Commissioner Gilkey was invited by the Biden Administration to celebrate high quality education and workforce development programs
On November 13, 2024, President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden welcomed approximately 200 education and workforce leaders to the White House for the “Classroom to Career” Summit. The summit highlighted record progress to expand career pathways to good-paying jobs in infrastructure, clean energy, advanced manufacturing, and more all across the country.
The summit brought together cabinet members and other senior administration officials, state and local elected officials, community college presidents, K-12 leaders, unions, workforce development leaders from the nine White House Workforce Hubs and other communities across the country, business leaders, representatives of philanthropic organizations, and students.
At the summit, President Biden announced that more than $80 billion from his American Rescue Plan has been committed to strengthening and expanding the American workforce—from supporting high-quality free community college programs in high-demand fields, to expanding Registered Apprenticeships, to attracting and retaining a skilled, diverse workforce in critical industries. These efforts are helping students and workers access good-paying opportunities.
The summit will take place nearly 15 years after Dr. Biden, an educator and community-college champion, led the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges as Second Lady, where she set the path forward for community colleges to be a critical part of America’s economic vision for the future.
Dr. Biden announced that 34 states and Washington, D.C. now have a free community college program. In total, over 400 colleges, cities, and states now offer tuition-free college and job training—up from about 50 programs when she, President Obama, and then-Vice President Biden launched the America’s College Promise Initiative in 2015. Several of the newest free community college plans were launched with support from American Rescue Plan funds. As First Lady, Dr. Biden has championed community colleges and workforce training programs, traveling the country to highlight evidence-based models and promising practices that connect high school and community college students to good-paying jobs.
The Department of Education published new analysis of data on postsecondary programs that provide pathways to jobs created or fueled by the Investing in America agenda. The department also released a mapping tool to help the public find those programs and a public-use data set that will allow researchers and policymakers to further explore these connections. This analysis comes on the heels of a years-long effort to better connect both high schools and postsecondary programs to career pathways through the Unlocking Career Success Initiative, which invested $31 million in building model career-connected programs in high schools that will provide up to 120,000 students with pathways to high-wage, high-demand careers.
The Department of Commerce announced that over one-quarter of states and territories have proactively allocated more than $300 million in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding toward workforce development initiatives. These states are building the skilled construction workforce needed to connect every American to reliable and affordable high-speed internet by investing in community college job training programs, Registered Apprenticeships, and sectoral partnership training models. The department also announced that more than 80 community colleges across 22 states have created or expanded programming to train semiconductor workers for advanced manufacturing jobs spurred by the President’s CHIPS and Science Act. In addition, 10 states have announced new dedicated state funding for workforce development investments to support CHIPS facilities.
