As the labor market tightens and the pace of technological change continues to accelerate, it’s becoming an increasingly common theme that the traditional “one-and-done” model of education is over. Workers and job seekers are finding that the skills learned in high school and college can no longer carry them throughout their careers. As a result, employers, policymakers, and analysts alike are increasingly calling for new approaches to lifelong learning that will help upskill and re-skill individuals to compete and succeed in a fast-changing economy.
In this shifting landscape education and workforce organizations are joining forces to experiment with new models with the potential to create pathways to opportunity and economic mobility.
This need for a new approach to lifelong learning inspired the San Diego Workforce Partnership and University of California San Diego Extension (UCSDx) to launch a new, first-of-its-kind workforce development program this spring. Known as the Workforce ISA Fund and backed by a cadre of impact investors including Google.org, Strada Education Network, and the James Irvine Foundation, the initiative is designed around a principle that is taking hold across the education and upskilling ecosystem: education financing that is outcomes-based, career-focused, and sustainable for providers.
How does the Workforce ISA Fund work? Michael Horn’s op-ed in Forbes, introduced the concept of “renewable learning”: a new approach that could “leverage investments in workforce development to create evergreen funds that recycle prior outlays to fund future adult learners to get the training they need.” This approach is made possible through income share agreements (ISAs), an increasingly popular model of outcomes-based education financing which is the namesake of the Workforce ISA Fund.
