Some of the biggest names in U.S. education and workforce policy came together in Washington on Wednesday with a blunt message: America is failing its workers, students and economy, and the window to fix it is closing fast.
The Bipartisan Policy Center, a bipartisan group of national and state policymakers, business leaders and education experts, has released a comprehensive report prepared by a 24-member commission that spent more than a year examining the country’s broken education and workforce pipeline. The report, A Nation at Work: The Case for a National Talent Strategy, tells a worrying story: a country heading toward severe economic instability as an unprepared workforce becomes even more unprepared amid the rise of artificial intelligence technology in the workplace.
It is estimated that by the end of 2025, 57% of current work hours in the United States can be automated through existing technologies, which is almost double what McKinsey predicted two years ago. Half of college graduates in the past decade were underemployed a year after graduation, and nearly three-quarters remained that way over the decade. About 37.6 million American adults under the age of 65 have some college credit but no credentials to prove it.
Former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick co-chaired the effort, and on Wednesday they were joined by former U.S. Secretary of Education and BPC Chair Margaret Spellings and former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The two governors spoke on the phone wealth On the need to update our laws for the current dire situation.
The key laws that govern how Americans pay for college and access job training—the Higher Education Act and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act—were last updated in 2008 and 2014, respectively, predating the rise of generative artificial intelligence, the gig economy, and widespread remote work.
“This is not just a question of artificial intelligence,” Haslam told wealth. “It’s about making sure that we have a workforce training system that was designed 100 years ago for a very different economy than it is today. It’s about having a system that lets people know, hey, the world has changed — here are the skill sets you may need in the future and how to get those skills.”
The Bipartisan Policy Center said the trend shows “the U.S. labor system is not fully aligned with the needs of an AI-driven economy,” with a growing skills mismatch that leaves many employers unable to find qualified workers even as unemployment rates fluctuate. The report notes that the education system “is still largely built around traditional university pathways, while the modern labor market increasingly requires a wider range of options such as apprenticeships, technical certificates, short-term training programs and lifelong learning opportunities.” The BPC believes that what distinguishes the current moment from past technological disruptions is its pace: “Whereas previous waves of technology automated routine tasks, this disruption is different – changing in real time.”
Patrick, who served two terms as governor of Massachusetts and later led Bain Capital Double Impact before joining the Harvard Kennedy School faculty, is well aware that the report’s ambitions extend far beyond the AI debate. “We are in a period of rapid change in the workforce, and our economy comes from many different places, but it affects us all – workers, learners, employers.”
Central to the commission’s diagnosis is the question of who is being left behind. Patrick cited research by Stanford University economist Raj Chetty to illustrate the stakes. “Raj Chetty’s research on ‘The Lost Einstein’ shows us that genius, creativity and innovation exist equally across zip codes and income levels,” said Patrick. “Yet too many talented young people from low-income and working-class communities never have the opportunity to develop their talents because they lack access to great schools, mentorship and career pathways,” he said.
“We are leaving untapped talent aside. If we are serious about strengthening America’s competitiveness and expanding opportunity for everyone, we must be equally serious about ensuring that every child can discover and develop their talents. This is not charity, but smart policy and a moral imperative.”
Haslam puts his record on the table. As Tennessee governor, he launched the Tennessee Promise to make community college and technical schools free for all high school graduates — a program the report views as a model of what state-level policies can accomplish. “When Tennessee makes community college and technical school free to all high school graduates, we’re not just opening the door, we’re changing the economic trajectory of the entire state,” Haslam said.
“Employers have a deeper talent pipeline. Communities see young people staying at home and building careers rather than leaving to pursue opportunities elsewhere,” he continued. “Combined with our investments in K-12 and our commitment to employer partnerships, free community college becomes key to the statewide talent ecosystem. That’s what happens when you align education policy with workforce and economic development.”
The report’s central structural fix is the creation of a Talent Advisory Council within the Executive Office of the President (modelled after the National Security Council) that would coordinate education and workforce policies across a dozen federal agencies that currently spend more than $230 billion annually on more than 150 programs but without a unified strategy. “What we’re experiencing is a very fragmented system that’s very difficult to access – you have to understand it in your little corner of the economy to take advantage of it,” Patrick said. “We need a strategy, and that strategy needs to be national. Because the challenge is national.”
“It feels like — different parts of the country, different parties — but it feels like an issue of increasing national urgency that needs some leadership to address it,” Haslam said.
The report comes at a fraught political moment, with the current administration slashing federal education spending and Congress showing no interest in comprehensive reform. But Patrick rejected the idea that a fight for funding would derail the effort. “If the people are mobilized, Washington will take action,” he said. “Funding is always important. I don’t want to downplay that. But it’s not just about funding. It’s about how to allocate resources and assets to properly train the next generation of the workforce. If we get into funding conversations, that does devolve into the old battles. It’s about how we think differently.”
This cross-party determination was the animating spirit of the summit. “There are a lot of things in the world today that are instantly polarizing,” Patrick said. “I think that’s one of the things that everyone understands: There’s going to be a lot of change in the future. I don’t know if we’re ready for it.”
