A couple of weeks ago EMSI hosted a webinar for Strategic Advantage users to be (re)introduced to the Career Pathways module and the O*NET data that powers it.

The webinar kicked off with a description of the basic components of O*NET data and how the Career Pathways module integrates O*NET data with EMSI labor market data. Tom Tveidt, Director of Research for Asheville Chamber of Commerce, shared a personal example of how EMSI’s Career Pathways tool has reinvented the way he shows workforce availability to prospective businesses. Dave Williams, EMSI Customer Solutions Consultant, demonstrated how to apply Career Pathways in two scenarios:

• Business Recruitment: How to show workforce availability to prospective employers based on O*NET data and the region’s potential labor pool.
• Rapid Response: How to quickly find viable job options for displaced workers.

Follow this link to see the recorded webinar (requires the Flash plugin for your browser).

Note: Due to some screen resolution issues we encountered during the webinar, the screen will appear somewhat “stretched” in the second part of the recording.

Education

Eileen Storck
Director of Enrollment Management, Indian River State College
Florida
Eileen Storck, Director of Enrollment Management, is helping Indian River State College lead the way in Florida’s transition to a new state college system which will play a vitally important role in the state’s workforce preparation and economic development. Indian River State College, formerly Indian River Community College, is using Strategic Advantage to align baccalaureate programs to the workforce needs of both the region and state. As Eileen reflects on the recent changes, she states, “As a state college, we have a responsibility to provide degree programs that will lead our students into high-skill, high-wage, and high-demand occupations. One big difference is that now we research a broader area as we address potential gaps in the workforce.” As Eileen provides detailed data to the baccalaureate program sub-committee, Indian River State College can make strategic, data-driven decisions on four-year degree programs—from the very beginning.

Jeanne Fadelli
Research Analyst, Santa Rosa Junior College
California
Jeanne Fadelli, Research Analyst at Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC), uses Strategic Advantage to prepare Institutional Effectiveness reports and the Community Needs Assessment (CNA). EMSI’s bi-annual data updates provide the most current data available, which is helpful for Institutional Effectiveness reports on time-sensitive issues like the “District Population Served by Gender, Age and Ethnicity” and “Population Participation Rates by ZIP Code” for the college’s annual Fact Book. The CNA includes detailed regional industry, occupation, and demographic detail for strategic planning purposes.  With SA’s integrated data and flexible regions, Jeanne could focus on the projected regional occupation growth and decline, as well as follow high school enrollment patterns and demographic trends.  This CNA will serve as a guide for outreach to targeted demographic groups, and it will also inform program planning.

Brett Riley
Director of Grants, Columbia Basin College
Washington
When Brett Riley hears of a grant opportunity, his first stop is Strategic Advantage. Before he does anything else, he uses SA to identify whether or not Columbia Basin College has a need for a particular grant opportunity. Brett says, “Using SA makes my job significantly easier, since I can find everything I need in one place, from start to finish.”  Recently, Brett helped Columbia Basin College win a grant for an Apprenticeship Growth Funding program. To accomplish this, he based the projection years on the grant funding period and looked at the forecasted demand for the specific occupations in the region. Then, he used EMSI GIS to visually display that his region has a 2% greater demand for these jobs than the rest of the state. This convincing data and clear presentation gave Columbia Basin College the competitive advantage they needed to win the grant.

Workforce Development

Rebecca Bloomquist
Special Projects Coordinator - High Country Workforce Development Board,
High Country Council of Governments
North Carolina
Rebecca Bloomquist uses Strategic Advantage as a resource for discovering regional trends and making recommendations based on these trends through allocation of workforce resources and strategic planning. She is currently using SA to perform a wage study for a small town in High Country’s service area. Stakeholders in this town fear that they are losing employees to surrounding counties due to lack of competitive wages. Rebecca will use SA’s Occupation reports to compare this small town to the state as well as surrounding counties and verify whether or not this town’s wages are lower than those surrounding counties. Once the report is completed, she can make wage recommendations to make this town more competitive with the surrounding regions.

