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West central Georgia has become a burgeoning center for advanced manufacturing and logistics. With facilities for global brands across automotive, agriculture, tech, and biotech industries, the region (which includes Carroll, Coweta, Douglas, Haralson, Heard, Meriwether, and Troup counties) has experienced a 100+ percent surge in job demand for manufacturing engineers, machine operators, and material assembly shift technicians alone. This case study explores a cross-sector response to upskilling and reskilling talent in the region through West Georgia Technical College's establishment of a Regional Workforce Training Center, which has fostered impactful employer partnerships to drive skill acquisition for entry-level talent and incumbent workforces, enhance workforce diversity, and meet the evolving needs of both businesses and the community at large.

Across the U.S. economy, large-scale changes in work are occurring because of skills disruption: the constant re-invention of work driven by the vigorous, accelerating demand for new skills in virtually all jobs, and the spread of those skills across industries and around the world. In the past half decade, the average U.S. worker has had to replace or upgrade over a third (37%) of their skills simply to keep up with the demands of their occupation. In order to better understand what is underway when emerging skills change jobs, workplaces, and even industries, and in order to inform leaders about how they can most effectively engage and respond to this new phenomenon, researchers conducted a landscape analysis to identify and then delve into areas of great transformation. This paper features an examination of four clusters of skills that are experiencing rapid rates of growth, are in high demand, and are spreading across industries and geographic regions. These four of the fastest-growing, highest-demand emerging skill sets are: (1) Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning; (2) Cloud Computing; (3) Product Management; and (4) Social Media. [Additional partners of this report include the Burning Glass Institute and Wiley.]

In 2018, BHEF and the Business Roundtable joined forces to create the Workforce Partnership Initiative (WPI). The initiative invited Business Roundtable CEOs to form multi-company partnerships and connect with leaders of postsecondary institutions to meet regional workforce needs. Dozens of CEOs responded, and the JPMorgan Chase Foundation awarded BHEF a grant to support nine WPI projects around the country. These case studies cover five of the nine partnerships: Chicago, D.C.-Maryland-Virginia, North Carolina, New York City, and the Southeast. The publication details the highly tailored educational and work-based learning opportunities created as part of the initiative, along with the unlikely partnerships and new curricula and apprenticeships.

This report demonstrates the power of business-higher education partnerships to create new kinds of STEM pathways that provide educational opportunity and economic mobility for underrepresented students. With funding from the National Science Foundation in 2014, the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) launched a five-year project to demonstrate the efficacy of regional ecosystems of community colleges, four-year higher education institutions, and STEM-driven business in facilitating the retention and persistence of students in STEM fields. Through this work, BHEF developed evidence-based models for implementing strategic and sustainable engagement by business with higher education to increase the persistence of STEM students, particularly women and underrepresented minorities. The project identified the transfer of students from two-year to four-year institutions as a key juncture that, if addressed, could significantly increase both the diversity and overall STEM degree attainment at the baccalaureate level. Learn more about BHEF's theory of action, the five project sites that led this work on the ground, and the Undergraduate STEM Interventions with Industry Consortium that fueled the community learning. [For the executive summary, see ED606492.]

This report from a workshop funded by the National Science Foundation recommends how federal agencies can more effectively support STEM workforce needs. Business executives and CEOs, college and university presidents, professional associations, state leaders, and heads of federal agencies recognize that developing a STEM-capable workforce is critical for the nation. Innovation is occurring on a daily basis to create and understand the best methods to train, reskill, and educate our nation's workforce, with stakeholders moving rapidly in the same direction. At this critical juncture, there is an even more important role for federal agencies to serve as amplifiers, investors, and leaders in propelling the development of our nation's workforce now and in the future. As such, we call on leaders in the federal government along with business and academia to build the pathways, partnerships, and programs that will help us reach scale and meet the evolving needs of the future workforce in the digital economy.

In recent decades, communities across the globe have been transformed by the spread of technology to all corners of life. This transformation has extended to the world of work and has disrupted the skills that workers must develop to remain competitive. In a 2018 special report, "The New Foundational Skills of the Digital Economy: Developing the Professionals of the Future," the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) commissioned Burning Glass Technologies to identify the skills that form the foundation of the new digital economy. An examination of more than 150 million unique U.S. job postings revealed 14 New Foundational Skills that converge around three interrelated groupings: Human Skills, Digital Building Blocks, and Business Enablers. To fully grasp the impact of these new skills, however, it is necessary to look beneath broader economic trends and investigate how these skills are affecting communities at a local level. This report aims to do just that by turning the lens on a specific cohort of communities that are pioneers of the new digital economy: smart cities. [This report was prepared with Burning Glass Technology for the Center for Innovative Technology.]

