Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge
Pathstream Skills Certificates
One-line solution summary:
Pathstream’s online certificates enable adult learners to succeed in the digital economy.
Pitch your solution.
Adults in low skills jobs today have few options to enter the modern economy other than pursuing lengthy degrees or expensive alternative education programs. Pathstream creates a learning experience that allows students to learn a new skill like data analytics or digital marketing in 3-6 months and then directly connects them to job opportunities. Our programs are developed with leading technology companies so that they are industry-relevant and delivered by universities so students can earn credit for these certificates that count towards degrees. Our curriculum is hosted on our custom platform that features lab environments where learners can practice using new software in a step-by-step way and complete project-based assignments aligned with real job tasks. Upon completion, students are matched with a career coach who helps them find a job within 6 months through our network of employer partners, staffing agencies and job boards.
What specific problem are you solving?
The supply of digitally skilled workers is not meeting demand in the U.S., and workers have few options to upskill. Eighty two percent of middle skills jobs are now digitally intensive (source: Burning Glass), and estimates show 30% of the workforce may need to learn new skills and find new work by 2030. This is a result of automation and advanced technology, the changing higher education landscape, and hiring managers’ difficulty to recognize signals that would indicate someone is prepared for a job. This is exacerbated by Covid-19, with more and more Americans looking for work.
To gain critical skills, adults are often forced to choose between lengthy and expensive degree programs that do not directly prepare them for jobs or alternative programs like bootcamps. At Pathstream, we believe partnering with accredited higher education institutions and technology companies to offer affordable certificates helps us provide learners with the best of both worlds. Our programs are industry-relevant and delivered through community colleges and online four-year universities to ensure they are accessible to students outside of major cities and are financial aid-eligible and offered for-credit for those who need it.
What is your solution?
Pathstream has built five certificate programs that consist of between three to six college-level courses. Our programs are built in a proprietary online learning environment that utilizes active learning, student/instructor interaction, and embedded labs so students can practice technical skills in the platform itself. Our application integrates directly with a college’s learning management system and we offer 24/7 help desk support. We are able to track student performance, measure time spent in platform, collect student feedback, and troubleshoot technical needs. Learning outcomes and curriculum are determined through backwards design from a job-task analysis to ensure students gain the skills needed for entry-level positions.
Upon program completion, students emerge with a portfolio of real work samples and projects and are matched with a career coach who connects them to employment opportunities based on their background and goals. We create our programs in partnership with tech companies like Salesforce that can then facilitate introductions to their network of clients looking to hire individuals with Salesforce skills. We also work with staffing agencies and job boards that repeatedly source and hire for the entry-level roles that we prepare students for.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Increase access to high-quality, affordable learning, skill-building, and training opportunities for those entering the workforce, transitioning between jobs, or facing unemploymentWho does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our solution serves a wide range of adults who need to reskill or upskill to have successful careers. Our current students range from a single father pursuing a new career at a community college in New Mexico to a woman in northern California looking to reenter the workforce after ten years of caregiving responsibilities. Pathstream has conducted extensive user research with potential, past, and current students to understand their goals and what type of learning experience would best address their needs. We solicit feedback from both students and instructors on our curriculum to understand if it helped them achieve their goals, and track performance and outcomes.
Our solution addresses their needs by offering an effective, fast, and affordable path to growing career areas in today’s economy. In 3-6 months, learners gain practical skills, build a portfolio of work to showcase to future employers, and earn a Certificate of Completion branded with a college or university partner and a leading technology company. Our programs are flexible to fit the schedule of working adults and parents, are accessible to learners with no prior digital skills, and are available in different formats with different partners to serve a range of learners.
Explain how the problem, your solution, and your solution’s target population relate to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge and your selected dimension.
Job-seekers today struggle to stay relevant, understand the changing job landscape, and pursue affordable and high-quality programs to help them achieve their goals. Pathstream’s solution provides a low-cost, short-term solution that provides credibility through technology and higher education partners, hands-on practice in digital skills, and career services to help students become job-ready. We’ve built our certificates to help adults enter or re-enter the workforce, transition careers, or upskill to meet increased demands by focusing on skills and customized career support. Our solution can assist all Americans unemployed or seeking new work.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
San Francisco, CA, USAIn which US state(s) will you be operating within the next year?
What is your solution’s stage of development?
Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growthWho is the team lead for your solution?
Eleanor Cooper, CEO
How many people work on your solution team?
55 full-time staff; 7 part-time staff
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization?
