Students gain skills virtually to close the inequality gap
When the word came in early March, Ashley Russell recalled his first reaction as “sheer astonishment.” Within a week, Year Up, a nonprofit job-training program in cities across the country, would go entirely online after being held entirely in person.
The promise of Year Up is that an intensive regimen of technical and professional training can be an on-ramp to a middle-class career. “You can change your life,” said Russell, an instructor at Year Up in Chicago.
Trying to translate lifechanging experiences to computer screens and video classes is the lockdown-induced experiment now being conducted by Year Up and other programs designed for disadvantaged Americans.
The future of these programs is in doubt at a time when they would seem to be needed more than ever. Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs in the past few months because of the coronavirus pandemic, while the recent unrest over the death of George Floyd, an African American man killed in police custody in Minneapolis, has been intensified by persistent income inequality and the lack of opportunity for many.
Pointing to those issues, Gerald Chertavian, founder and chief executive of Year Up, asked, “As we rebuild and recover, will it be in a way that is more economically inclusive — that brings more Americans along?”
Chertavian and the leaders of other programs, which operate in dozens of American cities from Seattle to Miami, said they saw opportunity beyond their immediate challenges. The forced march online, they said, has triggered a drastic rethinking across the education- t o- employment field and will most likely bring lasting change — and perhaps open the door to significant expansion.
The long-held view was that hands-on personal attention was necessary to lift up students who have to fill gaps in their education, overcome life obstacles and then make their way in the corporate world.
But Year Up and others say they have found that much more of their training can be done effectively online than they expected. While the attrition rates for students are higher, they are only slightly higher, they said.
The few dozen nonprofit, upward-mobility programs share certain characteristics. They cater mainly to people in their 20s and 30s. They have forged close ties with local employers and focus on skills that are in demand by companies, particularly in technology but also in health care, finance and advanced manufacturing.
The programs rely on charitable, corporate and some government funding. Some have a national reach, including Year Up, Per Scholas, NPower and Generation. But most remain small. Year Up, one of the largest, had 2,900 graduates last year.
Year Up, founded two decades ago, is a full-year program with six months of course training and a six-month apprenticeship at a company.
The program stands out for the size of the jump in income it has delivered for its graduates, results that have been verified by independent assessments.
Before Year Up, its students’ annual earnings ranged from $9,000 to $15,000, depending on where they lived in the country. The graduates typically land jobs that pay from $35,000 to $55,000, with the national average $42,000. Companies that have consistently hired from Year Up include Accenture, JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Bank of America and American Express.
Typically, 75% of the graduates are employed within four months. Job placements have slowed this year but by less than 10% so far, the program said.
For Russell, a longtime Year Up instructor in Chicago, the move to online classes had some “train wreck moments” getting students set up with laptops, internet service and video software. But he teaches a computer-support course, and he said he used the problems encountered by his 40 students as learning opportunities.