To meet workforce demand, higher ed should be ‘moving faster’

When Christine Miller hears that organizations can’t find the right talent to fill their open positions, she considers it a failure of higher educational institutions, she tells EdScoop in a video interview.

“We don’t want that. We have to start moving faster,” Miller, the chief information for Sacramento State University, says. She admits, however, that innovating quickly hasn’t traditionally been what higher education has excelled at.

“That’s not really the culture of education — to move faster, but I think we’re going to have to get more of our faculty on board with that, help them see the benefits of innovating and updating the curriculum so our students really have those skills that will be the currency of an increasingly digital workplace,” Miller says.

Higher education’s challenges track with other sectors, Miller says, and include expansive goals that include digital transformation, optimizing processes and ensuring services are finding meaningful adoption among a diverse group of constituents — from students to adult students, faculty and administrators.

Miller talks about what’s unique to California and its approach to innovation:

Miller on how she’s working to provide better services:

On how different levels of government can work together to find solutions to common problems:

This video was filmed at the California Innovation Summit on January 15, 2019, presented by VMware, Intel and Carahsoft and produced by StateScoop.