Opinion: Opportunity, cooperation can put Northeast Ohio students on path to success
Originally published April 10, 2023, by Autumn Russell, GCCC
As a region, we have failed our existing and future workforce for too long. This is especially true for students in Cleveland and many first-ring suburbs who are primarily scholars of color (79%) and low-income individuals (75%).
Unless they are offered new opportunities to explore and participate in robust career-focused experiences, students will continue to be excluded from the high-pay, high-growth jobs available in Northeast Ohio. In 2021, local colleges only produced 17.5% of credentials needed to meet the 15,544 open IT jobs. Similarly, only 32.8% of the 23,032 health practitioner positions available were credentialed.
The gaps in the market also apply to race, with Black people comprising only 7% of web developers and 6% of health practitioners. Addressing inequities in the workforce and meeting demand can coincide — to meet industry demand, employees must be appropriately credentialed, and employers need to hire traditionally underrepresented workers.
Several exciting initiatives exist in Greater Cleveland that could potentially begin to break these patterns that have been present in our workforce landscape for so long. However, many are adult-focused and others, though high-quality, have been difficult for students to access.
Driven to address this challenge, hundreds of individuals representing dozens of organizations across the education, industry, nonprofit, government and philanthropic sectors convened over a three-year period to determine how to connect students to education and workforce opportunities aligned to their interests and strengths. This resulted in the creation of the Greater Cleveland Career Consortium (GCCC) in March 2022.
As a collective impact initiative, the GCCC convenes partners across all sectors to address the dual challenge of providing access to quality jobs to historically disenfranchised people, and simultaneously solving high-growth industries' workforce demand dilemma.
The GCCC is more than the sum of its parts — we leverage the expertise and learnings from partners to address systemic challenges, aligning on a co-developed and co-owned set of goals and vision. We work to align and activate students and families, and local public, private, education and other nonprofit partners to grow and sustain a diverse and equitable talent pipeline in our region. GCCC's overall vision is that every student graduates with a career vision and plan, and the confidence, knowledge, education, skills and networks they need to own their future and contribute to a competitive regional workforce.