Declining K-12 enrollment, too many NH teenagers attending college out of state and not coming back, a low unemployment rate and the lowest in-migration in decades all add up to a big problem: Where will future employees come from?
Higher education has been criticized for not producing enough skilled workers, lagging behind industry needs and being out of touch with the business community. Several NH colleges and universities are finding new ways to form partnerships, beyond internships, to help students find jobs and create new economic opportunities for their institutions. Southern NH University (SNHU) in Manchester is partnering with Major League Soccer to provide SNHU students with internships and establish the SNHU brand among Latinos. Keene State College is partnering with three manufacturers that are funding scholarships for students interested in internships and jobs in that industry. The University of NH in Durham is forming an incubator lab where new breweries can experiment, test and market beers. And colleges are employing staff to assess the pulse of industry needs and connect companies to college resources.
The NH Coalition for Business and Education recently launched 65 by 25, endorsed by the NH College and University Council, that aims to have 65 percent of NH residents earning a college degree or certificate by 2025—up from 50 percent today. The problem, says Tom Horgan, president and CEO of the Council, is the state has a highly skilled workforce overall but fewer NH natives with college degrees. “We rely on importation of knowledge workers from other states, primarily from Massachusetts, to get our highly educated population,” says Horgan, noting in-migration is at a decades-long low.
Aiming High
Among those taking the lead is SNHU, known mostly for its tens of thousands of online students and affordable competency-based degrees. SNHU recently partnered with Major League Soccer (MLS) to place interns with all 20 MLS teams and with league offices in New York.
SNHU President Paul LeBlanc, back row center, at a Major League Soccer (MLS) event in Los Angeles. The school recently entered into a partnership with MLS. Courtesy photo.
SNHU President Paul LeBlanc says the university is offering MLS players scholarships for online classes. SNHU also helped open mini soccer pitches in poor, largely Latino neighborhoods. LeBlanc says this partnership puts the college in communities where school officials want a presence. It also further enhances SNHU’s brand and reputation nationally. “In [MLS’s] case, a third of their fan base is Latino, and that is the future of America, demographically speaking,” LeBlanc says.
College for America is another example of SNHU casting its net wide. A partnership with employers nationwide, it offers competency-based college degrees for working adults for $3,000 annually, a cost often shared, or even paid for, by employers. Students, of which there are 4,000 nationwide, can only attend if they work for one of more than 100 participating businesses including Anthem, The Gap, and Life is Good.
Keith Campbell, operations director at the Hudson-based Life is Good, says the program boosts employee confidence. “Some of them have volunteered to be a part of a project and asked to be a part of giving the presentation. … To me that is absolutely a direct result of what they are learning from SNHU,” Campbell says.
In Rochester, a partnership between Great Bay Community College, Safran USA and Albany Engineered Composites convinced Albany to move its corporate headquarters from New York to the Lilac City, creating hundreds of new jobs in an area that suffered after Cabletron closed. Albany International Corp. and Albany Engineered Composites have about 450 employees in Rochester, double what it had six years ago.
In 2012, Albany and Safran developed a new type of airplane engine fan blade. It needed a manufacturing site and a workforce of hundreds quickly. City officials teamed with Albany and Safran to build manufacturing sites in a Rochester industrial park and arranged with Great Bay Community College to create a training program to certify workers. In June 2013, the Advanced Technology and Academic Center (ATAC) of Great Bay Community College opened.
Great Bay President Will Arvelo says that by May 2016, the Advanced Technology and Academic Center will have graduated 91 students. About 72 percent of the students find employment immediately in their field while another 6 percent continue toward an associate degree. Albany does not have hard numbers but has hired students from that program. Without the partnership, Arvelo says the college would not have been able to build the facility or had the expertise to develop the curriculum.
Establishing Liaisons
Understanding how to best marry the capabilities of institutions to the needs of industry is crucial for successful partnerships. But it requires a relationship, says Marc Sedam, associate vice provost for innovation and new ventures at the University of NH in Durham. That is why several schools, including UNH, are employing business liaisons to establish and strengthen these important relationships.
