By: Misti Jeffers
In late September, I attended the ECMC Foundation’s 2024 Career and Technical Education Leadership Collaborative (CTE LC) Convening, an annual opportunity for all past and current CTE LC Fellows (500+!) to convene for 2-3 days of community and professional development.
The CTE LC, “an initiative focused on bringing together diverse perspectives and equipping leaders with the resources and skills needed to advance postsecondary CTE,” is made up of current and alumni Fellows across six fellowship programs. Each program has its own professional development focus, such as preparing journalists to better cover postsecondary CTE, developing CTE practitioners as postsecondary and nonprofit leaders, and helping institutional data professionals use data to improve student outcomes.
Group photo of some of the ECMC Fellows in the CTE Research Program at Old Dominion University in attendance at the CTE LC.
This year’s Convening included time for Fellows to connect casually and attend keynote and concurrent sessions focused on leadership, equity, leveraging data for institutional change, and outcomes related to postsecondary CTE.
In addition to providing a chance to catch up with friends and colleagues in postsecondary CTE, this professional development opportunity provided me with three insights related to my work that I carry back with me to SSTAR Lab.
1. Attitudes toward equity are evolving, but equitable student success is still achievable.
As is often the case in conferences and convenings across the higher education landscape, one primary theme of the LC Convening was eliminating equity gaps. While the conversation at the Convening focused specifically on equity in CTE, such as tracking students of color into low-wage, entry-level jobs, broader narratives of equity in education pathways certainly extend to all sectors of higher education. We know diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts remain under attack in higher education, and data continue to indicate persistent inequities in student success by race and class. In fact, we’re currently observing how the Supreme Court’s decision to ban race-conscious admissions practices resulted in disappointingly lower admissions rates for underrepresented students of color at selective institutions. For example, at UW-Madison, the acceptance rate for underrepresented students of color dropped by half.
While these stats are disappointing, it is inspiring to see how postsecondary leaders, practitioners, researchers, and funders are still committed to supporting marginalized students across the country. In fact, the ECMC Foundation’s North Star grounds the Foundation’s work in an ambitious goal to close equity gaps in postsecondary completion by 2040.
Every single session I attended, like one led by National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity CEO Brittany Brady, spoke to the ways we can still be innovative in supporting marginalized students moving to and through our organizations. One critical reminder is that we need to integrate assets perspectives in our research, policies, and practices. . So, I return to the SSTAR Lab with the same challenge echoed across the Convening: how can we continue to be deliberate about how we engage equity?
2. We need to understand and value students’ different reasons for pursuing higher education.
On that note, knowing our students means understanding how they set aspirations for college and careers. A major tension in higher education right now is the belief that “college isn’t worth it.” In other words, Americans are struggling to see the return on investment (ROI) of a postsecondary degree, especially if it means taking on student loan debt. In his keynote address, Dr. Jeff Strohl (Director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce) discussed how this sentiment (in a CTE context) reflects the misalignment between the supply of certificates and degrees and local labor market needs. A recent CEW report found “more than one-quarter of middle-skills credentials are conferred in programs of study that do not have a direct occupational match.”
Strohl also asserted there’s a mismatch between students’ goals and what we, in higher education, think their goals are or should be. Responding to these issues requires widening metrics to capture how people are viewing if college is a good investment and refining real time labor market data that can serve as a useful tool.
This endeavor shows up in our work at the SSTAR Lab, where we’re both trying to participate in existing ROI conversation while also challenging/widening that framework.
Dr. Lorenzo Baber, Director of the Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, shared similar points in his conversation about “Postsecondary Higher Education Policy in an Election Year.” He urged the audience to consider alternative reasons students seek out higher education. For example, some folks might be interested in higher education to make a difference in their communities.
This certainly struck a chord with me, as someone who initially pursued a college degree, and eventually a career in higher education policy research, because I wanted to help address the issues that arose from persistent poverty in my rural Appalachian hometown. And—this is a sentiment shared in Indigenous scholarship as folks advocate for institutions to recognize and support Indigenous students’ desires to use higher education for Native nation building.
This reminder to widen our lens as we study ROI and college access and success is timely to the SSTAR Lab as we expand our portfolio related to rural students’ pathways to and through postsecondary education.
3. “Your network is your net worth.”
This statement, shared by Will Collins of the Surge Institute, was a standout line in the best keynote session I’ve had the pleasure of attending, ever. Collins’ keynote focused on “Defining Your Leadership Legacy,” and was simultaneously a reflection of his own trajectory into a leadership position, a call to discover your own “Ikigai,” and key tips for strong leadership. One tip was the importance of investing in others without seeking a reward, which reminded me of a key ingredient of the SSTAR Lab’s research-practice partnership model: trusted relationship building. Our commitment to investing in relationships from a non-transactional perspective has been key to our success in growing partnerships that help us approach our work in better ways. Our network within the SSTAR Lab and across our partnerships truly is our net worth.
All in all, the CTE LC Convening was yet another reminder of how important collaboration is for student success. The CTE LC is somewhat unique in that it very intentionally convenes Fellows across cohorts and Fellowship programs, effectively bridging siloes across research, practice, and policy. This professional network is one strategy of collaboration, but there are others—such as SSTAR Lab’s research-practice partnership (RPP) model—that offer promising frameworks for those across higher education to gain inspiration from.