Pathways to Success for ’21st century students’

Degree completion is a huge challenge for “nontraditional” college students, concludes Pathways to Success a report to Congress and the U.S. Education Department by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. At community colleges, these older students are the norm, now dubbed “21st-century students.”

“Twenty-first century students,”  a large and diverse group, aren’t served well by financial aid programs, the report found.  National data banks track recent high school graduates, but ignore older students.

At a Sept. 30, 2011 meeting, two panels of experts discussed how federal policy can remove barriers to completion for adult students.  In addition to reforming financial aid and tracking the progress of all students, they called for giving credit for prior learning and demonstrated competency, creating career pathways, integrating basic skills education with workforce training and assessing how much students are learning in college.

Training 21st century workers isn’t fast or easy

Is Investing in Community Colleges a Good Idea? asks Charlotte Allen on Minding the Campus.

President Obama’s $8 billion program Community College to Career Fund assumes colleges can partner with employers to train 2 million workers for high-demand jobs in health care, technology and “green” industries.

Most community college students aren’t prepared for college-level courses, especially in math, Allen points out.  Developmental classes don’t seem to help much.

. . .  most of the anticipated job openings in the U.S. during the near future will require workers who possess exactly the sort of math and reading-comprehension skills that most community-college students these days seem unable to master. There is currently a shortage of skilled employees in high-tech industries, and some two million manufacturing jobs are expected to open up by 2018 thanks to expected retirements–but most of those jobs require workers who can operate sophisticated machinery, follow complex instructions, and demonstrate some facility at math and statistics. The training itself for 21st-century jobs can be expensive.

Successful job training programs at community colleges tend to be “small-scale, dependent on modest grants from the involved industries themselves, and centered around nationally recognized certificates,” Allen writes.

Key to many of the programs was ACT’s National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC), which measures recipients’ math and reading abilities. . . . Shoreline Community College near Seattle . . .  used a grant from the Manufacturing Institute, a nonprofit affiliate of the National Institute of Manufacturers, to integrate the NCRC and certification from the National Institute for Metalworking Skills into a three-quarter-long manufacturing program. The program’s retention rate (95 percent) and job-placement rate (100 percent) were stellar–but it was also a small, highly focused program with only 50 students per cohort.

Allen wonders whether small, focused training programs can be “replicated on a large scale with widely varying students, faculty, and educational standards — along with the potential for waste that a spigot of federal dollars always presents.”

Employers see higher ed as costly, stodgy

The nation’s higher education system is costly, unaccountable and unwilling to change, say business leaders interviewed for Hiring and Higher Education, a report by Public Agenda for the Committee for Economic Development (CED).

“There are growing and grave concerns about the system’s ability to remain a leader and produce the workforce our future economy demands,” said Steve Farkas, lead author of the Public Agenda report. “Business leaders told us that, if higher education fails to control costs and hold itself accountable for results, our colleges and universities will become less relevant, and our economy will suffer greatly.”

However, the business leaders praised community colleges as no-frills institutions that are able to adapt to new challenges and work with employers on job training.

The widely shared perception is that higher education is highly resistant to change, and that innovation and adaptability are hardly the forte of colleges and the administrators who run them. Some executives talked about experiences they had trying to work with their local colleges only to run up against a “can’t-do” system tied up by committees, paperwork requirements and institutional prerogatives.

“The colleges, as creative as they may be, lack innovation,” said one executive. “They’ve set up a certain structure, tenured staff, and because of that they’re opposed to change.”

Despite the high unemployment rate, it’s difficult to find skilled workers in some fields, the executives said.

$8 billion for ‘community career centers’

An $8 billion Community College to Career Fund will reward colleges that partner with local employers to train 2 million workers for high-demand, well-paying jobs in advanced manufacturing, information technology, health care and “green” tech. That’s if President Obama persuades Congress to pass his budget.  In a speech at Northern Virginia Community College yesterday, the president linked “America’s comeback” to investing in education.  ”We can’t just cut our way into growth,” he said.

A key component of the community college plan would institute “pay for performance” in job training, meaning there would be financial incentives to ensure that trainees find permanent jobs – particularly for programs that place individuals facing the greatest hurdles getting work. It also would promote training of entrepreneurs, provide grants for state and local government to recruit companies, and support paid internships for low-income community college students.

