Frank Shushok, president of Roanoke College since 2022, notices a contradiction at the center of Southwest Virginia’s job market.
Employers tell him that they can’t find employees. Graduates are unable to find good jobs. Meanwhile, the region’s largest healthcare provider has 2,000 open positions.
“What that tells me is that there is a significant misalignment between the pipeline from education, whether from K12 or higher education, to the workforce,” Shushok says.
Thanks in part to renewed federal and state investment in Virginia’s workforce, Roanoke College is breaking the mold of the traditional four-year university by building shorter, more flexible routes between the classroom and the labor market.
“I’m trying to publicly challenge the idea that there’s a hard bifurcation between going to vocational school or higher education,” he says. “The line does not have to be that hard.”
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a slate of bipartisan workforce development bills aimed at expanding career education to high schoolers. Here’s why President Shushok is aligning programs with the governor’s office.
Improving onramps and offramps
This month, Roanoke College gained accreditation approval to offer associate degrees. In March, it became one of two Virginia colleges to receive a federal grant that jumpstarts dual-credit programs for high school students.
Each new initiative prepares students for tracks in either healthcare or education—two high-demand professions in the region.
“Workforce development has to start at the K12 level,” Shushok says. “It has to include not only university-bound students, but also high school graduates who opt to go directly into the workforce.”
Introducing career tracks for students at earlier stages in their lives makes young people aware of lesser-known, high-paying jobs in the region that do not require a bachelor’s degree.
“There are so many ways to be credentialed for high-paying jobs as a respiratory therapist or phlebotomist, but students don’t know about these things,” he says.
Early exposure also ensures students pursue higher education with more clarity. As workers’ career aspirations evolve, institutions must reduce friction for learners of all age to seamlessly enter (and re-enter) higher education, Shushok says.
“You want people who decided to go into a skilled trade to come back easily if they would like a different kind of education,” he says. “The decision that you make at 18 might be different at 24, or might be different at 26.”
Roanoke’s new training initiative offers more than 100 online courses, and certifications can be applied as credit for prior learning toward a related four-year program.
Roanoke’s dual-admission agreements with three surrounding community colleges ensure that students who stop out can return later without reapplying. The design removes a key barrier for the 42 million Americans with some college credit and no degree.
“Who’s the loser when a student decides not to pursue a credential because the pathway seems too difficult? The person who has a skill that needs to be developed, but also all the organizations that need talent, and all the recipients of those organizations with services going unmet,” Shushok says.
Is Roanoke veering into vocational programs that resemble community college offerings? Here is why President Shushok believes that question is irrelevant in today’s job market.