"Creating Purposeful Partnerships" offers insights into business-led regional talent ecosystems that facilitate access, alignment, and development of a prepared workforce with the skills necessary for companies' long-term success. The findings of this report serve as a playbook for CEOs and their executive teams for establishing purposeful and strategic partnerships with higher education leaders to meet the need for diverse digital-skills talent. This report builds upon the Business-Higher Education Forum's (BHEF) work, supported by a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, to develop, replicate, and evaluate a successful model for such partnerships between businesses and higher education institutions. These partnerships begin with industry and higher education working together to deeply understand, articulate, and translate the workforce needs of a particular region. This level-setting activity, aided by a third-party facilitator (in this case, BHEF), creates the necessary foundation for developing partnerships that lead to new educational pathways, job credentials, and talent-acquisition strategies--and, ultimately, employees with the skills that companies need. This report focuses on the deployment, development, and learning across the five sites supported through the NSF grant.

Through the collaboration of its members, the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) launched the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative (HEWI) to support business-higher education partnerships that co-design community college and university pathways to careers in fields critical to innovation and national security, as well as maximize work-based learning to increase transfers, degree attainment, and connections to living-wage jobs. This case study looks at how BHEF member, the University System of Maryland (USM), collaborated with businesses and government agencies to develop cybersecurity pathways on multiple campuses to build a diverse regional cybersecurity talent ecosystem that can address national security needs. The case study also provides recommendations for stakeholders in government, business, and higher education on developing an ecosystem for cybersecurity skills needs--or one that can serve as a model for other fields. It builds upon BHEF's work to create new undergraduate pathways in high-skill, high-demand fields. As part of HEWI, BHEF received a $400,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2012 to work with USM and the Northrop Grumman Corporation on the development of undergraduate pathways in cybersecurity. In partnership with BHEF, USM pursued a coordinated, system-level effort to create new cybersecurity pathways that would attract diverse students, engage them in cutting-edge learning experiences, and encourage them to build their careers in the region. [This work was funded by the University System of Maryland and five of its campuses: Bowie State University, Towson University, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, University of Maryland, College Park, and University of Maryland University College.]

Increasingly US jobs require data science and analytics skills. Can we meet the demand? The current shortage of skills in the national job pool demonstrates that business-as-usual strategies won't satisfy the growing need. If we are to unlock the promise and potential of data and all the technologies that depend on it, employers and educators will have to transform. This joint report from BHEF and PwC provides groundbreaking data science and analytics market intelligence informed by a Burning Glass Technologies workforce analysis and real-time survey data of business and higher education leaders from Gallup. The findings of this report document the emergence of the hybrid economy, in which companies in all sectors have become increasingly digital-intensive organizations. It also recommends eight actions for change to put the supply of skills in balance with the demand.

"Invest to Improve: The Cybersecurity Talent Deficit" provides recommendations for cybersecurity stakeholders--employers, government agencies, and higher education institutions--to enable regional partnerships to meet today's cybersecurity skills needs. This report combines data from a 2017 Gallup survey of business executives and higher education leaders with jobs analyses from Burning Glass Technologies, as well as, for the first time, detailed student demographic and wage data--following them from their college studies to the cybersecurity profession. The findings of this report document the need to develop new approaches to nurture cybersecurity talent in an era in which employers from all sectors must protect their information and systems from extraordinary levels of risk.

Through the collaboration of its business and academic partners, the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) launched the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative (HEWI) to support business-higher education partnerships that co-design innovative community college and university pathways to careers, as well as maximize work-based learning for students to increase transfers, degree attainment, and connections to living-wage jobs. This case study examines how BHEF members, Washington University in St. Louis (Washington University) and The Boeing Company (Boeing), are collaborating with St. Louis Community College (STLCC) and the University of Missouri in St. Louis (UMSL) to develop a diverse regional engineering talent ecosystem.

This case study examines how Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) member Drake University, a private university with a strong liberal arts tradition, is equipping its students to become data-enabled professionals. Through the collaboration of its business and higher education members, BHEF launched the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative to create new undergraduate pathways in high-skill, high-demand fields such as data science and analytics. Data science and analytics must be integrated with T-shaped skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, and effective communication, which are critical for all graduates entering the 21st century workforce. Knowledge of data science and analytics in recent years has become as fundamental as any other skill for graduates' career readiness, and Drake University is at the forefront of U.S. institutions of higher education in offering undergraduate major and minor programs in data analytics.