Despite the recession, some high-tech industries report shortages of skilled workers. As the economy recovers and baby boomers retire, there will be 2 million job openings in manufacturing through 2018, according to the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown. But there’s a catch, reports AP.

. . . these types of jobs frequently require the ability to operate complicated machinery and follow detailed instructions, as well as some expertise in subjects like math and statistics.

. . . Mark Schneider, the former U.S. commissioner of education statistics who now serves as vice president at the American Institutes for Research, said there’s no doubt that high-tech companies need skilled workers. But he said there are challenges with leaning heavily on community colleges. Many students enter community colleges lacking math skills. The sophisticated equipment needed for training is expensive, and there’s little known about the effectiveness of individual community colleges programs across the country, he said.

In particular, “green” job training programs have produced disappointing results.

Community colleges have been partnering with industry on job training for many years. “Community colleges understand the needs of local employers,” said Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in a White House press conference yesterday. The fund would allow colleges to hire staff, buy equipment and develop curriculum, she said.  (I wanted to ask why taxpayers should fund training for employers, but I was too far back in the phone queue.)

“We will give community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, echoing President Obama’s line from the State of the Union speech.  We will create “an America built to last,” said Duncan. Also “an economy built to last.” And a workforce “built to last.”

President Obama’s past budgets have been “rife with unfilled promises” to community colleges, notes Inside Higher Ed.

Affordable, if your time has no value

Even with fee increases, California community colleges are among the cheapest in the nation — if students’ time has no value. Students may wait years to get into the classes they need, reports the Sacramento Bee.

 Now in his third year at Yuba College, a year he once hoped to spend in Chico or Davis, Robert Bond said every student he knows has struggled to get the classes they need.

“My first semester here, no math classes were open, so I couldn’t get a math class,” Bond, 20, lamented on the Yuba campus quad, decked in a sweat shirt and shorts on an unseasonably warm afternoon. “Basically it took me two years until I could get a math class, college-level Math 52. So I’m like way behind.”

As the state struggles with budget deficits, community college funding has been cut: It is now 12 percent below its 2008-09 high-water mark. Colleges have cut classes, despite high demand.

State Chancellor Jack Scott toured a $20 million Yuba College building built with bond funds approved before the recession.

In the sun-splashed foyer, several psychiatric technician students praised their two-year program, though they said they had to wait two or three years to gain entry.

Two to three years to get into a two-year program? That’s a crazy waste of time and time is money.

Adult ed, short-term students seek aid

Expand financial aid to part-time, non-credit students seeking job skills faculty and students told U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan at a town hall meeting at Tallahassee Community College last week, reports Community College Times.

President Obama wants two-year colleges to help train an additional two million Americans for  jobs.

”I can’t overstate how important the role community colleges are going to play, helping our country get back to where we want to go,” Duncan said.

Many students in adult education and non-credit training programs don’t qualify for financial aid and scholarships, despite their need, said Kristina Pereira, an adult education specialist at TCC.

People seeking short-term job training should be eligible for aid, TCC President Jim Murdaugh told Community College Times. For example, a TCC student was enable to enroll in a certificate course that would have lead to a good job because he didn’t have the $500 fee and didn’t qualify for student aid, Murdaugh said.

“There is no mechanism to provide any help to these folks,” Murdaugh said, noting that current rules on federal student aid eligibility “disadvantage” part-time and non-credit students enrolled in courses that can usually be completed in 90 days with jobs waiting for them. Eligibility requirement should factor in programs that successfully lead to employment.

“That should be the litmus test for success,” Murdaugh said.

Many laid-off workers seek short-term training to get back into the job market quickly.

The death of voc ed — and the middle class

The death of vocational education is hastening the demise of the middle class, argues Marc Tucker in Ed Week.

Years ago, almost all the larger cities had selective vocational high schools whose graduates were virtually assured good jobs, Tucker writes. Employers made sure these schools had “competent instructors and up-to-date equipment,” so graduates would meet job requirements.

That ended when vocational education became just another class, often crowded out by academic requirements, Tucker writes.

