Remarks at the Conference on Defining a 21st Century Education For a Vibrant Democracy, Missoula, MT, October 27, 2015

[as prepared for delivery]

Introduction

Good morning, and thank you Lieutenant Governor McLean for the kind introduction. Faculty, staff, students, and members of the community, I am so pleased to be with you here in Montana today. This may be my first visit to Montana as Labor Secretary, but I feel right at home — I'm from Buffalo, so I am no stranger to temperatures in October that are barely above freezing.

It's great to see so many friends here, including the former Assistant Secretary of Labor of the Veterans Employment and Training Service, Keith Kelly. Keith is currently enjoying a well-deserved retirement in the mountains outside of Helena. He's a son of Red Lodge, Montana, who bravely served our nation in Vietnam and dedicated his career to public service. He is a true champion for all veterans, and I was proud to call him my colleague.

Flipping through your conference agenda today, you are asking all the right questions — the same questions that I have the privilege of working on as your Secretary of Labor. I go to work every day with a hop in my step, because it's my job to help create more opportunity for more people, and in turn build an economy that works for everyone. I am glad to join you in this discussion on making sure that all Americans can access the skills and training they need to compete for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

Scene-Setting

As our nation continues to regain strength after the Great Recession, the wind is at our backs. September's unemployment rate was 5.1 percent, down from 10 percent at the height of the recession. We are officially below the pre-recession 12-month average. Over the last five and a half years, businesses have added 13.2 million new jobs.

As Vice President Biden reminds us, America is a magnet for investors; our kids aren't going to be talking about outsourcing, they will be talking about insourcing. Study after study, whether it's A.T. Kearney or the Boston Consulting Group, shows that a majority of business leaders say America is the best place in the world to invest.

The future is bright in Montana, too. Montana's unemployment rate in September was 4.1 percent, down from 7.4 percent in the spring of 2010. Over the next ten years or so, Montana is expected to add roughly a total of 55,000 jobs, primarily in health care, construction, leisure activities, and professional and technical services.

To take full advantage of this economic recovery, here in Montana and nationwide, it's up to us to prepare our young people with the skills they need to succeed. Sometimes when I talk to business leaders, however, they aren't happy with the state of higher education. They'll tell me that universities don't move with great alacrity to stay aligned with business needs.

We're not trying to turn four-year universities into trade schools, of course. But it behooves us to all to make smart changes to stay responsive to a dynamic economy. The days of doing one job for the same company for thirty years are over. Most young people today aren't going to retire with a gold watch, a handshake, and a defined benefit pension. In order to have a successful career, they will need skills that they can apply in a variety of settings, and mold to address particular challenges. That's how we need to "Define a 21st Century Education."

Reflecting on my own career journey, it was that ability to adapt — nurtured by my liberal-arts education — that has allowed me to reinvent myself, take on new challenges, and survive setbacks. My liberal-arts education was, to borrow a phrase from the philosopher Bob Dylan, "a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift."

What it Takes

Indeed, for our nation to thrive, our workforce needs both critical skills and critical thinking. We are more aligned than ever with our partners in industry to identify the critical skills and tailor our training programs to deliver them. But the need for critical thinking is constant, no matter where you work or what color someone says your "collar" is. America will always need independent thinkers, questioners, and leaders who can adapt — not just to drive innovation in individual workplaces, but to keep our democracy strong and vibrant.

The good news is that there are a lot of pathways for young people to develop both necessary job skills and to know how those skills fit into the bigger picture — whether it's at a trade school, a community college, with apprenticeships, or at a four-year university.

But all too often, we see artificial barriers between those pathways, and naysayers setting up false choices. You might hear that we have to focus on community colleges at the expense of four-year colleges, or trade schools, or vice versa. This isn't "either/or," this is "both/and." America needs to strengthen all of those pathways and to strengthen the on-ramps and off-ramps between those pathways, to build a competitive workforce that can thrive in the 21st century economy. There are many routes for Americans to punch their tickets to the middle class, and one size does not fit all.

It's fitting that we have this discussion here in Missoula, where you made the smart choice decades ago to co-locate a community college at the university. I've visited many community colleges and been inspired by all of them, but I think this is my first time seeing one quite like this. Your articulation agreement was far ahead of its time and a model for the rest of the nation. Just as you tear down literal walls in the buildings that house the two- and four-year facilities, you break down philosophical walls, too.

Community colleges are often the gateways to higher education for new Americans and first-generation college students. I think often my visits to Miami Dade Community College in Florida, the largest institution of higher education in the United States. Its leadership thinks fast and forms partnerships with industry leaders, expanding opportunity for its 175,000 students.