The United States faces a pressing national security and competitiveness challenge rooted in a shortage of a diverse, highly skilled workforce, particularly in vital cross-disciplinary fields such as data science and analytics, cybersecurity, and information technology. To address this challenge, Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) launched the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative, employing a model of strategic business engagement with postsecondary education to meet the highest priority workforce needs. Through the initiative, BHEF plans, launches, and assesses projects, partnerships, and scaling strategies that are designed to enable business and higher education to move from transactional engagement in low-touch, piecemeal activities to strategic, long-term partnerships that align postsecondary education with workforce needs. Two of these projects--in Maryland and Ohio--offer models of such partnerships. Contains BHEF's Strategic Business Engagement Model. [This article was originally published in "The Book of the States, The Council of State Governments" 2015.]

This case study examines how Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) member Case Western Reserve University is integrating T-shaped skills into a minor in applied data science. Through the collaboration of its business and higher education members, BHEF launched the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative to create new undergraduate pathways in high-skill, high-demand fields such as data science and analytics. Data science and analytics must be integrated with T-shaped skills, such as critical thinking, collaboration, and effective communication, which are critical for all graduates entering the 21st century workforce. Knowledge of data science and analytics in recent years has become as fundamental as any other skill for graduates' career readiness, and the Applied Data Science minor at Case Western Reserve University serves as a national model for undergraduate education in data science. Contains a list of resources.

ACT has been a leader in measuring college and career readiness trends for decades. Each August, ACT releases "The Condition of College & Career Readiness" (www.act.org/newsroom/data/2013), our annual report on the progress of the ACT-tested graduating class relative to college readiness. Nationally, 54.3% of the 2013 graduating class took the ACT® college readiness assessment. The continued increase of test takers enhances the breadth and depth of the data pool, providing a comprehensive picture of the current college readiness levels of the graduating class as well as offering a glimpse of the emerging national educational pipeline. It also allows us to review various aspects of the ACT-tested 2013 graduating class. In February 2014, ACT released "The Condition of STEM 2013" (www.act.org/stemcondition/13/), a report series that reviews the graduating class in the context of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics)-related fields. This report, "Building the Talent Pipeline: Policy Recommendations for The Condition of STEM 2013," is a collaboration between ACT and the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF). The report was created to offer recommendations relative to the results of "The Condition of STEM 2013." The recommendations fall into three key markets: higher education, business, and government. We hope this report starts discussions and creates actionable steps to improve achievement levels in STEM-related fields. As a nation, we need to improve the STEM education pipeline, moving more individuals into the STEM jobs that will drive our economy in the future. [For "The Condition of STEM 2013," see ED546778.]

The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) has achieved particular success in operationalizing the National Higher Education and Workforce Initiative (HEWI) in Maryland around cybersecurity. Leveraging its membership of corporate CEOs, university presidents, and government agency leaders, BHEF partnered with the University System of Maryland to build a system-wide response to the state's (and nation's) cybersecurity workforce challenges. BHEF's work in Maryland illustrates that it is indeed possible to effect swift, significant change and innovation in higher education with the goal of better aligning curricula and student outcomes with needed workforce skills. This pace of change hinges on the genuine commitment, expertise, and investment of resources by motivated stakeholders. This case study describes how the Maryland regional initiative, as part of HEWI, operationalizes and implements the BHEF strategies.

This is the first in a series of Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) playbooks intended to assist companies, higher education institutions, private philanthropies, membership associations, professional societies, government agencies, and other stakeholders seeking to understand the potential value of investing in coordinated strategic, long-term partnerships to increase the persistence of undergraduate students, particularly women and minorities, toward degree attainment and entering the 21st century workplace. BHEF has compiled a set of tools and materials that enables business and higher education to move from transactional engagement--that is, limited to low-touch, piecemeal activities such as on-campus recruiting or research related to business products and services that are often disconnected from undergraduate education--to strategic and long-term partnerships to align undergraduate education with workforce needs. From project launch through implementation, BHEF has developed metrics and processes for planning, launching, and assessing the projects, partnerships, and scaling strategies. This playbook details current regional projects underway in areas such as data science and analytics, cybersecurity, water and energy sciences, materials sciences, and engineering, and it offers best practices for creating and launching other successful collaborative projects. The following are appended: (1) Examples of Business Needs Assessments and Supply Analyses; and (2) Regional Project Summaries.

