Polis order seeks to remake state’s workforce-training system

Gov. Jared Polis issued an executive order Tuesday directing state agencies responsible for K-12, higher education and workforce development to bust down their silos and create a seamless pathway that can propel underemployed young adults into successful careers.

The order doesn’t immediately create seismic shifts in a three-tiered system whose leaders have been criticized for spending more effort marking their own territories and defending existing funding than taking steps to boost the skills of Colorado’s homegrown workers. But in requiring them by Dec. 1 to suggest “new administrative designs for a postsecondary talent development system,” it sets the stage to move focus and future funding decisions away from institutions and programs that jockey now for resources and toward a learner-centric model that values Coloradans equally throughout skills-development journeys.

In that sense, the directive is a continuation of Polis’ efforts to move the state from one concentrated on degree-based hiring to one focused on skills-based hiring that allows workers to climb the ladder based on the credentials they earn throughout their careers. The Democratic governor already has ordered state departments to put more emphasis on skills-based hiring and signed laws to create stackable credentials acknowledging work history and make it easier for workers to earn credentials to move up in health care, construction and other fields.

“Meet learners where they are”

Executive Order D-2025-006 mandates that the departments of education, higher education, labor and employment and regulatory affairs work with the Office of Economic Development and International Trade on this new initiative. They must offer a statement of shared strategies and common principles, identify areas where they can work together to close gaps between education and workforce development and produce administrative designs to ensure their efforts coalesce rather than compete.

“To build on the vision for a learner-centered talent ecosystem, we must continue to close the gaps between academic and occupational education and training,” Polis wrote in the order. “State postsecondary education and training efforts must meet learners where they are and serve them dynamically to continue to meet the workforce demands of Colorado’s growing economy.”

Two statistics illustrate the dilemma that Colorado leaders face. Nearly 92% of jobs that pay family-sustaining wages require credentials beyond a high school diploma, according to the Colorado Talent Pipeline report — not necessarily a four-year degree but some sort of advanced specialization. Yet in 2020, for the first time since state officials began keeping such records, less than 50% of graduates sought any kind of advanced education beyond their high-school diplomas.

Employers commonly recruited workers from outside the state throughout the 2010s as Colorado became one of the nation’s most popular relocation destinations, but skyrocketing costs of living have slowed that pipeline in recent years. Meanwhile, fields such as health care, construction and manufacturing — those in which students need advanced training but can enter and advance in with far less than a four-year degree — have reported significant workforce shortages.

A continuation of years of workforce development efforts

Polis and legislators have implemented several programs to try to fill these talent gaps. The state offered cost-free education first for healthcare trainees and then for several other fields. It passed tax breaks for businesses offering apprenticeships to boost work-based learning and career pipelines. And, working with recommendations from the business-led Education to Employment Alliance, it launched an ongoing series of regional talent summits that bring employers and educators together to partner on creating new career pathways.

But the departments of education, higher education and labor/employment — responsible, respectively, for K-12 schools, colleges and workforce-training programs focused on those who are not in school — continue to operate separately and fight for limited state funds. And Polis’ executive order seems to acknowledge that more must be done to meld their efforts to ensure that young workers in particular are getting the skills they need to be employable, no matter which education pathway they choose.

In directing the agencies in his executive order to “collaborate on reimagining the future of the postsecondary talent-development system in Colorado,” Polis specifically called out the need to focus on 18- to 24-year-old who are neither going through school nor working. To reduce the ranks of those underemployed individuals, “greater coordination and connection between postsecondary education and training is needed,” he wrote.

Seeking some specific aims

The executive order isn’t likely to produce an outcome as boundary-breaking as merging the three departments into one agency responsible for workforce development, and Polis doesn’t direct particular outcomes in his order. But he does detail accomplishments that he expects will come from whatever plan is developed, including:

• An increase in postsecondary credential attainment, particularly for the students who historically have not connected to postsecondary education or training within six years of high-school graduation;
• Greater integration of postsecondary education, skills attainment and training strategies to improve the flexibility and permeability of the workforce-development system;
• Investigation and scaling of strategies that help the postsecondary-education and workforce-development systems be more adaptive in order to “future-proof” talent development and allow them to pivot more quickly to teaching new skills;
• Easier navigation of the whole postsecondary talent-development system by both learners and employers; and,
• A reduction in bureaucratic barriers to cross-functional education and training.

Will 2026 session focus on upending workforce development?

By requiring the agencies’ report to be done by Dec. 1, Polis seems to be setting up the opportunity for legislators to push through any needed changes during the 2026 session. The timing is key, as the governor’s second and final term expires in early 2027, meaning he has just one more session to complete the major shifts in workforce development that he’s pushed since 2019.

And after Polis used earlier sessions to make big changes in healthcare, oil-and-gas regulation and laws limiting housing construction, this executive order appears to set up a potential large-scale discussion over one last grand vision he has for remaking Colorado.

“This executive order builds on (previous) work by ensuring our state meets learners and earners where they are and helps Coloradans get a meaningful job,” the governor said in a news release accompanying the order. “We’re asking how our state agencies and operations can better support Coloradans throughout successful lives and careers.”