“Resuming life after so many months of lockdown offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reboot.” That bold statement is found in a new report The Indispensable Institution from Opportunity America, in partnership with Lumina Foundation and Wilder Research.

Last year, Opportunity America set out to determine which community and technical colleges are working with employers, offering short job-focused programs and stackable credentials.

At that time, Tamar Jacoby, president of Opportunity America, noted it was still to be determined “how broad or how deep” the innovation at community colleges translates around workforce preparation.

The plan to research workforce education was hatched a few years ago. “We knew that we needed a better map to understand the landscape of community college workforce programs, but in 2018, we couldn't foresee just how important it would be in a world impacted by COVID today,” says Chauncy Lennon, vice president for learning and work, Lumina Foundation.

To that end, more than 1,260 community and technical colleges were invited to participate in a national survey to get a deeper understanding of the institutions’ credit and noncredit workforce programs, as well as their relationships with employers.

With a response rate of 38%, the findings are significant. Among them, more than 50% of students at the participating institutions are enrolled in job-focused programs.

In addition, the noncredit division’s primary strength is workforce education. Responding colleges indicate that 57% of noncredit students are enrolled in job-focused programs. Most of the programs are less than a semester.

(Graphic: Opportunity America)

The report finds the student populations are widely diverse, stating, “There’s no such thing as a typical community college student.” However, there is commonality in that “their time at a community college is likely to be just one stop in a lifetime of encounters with postsecondary education and training.”

The report notes, one institution offers a blunt self-assessment. “Most community colleges know very little about the noncredit students who pass through their doors,” with an educator stating, ‘The only thing we know about them is whether or not they paid by credit card.’”

The value of prior learning

Some students have prior learning from past experiences including previous jobs or the military. However, it does not seem that simple to translate that prior learning into school credit.

The report says, “Asked if noncredit workforce students who later enroll in a credit-eligible program can leverage most or all of their prior learning for college credit, only 20% of colleges said this is true ‘always’ or ‘most of the time.’ Another 46% said it’s true ‘sometimes.’”

Aligning credit and noncredit programs

One finding says, “Many educators aspire to build bridges from noncredit to credit education, but relatively few colleges provide robust opportunities for moving between divisions, and few noncredit learners—at most colleges, fewer than 20%—take advantage of existing opportunities.”

Public-private partnerships

It’s critical that companies offer input into the needs of the local labor markets and, ideally, have a willingness to hire.

“There can be no effective job-focused education without employers. When the relationship works, industry partners supply information about business trends and changing labor market demand. They often collaborate with educators to design programs and develop curriculum.”

“Most valuable, in the closest and most intensive partnerships, they commit to hiring graduates and help the college improve instruction by providing feedback on their skills.”

(Graphic: Opportunity America)

Incentivizing institutions

When the survey was launched, institutions were encouraged to present a scholarship program for their noncredit workforce students. A raffle that followed resulted in three responding schoo...