Rethinking Technology-Higher Ed Partnerships For Better Student Career Outcomes

Co-authored by Rose Nakamoto (@NakamotoRose) and Joseph A. Testani (@joe_testani)

Technology has always been a catalyst for change in higher education but never as much as the last 18 months. During that time, the future of work and education abruptly arrived in our lives. We see this as an opportunity to rethink technology as part of our strategic vision for career education and also remain - or become more - relevant to our key stakeholders. In this article, we outline some tips to evaluate how ready your campus and team are to take advantage of the opportunity that is upon us.

For decades, our existing system of higher education has been designed to serve a privileged segment of our society - those that can afford to attend college. As things continue to change rapidly, how will higher education change? What is our responsibility? And how will technology play a role in fulfilling our social contract? Social and economic mobility continues to be a primary driver for prospective and current students and institutions of every kind find themselves needing to demonstrate the value of the educational experience they provide. This pressure inevitably opens up opportunities for leaders to create upstream action plans. In order to serve all students, particularly those who most need support to achieve social and economic mobility, we must embrace technology to help scale, to supplement our expertise, and ultimately strengthen our efforts for student success. Integrating an adaptable and evolving technology vision and plan as a part of your overall strategy is a necessity in 2021 and beyond. 

In this article, we want to highlight a path forward for chief career officers and leaders across higher education. Here’s what we hope to help you do:

• Provide insight to the relevance of technology in our ecosystem and for our higher ed stakeholders in a post-COVID world 
• Rethink your approach to strategic decision-making about your technology partnerships
• Evaluate your readiness to take action

The Relevance of Technology in our Ecosystems

Higher education and technology

There are two distinct ways to think about technology within higher education. The first is technology that is implemented for systems and data management, infrastructure, and other operations. The other is educational technology which focuses more on the educational experiences of our students and how they are taught, advised, engaged in curricular and co-curricular experiences, and career education. The latter focuses on the core mission of many of our institutions where the former focuses on the infrastructure to support the people that lead and deliver learning experiences and other academic enterprises (research, HR, operations, etc.) 

Other considerations to consider when thinking about technology in higher education are the rate of speed that technology is evolving and who technology providers view as partners and users. Most industries operate at a much faster pace of innovation and adopting new technology than what is experienced in higher education. The speed of change comes from the iterative process of technology development, responsiveness to end-users, and generally how most businesses operate outside of government and education. This may seem like an obvious statement but it is worth noting as it influences how technology companies make decisions and think about their businesses. The second consideration focuses on understanding who the partners are and who are the core users of a product or service. Technology providers define their partnerships in different ways and can take many forms - explicit contractual partnerships, user focus groups, involvement in the product development process, or simply providing a tool or service to a user group or multiple user groups (students, alumni, parents, employers, etc.) By 2030 the global education marketplace may reach $10 trillion. In other words, this is a vast and diverse space with many players working to address needs and solve problems facing learners of all kinds all over the world. Our learners continue to evolve and therefore our technology must also evolve to meet those changing needs. How higher education works with this technology will be critical and it has already become a central strategy for many institutions. 

Two great examples of institutions leaning into this change are post-secondary mega institutions like Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors University. Coming through the pandemic, these institutions are part of an emerging innovation ecosystem of universities that are tackling the digital frontier and growing their online learning presence to expand access to economic opportunity for a diverse range of students and learners. There is clear evidence here for how technology can be leveraged in a way that is transformative for a broad range of communities if done well. 

These changes will only continue to increase in the coming years and the marketplace is responding to meet these challenges. HolonIQ, a market intelligence company providing insights and tools to analyze the global education and technology market, has developed a number of key insights on the future of higher education and the many factors in which technology will play a key role.

“COVID-19 has accelerated changes that were already on the senior leader agenda, but there are many more forces at play in higher education. These include shifts in government policy and funding, changing perspectives on the future of work and a growing range of non-traditional options for students – not to mention the impact of technology advancements on access and on interaction with the learning experience itself.”  HolonIQ Understanding Digital Transformation in Higher Education

In the near term, the number of players entering the education ecosystem will continue to grow in order to solve problems for our many stakeholders and users - students, employers, alumni, parents and families, faculty, and staff. Many are attempting to address real challenges facing our key users - students. Are we doing the same? Can we work with these potential partners to address the barriers many of our users face? 

