Matt Murphy

For colleges, employers and training providers

Find the training programs worth building

A dean, a workforce director or a training provider brings me a program idea and I answer the question underneath it: is this worth building, what should it teach, and can it pay for itself?

The answer arrives as a short, sourced brief with a go, revise or stop recommendation, and when it is a go, the competencies, outline and course materials to launch it.

Feasibility brief Three to four weeks

Book a 20-minute callWhere we start

What you get

  • Opportunity research
  • Program validation
  • Scenario-based financial models
  • Competencies and curriculum
  • Online course content
  • Assessments and instructor materials

How it works

  1. Intake

    Sixty minutes on the program, the service area, the CIP and SOC codes, and whatever internal data you have.

  2. Evidence

    Occupation demand and wages from BLS, O*NET, Census and your state’s labor-market office; the completion, placement and earnings tests the program will face; who already teaches it.

  3. Brief and readout

    Twelve to fifteen pages you can hand to a cabinet or a state reviewer, then an hour to walk through it and decide.

  4. If it’s a go

    Competencies, a unit map, online content, assessments and instructor materials, scoped as a course-development package.

Proof

Background Fifteen years building workforce training programs for an Iowa community college.

  • Live service

    Wavelength

    My program-development studio helps community colleges decide which workforce programs are worth building, then helps build them. That means labor-market research, feasibility studies, funding search, and curriculum and course development.

    Read the story

  • Live product

    Pathway Builder

    Software I built so community-college teams can map programs, courses and competencies into routes they can see, from short-term training to a degree. Right now I’m adding a place to weigh new program ideas with evidence.

    Read the story

Where we start

Feasibility brief

Timeline Three to four weeks

Included

  • One program, one service area
  • Demand, wage and competition analysis from public data
  • Benchmarks against completion, placement and earnings tests (including Workforce Pell’s)
  • An employer-validation outline and interview script
  • A written brief and a 60-minute readout

Not included

  • Fielding an employer survey (quoted separately)
  • More than one program per brief
  • Iowa community colleges

Course-development packages and multi-program bundles are quoted after the brief.

Book a 20-minute callOr send a note and I’ll reply with a time.

Where

Colleges and training providers anywhere in the U.S., almost always remotely.

Questions people ask

What does the feasibility brief include?

Occupation demand and wages for your service area, the completion and placement benchmarks the program will be held to, who already teaches it and where the gap is, a scenario-based view of whether it pays for itself, and a go, revise or stop recommendation with the reasons.

Which data do you use?

Public sources first: BLS, O*NET, Census, your state labor-market office and state program-approval guidance, plus any internal completion or placement data you share. Every figure in the brief carries its source.

Can you work under our procurement threshold?

Usually. One brief sits under the informal-quote threshold at most colleges. If your institution needs a vendor registration or a W-9 first, that takes a day.

Do you write the curriculum too?

Yes. The course-development package covers competencies, outline, online content, assessments and instructor materials for one course, built so another instructor could teach it.

Why not Iowa community colleges?

I work for one. Colleges anywhere else in the country are welcome; Iowa colleges by arrangement only, and never through my employer.

Other ways to work together