The Hidden Innovation Infrastructure: Understanding the Economic Development Role of Technician Education in the Changing Future of Work

The roles of technicians and two-year institutions are unrecognized in most traditional approaches to measuring the impact of higher education on economic development. This project aims address this gap by identifying the economic impact of technician education programs and workforce development at two-year institutions. The research will investigate the hypothesis that community college technician education programs and the NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program form an infrastructure that creates both a workforce of skilled technicians and an ecosystem of supports that help to increase workplace productivity and innovation, thus spurring regional economic development. The multi-faceted mixed-methods research study will include a national analysis of community college technician education and economic development, as well as in-depth regional case studies of technician education and industries in advanced manufacturing. The national analyses will examine data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics and the U.S. Census County Business Patterns. Case study sites will be selected based on ATE program investments, level of rurality, manufacturing sector, economic context, and economic development region. The project will advance understanding of technician education's contribution to economic development in two ways. First, the project will develop a more refined conception of the role that community college technician education plays in economic development. Second, the project will provide a deeper examination of workplace outcomes beyond simple employment and earnings models to generate insights on the nature of technician work and on innovation and productivity in the workplace.

In addition to a new data collection, two primary datasets will be combined in the analyses: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics data and the U.S. Census County Business Patterns data. Both use the North American Industry Classification System. The Integrated Post-Secondary Education System data and ATE program award data will be used to measure different cognate areas, such as the number of students in higher education. The National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk between Classification of Instruction Program codes with the Standard Occupation Classification codes will be used to link education programs to occupations. The project will examine trends in technician production from community colleges and trends in the technician labor market, which will be augmented with data from the NSF's National Training, Education, and Workforce Survey. A quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach will be used to establish causal linkages between technician education/ATE program and innovation/economic and workforce development. On-going work by the Aspen Institute and the State New Economy Index will inform case study measures and analyses. Comparative analysis of the linked case studies will contribute to: identifying the presence or absence of the phenomenon of interest; exploring how the phenomenon varies across conditions; investigating differences in the impact of the phenomenon; testing theoretical and emerging linkages among different phenomena; and examining conditions under which the phenomenon arises.