Students and technology

How involved are students in your planning and strategy? We ask this question because many students arrive at college with their own “personal tech stack” and varying degrees of tech savviness that they have developed either in their K-12, or other post-secondary and/or work experiences. Technology is impacting many aspects of their lives - entertainment, social, & connections, organization & studying, job and internship search communities. Skill-building platforms, education content platforms, virtual experiences and connections and many other aspects of the higher education and employment pathway experience are rapidly evolving with students at the center of the experience. These platforms are also increasingly bringing other parts of the career education ecosystems together - recruiters, alumni, students at other institutions, credentialing services, bootcamps, families, data insights. 

But access may vary greatly based on issues of equity and we need to consider the previous exposure to technology and how that has shaped student understanding and expectations as they engage with higher education. Covid-19 only exacerbated these issues with prolonged needs for accessibility to technology (and internet services) and with many students extensively learning online for the first time or being exposed to a different way of learning. We must consider the continued impact of accessibility and equity in educational experiences and if we do not, we will only further widen the gap among the students we work with. 

So, how will these trends shape the way that students learn and experience higher education in the future? How can student insights help inform how we leverage technology to create a more engaged experience with stronger and more equitable outcomes? At the end of the day, it's about the student. This should be central to our focus - a diverse cross-section of the students we serve - should be active in whatever decisions we make. This is the time that they should be involved in our strategy more than ever.

Employers and technology: hiring and sourcing early talent

Employers and early talent recruiters will play varied roles in career education on our campuses and their strategies continue to evolve. This stakeholder will continue to adopt technology to source early talent, engage with students directly and build their relationship and talent pipeline using platforms and communities like Rewriting the Code, Hopin, RippleMatch and others. While many employers work with career centers, a growing number will leverage technology as their primary vehicle to reach a wide range of students in both targeted ways and at scale versus relying on a college campus and career centers via traditional campus recruiting models and resources. This is an important consideration in the development of a technology and overall strategy. It is also critical to understand the rationale behind these efforts and the resulting experience it will create for students as a supplement to our work and edtech investments. Drivers for this may be efforts to attract more diverse talent, specific disciplines, or as a way to improve brand awareness. In the end, these efforts may improve access to opportunities for our students and yield better outcomes - internships and jobs. There is much more to unpack here in the early talent space (a critical topic that warrants further exploration) and we barely scratch the surface in terms of the scope of change that’s coming to higher ed in relation to workforce and campus recruiting shifts that have been accelerated by the pandemic. The key takeaways when thinking about employers and technology is to be aware of the existing diverse landscape and that we can choose to view these efforts as complementary to our work and evaluate them based on alignment with our goals and values.

Career education and technology 

Universities have an opportunity to generate tremendous value as part of a national post-Covid recovery process. Externally, a strong and forward-looking career education strategy and operation can bolster the institution’s role as an economic driver and gateway to the world and to the workforce. Internally, career centers are poised to advance top strategic imperatives related to access, social capital, and economic mobility for all students. Many visionary institutions have elevated the role of career services, recognizing the importance of the function and understanding its impact on hopeful students who are investing in their futures. 

One critical starting point can be to holistically understand the context for career education and the role of technology at your particular institution as you evaluate the future growth of external partnerships. Pre-Covid, we would have advocated for embracing technology to help serve and scale services to students. Post-Covid, that advice is no different but we would add an important point of emphasis: think of technology as an ongoing strategy for continuous improvement versus a singular decision or investment. Critically, we can and should build more anticipation for these events and prepare the people we lead for this change. Evaluating the landscape and culture about how your stakeholders perceive the value of career education and engage with technology is critical to how you can then develop your own strategy. 

Rethinking Your Approach

What Problems Are You Trying to Solve? 

In order to plan effectively, we must think about the genesis or root causes of the problems we aim to solve with technology. Oftentimes, we respond to the “downstream” issues without understanding what may be happening “upstream” that is causing the issue (Upstream, 2019). Elements that will inform your approach include your mission, the existence of a strategic plan or direction, where your unit is organized structurally, the comfort level the team (and institution) has with change, and the resources and skills available on your team to manage decisions around technology. All play a significant role in identifying new ways to think about technology, responding to the varied needs of the students you serve, and collaboration opportunities with stakeholders. Career centers have often thought of themselves as the center for career services, content and technology but on some campuses, these elements may be much more distributed with solutions coming from varied players.

