Getting Non-Degree Workforce Programs Right at Community Colleges

The first in a three-part series from New America's New Models for Career Preparation Project. Community college leaders bring decades of expertise to their work, drawing from lived experiences and national best practices. We hope that this collection of briefs will help these leaders with practical examples that will inspire both institutional and program-level changes necessary to maximize the impact of non-degree workforce training.

Despite the growing demand and availability of non-degree workforce training, outcomes for these programs are mixed. For some, non-degree programs are a faster, more affordable pathway to a good job, and, more importantly, a career that offers economic security—they represent the future of education. But for others, non-degree programs are a hyped-up distraction from degree attainment that leads to unemployment, underemployment, or employment in poverty-wage jobs with limited advancement opportunities—particularly for Black and Brown learners.

This brief describes data collection and data-driven continuous improvement strategies colleges should use regularly.

To build a more equitable post-pandemic economy, we need to accelerate the development of high-quality, affordable workforce programs at community colleges that lead directly to quality jobs and careers. To do this, we must change the policy environment in which colleges operate.

High-quality non-degree workforce programs at community colleges, including both credit-bearing and non-credit programs, play a crucial role in equipping low-income and marginalized workers and learners with the skills and credentials they need to secure quality jobs and careers in a variety of occupations. Financing these programs can be a challenge for many colleges. Under the hospices of its New Models for Career Preparation project, The Center on Education and Labor at New America (CELNA), with support from Lumina Foundation, commissioned Non-Profit Finance Fund to undertake a study examining innovative financing approaches. This report presents the findings from the study.

This blog shares the fifteen colleges selected for the Workforce Transformation & Implementation Cohort, as well as how these colleges are looking to strengthen their workforce programs.

This blog shares the three focus areas of the project and the members of the national Advisory Committee that will support the cohort.

Community colleges must be proactive rather than reactive in connecting with regional innovation economies and expanding equitable access to quality jobs of the future.

Community colleges have teamed up with major companies like Intel to create AI education opportunities to expand equitable pathways to new jobs in the innovation economy. They are "critical partners" says Intel's Carlos Contreras.

Colleges and "Federally Funded R&D Centers" are partnering to align technology and talent development: As demand for non-degree training programs now outpaces demand for traditional degree programs, it is time to create new non-degree pathways for folks without degrees to secure these coveted jobs born from federally funded research.

Energy efficiency has a key role to play at the intersection of these goals but access to workers remains a challenge in this sector. A new green buildings career map, developed by the non-profit Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, aims to address this gap.

Pima Community College and TuSimple, the first autonomous vehicles company to go public in the US, partnered to create the first certificate program to train autonomous vehicle truckers.

Future U.S. economic competitiveness and national security will rely not only on a robust base of AI talent to develop cutting-edge systems, but also on the broader U.S. workforce having a baseline AI proficiency. How can we secure and strengthen U.S. leadership in both of these categories? CSET Research Fellow Diana Gehlhaus and other experts unpacked the current state of our domestic AI talent pipeline, and discussed what policies we need today to stay ahead.

Could NSF’s new directorate help community colleges anticipate and expand equitable pathways to the Future of Work? “Yes, absolutely,” says TIP head Erwin Gianchandani

Miami Dade College’s Antonio Delgado addresses how community colleges can anticipate opportunities, mitigate risk, and expand equitable pathways relating to emerging tech jobs of the future.

A number of policy recommendations can help our world transition to new, high-quality jobs. However, in our current skills marketplace, helping at-risk workers acquire quality, in-demand non-credentials offered by reputable education and training providers is the right first step.

Amazon has launched an “educator enablement” program to help instructors at community colleges, HBCUs, and other minority-serving institutions learn and teach AI.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has launched a new $20 million workforce program called Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC). The NSF EPIC program aims to help more community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, and minority-serving institutions, and other emerging research institutions expand career opportunities in the innovation economy.

The Biden administration has launched a new workforce development funding program to help people, including those at community colleges, gain skills for emerging jobs in fields like AI, biotechnology, quantum science and new areas of advanced manufacturing and semiconductor.

Research supported by Joyce Foundation and Ascendium Education Group at the think-tank New America found that twenty-five U.S. states allow community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees, a departure from their historical roots offering associate degrees that lead to transfer to a 4-year university where students would complete a bachelor’s degree. This development is helping community colleges meet the biotechnology industry’s manufacturing needs in a subfield called biomanufacturing.

What happened to enrollment at community colleges this summer in the wake of COVID-19? We are starting to get a clearer picture and it is not pretty.

Quality non-degree credentials can help workers transition to work of the future. However, without a significant re-investment in American public 2-year (and 4-year higher education) system, our standard of living will decline and the United States will decline as a world leader.

The COVID-19 pandemic is making technical, hands-on programs more expensive than ever. At the same time, we need these programs to be available to help people reenter the workforce. We need to make a collective effort to ensure these programs are available for all who need them.

New America convened a group of sixteen of these leaders to see how their institutions are currently faring and what their plans are for the fall. Here are six strategies colleges in our convening are using to help students come back to college or stay enrolled.

