## Tuesday, June 02, 2015

### Methodology: Higher Education-Workforce Pipeline IPEDS CIP SOC crosswalk

To Be Completed!

** If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer or Google Chrom browser, you would not be able to read the formulas in this article. These formulas were written in MathML, a W3C standard, and can be viewed in FireFox.

This methodology is much improved over my previous methodology.

In essence, the number of graduates can potentially be hired for a program with CIP code C is:
$\text{Potentially_Hired}\left(C\right)=\left({G}_{c}+\epsilon \right)\sum _{{S}_{c}}{O}_{{s}_{c}}\left[\frac{1}{\sum _{{C}_{{S}_{c}}}\left({G}_{{C}_{{S}_{c}}}+\epsilon \right)}\right]$
Where ${G}_{x}$ is the number of graduates for CIP x, ${O}_{z}$ is the number of job opening for a given SOC z, ${S}_{x}$ is the SOC S related to a CIP x, ${C}_{z}$ is the CIP C related to an SOC z, and $\epsilon$ is a very small number, which play important role when ${G}_{x}$ is zero.

Following are drafts and is to be ignored for Now!
Number of graduates for CIP c:

Number of job open for SOC s:
${O}_{s}$
SOC related to a CIP c:
${S}_{c}$
CIP related to an SOC s:
${C}_{s}$
${G}_{{S}_{{C}_{s}}}$
$\sum _{-1}^{+1}$
$\sqrt{{\left({x}_{1}-{x}_{2}\right)}^{2}+{\left({y}_{1}-{y}_{2}\right)}^{2}}$

### An exciting discovery ... Yeh !!

An exciting discovery!

I started this blog to provide my analysis to the Internet society and, especially, as my thanks to wonderful people who contribute contents freely to the Internet society. Every time I am on the Internet reading personal websites, blogs, or the Wikipedia, I appreciate their volunteer works. These individuals may not volunteer in any physical form, but their contribution to the human society is of no less. A while back, I thought about creating some kind of website that can recognize these wonderful people for their volunteer works. Unfortunately, I haven't have time to move forward on the project.

Now my discovery. The other day, I was surprised to find that one of my post is actually referenced by a book. I considered that a great honor and totally flattered. But I would like to attribute this to all the people who volunteered their time and made our life better and easier.

## Monday, June 01, 2015

### Evaluate Nebraska's Education-Workforce Pipeline - CIP SOC Crosswalk

The methodology employed by this article is a major improvement over the previous model in that suggested increase or decrease of award production will have no side effects on related fields!
With the P20 initiatives bobbling up all over the United States, the idea of education pipeline has extended from education to the workforce supply. The idea of linking higher education production to economic prosperity has found its way into legislatures.

The idea of aligning higher education production with the workforce demand isn't new. A crosswalk system that linking the field of study to appropriate occupation was last updated in March 2012 by National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The crosswalk, also known as CIP to SOC crosswalk, had been used in various workforce supply studies. However, because the complexity of the crosswalk, most of the studies limited their use to few focused fields of interest.

While the CIP to SOC crosswalk is a useful tool, limitations must be observed. The guiding principle behind the development summarized it well:
• “A CIP-SOC relationship must indicate a “direct” relationship, that is, programs in the CIP category are preparation directly for entry into and performance in jobs in the SOC category. The programs satisfy requirements for entry and/or prepare individuals to meet licensure or certification requirements to work in the occupation.”
An example can provide some clarity to the principle. In the nursing field, the registered nurse program (CIP 513801 Associate degree) is crosswalked to the registered nurse (RN) occupation (SOC 291141 Registered Nurse) and not the Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) occupation (SOC 292061) even though the registered nurse can certainly worked in the LPN occupation. When interpret the result of this work, please keep this in mind, the result is based on 'appropriate' mapping and not the 'all possible mapping'. In the case of Registered Nurse, State of Nebraska can decide to produce more Registered Nurses to fill the LPN occupation. But that probably isn't the most efficient approach.

This article presents a general approach that is applied to all field of studies. The approach is applied to the state of Nebraska data set but can be easily applied to other states.

The data employed are the 2012-22 long term occupation projection data from Nebraska's Department of Labor and the 2013 degree awarded data from IPEDS' (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) completion survey.

While the methodology possessed some very desirable characteristics, like all researches, the data employed played vital role in the outcome. During the development, the job opening advertise data available from Nebraska Department of Labor's website were examined. The data for occupation like 'bus driver, School or Special Client' seems to be OK. The data for hot occupations like nurse or computer related positions post some challenges. For one, there were a lot of entries posted by staffing companies or recruiters and, by reading through some of the entries, some of them are simply phantom entries that mimic the real positions. For the nursing jobs, multi-leveled job listings are common. For example, a position can be advertized as RN/LPN, which begged the question of which category this position is counted under. With these observations, the result presented is based on Labor's projection data which can easily be replaced with more accurate data if such data is available.

At the heart of this new methodology is the assumption of equal chance of employment, which means that all graduates that can be walked to an occupation, they all have the same chance of getting hired. If supported by real-life data, this factor can be modified to provide better result.

The top 10 education programs that could be targeted to produce more graduates are:
 CIP Title Dgr Level Job Open UnFilled 490205 Truck and Bus Driver/Commercial Vehicle Operator and Instructor. LessAssct 1,024 (953) 513999 Practical Nursing, Vocational Nursing and Nursing Assistants, Other. LessAssct 468 (456) 513801 Registered Nursing/Registered Nurse. Associate 702 (292) 520301 Accounting. Bachelor 467 (156) 110101 Computer and Information Sciences, General. Bachelor 259 (113) 520801 Finance, General. Bachelor 300 (55) 460302 Electrician. LessAssct 154 (96) 120401 Cosmetology/Cosmetologist, General. LessAssct 126 (84) 110701 Computer Science. Bachelor 121 (75) 480501 Machine Tool Technology/Machinist. LessAssct 144 (65) 460303 Lineworker. LessAssct 71 (56)

The top 10 eduction programs that could consider reducing graduates are:
 CIP Title Dgr Level Job Open Over Supplied 540101 History, General. Bachelor 22 163 513801 Registered Nursing/Registered Nurse. Master 11 180 230101 English Language and Literature, General. Bachelor 27 198 510912 Physician Assistant. Master 43 245 450101 Social Sciences, General. Bachelor 41 255 130301 Curriculum and Instruction. Master 13 398 131202 Elementary Education and Teaching. Bachelor 276 404 260101 Biology/Biological Sciences, General. Bachelor 70 436 520201 Business Administration and Management, General. Bachelor 368 588 520101 Business/Commerce, General. Bachelor 386 618