As employers scan the current workforce and anticipate future workforce needs, they frequently find that employees are not well-equipped with core content knowledge and 21st century workplace competencies, the combination of which the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation defines as "deeper learning." The cumulative effect of these deficiencies impedes U.S. economic competitiveness, security, equity, and civic engagement. The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF), in partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is examining the need for students to possess workplace competencies and core content knowledge as essential prerequisites of college and career readiness, and building the business case for improved competencies to fuel the innovation economy. To build the case, BHEF worked through networks of national business partners and conducted a series of in-depth interviews with key corporate representatives to illuminate the role deeper learning plays in hiring, evaluation, training, and promotion of employees. Through our members, as well as through affiliates of Louisville's Business Leaders for Education working group, BHEF connected with chief talent officers of over a dozen organizations, ranging from health care, aerospace, defense, and finance to identify the demand for 21st century workplace competencies. We conducted at least one interview with each organization, and often conducted follow up conversations to build upon questions raised in the initial interview. Companies also were encouraged to provide job descriptions, assessment models, and internal communications that incorporate 21st century workplace competencies and illuminate the role these competencies play in hiring, evaluation, training, and promotion. This BHEF brief summarizes the findings from this research.

This report shows how insights gained from system dynamics modeling and the U.S. STEM Undergraduate Model® can help inform the Navy's strategy to grow a robust civilian workforce that is strongly invested with Navy-relevant STEM skills and ready to contribute to the next generation of Naval innovation. This work positions the Navy to serve a strong national leadership role in advancing President Obama's goals in STEM precisely while it enhances Naval STEM capacity. That powerful synergy is doing much to advance important improvements in the shaping and execution of the STEM education pathway.

The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) is committed to aligning education and the workforce to create the talent and capacity for innovation necessary to keep regions, states, and the nation economically competitive. As part of that work, BHEF strives to analyze the factors that contribute to effective business and higher education partnerships that align education and the workforce. To reach this deeper understanding, BHEF periodically examines exemplary "innovative communities" already in existence. One such center of innovation is in Houston, where leaders in the energy industry collaborated with the University of Houston (UH) to launch, and quickly grow, a highly successful undergraduate program in petroleum engineering. The success of this partnership stands as a model of how business and higher education can collaborate to meet workforce needs. It both exemplifies a successful strategy for improved alignment between education and the workforce, and it demonstrates the value that is inherent in synergies among business, higher education, and the community. One of the cornerstones of the success of the UH program is that it was created and shaped in consultation with an advisory board whose members are primarily executives in the energy industry. The process of creating this partnership between higher education and business produced insights that can be generalized to other partnerships, including these top-level findings: (1) New partnerships must address actual workforce realities and create college graduates who can enter high-demand fields; (2) Deeply engaged high-level industry support is a critical requirement for program development; (3) "Quick wins" can help keep business engaged; and (4) Targeted interventions in education can help universities recruit and retain women and minorities. The success of the undergraduate petroleum engineering program at the University of Houston exemplifies how business and education can effectively join forces to develop both curricular and co-curricular experiences that directly address regional workforce requirements.

Graduate education in the natural sciences has traditionally emphasized doctoral training for academic or research careers. This training, however, is not meeting the demand for professionals in business, industry, and the public sector, where individuals with a combination of scientific, technical, and managerial skills will be required. Professional master's degrees (often called Professional Science Master's (PSM) or Professional Engineering Master's degrees) aim to redress this mismatch by providing students with intensive interdisciplinary graduate level coursework in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, combined with training in management. PSMs have been hailed as the "21st Century MBA" and have grown dramatically recently. One of their key features is that business has been deeply involved in their development from the onset, to ensure that graduates have a seamless transition into high-demand STEM jobs. This paper calls to employers that they should support their employees' participation in PSM programs through tuition assistance or reimbursements. Businesses should incorporate programs leading to these new professional degrees in their research collaborations with universities. They should retool their recruiting practices to ensure that they draw from the advanced talent and training that professional graduate-level programs produce. Similarly, research universities have an invaluable role to play in doing more to collaborate with corporations to develop additional professional master's programs. Continued innovation is needed to design and execute programs that align in focus and content with workforce needs. Universities should continue and expand their practice of engaging with corporate partners in the development of professional master's programs. Finally, policy makers need to become better aware of the potential of professional master's degrees in enhancing innovation and competitiveness in both the public and private sectors. Future legislation should include and support such programs. (Contains 10 endnotes.)

