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Jennifer Berne, the president of Madison College; Nydia Martinez, the executive director of Latino Academy of Workforce Development; and Bridgett Willey, the chief operating officer of UW Health’s WorkForward, spoke Tuesday night at Cap Times Idea Fest about the future of Wisconsin’s workforce in a changing economy.
Latino Academy creates pathways for economic and social mobility within Wisconsin’s Latino community, and WorkForward is an intermediary in healthcare that aligns employers, educators and governing bodies around shared workforce development goals and outcomes.
“There are opportunities, but how do we match the opportunity to the talent we have?” Martinez said.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, workforce needs are rising at a rate Madison College can hardly keep up with, Berne said. Last fall, about 13% of entry-level jobs were considered AI-necessary, meaning some AI skills were required. Now, she said, the rate is up to 37%.
New research also shows heavily female occupations are most likely to be “AI-trapped,” Berne said, meaning the next step up from entry-level jobs is being taken over by AI. Harvard University researchers found a child’s chances of earning more than their parents has fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century.
The three Idea Fest panelists agreed a solution would be found in working together.
“Latino Academy is a small organization in comparison to UW Health, in comparison to Madison College. However, we are thought partners,” Martinez said. “We have to be at the same table, and we have to respect each other because each side provides something to the solution.”
Below are more highlights from the discussion, moderated by Bethany Miller, vice president for planning, learning and impact at Ascendium Education Group, which sponsored the event. Some responses have been condensed for brevity.
Miller: Tell us about Madison’s changing economy. What are the skills and careers you’re seeing employers value most right now?
Willey: Something that has remained constant is healthcare has grown, especially since the pandemic because we have an aging population and more people have chronic health conditions that require care. We don’t have enough people that are able to access a pathway into these fields. They require sometimes thousands of hours of clinical rotations, and historically, we’ve expected people to just do those clinical rotations and that on-the-job learning for free.
We have pioneered, piloted and proven that increasing access through providing earn-and-learn models helps people attain the careers that they might be interested in. Apprenticeship also addresses student loan debt because all the programs not only provide a living wage, but we also provide support for all of the tuition, books and materials that people go through.
Berne: Here are the three things that employers are telling us that are durable skills: First is digital literacy and AI fluency. Second is what we’re calling technical literacy — how to work with data and software, machine learning, and machine operations. Finally, employers are asking for excellent communication: listening, writing and working with people who are not like you and people from different generations.
Martinez: One thing that is really clear as we see the shift in the economy is that a job is not equal to economic mobility. The communities that we are serving in Latino Academy, most of our individuals have more than two jobs, and yet they are not able to move up that economic ladder.
Right now there’s a lot of emphasis on short-term certifications, which is great. However, many times those short-term certifications, in the effort of trying to expedite, are not preparing people for where they need to be. We hear the need for human skills — adaptability, communication and being able to work in teams. Whenever I think about that, it’s like, “So you’re looking for an immigrant?”
Miller: What are some impacts of AI on jobs that you’re seeing, and how is it reshaping learners’ decisions about which education and training to pursue?
Berne: There’s a couple things going on at Madison College. We are working to retool our information technology certifications so that we can prepare people to be AI professionals — somebody who can go into a business and help them when AI goes down.
We’re also teaching students how to work with AI within the discipline that they’re studying. What you need to be AI competent and AI literate are the following: understand what a large language model is, know how to prompt AI and learn to evaluate the response it gives. Finally is the ethics of AI and how you protect data and privacy.
Martinez: Before they get to be AI literate in the communities that we are serving, they have to be digitally literate and access the devices. A lot of our students and a lot of adults haven’t had the opportunity. They do have the ability.
Another thing we hear is that skilled trades are the antidote to the AI-impacted economy. Therefore, we need to push more toward the skilled trades. We saw the skilled trades provided the greatest access to entrepreneurship because they could have their own business. Right now, that’s no longer the case because these individuals are going to have to be able to use Canva and know how to advertise on social media.
I wanted to highlight that we have to think about AI as an issue of civil rights because it’s impacting the way that employment is being managed.
Willey: AI is changing healthcare in a number of different ways. It’s impacting clinical providers by increasing their efficiency with AI transcription, but providers still have to go back and check AI for errors.
We’re doing a lot of AI pilots in healthcare, and the data consideration is huge, where we’ve got protected health information. I think it’s changing a lot the way our IT and our information security folks work. There are some back-office jobs that can be automated like scheduling. Then we have to retrain those people who want to stay in healthcare into, a lot of times, the front-facing clinical patient care roles.
The Cap Times Idea Fest event was held at Madison College’s Goodman Campus and sponsored by Ascendium Education Group.
Miller: What barriers are those most at risk facing?
Willey: What we’re talking about are developing career pathways. Understanding the pathways that are available within each industry is not something that everyone knows about, so it’s about educating the public on pathways that are available. Short-term credentials are great, but unless they put you on a pathway within a career within an industry, you’re at risk of being left behind.
I think the ability to think critically — that is something that cannot be replaced by AI, but the only way you learn how to do that is by working a job. I’m going to tout apprenticeship again because it allows us to build pathways where you can stack different apprenticeships on top of one another, and you can advance really as far as you want to go.
Martinez: I think the issue is not the lack of ability and willingness. It’s the lack of the accessible pathways to be able to do that. Who’s going to be left behind? What’s going to be left behind is a lot of talent because we don’t have clear pathways.