I will never forget an interview I did a few years ago with a wonderful man who had been teaching vocational education for decades in his middle class community.  With tears in his eyes, he described how, when he began, he had, with great pride prepared young men (that’s how it was) for well-paying careers in the skilled trades.  Now, he told me, “That’s all over.  Now I get the kids who the teachers of academic courses don’t want to deal with.  I am expected to use my shop to motivate those kids to learn what they can of basic skills.”  He was, in high school, trying to interest these young people, who were full of the despair and anger that comes of knowing that everyone else had given up on them, to learn enough arithmetic to measure the length of a board.  He knew that was an important thing to do, but he also knew that it was a far cry from serious vocational education of the sort he had done very well years earlier.

Career academies were developed to motivate students, not to prepare them for real jobs, Tucker writes. Voc ed, now renamed “career technical education,” is no longer a “serious enterprise” in high schools.

By contrast, Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, Denmark and other leading industrial countries “doubled down to improve both their academic and their vocational programs.”

They built vocational education programs that require high academic skills.  And they designed programs that could deliver those skills.  They did not sever the connections between employers and their high schools; they strengthened them.  They made sure their high school vocational students had first-rate instructors and equipment.  Their reward is a work force that is balanced between managers and workers, scientists and technicians.  No one tells an individual student what he or she will do with their life.  But those students have a range of attractive choices.

Tucker links to descriptions of vocational education in the Netherlands, Australia and Singapore.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama called for states to require school attendance till age 18 or graduation. If schools offer no options except the college track, that seems cruel.

Massachusetts will centralize CC control

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick proposed centralizing the state’s community college system in his State of the Commonwealth address, reports the Boston Globe.

“We have a skills gap,’’ Patrick told the packed House chamber at the State House. “We can do something about that. We can help people get back to work. And our community colleges should be at the very center of it.’’

A November report describes the state’s community college system as “disjointed and inadequate in its preparation of students for technical careers,” notes the Globe.

Patrick’s proposal will let a central board dole out funding to individual colleges, taking into account enrollment and several performance measures. The new plan is also intended to make it easier for students to transfer credits between colleges, a frequent source of complaints.

Patrick is proposing a $10 million increase in the community college system’s budget for the coming year to fund the transition.

The workforce development fantasy

President Obama focused on the workforce development mission of community colleges in his State of the Union Speech, calling on community colleges to train two million skilled workers for unfilled jobs.

The next day, Education Secretary Arne Duncan flew to Florida to praise job training programs at Tallahassee Community College.

Workforce development is the flavor of the month, writes Community College Dean. But it’s not as easy as politicians think to turn out skilled workers.

The most predictable lower-level workforce needs are actually the skills we expect students to pick up in their general education courses: effective communication, the ability to see the big picture, enough quantitative skill to know when an answer doesn’t sound right.  Those skills are evergreens, and like evergreens, they take time to grow.

There are always a few local employers who need workers who can be trained quickly, the dean writes. But those jobs get filled by the first or second cohort of trainees.

Many would-be workers need literacy or English as a Second Language classes. Community colleges’ developmental track is geared towards getting students into a degree program.  Adult Basic Education is a better fit, but often is underfunded and can’t meet the demand.

The dean’s advice:

If you want to improve the prospects of the local workforce, start with adult basic education, add short-term training programs, and beef up the classic academic offerings at community colleges for transfer. . . . Otherwise, you’ll just keep cycling people through training programs every few years, every time the economic winds shift.

The second word in “community college” is “college,” the dean points out. Community colleges are in danger of being defined purely as job training centers.

Again, Obama touts community colleges

President Obama touted community colleges as “community career centers” in his State of the Union speech. He proposed training 2 million people for skilled jobs through business-college partnerships, not a new idea.

Obama cited the experience of Jackie Bray, a single mom in North Carolina who was laid off from her job as a mechanic. “Then Siemens opened a gas turbine factory in Charlotte and formed a partnership with Central Piedmont Community College,” Obama said. “The company helped the college design courses in laser and robotics training. It paid Jackie’s tuition, then hired her to help operate their plant. I want every American looking for work to have the same opportunity as Jackie did.”

The president also pledged to make a college education affordable, pitching his student aid promises to middle-class families.