That's just what you are doing here in Montana. I applaud this university administration's efforts to build bridges between the two- and four-year programs. You came up with a great way to create more pathways to opportunity, not fewer. Your online offerings are tremendous for folks who live miles away from a physical campus. And by aligning your programs with the needs of Montana industry — whether it's health care or advanced manufacturing — you give students the confidence that the skills they are acquiring perfectly suit the jobs available right now. Indeed, the Treasure State is home to a treasure of a university system.

Our work at the Department of Labor is motivated by those same aspirations: meeting working people where they are, and getting them the tools they need for jobs that are available now. Today, I want to talk to you about how the Department of Labor helps people access just the right education and skills they need to succeed in careers, and how those same skills help us build a stronger nation.

Prosperity: Many Ways to Get There

It's no secret that education remains the great equalizer. It's the most powerful force we have for upward mobility. That's a lesson I learned at a very young age from my parents, who came to America from the Dominican Republic. My maternal grandfather, the Dominican ambassador to the U.S., was declared persona non grata for criticizing the regime of President Rafael Trujillo, a notorious dictator. My family had to flee his regime and start over in a new country.

Education and hard work was the key to building a bright future in America, opening doors to unlimited possibilities for me and my four older siblings. They all followed in my dad's footsteps to become doctors. I fainted after seeing my brother perform an operation, so it was law school for me. I will never forget how my mother fiercely valued education: she entered college the same year I did, in 1979, and graduated eight years later.

Here in America, zip code should never determine destiny. That's the guiding philosophy of the Obama Administration. We recognize that college continues to be the best investment people can make in their futures. The OECD estimates that the return on investment for a college degree is 10 to 15 percent — greater than most financial investments. Americans with four-year college degrees made 98 percent more an hour on average in 2013 than people without a degree. That's up from 89 percent five years ago.

As of last month, Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher saw a 2.5 percent rate of unemployment, compared to 5.2 percent for high-school graduates. The story's the same here in Montana — in 2014, on average, college graduates faced an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent, compared to 4.4 for those with only a high school diploma.

We've simplified the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and provided better college-shopping tools. We've shifted more than $60 billion in savings to students, including $40 billion into Pell Grants, to make college more affordable for low-income students. Nearly nine million students attend college on Pell Grants today. Back at Brown University in the late 1970s and early 80s, I was one of them. College enrollment for black and Hispanic students is up by more than a million since 2008. We are proud to support first-generation college students, a well-represented group here at Missoula.

No False Choices on the Skills Superhighway

However, we still have a long way to go to making real the promise of a college education for more Americans. Persistent gaps in academic achievement have proven hard to narrow, and other countries continue to leapfrog the United States. A generation ago we were the leader in the college graduation rate of our young people; today, we are 12th.

As we work to tackle these challenges, we are working just as hard to fortify other pathways to prosperity. We are building a modernized, refurbished skills superhighway that enables workers to get good jobs and businesses to find good workers. It's similar to how President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. The destination is a middle-class job, but there are many different routes to get there — on-ramps and off-ramps.

We are building this skills superhighway in partnership with businesses, with labor unions, with colleges, with nonprofits, philanthropy, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and our partners in state and local government.

The new Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which was passed last summer in a strong bipartisan fashion, will enable us to continue this transformation.

Community colleges are one well-traveled path... and we're putting down the orange cones and doing the roadwork to make the ride that much, much smoother. The Obama Administration has made a very bold investment — nearly $2 billion over the past four years — to help community colleges develop innovative training programs and curricula that help people launch middle-class careers. It's called TAACCCT. It's not the most elegant acronym in the world, but it's a pretty effective tool for upgrading people's skills in manufacturing, IT, health care, and growing sectors across the board.

I'm especially proud that TAACCCT is jointly implemented in partnership between the Department of Labor and Department of Education. It's another example of imploding silos between federal agencies to pool our resources and our know-how to build a truly integrated workforce system.

In TAACCCT and all of our skills-training efforts, we are making sure that our programs are job-driven. We've gotten rid of what I call the old "train and pray" model — where we train widget-makers and we pray someone's hiring them. That's yesterday's paradigm. Today's paradigm is demand-driven, or job-driven, training. We're working more closely than ever before with industry, our Bureau of Labor Statistics, and others to understand employers' needs in granular detail, and then making sure that we design programs to meet those precise needs.

I like to think of the Department of Labor as Match.com — because what we do is help make a connection, just the right fit between ready-to-work Americans and jobs and employers who want to grow their business. And the secret sauce of this Match.com is very frequently community colleges that provide that critical training to compete in a 21st century economy.

