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.

Massachusetts report urges centralization

Massachusetts should expand statewide control of its 15 community colleges argues a new report from the influential Boston Foundation. In the centralized system focused on job training, colleges should be judged and funded based on student performance, the report concluded.

The state’s community colleges “have failed to connect in a systemic way with prospective workforce, economic development and employer partners,” reports Inside Higher Ed.

As a result there is no way to make broad curriculum changes based on workforce needs, it argues, and colleges and community-based groups compete for resources rather than cooperate.

“There are good programs within the community college system, but the system as a whole is under-resourced, overly fragmented, and not well aligned with the needs of Massachusetts employers in the knowledge economy,” said Paul S. Grogan, the foundation’s president, in a written statement.

Virginia’s centralized community college system was offered as a model for Massachusetts.

Community college presidents believe they already collaborate, reports the Boston Globe.

“We think we’re doing a hell of a lot better job than we did in the past,’’ said William Messner, president of Holyoke Community College. “We’re on the case.’’

Job training “what we do,” said Ira Rubenzahl, president of Springfield Technical Community College, who was a panelist for the report’s presentation. “We’ve been doing it for 50 years.’’  “I’m concerned that [the proposed structural changes] will be disruptive at a time when our institutions are fragile.’’

The system needs “radical change,” not “tweaking,” responded Grogan.

Next door in Connecticut, the community colleges will share a state board with the Connecticut State University System, a move that’s not popular with college officials.

“Board consolidation is a trendy idea in some states, particularly when budgets are tight,” notes Inside Higher Ed. Louisiana may merge its higher education boards. A proposal in  Rhode Island would create a single K-12 and higher education board.

Decentralization is on the table in other states, such as Wisconsin, which may separate its flagship university from the rest of the state university system.

Study liberal arts, get a job

Liberal arts classes aren’t frills, writes Rob Jenkins, an English professor at Georgia Perimeter College. Students prepare for success in the workforce by learning to write, analyze and solve problems in liberal arts classes.

Many Americans learn at a two-year college most of what they will ever learn—in a formal setting, at least—about writing, critical thinking, the history of our culture and civilization, the environment, and human behavior. 

. . . Employers rank communication and analytical skills among the most important attributes they seek in new hires, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Perhaps those of us who teach those very skills at community colleges should embrace the integral role we play in preparing the nation’s workers rather than rejecting the idea of work-force development as somehow beneath us.

Communicating clearly in writing is a key to business success, so ”one of the best things we can do for students is to require them to write—a lot,”  Jenkins argues.

Employers complain that many workers have difficulty thinking for themselves.

How many of us actually require our students to analyze material in an in-depth way (as opposed to providing them with convenient study sheets)? How many of us require them to draw inferences, make connections, reach and defend conclusions? Our liberal-arts courses are the ideal places to teach those cognitive skills that students need to be successful in the workplace.

Finally, liberal-arts instructors should connect what students are learning in class to the “real world.”

NC could merge small community colleges

North Carolina could save $5.1 million a year by merging small community colleges with larger neighbors, but legislators are split on the idea and community college leaders are opposed.

North Carolina has 58 “quasi-independent” community colleges, with 162 campuses and off-campus centers in 91 counties, according to a report on cost-cutting options. Full-time equivalent enrollment ranges from 624 at Pamlico Community College to 16,200 at Central Piedmont. Smaller schools typically have higher administrative costs per student.

Fifteen colleges with fewer than 3,000 students could be merged with a larger college less than 30 miles away, the report suggests.

Senator Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, teaches at a community college. He said trying to yoke schools in neighboring counties together is “opening a Pandora’s Box.” Hise said different counties are on different rotations for property tax evaluations, and schools relying on two or three of them would likely get the short end of the budgeting stick from all of them.

Community colleges are “easily the most efficient” of any of the state’s educational systems, “and the most underfunded, too,” said Senate co-chairman Fletcher Hartsell, R-Cabarrus. However Hartsell said he’d consider the recommendations.

With gas prices high, students may be reluctant to drive farther for college classes.

Breanna Justice, who’s studying to be a surgical tech at Blue Ridge Community College, may drop out if Blue Ridge merges with Asheville-Buncombe Tech.

She has two small children and says driving to Asheville would mean less time with them and more time at the gas pump.

Blue Ridge President Molly Parkhill says the community college works closely with local employers to meet workforce needs.  Moving to another location would make it harder to serve the community.

Brookings: Learn more, earn more

Community colleges are the key to developing a skilled workforce, concludes a Brookings Institution  report, Community Colleges and Economic Recovery: Strategies for State Action.  However, states must  align workforce development policies with community colleges and colleges must improve student success rates, says Richard Kazis, senior vice president of Jobs for the Future and the author of the new report.  