"Learn and Earn" programs offer one channel for ameliorating some of the workforce challenges that are of concern. Learn and Earn programs involve partnerships between postsecondary education institutions and employers to provide opportunities for adults to attend college while maintaining their employment. One such example is Metropolitan College, an educational partnership founded in 1998 among United Parcel Services (UPS), the University of Louisville, and Jefferson Community and Technical College (JCTC). This report summarizes a project undertaken by the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) that used a system dynamics modeling approach to understand the factors and describe the results that led to the success of Metropolitan College. The findings show that after Metropolitan College was introduced, employee demographics at UPS changed to reflect a better educated and more experienced workforce. In effect, Metropolitan College appeared to serve as a tool for attracting and retaining employees at UPS. The changing employee demographics resulted in financial benefits to UPS and the program saw a 600 percent return on investment. Given that it effectively pinpointed vital reasons for Metropolitan College's success, this relatively simple model can be a valuable tool for policymakers and other stakeholders interested in implementing new Learn and Earn programs. Specifically, for example, the model's ability to sort more important factors from less important ones can help others who seek to adapt and scale the successful Metropolitan College model. The tool can help policymakers understand "why" prior successes occurred. Importantly, for those who would seek to replicate Metropolitan College's success in their own community, system dynamics-based modeling can simulate the effect of important contextual differences "prior" to implementation. A generic Learn and Earn decision-aid tool could be built that incorporates collective wisdom about how these programs can be successful. Metropolitan College system dynamics model structure is appended. (Contains 7 figures and 22 endnotes.)

Across the United States, civic leaders from all sectors are working avidly to identify education and workforce strategies that can bolster regional economic development. One notable success story is found in Louisville, Kentucky, where a broad coalition of local leaders identified powerful educational improvement strategies and then successfully mobilized the community around those strategies. That work, spotlighted in a landmark meeting of leaders that the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) sponsored in Louisville October 28-29, 2010, is the focus of this publication. The meeting, "Cities for Success: A BHEF Leadership Summit", was supported by BHEF's members and through the generosity of the American Fidelity Foundation. The summit was part of an ongoing BHEF effort, the College Readiness, Access, and Success Initiative (CRI), through which prominent leaders in business and higher education work together to promote college readiness, access, and degree completion--particularly in math and science--for underserved populations, and seek to address the misalignment between workforce needs and student preparation and interest.

In light of recent data showing that educational attainment rates in the United States have stagnated, the Obama administration and others have called for renewed efforts to bolster higher education outcomes. Strengthening the role of community colleges is undoubtedly an important component of any plan to dramatically increase the number of students earning postsecondary credentials. This project was undertaken by the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project uses a system dynamics modeling approach to develop a framework that can help stakeholders understand the role and potential of community colleges in increasing postsecondary degree attainment and workforce preparedness, either through the lens of a region or an industry sector. It also begins to examine strategies that the community college system could use to increase degree attainment and increase the capacity or efficiency of the community college system to accommodate this growth both generally, and specifically in science, technology, engineering, health and mathematics (STEHM) related disciplines. This report describes the results from a system dynamics modeling approach that was used to examine the community colleges "ecosystem," including the K-12 education system, employers, four-year institutions, government, and local communities. Through this approach, a range of problems, factors of interest, and policy levers were identified and clustered to generate two broad model frameworks. The first, "a regional model", focuses on a community or region and a community college (or colleges). It allows users to explore interactions among government, education, and workforce as they contribute to increasing the number of students earning credentials or degrees with workforce value over time. A second model--"a sectoral model"-- focuses on the labor market dynamics of a single workforce or profession (e.g., the allied health fields) and articulates the relationships between employers and the community college that fuels the future workforce for a particular industry. Appended are: (1) System Dynamics Modeling; (2) Detailed Description of Building a Qualitative System Dynamics Model; and (3) Tables showing various problems and concerns of different stakeholder(s), illustrative examples of challenges and solutions in STEHM and illustrative examples of solutions and strategies to increase enrollment of students in community colleges. (Contains 7 figures and 19 footnotes.) [This paper was prepared by Business-Higher Education Forum and Emtect Solutions.]

The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) is an organization of Fortune 500 chief executive officers (CEOs,) prominent college and university presidents, and foundation leaders working to advance innovative solutions to the nation's education challenges in order to enhance U.S. competitiveness. This paper presents questions and answers about the BHEF U.S. STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education model. Answers to the following questions are included: (1) Why should people care about STEM?; (2) What is the BHEF U.S. STEM Education Model?; (3) What is significant about the Model?; (4) What are the next steps?; and (5) How can one access the Model and join the effort?

