A Complex Sociotechnical Systems Approach to Provisioning Educational Policies for Future Workforce

Reforming the U.S. educational system and workforce is a national challenge. Both industry leaders 30 and academics 2,28 concur that improving the quality, quantity [and alignment] of U.S STEM graduates are national imperatives. Models of the U.S. educational system, using complex sociotechnical systems’ approaches and tools that instill systems thinking, offer a holistic perspective to the educational and workforce challenges we face as a nation and allow us to identify and understand challenges associated with workforce preparedness, and increasing the number and technical excellence of STEM graduates 9,13,29. These models represent a sociotechnical system of systems with various sub-systems, each one representing an inherently complex and interdisciplinary problem of maintaining bi-directional, non-linear feedback relationships between one another. Each system involves multiple disparate stakeholders that need to collaborate within a time-and resource-intensive process while embedded in a larger sociotechnical system, aligned with the people, ideas, and support required to support desired global outcomes, of the system of systems, society and industry in particular11.