Community colleges, which serve more than a third of U.S. undergraduates, prepare students for fast-growing “middle-skill” jobs.   But community colleges must change to raise low retention and completion rates.  “We need more students to get degrees and certificates, and we need those credentials to be worth more to the students,” Kazis says.
 
The report’s recommendations include:
 

Improving student performance: States need to promote innovation so that more students complete programs that pay off in the economy. States need to collect —and use—better data about student progress and outcomes. They should change institutional and individual incentives to drive toward outcomes, not just enrollment. And they should work closely with both K-12 and workforce development systems to increase college readiness and align advising and support services.

Making the connection between education and economic development: Leaders should target local/regional industry sectors critical to economic growth and promote partnerships that align workforce needs with educational opportunities. They must also create innovative programs for working adults to help open up more employment possibilities for this critical population.

Thinking strategically: Public- and private-sector leaders must include postsecondary education as part of their planning for long-term competitiveness and economic sustainability, including making targeted investments. They need to explain to constituents the critical role these investments are going to play in the future economic security and quality of life for their regions.

The report praised innovative workforce development and education programs in Washington state, Ohio, Indiana, and Connecticut that tie higher education funding to outcomes. It also cited the Illinois’ Critical Skills Shortage Initiative and the Pennsylvania Industry Partnership—as examples of efforts to align postsecondary education and economic growth strategies.

Rural college is ‘the only game in town’

Community colleges are helping revive rural economies by working with employers to provide job training, writes Community College Times.

Rural areas try to recruit new businesses looking for lower costs, but employers also look at the availability of qualified workers, access to workforce development programs and the quality of life, said Randy Smith, executive director of the Rural Community College Alliance, which is affiliated with the American Association of Community Colleges. “Community colleges are absolutely critical to economic development in rural areas,” Smith said.

CC summit will miss the point

Next week’s White House summit on community colleges is “designed to miss the point,” writes Community College Dean. To start with, “not a single community college professor or on-campus administrator” is invited. But the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CEO of Accenture will be there.

The summit will be hosted by Jill Biden, the vice-president’s wife, who teaches at a community college. But she’s the only instructor on the guest list? That’s crazy. (College presidents and students have been invited.)

Workforce development and increasing graduation rates are the goals, according to the website. “Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll get the wrong answers,” writes the dean.

Graduation data count first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students, a group that’s a small minority on  community college campuses.

If we wanted to ‘game’ our graduation rates, we could just put in place policies that favor the first-time, full-time student over the returning student or the part-time student. That’s easy enough — sometimes it happens without our even trying — but it’s contrary to the mission of the college.

Community colleges do lots of workforce development, but much of it isn’t counted in statistics like graduation rates, the dean argues.

When a large local employer contracts with the continuing-ed arm of my cc to run some ESL classes for its entry-level employees who mostly speak Spanish, that’s a version of workforce development, but it’s completely disconnected from our IPEDS numbers, and it won’t show up in certificate completions.

What community colleges really need, the dean writes, is “a sustainable funding model.”

Part of that implies a direct, long-term, sustained infusion of operating cash. Money won’t generate success by itself, but you won’t generate success without it. When community colleges are struggling just to keep doing what they’re already doing, asking them to do even more with even less is just silly. If you want real improvement, you need to pay for it. Whether that means direct federal infusions, or bloc grants (with strings) to states, or dramatically higher Pell grants, is open to debate. The mechanism could be any number of things. But unless the bottom line is increased dramatically and permanently, we’re blowing smoke.

Colleges need to stop measuring academic achievement by the credit hour, the dean writes. Federal leadership could be a big help.

The feds could look at the unintended consequences of disability law, the repeal of mandatory retirement ages and the judicial assertion of a property right inherent in tenure, which “add tremendously to overhead and don’t result in better student outcomes.”

Finally, improving the K-12 system so graduates are literate and numerate would be a huge help to community colleges, the dean writes.

But that’s not going to happen.

Update: President Obama will attend the summit, the White House has announced.  Both K-12 teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, were invited to send representatives. Jill Biden’s office says community college faculty have been invited, but provided no names. Adjuncts are demanding a voice, reports Chronicle of Higher Education.

Maria Maisto, who teaches English at Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio, leads the New Faculty Majority, a national advocacy group for adjuncts.

. . . she is baffled over why the faculty is not playing a more-significant role in the discussion. She is especially troubled by the fact that Ms. Biden, an effusive supporter of community colleges, would leave the adjunct faculty’s voice out of the summit.

Adjuncts now do most of the teaching at community colleges.