Every April, several thousand educators, ed-tech entrepreneurs and policy wonks gather to pitch ideas and plot the future of the field of lifelong learning and education. Sometimes called “Davos in the Desert” the ASU-GSV Summit was held this year in San Diego, leaving its home for the past six years, Scottsdale Arizona. This year also marked the introduction of a new track, called “The Future of Work”, consisting of about a dozen sessions with titles containing phrases such as “skill shortage”, “workforce development”, “credentials versus degrees”, “up-skilling for mobility”, and “bridges from higher-ed to career”. While claims that this new track indicates a seismic shift in the education sector might lead to accusations of hyperbole, an undeniable fact is that every single one of these sessions was packed, with observers standing in the doorways to get a glimpse of the discussions inside. A recurring theme of these presentations was that the current system of K-12 and post secondary education is woefully inadequate to develop the workforce required to meet the needs of the 21st century economy.

It is no secret that many companies complain they are unable to find qualified workers who do not require months or years of training to be productive. Facing increasing global competition, many American employers have cut back their training budgets, and raised their expectations of the skills and knowledge of their applicant pool. At the same time, their increasingly automated HR departments are running applicant screening algorithms that reject every applicant who doesn’t already have the perfect combination of training and experience to perform the job on day one.

Both government and private industry are beginning an aggressive effort to bring this growing population of underemployed into the workforce in a meaningful way, starting primarily with career and technical education (CTE). Efforts are also underway in the private sector to develop more apprenticeship programs to help train students in high school and beyond for future careers, particularly ones not requiring a four-year degree. A handful of U.S. employers are experimenting with putting semi-skilled workers through an apprenticeship program, thus ensuring they are receiving the training they need for the jobs they will be filling.

An example of this approach is a group of employers who collaborated and set up what is essentially an apprenticeship program called LaunchCode. These employers realized it doesn’t take a college education to become good at computer programming. What it takes is working with an experienced programmer. The program takes people with basic programming skills, pays them $15 an hour, and pairs them with experienced programmers for two years to give them the training to secure jobs as coders. Similar efforts are underway in fields such as healthcare, biotech, and manufacturing.

An excerpt from a recent book by Jamie Merisotis, CEO of the Lumina Foundation, put it this way: “These non-degree credentials, whether they’re issued by work-force agencies, by employers, or by some other entity, are going to be a very important part of the national dialogue, particularly as technology changes how people learn, you’re going to see a proliferation of credentials.”