Eddie Foreman
CEO, Central Oklahoma Workforce Investment Board
Oklahoma
Eddie Foreman, CEO of Central Oklahoma WIB, uses Strategic Advantage to proactively plan for future workforce needs. For example, he recently used SA to confirm that without any intervention, central Oklahoma could face a workforce crisis in several years. He found that by 2014, central Oklahoma is projected to grow by 20,000 jobs, but the working age population is only expected to grow by 3,000.  With such an immense difference, Foreman knows that creative strategies are necessary to counteract the workforce decline.   Instead of merely targeting populations outside of their region, it has led the WIB to sponsor several training programs inside of correctional facilities within the region, and the results have been positive so far, with former convicts transitioning into the declining workforce. As the workforce crisis looms, Foreman proves that proactive and creative solutions are a must for successful economies.

Economic Development

Jim Held
Senior Economist, Empire State Development
New York
Jim Held, Senior Economist with Empire State Development in Albany, New York, doesn’t know what he would do without the flexibility of Strategic Advantage. He says that one challenge of being an economic developer in New York is trying to keep up with the changing regional distinctions between Upstate and Downstate (i.e., metropolitan New York City).  With 62 counties in the state, there are many possible definitions for the two mega-regions.  Creating a region in SA is so simple that Held is not fazed by creating and combining different regions as policy needs change, and this helps him stay on the cutting edge of economic development in his state.

The Cape Cod, Massachusetts economy is primarily driven by small businesses in the hospitality and retail sectors. Many of these businesses are sole proprietors, and 90% have fewer than 20 people. This creates a unique labor market and workforce environment, according to David Augustinho, Executive Director at Cape and Islands Workforce Investment Board.

Augustinho found that most small businesses in his area promote their employees from associates to managers with little or no training. Because of the relatively small size of the businesses, they do not have the resources to provide the kind of customized management training programs not normally found in areas dominated by larger companies. To help fill this resource gap, Augustinho applied for and won a $500,000 grant for cross-sector management training from the Massachusetts Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund. Though the Fund is primarily aimed at sector-specific training programs, Augustinho successfully argued that a cross-sector management training program would provide significant returns to small business owners.

Read the full case study (PDF): Cape & Islands WIB Uses Strategic Advantage to Win Training Grant

This study, “Economic Contribution of America’s Community and Technical Colleges” (PDF link), was authored by CCbenefits (now EMSI) in 2004, and showcases the socioeconomic impact model (SEIM) framework used in EMSI’s college studies.

The analysis is based on a sample of 262 colleges in 14 states, representing roughly one-third of the current total enrollment in community and technical colleges in the country. The findings from the sample were used to generate results by inference for the some 1,200 colleges in the United States. Two major analyses are conducted: 1) investment analyses from the perspectives of the students and the taxpayers, and 2) economic growth analysis to determine the relative contribution to GDP by the community and technical colleges.

Some of the findings include:

• The average associate’s degree holder will earn $9,000 more annually ($325,000 lifetime) because of that degree.
• Associate’s-level education confers a number of benefits to students as well as the general public. The analysis translates the economic growth effect of community and technical college education into increased state and local government revenues (via increased tax receipts). Added to these are an assortment of social savings, e.g., avoided costs stemming from reductions in incarceration, welfare, health care support, and others.
• Taxpayers, who bear about 58% of community and technical college costs, receive a 16% return on their investment in the colleges—well above the 4% opportunity cost of funds.
• The bottom line: colleges return more to taxpayers than they cost.

In 2002, lawmakers on the Wisconsin Assembly’s budget committee began their biennial session to set the state’s spending priorities. In the wake of the dot-com bust and the 9/11 attacks, the national economy was starting to enter a recession and committee members were concerned about reducing state spending. Early in their deliberations, the committee voted to cut state funding for the state’s technical colleges by $14 million, or 10 percent.