The Business-Higher Education Forum's (BHEF's) Securing America's Leadership in STEM Initiative has broken new ground in addressing one of the nation's most critical challenges--increasing the number of students who are interested in and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, the so-called "STEM" fields. The Initiative, which identified as its goal the doubling of U.S. bachelor's degrees earned in STEM fields, produced the first simulation model of STEM education in the United States. The BHEF U.S. STEM Education Model (the Model), developed by Raytheon Company and donated to BHEF, has provided a number of powerful insights about the highest leverage points and potential strategies that can lead to increased numbers of students who are proficient in STEM fields, and who may pursue STEM careers. It has also pointed to the need for a comprehensive, national STEM education strategy that targets critical leakage points in the STEM education pipeline, and to the need for new, more sophisticated tools that can help guide policymakers and educators. Among the most significant insights from this multi-year effort are: (1) Increasing the number of STEM college graduates will require a carefully integrated (in fact, mutually reinforcing) P-12 and higher education strategy; (2) Improving persistence and student success in STEM undergraduate education can produce significant returns in the near term; (3) Increasing the number of STEM-capable teachers is vital to increasing the number of students who choose and succeed in STEM majors; and (4) In addition to increasing student proficiency in STEM subjects, the United States must increase students' interest in STEM majors and careers. Securing America's Leadership in STEM Initiative: Working Group 2010 is appended. (Contains 6 figures and 7 footnotes.)

Across the country, cities and regions have used community-wide partnerships to improve the educational attainment of their citizens. The most established of these partnerships have seen substantial education gains during their tenure. The community of Louisville, Kentucky has embarked on a similar effort to improve educational attainment. Nearly two years ago, the Business Leaders for Education (BLE), coordinated through Greater Louisville Inc., asked the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF), a Washington, DC-based organization with experience in community-wide education improvement efforts, to guide them in assessing how best to improve educational attainment within Louisville. In 2008, BHEF agreed to provide strategic guidance to this group of education leaders and recommended it convene key education and community leaders. At the same time, Mayor Abramson convened the Mayor's Education Roundtable (MER), a group comprised of community leaders from all sectors--including business, K-12 education, postsecondary education, and community organizations--to address the education challenges facing the region. Following these developments, BHEF committed to working with the Louisville community to develop a plan that will help the community reach its goal of increasing educational attainment. This document is the end result. While developing this plan, BHEF interviewed dozens of community stakeholders and attended many meetings of concerned stakeholder groups. The goals, strategies, and recommendations in this plan were all garnered from this work. The framing goals are: (1) Create a strong college-going culture in Louisville's schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods; (2) Increase alignment and rigor across the K-12 and postsecondary education systems; (3) Ensure that the citizens of Louisville can access and afford postsecondary education; (4) Ensure all Louisville students will be able to progress through postsecondary institutions to ultimately attain needed postsecondary credentials; and (5) Galvanize Louisville's education, business, and community leaders to achieve a long-term, common education agenda. In turn, the plan presents strategies and recommendations that arise from the dozens of interviews conducted and from analyses of successful community efforts across the country. This blueprint for action is designed to provide comprehensive and systemic guidance for the Louisville community toward its 2020 education attainment target. In achieving this end goal, Louisville will serve as a national leader for community education improvement and as a model that can be replicated in other regions of the state. (Contains 1 footnote and 14 endnotes.) [Draft plan presented to the Mayor's Education Roundtable retreat, July 23, 2009, Louisville, KY. Revised plan delivered to the Mayor's Education Roundtable on August 28, 2009.]

Business-Higher Education Forum's study of the Seamless Education Partnership began with a theory of action for cross-sector efforts to increase alignment from Pre-K through graduate school (P-20) and improve educational outcomes. BHEF's theory of action posits that community leaders coalesce around a shared vision that is shaped by local context and needs. Collaborative efforts are solidified through governance structures and by allocating resources to support the effort. Participants identify P-20 improvement strategies to address the academic core (curriculum and instruction), student experience (support services and co- and extra-curricular activities), and relevant policies. These strategies are specifically designed to achieve the community's desired outcomes. In August 2009, BHEF interviewed approximately 50 leaders from various sectors of the community--K-12 and higher education, community and faith organizations, and business--and analyzed those interviews for common themes related to the theory of action and research questions. BHEF also reviewed documents related to the Partnership. This report briefly summarizes some key findings of this analysis. (Contains 1 table, 2 figures and 1 footnote.)