One exemplary community college is right here on your campus. Missoula College leads a consortium that received a $15 million TAACCCT grant to help Montanans gain skills and credentials for health care jobs. Montana HealthCARE provides workforce training in high-growth, high-skill health care professions, including nursing, emergency service technicians, and other health professions. These are career pathways that cross the divide between two- and four-year schools. 39 employer partners, public and private, are working closely with schools to develop curricula. With about 1,300 new positions projected to be added yearly through 2024, the health care industry will be adding more jobs than any other industry. That shows great potential to address Montana's nursing shortage.

Missoula College is also part of a $25 million TAACCCT grant being led by Great Falls College, helping develop a statewide approach to workforce challenges in advanced manufacturing and energy industries. RevUp Montana has 13 participating colleges across the state and many courses available online. It's designed to reach more students in rural areas — meeting them where they are and expanding their educational horizons. Schools like Missoula are changing where and how students learn to match the modern workforce and day-to-day life.

And guess what? All of these programs have potential to expand apprenticeship, another important stretch of the skills superhighway. Unfortunately, as a nation, we haven't kept up with the necessary road repairs in the apprenticeship area over a period of several decades. We've massively underinvested — other countries are really running circles around us. I've travelled to Germany, the UK, and Switzerland to learn more about apprenticeship best practices overseas.

I encourage you to join the Registered Apprenticeship College Consortium, or RACC. President Obama has placed renewed emphasis on apprenticeship as a successful workforce development model.

The RACC, which is now more than 231 colleges strong, allows graduates of Registered Apprenticeship programs to turn their years of rigorous on-the-job and classroom training into college credits toward an associate or bachelor's degree.

We want to be clear that Registered Apprenticeship and college are not an either/or prospect. Stackable and portable credentials are key, so students don't have to choose between starting out on an exciting career path and getting an education. You led the country with your in-state articulation agreement. The RACC presents an opportunity to join a nationwide network, creating even more educational value for your current students and opening doors to new students like never before.

For decades, the skilled trades have led the way in developing and refining apprenticeships in America. Today, in addition to using their own expertise to apply apprenticeships to modern methods and skills, the foundation they helped create is being used by new industries, creating an unprecedented era of innovation. Earlier this year, President Obama announced the most significant apprenticeship investment in our nation's history − $175 million to 46 grantees across the country who are expanding and developing apprenticeships in high-growth industries.

It's not just about growing apprenticeship, it's about extending the opportunity to more people. Around DOL we call this the "double and diversify" approach, and both sides of that coin are equally important. We need to show businesses the positive ROI of apprenticeship and create more opportunities for more people to get as — one apprentice in California called it — the "golden ticket to the middle-class."

But we also need to make sure that the doors to apprenticeship programs are open to all. Our American Apprenticeship grantees are doing just that, creating and expanding programs that significantly increase apprenticeship opportunities for all American workers, particularly underrepresented populations, like women and people of color.

Apprenticeship offers a smooth pathway to the middle class and to a college degree for those who wish to continue their education and training.

Essential for Democracy

But none of our efforts to connect people to the workforce system can function without the educators, career counselors, and academic advisors who so often make that link for students on the ground. "Match.com" can't work the people in this room. There is just no substitute for mentors — people who are there to give you advice and direction when you need it, but also who challenge you to think big what you are learning in the classroom, and also your own potential.

I can't emphasize enough how much my mentor, Professor Ed Beiser, made me a better thinker. He taught a legendary class on the politics of the legal system that inspired me to go to law school and pursue a career as an attorney.

I learned a lot of facts from him, but what I continue to value today is how he taught me to appreciate diversity. Here was a Catholic boy from Buffalo gleaning so many life lessons from an Orthodox Jew from New York City. My life is richer because he was in it.

College was the first place where I got to know people of different races, religions, sexual orientations, and perspectives. Back home in Buffalo, I was the diversity. My undergraduate education taught me that diversity is indeed a unique source of America's strength and vitality. One of my pet peeves is when we talk about racial "tolerance" in America. I tolerate Brussels sprouts, but I believe diversity ought to be embraced and celebrated.

Your Global Leadership Initiative right here is a great example of how teaching students to value diversity can pay dividends. Those moments of cultural exchange prepare students to appreciate complexity and respectfully debate opposing ideas in an increasingly interconnected world. In preparing students to become citizens of the world, you are making them better Americans, too.

Exposing young people to the big challenges of the day, and giving them the tools to tackle them, is how we ensure that our democracy can overcome any crisis.

