Working to Learn: Building Stronger Education-to-Employment Pathways

Recently, Harvard’s interdisciplinary Project on Workforce released a new report: Working to Learn: Despite a growing set of innovators, America struggles to connect education and career. The report identifies opportunities to create stronger, more equitable pathways from education to career, drawing on data from New Profit’s Postsecondary Initiative for Equity Initiative to assess the state of innovation in the sector.

The research comes to us at a critical moment — at a time when the economic fallout brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic is putting enormous stress on millions of Americans. In particular, Black, Latino/a/x, Indigenous and other underinvested communities would benefit from much stronger pathways that integrate work, learning, and earning. Working to Learn examines how social enterprise organizations are connecting postsecondary education with employment opportunities.

The report identifies clear opportunities for the sector — from engaging employers more deeply to providing wraparound supports for workers and learners to prioritizing transferable, soft skills. Many of these challenges identified in the report are not only tied to innovators. We need systemic approaches if we want to advance change that is meaningful to workers in the short and long term. I see Working to Learn as a clear…