Kathleen McLaughlin’s Post

When Walmart stopped requiring college degrees for most of its corporate jobs last year, the company confronted three deep truths about work and schooling: A college diploma is only a proxy for what someone knows, and not always a perfect one. A degree's high cost sidelines many people. For industries dominated by workers without degrees, cultivating future talent demands a different playbook. Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald’s, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree. Behind the scenes, executives often paint a grander transformation of hiring, a world where your resume will rely less on titles or diplomas and act more like a passport of skills you’ve proven you have. For now, companies and educators are only starting to chip away at one of the first steps: figuring out how much college credit a work skill is worth. Getting credit for Walmart training Something unusual happened to Bonnie Boop one semester. She’d returned to college in her late 40s using Walmart’s tuition-assistance program after joining the company as a part-time stocker. In her younger years, she had gotten two associate degrees, so her children used to joke that she might as well say she’d gone to school for four years. But to her, it wasn’t the same. “Bachelor’s degrees tend to open more doors,” Boop says. Plus, she says, she persisted for “the principle of it all.” At Walmart, Boop stocked health and beauty aisles in the evenings after another day job. Later, she went full time and got promoted to supervise others. This required new training at “Walmart Academy”: brief, intensive courses on leadership, financial decision-making and workforce planning. https://lnkd.in/gGHXR-kj

Absolutely no brainer to allow workers from places like Walmart and McDonald's to advance their professional growth within and outside the corporate walls of their current employers: a better life for them and they families, more engaged employees for their current and future employers and more tax revenue for federal, state and local governments. #createyourfuture #pushboundaries #economicgrowth #upwardmobility College credit for working your job? Walmart, McDonald’s are trying it https://lnkd.in/ge-xASpk

Smart. We all talk about degree requirements in many sectors not being as critical as they once were. Walmart acting upon that. Well done. https://lnkd.in/dQW2WSCV

Work is extra credit. Earning college credit for doing your job is nothing new in corporate America. Universities have long offered credit for corporate training. But not so much for retail and fast food. That may soon be changing with the Walmart and McDonald's pushing more than rollbacks and Happy Meals. Over the past few years, more and more companies have been doing away with the college degree as a requirement for specific jobs. Whether they actually follow through on that promise in their hiring practices is debatable. But this trend also coincides with growing discontent among prospective students and graduates over the value of a degree. If you've worked the retail and fast food industry, you realize it can be a very hard and grueling job. Wages aren't great, and the customer isn't always right. But many of these organizations such as Walmart and McDonald's have extensive and reputable employee and management training programs that rival those of banking institutions and tech titans. The goal and intent behind this movement to get universities to recognize and provide college credit for these programs makes a lot of economic and socioeconomic sense. While they may not have gone the traditional route to a degree, these workers have not only done training in leadership, financial decision-making and workforce planning among other areas, they've actually lived and breathed all of it on daily basis. So, why not count that work learning towards a degree? As for skills learning on the job, that's still a work in progress. Much of that has to do with figuring what equates to what, but even evaluating the work experiences of so many requires time and resources. Companies, and for that matter, society often talks about the need to provide opportunities for those who want them. Opportunities, by themselves, simply aren't enough. It's also about providing circumstances for upward mobility https://lnkd.in/gzwBQMPy #college #work #experience #education #retail #fastfood #workforce #corporate #management #leadership #training #mcdonalds #walmart

Fascinating to think what the effects will be on the labor market.