Although private philanthropic dollars in education make up just a fraction of overall education financial support, strategically targeted corporate philanthropic resources can serve as a vital catalyst for positive, lasting, and high-impact change in public education. Recognizing this, the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, with support from the Goldman Sachs Foundation, hosted the inaugural Institute for Strategic Investment in Education (ISIE) on April 3-5, 2008 at Harvard University. The event, titled "Maximizing the Impact of Corporate Philanthropy," convened over 45 corporate and private philanthropic leaders and education leaders for two and a half days to explore how best to leverage corporate philanthropic monies to maximize the impact on education. The collective knowledge and expertise of ISIE participants demanded an interactive and dynamic format. Prior to the ISIE, attendees were asked to review five case studies authored by leading practitioners and scholars. Topically, these case studies covered a range of areas, but all were designed to aid participants in critically examining philanthropic investments in education, particularly within the unique corporate context. All cases were designed to elicit rich discussion points for ISIE participants and lead to a series of lessons and best practices participants might use in their education grant-making. Harvard faculty members serving as content experts and synthesizers facilitated the discussions, and helped guide the iterative process toward "take-aways" for participants. The following five key strategies emerged from the ISIE: (1) Develop a comprehensive theory of change; (2) Consider context, both corporate and school district, when developing a philanthropic strategy; (3) Use information, research, and data to make decisions and assess outcomes; (4) Support partnerships, collaboration, and advocacy to magnify impact; and (5) Align investments with school district improvement efforts to maximize impact.

Investing in research, which drives industrial development and innovation, is essential to ensuring America's economic prosperity, national security, and leadership in a global economy. Although U.S. commitment to research and development (R&D) has traditionally been strong and sustained, federal funding of R&D as a share of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) fell from 1.25 percent to 0.78 percent between 1985 and 2003. At the same time, many other nations have increased R&D expenditures as a percentage of GDP. The worldwide increase in R&D expenditures has shrunk the U.S. share of patents and publications in scientific journals, and adversely affected the nation's trade balance in high technology products. In February 2006, President Bush introduced the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) to re-establish American dominance in the global marketplace. At the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) 2006 summer meeting, Dr. John Marburger, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the Executive Office of the President, discussed the imperative to increase American commitment to basic research, particularly in the physical sciences. He also explained the ACI plan to double funding over the next ten years for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, and the Department of Commerce's National Institutes for Standards and Technology (NIST), and plans to make permanent the Research and Experimentation (R&E) federal tax credit. (Contains 1 box, 3 figures and 1 table.)

America's leaders are increasingly concerned about U.S. competitiveness in a rapidly globalizing world. In response, during the 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush introduced the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) to promote policy that bolsters student achievement in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). At the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) summer 2006 meeting, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings discussed provisions of the ACI that address teacher shortages in mathematics and science, and corresponding student academic readiness. Specific ACI education provisions include the Adjunct Teacher Corps, the Advanced Placement-International Baccalaureate (AP/IB) Incentive Program, the National Math Panel, Math Now for Elementary Students, and Math Now for Middle School Students. (Contains 2 boxes, 2 figures and 1 table.)

This report warns that if current trends continue, the United States will lose is preeminence in science and technology and its leadership position in innovation. In this report, the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) proposes a four-part action plan in which business, higher education, and policy leaders support P-12 education leaders in achieving comprehensive, coordinated, system-level improvement from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary activity in college and into the workplace--a span referred to as "P-16." The four actions of the plan constitute a single agenda--a holistic approach to improving mathematics and science education of all students throughout the United States. For the plan to succeed, therefore, America must undertake all four actions simultaneously during the next five years. The four action plans are: (1) Establish a P-16 Education Council in Each State: (2) Simultaneously Address and Align the Five P-12 System Components; (3) Engage Business and Education in More Effective P-12 Reform Rules; and (4) Implement Coordinated National and State Public Information Systems. A companion toolkit, "Handbook for a Commitment to America's Future," is also available, in which the BHEF provides business, higher education, and policy leaders with background information and proposed procedures for structuring and guiding implementation of the proposed plan. (Contains 63 endnotes.)

This document provides a detailed assessment of the opportunities and challenges facing university-industry research collaborations. This report represents a synthesis of the work and findings of this initiative. It analyzes several of the critical issues facing research collaborations between industry and universities and offers suggestions to make these collaborations more effective. The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 was passed to improve the transfer of university research to private companies capable of translating advances into new products and services for consumers. Research collaborations can offer direct benefits for university and company participants, but there are several barriers to collaboration, including practical considerations and the conflict of values. Of the many ingredients in successful negotiations between companies and universities, mutual trust is perhaps the most important. In addition, a balance must be found between the need of university researchers to share their findings and the need of companies to protect the value of their investments through confidentiality. Indirect costs are yet another issue that companies and universities must resolve. Appendixes list panel participants from the study of collaboration and provide tables of university research expenditures and licensing income tables. (SLD)