To read on and see what role EMSI’s SEIM study played in this situation, open the full case study (PDF): Wisconsin SEIM Case Study

Ten years ago, when Dr. Robert “Rab” Thornton became Dean of Outreach Services at Housatonic Community College (HCC), the college had slow enrollment growth, very little interaction with the local business community, and low visibility in the state legislature. His duty was to reverse this trend and effectively “make an invisible college visible.”

Thornton quickly realized that one of the problems behind this was that the college primarily focused on enrollment figures when talking about its community value, and not on what stakeholders were truly interested in—economic revitalization, bottom lines, and return on investment. They were not communicating because they were speaking completely different languages. This discovery spurred Thornton to redirect HCC’s outreach efforts by looking for new ways to communicate the college’s real value to the community and state.

Read the full case study (PDF): Housatonic Community College: An urban renewal success story

Brian Kelsey, President
Civic Analytics

Brian Kelsey primarily uses Strategic Advantage to perform efficient market research for his consulting business, as well as to supply his business blog with interesting data highlights and maps. Brian finds that EMSI’s GIS module helps him communicate information effectively to audiences with wide-ranging levels of technical experience, while both the Career Pathways and Educational Analyst modules streamlined his workflow for a recent market research project. Brian turned to CP and EA when a client recently expressed interest in understanding demographic trends and workforce availability in order to locate new business branches in strategic locations. With the key data at his fingertips, Brian was able to quickly provide the client with a data-driven site selection plan.

Rose Baker, Program Manager, University Outreach
Penn State University

With the time-saving features of Strategic Advantage, Rose is able to multi-task without being spread too thin. She helps small communities with questions on their economies, trains workforce professionals on data-driven decision making, and assists continuing education professionals with program expansion decisions. Recently, Rose was able to use SA to assist a small rural community that needed to estimate how many of its jobs were driven by tourism. Using SA’s Economic Impact input/output model, Rose created an economic base report which showed 3,800 jobs driven by visitors. “Because I have Strategic Advantage, I could assist this community,” she said. “Without it, helping them would have meant a costly sacrifice of time and resources, not to mention a laborious and inefficient workflow.”

Carolyn Arnold, Institutional Research and Grants
Chabot-Las Positas Community College District (California)

Using Strategic Advantage is one way that Carolyn maximizes the efficiency and productivity of her research time. As the Coordinator of Institutional Research and Grants in a large community college, her work demands detailed, current, easily-accessible data on local demographic and economic trends. Carolyn finds that SA is a perfect fit for her needs, both (1) to provide a strong data-driven foundation for grant proposals, since she can tailor an SA report to provide relevant facts in a short timeframe; and (2) to perform program alignment and identify new program opportunities. By examining projections for high-wage occupations in her community college district’s service area, Carolyn can identify gaps in program offerings, as well as ensure that the current programs are aligned with labor market realities.

Beth Sullivan, Director of Planning and Marketing
Workforce Connections, Inc. (Wisconsin)

Strategic Advantage’s flexible database simplifies regional planning for Beth Sullivan of Workforce Connections, Inc., which provides jobseeker and employer services to western Wisconsin. Because their service area is part of a 16-county functional labor market area that includes two adjoining states (Minnesota and Iowa), Beth Sullivan relies on Strategic Advantage for streamlined analysis that aids collaboration with regional partners. Manually pulling data for 16 counties in the three states would be laborious and time-consuming at best, but SA’s customizable region definitions allow Beth to see the big picture instantly, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries. She applies this regional perspective by creating up-to-date analysis of industry clusters and creating data-driven grant applications.

Tom Tveidt, Director of Research
Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce (North Carolina)

Tom Tveidt values Strategic Advantage “for the ease in which I can perform economic development centered around data.” Before he had SA, Tom didn’t have a practical way of summarizing his area’s workforce competencies (skills, knowledge, and abilities) to businesses considering a move there. He could see the potential benefits of utilizing O*NET competency data, but there was no platform to use it practically for his needs. Now he can use the Career Pathways module in SA for instant numbers on not only the “target occupations” of a particular business, but also all “compatible occupations” which represent a broader potential labor pool. This gives the prospective business a more realistic picture of the local workforce, and using SA for this task has proven to be an invaluable way to provide relevant data in a short timeframe.

