To strengthen students’ pathways through postsecondary education and into in-demand careers, employers and colleges must work more closely together. Industry-led public-private partnerships have tremendous potential to build and grow these employer–college relationships, but little information is available on these partnerships and their postsecondary initiatives. This report highlights the features of industry-led public-private partnerships initiatives with postsecondary institutions and providing lessons and opportunities for developing, sustaining, and scaling these initiatives.
This investigation also highlighted the need for better documentation of return on investment in order to sustain and scale these programs. Survey respondents often had difficulty reporting the number of individuals participating in initiative activities, the extent to which participants were members of the focus populations that the initiative aimed to support, and initiative costs. Gathering metrics from employers was also a struggle. The full report discusses ways in which an independent evaluator could support growth of partnership initiatives by providing assistance in collecting and analyzing initiative outcomes.