Across the board, many stakeholders consistently confuse and conflate “non-credit” and “non-degree”. Here's the difference between them.

Federal and state investments in community colleges should give institutions the latitude to address their particular needs as well as inequities across institutions.

For many students, the need to make money for their families is driving this exodus. Providing these students with subsidized work study job opportunities on campus, in conjunction with their studies, could bring thousands back to college.

This discovery and the belief that we value what we measure led her to assemble a team to create LaunchBoard, a statewide data system that provides information about progress, success, employment, and earnings outcomes for California community college students.

We need a better way for people who don’t have bachelor’s degrees to access stable, well-paying jobs emerging from this economic crisis. To be clear, we need more of these jobs full stop. But at the same time, we need to offer training pathways that provide access to these jobs without requiring adults to sit in college for four-years to rejoin the labor market. The good news is that community colleges are already thinking about job quality and their responsibility to train students for jobs that provide a living wage.

Federal and state investments to empower higher education to play a more proactive role in job quality can be especially valuable. But there is much that higher education institutions and their employer partners can do to improve job quality as the work of the future arrives.

Some facilities had lost the authorization to train their own Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA) due to state citations of their facilities. Turnover of CNAs was high. With the typical starting wage of a CNA in Rochester around $12 an hour, local community colleges and other training providers were balking at the idea of training people for a job with such low pay, few career pathways, and uncertain scheduling.

If community colleges and states work to increase the capacity and flexibility of allied health programs, partnership with labor management training funds can do even more to serve colleges, learners, and state workforce needs.

The U.S. Department of Labor has launched a new campaign to dispel myths about the federal workforce development funding system—the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). Modeled after the Obama-era slogan “Yes, we can” the Yes, WIOA Can! campaign was announced by the Deputy Secretary of Labor Julie Su earlier this month.

Women and people of color are underrepresented in the manufacturing workforce. Community colleges aim to foster racial and gender equity.

Community colleges can increase equity in enrollment by engaging marginalized communities. Here's how.

Community colleges and American Jobs Centers must work together to maximize their impact on education attainment and workforce development.

Colleges can use priority-based funding models, asset monetization, and full-cost budgeting to cover critical needs and reduce the cost of non-degree workforce programs.

Earning a degree in an in-demand field from affordable, quality public institutions can still yield the greatest return on investment for students, but a degree isn't necessary to secure a quality life. As more colleges and universities explore bootcamps as a new model for career preparation, employers, institutions, students, and local economies may stand to benefit.

By improving job quality and education pathways for CNAs, employers, policymakers, and colleges can make this promise of stackable career pathways in nursing a reality.

Announcing New America's 2021 New Models for Career Preparation Cohort: Six community colleges with quality non-degree workforce programs that lead to quality jobs and careers.

Broward College is leveraging partnerships to offer free education and wraparound support for its most vulnerable community members. They believe their model is replicable across other community colleges.

The world of work is changing, but as new jobs emerge employers struggle to find skilled labor. A 2018 study of the US manufacturing industry estimates that 2.4 million positions will go unfilled between 2018 and 2028. While this gap between demand-driven jobs and talent troubles Detroit-based employers, many can turn to a surprising source for skilled labor: faith-based organizations and nonprofits like Focus: HOPE.

Learning and employment records (LERs, formerly called interoperable learning records) offer a promising solution to the challenge of capturing and communicating the skills of individual workers to a wide selection of potential employers, and they may equip employers with the tools necessary to maximize hiring, promotion, and upskilling.

The Journal of Science Policy & Governance (JSPG) and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society launched a call for papers and competition focused on Re-envisioning STEM Education and Workforce Development for the 21st Century. The call for papers and competition for op-eds and policy position papers will result in a Special Topics Issue of JSPG to be released in 2022 that will comprise the most compelling papers. Read the call for submissions. 

As part of this partnership, JSPG and Sigma Xi hosted a series of educational webinars led by experts from Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS), New America, and the Association of American Universities (AAU) to examine policy changes in STEM education and workforce development, and a policy writing workshop for op-eds and policy position papers to help prospective authors improve their submissions to the special issue. View the event recordings.

In fall 2016, Dallas College—in partnership with the Dallas Independent School District—opened eight P-TECH campuses. Since then, the project has expanded to 18 P-TECH campuses each with its own sponsoring industry partner. In 2021, more than 10 percent of Dallas seniors graduated high school with an associate degree.

In 2018, the University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents approved Columbus State University (CSU) and Albany State University to begin offering a new type of degree. Not quite associate degrees and not bachelor’s degrees, these new nexus degree programs are designed to support people at a variety of points in their career and give them what they need to move forward, regardless of previous education. With the credit load of the degree being similar to an associate at 60 credit hours but including upper division classes, industry-specific credentials, and experiential learning, the nexus degree seemed a flexible and practical alternative to a bachelor’s that could prepare its graduates to address industry demands directly.

The publication also explores the need for LERs to be carefully designed to achieve more equitable, socially desirable outcomes, rather than intensifying existing inequities or disproportionately benefitting one group over another.

A recent white paper from the Project on Workforce at Harvard University sheds light on the challenges and opportunities of education-to-employment that reveals insights for community college leaders.