In the future, we are not only building our own operations and strategy but must also take stock of the ecosystem at large and how that system supports our students in their career education. 

Understanding Technology Partners

Lastly, there is an area where we—as career educators— sometimes fail to take the time to explore and understand: the business models of potential technology partners. This does not require an individual to become well-versed in business acumen or finance but we believe that you can apply the skills and competencies many of us deploy when working with students: curiosity and asking questions to better understand or empathize. Understanding what drives a potential technology partner to succeed will allow you to more readily evaluate the nature of the partnership and how to manage expectations—your own and your partner’s. There are many technology partners who share the values and goals of educating and supporting students and they build business models in order to achieve those goals (you can make money AND help students!) Asking thoughtful questions and building a conversation allows you to better understand how these pieces can come together for your team and your students. 

To help us seize upon and tackle the opportunities and tensions of this moment, we need to not only rethink our technology approach but also challenge ourselves and rethink how we approach our work - our work flows, data analysis, processes, procedures, and operations. This is a key step in understanding the solutions that technology partners provide. How do you actually do the business of career education? Have you spent years adapting your work flows to the technology you have? Have you continuously adapted based on students' evolving needs? How can we review new technology solutions while also exploring new and innovative ways to manage our operations and resources?

“Once a year, conduct a technology audit of your company. Take a step back and look at what technology your teams use and how they use them. Identify bottlenecks that can be improved by new technology or bottlenecks that are caused by technology that need to be improved.”

Jacob Morgan’s Future of Work Newsletter

We return to the first question in this rethinking section: what problems are we actually seeking solutions for? Do we have solutions looking for problems or user problems needing innovative solutions? 

When we enter into a contract with a technology partner, it should be more than just a client-service provider transaction. We should consider what it looks like to be in a mutually beneficial relationship that is both iterative and evolving in response to our users and context. If your organization’s mission and strategy are revised regularly (in order to be nimble), then you can begin to adequately take advantage of technology in the best way possible. This requires a rethink of the cycles of review, more regularly examining your processes and workflows, staying abreast of changes among technology partners, and continuously listening to your various users.

Evaluate Your Readiness to Take Action

Technology is evolving faster than ever with new solutions coming to market and evolving needs of stakeholders and even segments within those stakeholders (eg. varied needs of different student affinity groups). We have arranged this section with a series of questions to help you determine how to make effective decisions in the future - it will be difficult to stay on top of this constantly changing landscape which is why it is more important to continuously ask questions. 

Technology + Our Ecosystem

Understanding your institutional context

• Culture: What are the spoken and unspoken values and beliefs? What does your institutional culture tell you about risk? Innovation? Do you understand how to navigate this culture? Who are the drivers of priorities at your institution? (faculty, a key administrator, students, etc.)
• Processes: Do you know the processes or strategy for technology adoption at your institution? How fast do they move? Who are the key players and decision-makers involved? How is your data integrated? Have you made efforts to integrate your data into institution systems?
• Current Challenges + Pain Points: Outside of the pandemic, what are critical areas that your institution is facing? What are the major pain-points? 
• Post-Pandemic: From your perspective, what is the relevancy of your institution post-pandemic? What new challenges has the pandemic exposed?  

Understanding the student experience

• What is the student experience with technology at your institution? 
• What sort of strategy does your university/college have to implement solutions for the various educational experiences of students? 
• How involved are students in technology decisions at your university/college? Which technologies are they most involved with? What role do they typically play? 

Understanding the career education context

• What is the state of career education for your institution? Who is involved in shaping students’ futures at your institution? What does your institution believe about career education and preparation?
• What efforts have you made to scale your work? What have these efforts looked like?
• How would you define key stakeholders for student career education? How would students define that? Their peers? Administrators? Faculty?  
• What should career education of the future at your institution look like? Once you can define this, you’ll be better positioned to articulate it and build towards that internally and externally. 
• What do you believe to be true about your department’s role? About your positional power and sphere of influence on your campus? How is it evolving post-pandemic?
• Do you know what career-related technology is being evaluated by your institutional partners? 

Rethinking Our Approach

What problems are you trying to solve? 

