hands because they have just not been able to get the skills they need to do the jobs they have. Right. And we are seeing Big Companies saying were not going to require a College Degree anymore. Google has done that. Some other big tech companies. I think firms are getting the message both because they cant hire if they keep their requirements so high and also because some jobs simply dont require that kind of background and that kind of debt. I do want to ask you given that our audience here control it is pursestrings, basically, what do you think companies should be doing what is their responsibility when it comes to figuring out how to prepare their workforce or the workforce . I think its an opportunity to think differently about the kind of workers that your Company Needs today and in the future and to look creatively within your own community as to how you can solve the problem or meet the needs of your business both today and tomorrow. Im sure youve all heard the prediction of kindergarteners starting this year, theyll graduate from high school in 2030 and 85 of their jobs have not yet been created. So this is a this is a really important period of time to really approach things differently than we have before. And ive worked with enough individuals in the financial world to understand that sometimes thats that might not that might be a little more difficult to think about and to do, but it is i think a really important opportunity to work more closely with your own communities and look at ways that you can partner with educators today. More and more educators are open to and cognizant of the fact that education fundamentally has to change. But they need encouragement just like i think you can be encouraging of them to really take the steps to come together and solve those problems together. I just i know that ivanka trump has been working with a number of large employers to advance the pledge to the American Worker and today she Just Announced that over 10 million commitments to expanding opportunities for current workers have been the pledges have been made. Again, there are so many opportunities today but we have to think more creatively about how to meet those needs and look at the development of Human Capital in the same way that we look at Capital Investments of other goods and, you know, equipment within a business. On that note, i want to pull up our poll question for the audience. In the current fiscal year, my company has made significant new investments, kept spending about the same, and c, decreased it. Well take a look back in a minute to see where the results end up. We are i recently wrote a story that included some statistics that i hadnt been aware of before which is that the u. S. On a list of oecd companies, we are second in last in terms of our Government Spending on career and continuing education. Should we be putting more money into most secondary education specifically for Career Training . I know we have the perkins act, thats 1. 3 billion. Should we be putting a lot more in . Its an important question for congress to wrestle with. This administration has been very supportive of really supporting the multiple pathways to successful adult life in careers and i think that i think that we do need to examine where the resources are going from the federal level and what messages were sending either overtly or subliminally about what we value. And we should be valuing a lot more types of opportunities than we have sent signals for in the last several decades. Certainly Fouryear College and university is a good answer for a lot of young people, but for a lot of them, it might not be the answer today. It might be it might be for them five or ten years from now. We really need to, i think, embrace learning as a lifelong pursuit, not one that is episodic and that we check off the box by the time were 21 or 22 or a few years older with a graduated degree. I agree. Baked into our educational system is just kind of like the way we think about this issue as a society is idea that education is over by the time youre 25. We dont have a lot of resources for people who are continuing and improving your skills in your current job is so critical. I think a lot about how we can encourage that in people, how companies can encourage it and how we can have policies that encourage it. Right now we see this proliferation of theres a lot of innovation in the world of education, educational technology, we have boot camps. We have Online Education platforms, nano degrees, certificates in pretty much anything under the earth. Theres linked in learning. There are all of these places where people can get additional training. Theres not a lot of oversight and standards for them and it mirrors the forprofit Education System where most of these companies have a profit motive and theres not a lot of oversight on quality or standards. And when i talk to employers, they dont know they dont recognize these credentials, they dont know how to value them and thats very frustrating for workers who have gone and gotten them. In this wild west of a situation right now, where can government step in to help kind of manage this process of innovation or provide some oversight . Well, i think the role federally is to provide as wide a boundary that is feasible and possible particularly if federal resources are following some of these efforts. But i think its really important to ensure the most innovation and creativity that the the opportunity for it to develop appropriately and robustly. To let the market work to the greatest extent possible and on the other hand look to some of the education innovators who are having Great Success as validated by the marketplace. Are they graduates of whatever degree or Certification Program getting hired and are they advancing in their careers . Well, they should be highlighted and more people will emulate them. Ones that are not particularly effective, probably wont be very longlived. Clearly where federal resources are involved, there have to be appropriate boundaries and, you know, that is i think an