The Boston Area Advanced Technological Education Center (BATEC) will develop and promote a coordinated, self-sustaining, regional education and workforce development system for IT, one that will attract a diverse student population to IT careers, promote lifelong learning of IT skills and support the workforce needs of the region's IT companies and departments.

As defined by the National Research Council (NRC), IT workers are “those persons engaged primarily in the conception, design, documentation, adaptation, implementation, deployment, training, support, documentation, and management of information technology systems, components or applications” (2001). The speed of development in IT and technology in general has changed the paradigm of education: academia needs an interdisciplinary approach that balances rigor with applied methodologies to prepare students for the constantly evolving needs of industry. Educational pathways in IT do not just follow a linear progression from a high school diploma to an associates degree at the community college and a bachelors degree or beyond at the university level. Because of the dynamic nature of the technologies, students increasingly weave in and out of the education and workforce arena, often confused by the plethora of options and discouraged by redundant or mismatched course offerings. The BATEC education and business partners will use IT skill standards and performance-based assessments to align their education and workforce development opportunities to facilitate efficient transition from one point to the next. BATEC will document lessons learned and disseminate the information through a variety of channels. BATEC will accomplish its objectives by focusing on three critical success factors: closer collaboration with community and industry; flexibility of delivering education and training; and long-term sustainability. This means establishing innovative processes and collaborations that deliver ongoing benefits to participants: to academia - more relevant curricula, a higher degree of sharing the cost and effort of developing educational materials, and closer connection to the region’s workforce; to communities - ways to continuously increase the diversity and skill level of its citizens and the regional competitiveness; to companies - clear and demonstrable business value above and beyond philanthropy.

BATEC will accomplish its objectives by focusing on three critical success factors:

2. Flexibility of delivering education and training
To be effective, IT training today has to be more coordinated to ensure that expectations of employers are met quickly and consistently, yet more flexible to allow students to engage in lifelong learning, weave in and out of the education and workforce arena, and combine academic and practical training. BATEC will develop explicit processes for and coordinate among participating institutions and community and industry partners to create an infrastructure and platform that can meet these needs.

3. Long-term sustainability
To have lasting impact, a regional IT system has to ultimately be self-sustaining. Over the next four years, BATEC will focus on establishing innovative processes and collaborations that deliver ongoing benefits to participants: to academia - more relevant curricula, a higher degree of sharing the cost and effort of developing educational materials, and closer connection to the region's workforce; to communities - ways to continuously increase the diversity and skill level of its citizens and the regional competitiveness; and to companies - clear and demonstrable business value through improved employee preparation and performance. To meet these objectives, BATEC will develop an evaluation framework to continuously measure responsiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency of the program to demonstrate and improve impact.