• What core problems is your office solving for? How do these connect with institutional priorities? 
• What is the intended outcome you are seeking?
• How can a technology partner help you address these areas/help you achieve the desired impact? 
• What might your team consider letting go of? What’s no longer serving you as a team and department?
• How can you create an integrated model with technology partners to solve mission-aligned problems? How can you build alliances with industry and technology? What would this look like? How do you define this? What is your desired outcome?
• Have you mapped the stakeholder user experiences before? Start with a simple design thinking structure to empathize with your user and identify the problems (upstream and downstream).

Career education and your stakeholders

• Who will help you grow your strategy? How are students involved, do they have a seat at the table?
• How are you inviting conversation and engaging your team, key stakeholders, administrators, and campus partners around career education? 
• How do you actually do the business of career education? 
• Have you continuously adapted based on students' evolving needs? Other stakeholder needs?
• How often and to what extent have you explored new and innovative ways to manage our operations, work flows, and services? 

Understanding technology partners

• What is their business model? Take the time to be curious and ask questions to understand it in detail. Suspend your opinions early on and be open to understanding. 
• What is their product roadmap (short and long term)? This is more about how they will plan to evolve as an organization - are they curious about learning? Have they thought through their vision? 
• What is their value proposition for students? (or employers, alumni - whatever stakeholder it is created to serve)
• What is the impact they want to make for whatever stakeholder they are serving? What problem are they trying to solve? 
• What is the user experience that the partner is trying to provide or create? How do they think about the user / customer lifecycle? Do they think about it?

Final Thoughts

Integrating an adaptable and evolving technology plan as a part of your career education strategy is a necessity in 2021 and beyond. It is important to think carefully but also with pace. Technology is evolving fast and our students are becoming increasingly more sophisticated in their use of it. And while our institutional processes can move very slowly (e.g., buy-in, contract review, technology review, security review), we do not have to move at that same pace and can work to mitigate some of these issues by addressing the questions outlined above. Most importantly, how can you create an upstream action plan versus a downstream reactive plan? As we move forward, our approaches will require more creativity and willing partners to address the challenges that face our students and institutions in the post-Covid era. 

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Some Resources

We compiled a short list of resources - articles, reports, videos - that we thought would be helpful as you dive into this complex topic. There are no easy answers to addressing the challenges and opportunities that technology presents to us so we all have to start with being curious and learning as much as possible about the landscape. The authors are happy to continue the discussion online, in-person, or virtually!

Read

Average Lifespan of IT in Higher Education

Entangled Solutions: An Analysis of the Career Navigation & Guidance Product Landscape

Five Future Directions in University Career Services

Focusing on Technology Your Teams Actually Need

JFF: Career Navigation Technology 2020

JFF Report: Universal Career Navigation Services

Research: How Workers Shift from One Industry to Another

Stand Out by Expanding Career Services

The Rebirth of College Career Services

Where Ed Tech's $2-Billion Year Leaves Colleges

Learn 

Leading the Modern Day Business - Coursera Specialization

Switch, Dan + Chip Heath

The Gap Letter JobTech Market Map

Think Again, Adam Grant

Upstream, Dan Heath

Watch

HolonIQ Digital Transformation Webinar Series

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Rose Nakamoto, M.A. (rnakamoto@scu.edu) received her Master’s degree in education at San Jose State University with a degree emphasis in career development. Rose currently serves as Santa Clara University’s chief career development officer and leads the operations and strategy for The Career Center. After taking this leadership role in 2016, Rose led a highly engaged reimagine process which involved engaging the entire campus ecosystem, reinvesting existing resources, and building a new dynamic vision and operational priorities to move student career development at SCU in a new strategic and forward-thinking direction. Connections welcome on LinkedIn.

Joseph A. Testani, M.S. (j.testani@rochester.edu) received his Master’s degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington. Joe currently serves as the Associate Vice Provost for Career Education Initiatives and the Executive Director for the Greene Center for Career Education at the University of Rochester. With over 20 years of career services and student engagement experience in diverse institutional settings, Joe has been recognized for his leadership and strategic planning on the departmental, institutional, and professional association level. He currently leads a team of 21 staff and a growing career ecosystem in a re-envisioned effort to prepare students for the future of work. Connections welcome on LinkedIn.