Conclusion

Although the United States has fostered significant innovation and economic growth in recent decades, these gains have not been evenly distributed, with many individuals and communities still facing systemic barriers to opportunity. Expanding access to multiple, high-quality pathways to postsecondary education and training is essential to ensuring that all learners and workers can thrive. Achieving this goal will require state and local officials, K–12 and higher education leaders, employers, philanthropists, and community partners to collaborate across traditional silos and build a coordinated ecosystem that supports individuals in choosing and pursuing the pathways best aligned with their aspirations and needs.

As learners and workers reach new milestones, they often face additional barriers at transition points between schools, employers, and systems. In Commission listening sessions with education administrators and employers, an oft-mentioned barrier to progress was the lack of understanding among traditionally siloed sectors. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, almost forty states had established P-20 councils, meant to coordinate state resources across the continuum of young residents’ lives from preschool through careers and college. However, today, fewer than half still exist. The fragmentation of policies, programs, and systems that learners encounter creates barriers to transitioning to the next step in their educational and career journeys.

Learners frequently shared with commissioners that they felt uninformed about their postsecondary options, including not understanding the differences between various institution and credential types. Education leaders should collaborate with learners and local community partners to design messaging campaigns that provide learners and families with information about their postsecondary options in an accessible manner. Critically, these options also need to be made more affordable and relevant to learners’ career paths. Whether a recent high school graduate, a working parent, or a long-tenured employee looking to upskill, learners benefit from career-connected educational experiences.

Through community partnerships with local governments, nonprofit organizations, and public schools, two- and four-year higher education institutions facilitate internships, community-based research projects, and public service programs that expose learners to practical policy challenges and community priorities while also contributing institutional resources and expertise to local initiatives. Such initiatives benefit the local community while connecting learners to potential career opportunities after they graduate.

Alongside experiential learning and participation in accelerated postsecondary pathways, learners and their families need timely and accessible data to inform their choices. Institutional leaders need accurate data linked to occupation and education information to improve their academic and training programs, address learner needs, and ensure that learners’ investments of time and resources lead to meaningful opportunities. Employers benefit from this data to improve their hiring practices and help workers better understand the education and training that can help them to progress in their careers.

The Commission identified promising practices around the country that illustrate ways to advance its recommendations, often in a local context. Many of these ideas have seen some traction. However, significant progress is still required on each of these recommendations to offer opportunities to America’s extraordinary and diverse talent pool and to ensure American prosperity and competitiveness. Today, as we navigate greater labor market uncertainty and misconceptions about the value of postsecondary pathways, these recommendations are more urgent than ever.

This Commission urges action by individuals, institutions, and, most important, coalitions of leaders and stakeholders across traditional silos who are committed to improving the lives of their neighbors and helping their communities thrive. By gathering more than one hundred examples of promising practices across the country, this Commission’s recommendations point the way forward and provide an illustrated map founded on cross-sector partnerships and programs that center learners in their design. The Commission encourages all stakeholders in the future of American education to learn from these examples (available at www.amacad.org/opportunities), add to them, and build on the promising work that is already occurring in states and local communities across the country.

Nothing is more foundational to American prosperity than the expansion of opportunity by empowering learners to choose the best pathways through education, service, and career training in order to thrive in adulthood.