Mark Clasby, Executive Director
Haywood County Economic Development Commission (North Carolina)

Capturing the impact of business is one part of Mark Clasby’s success as an economic developer. He says Strategic Advantage is a great resource for performing impact analyses that are time- and cost-effective. Whether a business is thinking of arriving, leaving, expanding, or downsizing, Mark can use SA’s input/output model to find out the full impact of the scenario in terms of regional jobs and earnings. The results help him build a case for supporting existing industries and assisting new industries as they move to the region. With the impact analysis as a foundation, Mark can promote regional growth with decisions founded on the data.

Canada’s colleges, institutes, and polytechnics contribute CA $123.2 billion to the country’s economy every year, according to a study recently completed by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI). The study, which was commissioned by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, also showed that students who attend these institutions receive a 15% return on their investment in education, while taxpayer support of the institutions offers a return of nearly 16%.

 ”This report clearly demonstrates that Canada’s colleges, institutes, and polytechnics play a vital role in keeping Canada prosperous and competitive, as well as benefiting students and their communities,” said James Knight, President of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. “They more than repay the investment taxpayers and their governments have made.”

Other key findings highlighted by the ACCC’s media release include:

• The average annual earnings of a student with a one to two-year certificate are $36,582, or 35 per cent more than someone without a high school diploma or GED, and 12 per cent more than a student with a high school diploma. The average earnings of someone with a two to three-year diploma are $41,937, or 54 per cent more than someone without a high school diploma or GED, and 29 per cent more than a student with a high school diploma or GED.
• Colleges, institutes, and polytechnics contribute nearly $123.2 billion a year to income in Canada’s economy, roughly eight per cent of a typical year’s economic growth.
• Canada’s current workforce is enhanced by approximately 512.6 million hours of past and present college, institute, and polytechnic training.
• Taxpayers see a real-money return of 15.9 per cent on their annual investments in the colleges, institutes, and polytechnics and recover all investments in 8.7 years.
• Canada also benefits from improved health and reduced welfare, unemployment, and crime, saving the public some $215.1 million per year.

ACCC has also made the full report and associated materials available online.

Approaches to worker recruitment in the 21st century are changing, but with the right information, an effective strategy, and expert execution, the opportunities for success are abundant. This is even true in the energy sector, which is expected to experience a wave of retirements and pressing worker shortages in coming years. By using detailed national and local data, one talent management consulting firm increased its client’s pool of qualified applicants by 400% in two weeks.

Read the full case study to find out how Brian Kelsey of Civic Analytics delivered a data-driven solution to a national talent management firm.

Strategic Advantage locates talent for the energy industry (PDF)

A recent study by EMSI has shown Baltimore City Community College to have a total net impact of more than $540 million on its service area. The study was completed in January and released by the college on April 15th.

Highlights from the study showed:

• BCCC pumps $45.5 million in labor and non-labor income into the economy from operations and capital spending;
• BCCC students contribute $24.9 million in taxable income to the Maryland economy annually;
• For every dollar students spend on courses at BCCC, they will earn $4.40 in future earnings;
• BCCC saves Maryland $2.1 million each year through improved health and reduced welfare, unemployment and crime; and,
• Associate degree graduates from Baltimore City Community College who work in the region can earn $50,400 per year, 40 percent more than an individual with a high school diploma or GED.

Read the article here (Baltimore Business Journal).

EMSI is the international leader in impact studies for community and technical colleges, with over 800 studies completed for more than 500 colleges in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom since 2001. Unlike many simple impact models which have been rightly criticized for inflating benefits and ignoring costs, EMSI uses a sophisticated proprietary model that requires detailed data and calculates the college’s true net impact of a college, along with a student and taxpayer investment analysis.