education is a supply chain, not a pipeline

Multiple choice question: What would you do first when building a coffee supply chain? (This will lead us back to education. I promise)

A. Understand what coffee farmers want to grow

B. Understand what coffee roasters want to produce

C. Understand what coffee drinkers want to drink

is there anyone not picking C?

Of course not; because in any rational supply chain, you start with the needs of the customer. Then you work backward, understanding the needs of subsequent suppliers to determine what the previous suppliers must deliver to them.

Well, if you really take a moment to think about it, our education system is, in essence, a supply chain:

• Students are the coffee beans.

• Each stage, from pre-K through higher ed, is a supplier refining the beans.

• And employers are the customers drinking the coffee.

Here’s the problem.

our current education system doesn’t work this way

It starts with the needs of the last supplier (colleges), rather than with those of the customer. And, what’s worse, is that this supplier isn’t even building their product for the customer (employers).

No wonder our education system is broken.

But, there’s still hope.

With this “education supply chain” framework, the answer to how we fix the system becomes pretty clear:

we start with the needs of the employer and fix higher ed first

Fortunately, employers’ needs are simple. They want an entry-level workforce that:

• Provides the most lift,

• The fastest,

• With little to no employer resources required.

Okay. So, now we know what “finished good” higher ed needs to produce for the customer:

graduates who are fully skilled and ready for their first jobs from day 1

Soooooo, given this requirement, we can start to zero-in on what high school graduates need to look like when they enter college. And, given high schools’ required output, that enables us to figure out what their input (i.e., middle school graduates) need to look like. And so on and so forth.

Backwards through the education supply chain.

The subsequent supplier’s input requirements dictating what the previous supplier’s output must be. Only with this approach will we know precisely what each link in the chain should be teaching their students in order to deliver the ideal output to the next link.

only then can we fix the broken US education system

Because, if our education supply chain keeps focusing on producing better apple juice for their coffee drinkers, we’ll never solve the actual problem.