Credit for work, a key tenet of an #ApprenticeshipDegree, is taking hold: “Some of the nation’s largest employers, including Walmart and McDonald's, are now broaching a new frontier in higher education: convincing colleges to give retail and fast-food workers credit for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree,” reports Alina Selyukh of NPR. Alongside our expansive partners, Reach University & National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree (NCAD) are creating a world where everyone, everywhere has access to job-embedded higher education, so that skill and effort — not money or connections — are what it takes to get ahead. Not only are leading employers, such as Walmart and IBM, offering employees credit for the work they already do, but more specifically building “a pipeline of talent from the front lines to open positions within the company.” This marks a tremendous step forward in aligning employers and colleges and smoothing the pathway to a degree and career pathway. 👏 👏 Read more: https://lnkd.in/dfZ3Zfv8 #Job2Degree #Employers #Degrees #FutureOfWork

In December, 2019, I shared a vision with Donna Morris for how we could help our 2.1m associates discover opportunity and be discovered for everything they bring to the table. We are a people-led omni-channel retailer, and our associates possess aspirations, experiences, potential and skills that we want to access and develop for the future of retail. The way in which we could better match our associates to our opportunities became a personal mission for me and many others – and we declared that skills would be at the center of a system to match our associates to our opportunities, and for our leaders to gain more visibility into our associates and their skills. We have exceptional, hidden talent that we want to be sure we bring forward every step of the way.    We have all been faced with the demand/supply imbalance in the market, which has only intensified. It is really challenging. It was clear then that we couldn’t solely recruit our way out of this challenge, and we needed to ensure we had ready-now talent to meet the demands of the business. It's never been more important that we get this right.    Seeing this vision coming to life at Walmart is beyond exciting and I’m deeply appreciative of all of the many people that are executing this – from embedding skills needed for the future into our talent system, to removing degree requirements in our job descriptions – and truly creating a path for everyone. And, alongside the Walmart Foundation, we are fostering this approach with other companies, workforce systems and policymakers.   We now have an app (thanks to Andriana Diez, her team, and a LOT of other people) that we launched as a beta test for how we can give our associates access to opportunity – where they can indicate their preferences and skills and receive recommendations for growth and learning. This helps our associates, and it also helps our business ensure it has the right people with the right skills at the right time. We are now exploring how we can roll it out to support our entire workforce.    Thank you to all the people who are making this happen and appreciate the shared leadership Lorraine Stomski and Julie Gehrki. Check out details here: https://lnkd.in/ecDiDgBu. The future is bright!

It's not often that I'm out here hailing Walmart and McDonalds, but I'm thrilled by their recent initiative to offer college degrees to their employees. This development is incredibly promising because it addresses a critical challenge faced by many students today—balancing the need to earn a living with pursuing higher education. Often, students struggle to juggle work and study, with their employment becoming essential for survival but also potentially hindering their academic success. By providing access to college degrees, these companies are not only investing in their employees' future but also leveling the playing field for those who may not have had the opportunity to pursue higher education otherwise. This initiative has the potential to empower countless individuals by opening doors to career advancement and personal growth. It represents a significant step toward creating more equitable access to education and opportunities in our society. I applaud Walmart and McDonald's for their commitment to supporting their employees' educational aspirations, and I look forward seeing the potential impact of this. If it is successful, I hope other corporations get on board. It would also help if these companies provided monetary study incentives.

Some of the nation’s largest employers — like Walmart, McDonald’s and Jiffy Lube — are broaching a new frontier: convincing colleges to give credits to retail and fast-food workers for what they learn on the job, counting toward a degree. Educators hope this brings more students into the fold, expanding access to education and allowing more people to achieve better-paying, more-secure careers with less debt and fewer years of juggling work and study. Behind the scenes, executives paint a grander transformation of hiring, a world where your resume will rely less on titles or diplomas and act more like a passport of skills you’ve proven you have. Learn more about how it works 👇

There is a great re-imagining of higher education happening in the US. It is heartening to see employers connecting workers to college access opportunities and supporting them in getting college credit for skills they have learned on the job. The traditional four year college route works for many people. But for others who can not access that path due to learning styles, academic readiness after high school, economic reasons or other factors, programs like these can be a lifeline to greater economic opportunities and independence. #college #collegeaccesss #opportunity #learning #adulting #lifelonglearning #jobs #skills