Embracing diversity is just one lesson that comes from a liberal education. Another important one is learning how to adapt to changing circumstances and think flexibly.

I think about my best friend's father, who stepped in when my father passed away when I was just 12 years old. He lost his job in the 70s when the economy started to crumble in Upstate New York. He was the wisest man I ever knew, but the challenge that he encountered is that he had a tenth-grade education, and didn't have the skills to compete for the new positions. The manufacturing facilities I've visited in this job, from Louisville to Pittsburgh, look nothing like the Buffalo industrial factories of my youth. They're driven by state-of-the-art computer systems. On today's assembly lines, you've got people walking around with iPads... and they're not using them to download music.

Some of the most dynamic leaders draw on their liberal-arts educations to make an impact in this world. I think about Retired General Charles Krulak, who served as the Commandant of the Marine Corps and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He studied classics at the U.S. Naval Academy, and while serving as Commandant, required every officer to read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," a 2500-year-old Chinese book on strategy. He later served as president of Birmingham-Southern College, where he described his job as helping "talented individuals grow mentally, morally, and physically and reach their full potential and thereby become difference-makers to our nation and the world." It was his power to apply his skills in a variety of settings that made him so effective, and he made it his mission to share those skills with young Americans.

It wasn't just the Marines under General Krulak's leadership that understood the value of liberal arts. As The Atlantic reported this month, you can major in Philosophy at West Point. The Culinary Institute of America requires courses in sociology, psychology, and languages. The Associate Dean for Culinary Science said that, without a liberal-arts education, the Institute's students "would definitely have technical skills. They could make a croissant and it would be exquisite. But there's a difference between knowing how to do something and understanding what's happening."

These schools recognize that employers are looking for agile thinkers who can connect the dots. That's why they made the smart decision to keep them at the heart of their curriculum. And it's true no matter if you're learning about croissants, criminology, coding, or classics. To make a big impact in the word, you have to master the technical skills and know why it matters. That critical thinking is what allows you to think across disciplines. It's how you turn your problem-solving skills loose on bigger and more complicated challenges.

And we have no shortage of bigger and more complicated challenges in our nation today. Our country and our economy are at a crossroads. On the one hand, we are experiencing a remarkable economic recovery. We've put the Great Recession behind us, and we once again have the wind at our back.

On the other hand, we have an economy that's out of balance, with the fruits of this recovery not fairly distributed. With huge opportunity gaps and vast economic inequality, so many working people are taking it on the chin. No matter how hard they work, they're still just struggling to get by, let alone get ahead. They feel like they don't have a voice to push for change at work. More than ever, we need people who can see that something is wrong or unfair, and work together to do something about it.

That's why, earlier this month in Washington, the President hosted a first-of-its kind event at the White House called the Summit on Worker Voice where we got to grapple with those questions. We met some great people who talked about their struggles and triumphs banding together to bring changes to their workplaces, improving their lot in life and strengthening their employer's bottom line as well.

It was a remarkable day for many reasons. The whole day was full of respectful discourse, which sadly isn't the norm in Washington. The Summit was really about the President and senior administration officials asking questions rather than providing the answers. It was a Socratic exercise like the ones you have in the classrooms right here on campus.

Indeed, there isn't one policy deliverable that can fix everything. And like many of the solutions to our most challenging problems, the answer isn't going to come from Washington. It was a start to a conversation we hope that everyone in the room would carry home with them.

It's more important than ever that young people engage in this debate, and that everyone do their part to make sure they get the skills they need to be active participants. Our democracy depends on it.

Conclusion

We have to support ALL of the institutions that help Americans develop the skills and knowledge they need to do big things. If we are going to build a strong economy that works for everyone, we need to make sure everyone can access opportunity, adapt to changes, and find their voice — no matter what kind of degree or certificate comes at the end of it. Like our workforce development system, democracy is an all-hands-on-deck enterprise. Remarkable things happen when we work together.

I have a friend named Randy Lewis who's a retired senior executive at Walgreens. He had a very successful business career, and he's also the father of an autistic son. That experience has led him to be a pioneer in advancing employment opportunities for people with disabilities — at Walgreens, but also by sharing his best practices with other employers. There are literally thousands of people with disabilities working at Walgreens and countless other companies as a result of Randy's leadership in changing their business model. I am a civil rights and labor rights lawyer. He is a corporate executive. But as Randy said to me: we may play different instruments, but we're in the same orchestra — the orchestra of opportunity. Imagine how that orchestra sounds when we're all reading off the same sheet music.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.