Editorial: Helping students develop careers

The University of Hawaii is one of the state’s largest institutions, an enormous investment by the people of the state. All of them have paid into it with their taxes, and all can benefit.

Labor shortages across the islands, long predating the pandemic, have grown more acute since it began more than two years ago. Two areas of concern spring to mind: health-care providers — nurses, especially — and teachers. The strain on those professions has been painful.

This is where the benefit comes in, assuming that UH system administrators, backed by elected leaders, can effectively carry out one of its more crucial missions: workforce development.

For the thousands of students moving through the public schools, and those entering the UH system from various points, this means following a pathway to careers, jobs with a living wage.

“It’s a mix of where are the jobs, where is the student interest,” said UH President David Lassner, “but also, how do we stimulate the economy so that we don’t find ourselves as dependent on tourism as we have been for these last decades?”

Starting this calendar year, that pathway should become clearer to high school students contemplating their futures in a turbulent economy.

Career Pathways are programs of learning that students and their families can begin to chart well before graduation, and to see their way up the career ladder.

Speaking in a meeting with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser editorial board, Lassner added that nursing is the area where the changes may be noticed first.

For starters, he said, there was UH’s hiring freeze in the initial response to the pandemic; nursing later was the first department where positions were unfrozen.

In addition to nursing and other health-care professions, he listed other areas of emphasis:

>> Education, like health care, is an area of particular concern to Gov. David Ige, Lassner said, which is why funding for teaching programs are part of the administration budget request.

>> Skilled trades, including renewable energy job training, would be a focus in the community colleges.

>> Food and agriculture, which he acknowledged currently do not offer a lot of job opportunities but are important to the state.

>> Technology professions — another interest of Ige’s — including data analytics, cybersecurity and software engineering.

>> Creative media, which Lassner described as one of the most popular new majors and which gave rise to a new center built at UH-West Oahu.

>> Conservation jobs. The recent $50 million gift for climate-change research from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, will allow UH to accelerate its conservation research. It also emphasizes that some of its resources will be coming through philanthropy.

Each career area brings with it different workforce dynamics that Pathways aims to make more seamless, said Tammi Oyadomari- Chun, associate vice president for academic affairs for the University of Hawaii Community Colleges. Her office is at the center of the move to realign educational curricula with skills the workforce needs.

For example, she said, in the information technology field, there is a need to work with employers to offer entry-level job opportunities for students and new graduates. Often, she said, tech students find it difficult to gain the experience that employers are seeking in their new hires.

The work of getting students and employment in closer alignment includes what she calls making each skillset “stackable,” one step providing the foundation for the next.

It’s easiest to visualize this concept in the nursing pathway. A certified nursing assistant (CNA) is a job in great demand, but it’s low-paying, Oyadomari-Chun said.

It’s important to ensure that training, starting as early as high school, prepares a CNA to study for the next level — licensed practical nurse, at a higher pay — to make the entry level more attractive, she added. That leads to further advances — registered nurse, bachelor’s degree in nursing, doctor of nursing practice — if the student feels drawn that way.

Private universities, such as Chaminade University and Hawaii Pacific University, also are adding degree programs to help fill the workforce gaps, in nursing and other fields, she added. But the needs are so great in Hawaii that there’s room for multiple institutions to join the effort.

This is an educational mission deserving of support from the legislative branch, where there are unfortunate proposals to throw the proverbial wrench into the works. Specifically, a bid to take away UH control of its own facilities development, and another to create a separate bureaucracy for the community colleges, are counterintuitive to the whole notion of unbroken pathways.

“If we get this right, we will have these pathways so that students can exit into the workforce pretty much anywhere,” Lassner said.

So, let’s get this right — for the sake of the next generation of professionals, and the future of the island economy.