NBCC Is ‘Going Beyond’ To Transform New Brunswick’s Workforce
Mary Butler is the president and CEO of New Brunswick Community College
In July 2019, when I became President and CEO of NBCC, nobody had any idea that within the next eight months, every aspect of our lives – especially the way we work and learn – would be turned upside down by a global pandemic.
The last three years have been anything but ordinary, however, from “extra-ordinary” times come extraordinary opportunities. If ever there were a time to seize opportunities, that time is now.
Right now, the majority of business owners in New Brunswick will tell you that the thing keeping them up at night is finding and retaining talent. It’s posing huge challenges to their sustainability and preventing them from growing and competing in the global marketplace.
With a third of our workforce set to retire in the next few years, half of our jobs at risk of disruption due to automation, and the lowest post-secondary attainment rate among the provinces, New Brunswick is at a critical moment.
These are the challenges today, but they don’t have to define tomorrow.
NBCC’s Going Beyond campaign aims to transform New Brunswick’s workforce by:
- Accelerating skills development opportunities with faster, more flexible and quality-assured ways to obtain the skills individuals need to further their career success, and that employers need to grow and thrive;
- Innovating educational delivery with new tools, technology, spaces, and partnerships to surpass the pace of change in society and in the workplace;
- Reaching an unprecedented number of learners by tearing down the barriers to post-secondary education with financial assistance for underrepresented groups and community- and workplace-based programs to meet learners where they are.
As one of the province’s largest post-secondary institutions and its largest provider of skills training, NBCC has a significant role to play in changing the workforce narrative in New Brunswick. We’ve been training New Brunswickers to work and live right here in the province for almost 50 years.
In the past, our programming was largely confined to one- and two-year programs which served a lot of learners well, but have left far too many behind. Financial, geographic, and lifestyle barriers have prevented over 40% of New Brunswick’s working age population from accessing training. Many of today’s students need to earn while they learn; others don’t have access to reliable transportation to attend a campus every day; and still others have family and/or caregiving responsibilities that place a traditional full-time program out of reach.
Society is changing at a pace we haven’t seen in our lifetimes, and education has to not only keep pace, but overtake the change. Faster access to credentials through short-duration, flexible courses that can be used on their own to gain employment, and stacked together to facilitate career growth, is part of the answer. So is a more comprehensive method of assessing prior learning, competencies, and lived experiences.
But it goes beyond programming, into every aspect of post-secondary education as we know it today. We need to rethink not just programming and its delivery, but also who we can reach and how we can reach them.
Quality education is one of the keys to sustainable employment and economic growth, fueling innovation and reducing inequalities, however, we can only achieve meaningful impact when no one is left behind. NBCC’s Going Beyond campaign is about making sure every New Brunswicker has the opportunity to develop skills to fully participate in meaningful work that contributes to social and economic prosperity for the individual and their family, our communities, and our Province. Join us as we transform New Brunswick’s workforce.
This story is sponsored by NBCC