“I think it’s important for any university to have a front door, to have the person you go to,” says Sedam of his role. “[The role] is really like a liaison. And the main role is really just interviewing the company to find out what they need and then try to match those needs with university capacity.”
At Keene State College, Daniel Henderson serves a similar function as corporate relations officer. In addition to connecting industry officials with the college’s resources, he reaches out to companies to find out what they need. He then can find faculty interested in working with the company to further develop current programming, update curriculum or even add new programs.
“And that’s really essential,” Henderson says. “Because I can talk about the programs at a high level, but it’s really the faculty that’s in charge of the programs.” It’s also an opportunity to educate businesses about the curriculum and to hear from them what could be improved to help students succeed after graduation. “And that’s a long-term process,” Henderson says.
For example, Keene State worked with Moore Nanotechnology in Swanzey to design an interdisciplinary major to train software engineers for the math, computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), and instrumentation skills the company needs.
Rethinking Alumni Relations
Most universities and colleges keep close tabs on alumni as a source of funding. Increasingly, as is the case at UNH, they are also mining the talent pool of alums for skills and resources they can share with students, Sedam says.
Southern NH University is rethinking alumni giving, LeBlanc says. “We would no longer ask our alumni for an annual gift,” he says. “What we want is their time. We want them to mentor; we want them to make available internships at their companies; we want them to hire our graduates; we want them to visit our classes either physically or virtually.”
Adds LeBlanc, “Our primary job is to give students a pathway to meaningful work, and that kind of mentoring and that kind of value-added network you get when you can connect with somebody at a place you might want to work someday.” He offers as an example a student with a job interview at BAE Systems. The university could connect the student with SNHU alumni who work at BAE to serve as mentors. Such relationships, as well as internships, are critical for today’s workforce, says LeBlanc, as employers want employees who come in ready to work.
Give and Take
Commitment to making these connections, though, can’t be one sided, says Arvelo, and needs business support. “They have to be there, for example, to offer students scholarships, to offer students internships or apprenticeships; they have to be there to help us recruit, help us get the message out,” Arvelo says.
Keene State College has found business partners willing to invest in its students. MARKEM-Imaje in Keene, Whelen Engineering in Claremont and Hitchiner Manufacturing in Milford recently started
funding scholarships for up to three years for Keene State students interested in pursuing a career in manufacturing.
Another way companies are making that investment is by joining industry advisory boards at colleges and universities. From the board, industry leaders can help update curriculum to better reflect needs in the marketplace. Melissa Libby, engineering manager at Velcro USA in Manchester, accessed several candidates for internships as an advisory board member at Manchester Community College. She ended up hiring one for a job.
“We like to say that we make 10 billion connections every year and those connections could be customers, suppliers or colleges, like in the case of Manchester Community College, and I think through time and truly having input into what these programs really look like, you build that strong connection,” Libby says.
Proactive Approaches
Universities are being more forward thinking to anticipate industry needs. For example, Sedam says UNH realized the craft brew industry was booming across New England but there was no one on the East Coast conducting quality analysis. This meant breweries had to send their samples out west for testing.
UNH had the equipment necessary to provide that analysis, Sedam says, and the students can do the work for pay or class credit. And UNH isn’t stopping there. The university is creating an incubator lab where new brewers can experiment, test and market beers before investing in a brick and mortar operation. By 2017, UNH will have the lab and offer a degree in brewing. “It’s a big industry, it’s a big job creator; there are market needs that no one is filling so we figured, let’s fill some of those market needs,” Sedam says.
Changing to meet the needs of industry can be a difficult balancing act. Sometimes universities find they’ve met one need at the expense of another. “You hear about this need for STEM and then there’s this push for STEM,” Sedam says. “Now the feedback we’re getting from companies is that these students are technical superstars, but they lack the soft skills. They need to know how to communicate effectively, they need to know how to give presentations.”
Another challenge is accommodating industry without sacrificing a broad education. One way to do so is by maintaining a robust liberal arts program. “How can higher education institutions meet their missions of educating students not only for the workplace but for life and for citizenship? I think those conversations are more aggressive and more engaged then they’ve perhaps ever been in New Hampshire,” Horgan says.
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