Higher Education’s Role in Preparing Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Workforce
How colleges and universities can support entry into expanding sectors
Higher education institutions play a key role in fostering economic development and job readiness. And in Greater Philadelphia, where these organizations are also significant employers, their support in preparing people to join growing industry sectors can have far-reaching impacts on economic mobility.
In a Dec. 15 webinar, experts from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Economic Collaborative, and the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia discussed how higher education can prepare area residents for better jobs in select industries in Southeastern Pennsylvania—a key aspect of the organizations’ work together.
The session’s central message was that local educational institutions—four-year colleges or universities, two-year community colleges, and high schools offering specialty career training—are key stakeholders for efforts the Southeastern Pennsylvania Economic Collaborative is leading to expand economic mobility.
“Our collective challenge, and our opportunity, is to ensure that higher education fuels maximum job growth across the region’s most important industries,” Temple University President John Fry said at the outset. “By aligning our programs with employer-validated skills, we deliver not just degrees but durable economic opportunity.”
A regional market assessment from the Brookings Institution, published in summer 2025, served as the framework for the conversation. This assessment highlighted three industry sectors in the region as having high potential for generating jobs that offer family-supporting wages and benefits particularly accessible to people who do not have four-year degrees.
Those sectors are:
- Enterprise digital solutions: Business-to-business software tools and customization services to optimize back-office and middle-office functions in operations, compliance, and strategy.
- Materials machining/fabrication and electronic components value chain: Production and distribution of precision metalworking and polymer components, industrial and process equipment, high-tolerance electronic connectors and instrumentation, communications systems and control devices, and related assemblies.
- Biomedical commercialization: Manufacturing diagnostics and therapeutics (including biologics) and medical devices—supporting research and emerging technology platforms such as cell and gene therapy, as well as retaining more life science startups through early and growth stages.
Calling out specific sectors is vital, said Anne Prisco, president of Holy Family University, “so that we can become more targeted in our efforts.” And all the industry clusters are particularly valuable to the regional economy because they are tradable industries, ones that sell goods and services to customers outside the Philadelphia area.
What can higher education do to help nurture these industries? The answers, according to the Brookings research, vary across the three groupings. But a common thread is the need to develop and expand the talent pipelines for the jobs these industries have now and might create in the future.
“What we’ve heard from some training providers is that there’s unmet demand from workers [for training],” said Marek Gootman, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and one of the market assessment’s co-authors. “There’s a bottleneck in the ability to train and deliver because there aren’t enough seats, and there aren’t enough trainers or access to specialized equipment. So that is an area that, through near-term activity, can be realistically solved with some resources and policy changes.”
Rachel Barker, a nonresident fellow at Brookings and co-author of the report, said that the situation, if not addressed, has the potential to be an “existential choke point” for growth in local advanced manufacturing.
Barker and Gootman cited several related challenges facing potential workers and employers. One is the lack of awareness among some young people about the availability and appeal of these career opportunities.
To be sure, some four-year colleges and universities may not be able to offer the kind of training designed to prepare students to work in specific industries. But Barker said those institutions still have contributions to make in the economic development sphere, by providing necessary research and being part of the discussion.
“There’s a really critical role for four-year universities to play in really just rolling up their sleeves and sitting down with economic development [leaders], understanding what are the near-term needs,” Barker said.
Gootman added that the business community itself can help to address job training needs by “coinvesting in the seats [for training],” contributing to equipment and supplies, and helping institutions compensate the specialized instructors who are needed.
The convening came at an important moment for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Economic Collaborative, which has been several years in the making. Organizers expect to release a regional growth strategy document in April 2026.
Larry Eichel is a senior adviser with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia research and policy initiative.
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