Pathstream is passionate and transparent about diversity, equity, and inclusion: We value diversity so that we can reflect the characteristics of our students, inclusion so that employees can be their true selves and bring forward perspectives that improve our product, and equity so that our mission of focusing hiring on skills rather than credentials matches our internal processes. We take pride in our leadership team being more than 50% women, each division having people of color, taking active efforts to reduce bias in our hiring process, and creating spaces to facilitate conversations about these topics. Outside of race and gender, we emphasize diversity in background -- Many of our curriculum designers and engineers come from nontraditional education backgrounds (i.e no college, some community college / no degree, attended a bootcamp, or are still in school pursuing a degree). Several of our team members are also first generation college graduates.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new technologyDescribe what makes your solution innovative.
Pathstream combines the best of other offerings: affordability compared to bootcamps and degrees, career alignment, best-in-class online learning compared to MOOCs and current higher education offerings, credibility through industry and higher education partnerships, time to complete, accessibility of our online learning platform, and career services to help students achieve their ultimate goals. Our solution is unique because it balances the needs of all stakeholders involved in reskilling and upskilling - industry, higher education, employers, and students. Learners know they're getting a valuable education from recognized partners, and employers can assess students' skills through their portfolio of work.
Provide evidence that this technology works.
We have seen +370% year-over-year growth in student enrollment, and recorded an NPS of +62. Students recommend our programs with an average score of 8.5 out of 10 and report an average 78% knowledge increase from start to end.
85% of students who opt into career services land a higher-paying job within three months of completing the program, and 98% achieve their career goals within 6 months.
What is your theory of change?
Pathstream creates quality curriculum in partnership with leading technology companies. This curriculum is then delivered by higher education partners including community colleges and four-year online universities where it can be broadly accessed by learners across the country. The curriculum integrates with the existing learning management systems of colleges and universities to ensure seamless integration and delivery. Trained faculty deliver the certificate programs to ensure that students master necessary skills and receive feedback on their assignments as they progress through the courses. Students who successfully complete the certificate programs can opt into Career Services offered by Pathstream to be connected with staffing agencies, job boards, and hiring managers to help them successfully interview for and land a job that utilizes their newly acquired digital skills. We anticipate that candidates who successfully complete Pathstream certificates will be better able to obtain jobs in a related field, achieve economic mobility, and maintain relevance in the modern economy.
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
How many people does your solution currently serve? How many people did your solution serve in 2019? 2018? 2017?
In the two years since Pathstream has started, we have served over 1,500 students. In one year we anticipate serving 7,000 students.
What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year and in the next five years?
We need to build out the capabilities and partnerships to continue to increase the number of students using Pathstream. We also need to scalably connect students to job opportunities so that the value of our credentials is reinforced in the market.
What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?
We hope to expand the number of students using Pathstream and continue to establish partnerships to reliably connect them to job opportunities in the next year.
How do you plan to overcome these barriers?
We are continuing to innovate on our technological capabilities and are forging initial partnerships with key intermediaries in the job market including staffing agencies and job boards. This will ensure that our distributed network of students have access to partners who can provide onramps to jobs. We have recently partnered with job boards and staffing agencies such as Career Circle, WayUp, Jopwell, Mathison, Happy Monday, Placement, and Indeed.
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar modelsHow many people are on your leadership team? (Of these, please provide the number of individuals from your leadership team that are full time, part time, and volunteer)
7 full-time, not including CEO
In what year was your organization founded? How many years have you worked on your solution?
Founded 2018
Why are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Our team includes educators, people who have pursued alternative education paths, higher education professionals, business professionals, and more. With a diverse set of backgrounds and skills, we’re able to tackle problems effectively and understand each stakeholder’s needs. A significant portion of the learning designers creating the curriculum have been students at community colleges or pursued alternative education pathways themselves and so are uniquely positioned to understand the needs of some of our target learners.
What organizations do you currently partner with, if any? How are you working with them?
We currently partners with five technology partners - Facebook, Tableau, Salesforce, Asana, and Unity. These partners have sponsored our curriculum development and given us access to their platforms so we can teach related skills to students.
We are partnered with over 25 colleges and universities around the U.S. where we offer our programs fully online or in a hybrid model.
We have partnered with job boards and staffing agencies to help place our students into jobs, including: Career Circle, WayUp, Jopwell, Mathison, and Indeed.
What is your business model?
Pathstream offers services to a variety of partners in the digital skills ecosystem, and our business model varies by institution and the services provided.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, or to other organizations?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)What is your path to financial sustainability?
Pathstream's rapidly growing user base via a growing network of partners will help us generate the revenue necessary to achieving financial sustainability.
Why are you applying to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge?
We are applying to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge to help build momentum as we seek to scale - we would greatly benefit from opportunities to generate media, pursue additional partnerships, and learn how others are successfully helping their students find new jobs.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Solution Team
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Solution Name:
Pathstream Skills Certificates