important piece. But i think we have to we have to allow for a lot more creativity and innovation to enter the Education World because we have we have not kept up with the rest of the world in terms of opportunity. Yeah, i think well have to well end up at a place where theres a little more transparency. I hear a lot there workers who say i wanted to get a degree or i wanted to get some training in digital marketing, its always digital markets, because i think it seems easier than data science and people are familiar with marketing. And so theyll google it and theyll come the top three results, theyll choose one of those programs and sometimes theyre spending a thousand dollars which can be tough for a lot of people and have no idea whether or not theyre going to get the outcome that theyre looking for. I see a lot of vendors selling directly to corporations but i think theres a much better vetting process, hopefully. I want to take a look at our poll results. 50 say theyve made significant new investments in employee training, 50 keeping it about the same and no one is decreasing their investment in training. Thats good news. That is. I would be interested to know what the plan is for next year and beyond, if thats going to continue to increase. I do think there are some other countries that are trying very creative things. France started a program where theyre each worker or person of working age is giving 500 euros to put towards their training that they can spend that year or save it up to about 10 years or so. You see countries experimenting with how do we invest in the notion of lifelong learning. Exactly. And i really think that we could benefit from learning what switzerland has done in terms of apprenticeship opportunities. It was really interesting for me to learn when visiting there that almost 70 of their High School Students are in some kind of an apprenticeship. Theyre earning while theyre still learning in high school, and they can go onto any one of 230 different apprenticeships as decided by the can tons and businesses jointly. Theyre constantly dropping off apprenticeships that are no longer relevant, adding new ones and they have perfected a system of lifelong education that is very permeable. You can come into it and go out of the formal Education Program at any point in your life. And the notion of apprenticeship is i think we have a pretty narrow view of it here. My view was broadened when i realized that the ceo of ubs started as an apprentice in a bank. There are very few sectors where earning and learning wouldnt work in some way and i think, you know, business can be challenged to think more broadly about how that might look in your own company and i know that there are companies that are informally starting these kinds of programs today i think as theres more interest generated, there will be more opportunity to come together with businesses of similar size or scale or focus and develop some more of these opportunities. Apprenticeship is one of those rare bipartisan issues. Were going to take some questions from the audience. Questions for secretary devos . Question over here. Good. Hi. Hi. Very interesting, thank you. My name is christina. Wondering what advice you would give a pending student entering the college, University Years and what kind of or what kinds of programs you think are right now applicable to that person looking at what to do versus apprenticeship, school, curriculum in terms of what the output is and the job market. I think that would depend on the individual and what he or she was interested in pursuing. Theres no end to opportunity the opportunity for the types of programs that one can pursue and i think for a lot of young people, theres almost too many and trying to sort through that is challenging. And i think thats another opportunity for the k12 years is to start at a younger age to talk about, you know, what kinds of things you might actually have the innate skills to do. So i cant give you a very specific answer because it really would depend on the individual. Tell us a little bit about how is there a process for that within the in terms of training and teaching the child what are the options out there . Well, i know that there are some places that have begun to look at this more seriously. I think about a school i visited in tennessee. It was a really multifaceted career and Technical High School that was that had a lot of different opportunities for students who were both going to pursue a traditional fouryear experience in engineering and or some other subject areas but also ones in career and technical. But in i believe it was in eighth grade, all of the students in that high school did some kind of an aptitude test. So they would have a better understanding of what their innate gifts and talents were and how they might be able to actually develop them and what kinds of vocations would be would line up with those aptitudes. I think a lot more schools, a lot more communities might look seriously at that to help students know and understand at an earlier age what some whats some of the things theyre innately good at doing. Secretary, tell us your thoughts on immigration and the role that it plays here. A businessman that i spoke with who does a lot of business in china and the United States says that he thinks that the United States should staple a green card on the back of every diploma that it hands out to every grad student that comes from aboard. We want them to stay here. Dont go home and compete with us. Do you buy that idea . I think immigration and the future of what immigrants can bring and add to our country is of critical importance. Our president clearly believes this and thinks this as well with the most recent proposal around immigration that deals specifically with international students. The focus has been on exceptional students and students coming with and maintaining high levels of academic achievement would have an opportunity to apply before theyve graduated for a green card. If they have if

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