This report is the final report of the K-16 Education Reform Initiative of the Business-Higher Education Forum K-16 Task Force. Beginning in 1998, the Task Force and the full Forum heard from a variety of education and business leaders, studied reports and research findings, surveyed higher education and business leaders, and conducted interviews and meetings with K-12, higher education, and business leaders. The Task Force observed three characteristics of existing education partnerships: (1) partnerships are more likely to unite business and schools or higher education and schools than to involve all three sectors in cooperative efforts; (2) partnerships projects with K-12 are often unconnected, duplicative, and may even be competitive; and (3) many projects have goals that are not directly related to student achievement. The focus of this report is on tripartite partnerships that involve K-12 education, higher education, and business, moving to a K-16 emphasis that strengthens the connections between different levels of education. Some exemplary partnerships are described, and 10 essential elements for effective partnerships are identified. (SLD)

This study, conducted by a task force that interviewed corporate and campus officials at 10 corporations and 12 universities and colleges during 1994-96, examined how well undergraduate, graduate, and professional students in the United States are being prepared to meet the demands of the modern high-performance workplace. The study found conflicting views. Business leaders saw higher education professionals as being unwilling to change in any time frame, holding narrow views of academic disciplines, failing to consider career needs, expecting support without accountability, and operating inefficiently. Academic respondents, on the other hand, complained that business leaders proposed making major changes in short time frames, provided vague descriptions of the skills they sought in new employees, sent inconsistent messages, failed to understand the difference between education and training, and were too focused on profit. The report offers sample quotes from corporate respondents, people on campus, and recent graduates. It suggests several models for better cooperation between the two sectors. Appended to the report is a list of the Business-Higher Education Forum members. (CH)

This report discusses the challenges of preparing a nation of learners to address the skills deficit for high-performing jobs and innovations in the future. A nation of learners is one that effectively and efficiently helps students achieve proficiency in the basic, lifelong skills, and also provides ongoing education and training tailored to individual and workplace needs. To increase the effectiveness of learning, educators must provide more engaging relevant content targeted to individual styles of learning and needs. The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) recommends a bold new commitment to the U.S. learning future through the creation of a Presidential Commission on Learning. This high-level commission can enable the country to meet the needs of a new generation of learners, unlock the learning potential of each student, and ensure the competitive future of the United States. The BHEF urges policy makers to steer the United States into a new era of learning by taking several specific and critical steps in two key areas: developing new leadership and vision and focusing on learning redesign and dissemination. New regional innovation centers for learning redesign also should be created to develop best practices, disseminate learning solutions, help with the redesign of education, and underscore the role of technology. (SLD)

This issue brief discusses how data science has emerged as a tool across all industries, resulting in a high demand for data-science experts and data analytics-enabled workers.

This report presents ideas on the campus to workplace transition gathered from five regional workshops conducted in 1998-99. It notes that although business and higher education agree on the importance of changes in this transition, major differences exist between how these two sectors propose to accomplish such improvements. The workshops suggest that while the latter differences can be spanned, a greater chasm exists between the challenges of a changing global environment and the strategies necessary to arm graduates with needed skills in today's ambiguous work world. Recommendations focus on translating principles into local action and address: (1) the need for students to develop flexible and cross-functional skill sets, such as leadership, teamwork, problem solving, time management, communication and analytical thinking; (2) the need for students to develop such personal traits as ethics, adaptability, self-management, and global consciousness; (3) the need for a business-higher education collaborative process for restructuring curricula and teaching methods; (4) the need to provide more opportunities for college students to apply theoretical concepts; (5) the need for university career service advisors to build linkages to corporate recruiters; and (6) the need to include faculty in the academic-corporate dialogue and to focus on practical action-oriented items. Nine case studies illustrate effective business-school collaborations. (DB)

While states and the federal government have put efforts in place to increase the size of the workforce trained in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to meet innovation demands, there continues to be a nationwide shortage of students who are interested in and prepared for such careers. Missouri is no exception to this problem, one which threatens to impact the country's ability to compete in the global economy. The percent of Missouri 12th graders with both interest in and skills for success in STEM is low. Only 17 percent of Missouri 12th grade students are both proficient in math and interested in STEM, mirroring the nation. Overall, a huge number of Missouri students--71 percent--are not interested in STEM at all. Missouri's African American students are far less likely than their peers to have the math proficiency necessary to pursue STEM education. Missouri's female students are underrepresented in STEM interest and math proficiency. Few students enrolled in Missouri's two-year college programs are academically ready for STEM. Many math-proficient Missouri students already enrolled in four-year colleges are not interested in STEM. Many Missouri students are on the edge of both math proficiency and STEM interest. (Contains 3 figures and 1 footnote.)