How Regional and State Associations Can Build Colleges’ Work-Based Learning Capacity

What makes community colleges excel at workforce and economic development? How can national and regional organizations meaningfully and sustainably help transfer-oriented or struggling colleges transform into high-performing workforce development powerhouses? What is the menu of capacity-building needs that policymakers, philanthropies, consultants, and researchers should address? For the past five years, answering these questions has been a core thrust of New America’s research and technical assistance.

While community colleges maintain a strong reputation as affordable, accessible, and employer-aligned education and training destinations for youth and working adults alike, not all colleges have the internal and external enabling conditions needed for success.

Many colleges report a myriad of capacity-building needs. Building grants capacity, improving financing approaches and business models for workforce programs, fostering professional development for workforce staff, strengthening employer partnership practices, and enhancing the quality of non-degree credentials to strengthen employer and economic development partnerships all arise as priorities.

A central area of focus for community colleges in workforce development has been creating, improving, and scaling work-based learning opportunities, from internships to apprenticeships to project-based learning.

Colleges often undertake internal capacity-building initiatives as part of strategic planning processes or in partnership with third-party national organizations, including New America. However, state and regional intermediaries and membership associations also play an important and underutilized role in fostering peer learning, best practice exchange, and coordination among colleges locally.

Fostering peer learning for work-based learning leaders locally

Take North Carolina, for example. Work-based learning is structured uniquely across each of North Carolina’s 58 community colleges, depending on their size, enrollment, and the labor market they serve.

The North Carolina Community College System provides colleges with general compliance standards to meet audit requirements, including providing a common definition, a baseline of the number of work hours needed to earn college credit per credential type, and details around student records management. But when it comes to capacity building – colleges are largely left to their own devices.

Since 1974, the North Carolina Work-Based Learning Association (NCWBLA) has served as a regional professional organization led by a volunteer board comprised of over forty work-based learning leaders at community colleges across the state.

The association helps college leaders with process improvement, quality assurance, and peer learning around work-based learning approaches. NCWBLA maintains a contact book of work-based learning professionals in the state, organizes regular lunch and learn sessions, facilitates resource and employer connections, and hosts an annual conference to foster professional development among experiential and work-based learning leaders across North Carolina. The association even offers awards to employers, college professionals, and students engaged with work-based learning to support career advancement in the field.

Laura Brown is a coordinator for work-based learning at Forsyth Technical Community College, who serves as NCWBLA’s vice president. According to Brown, the association helps foster a community of practice among her peers in the state. “NCWBLA exemplifies the impact that state associations can have in advancing WBL,” she told me, “Our efforts contribute to building robust pathways from education to employment, strengthening the workforce, and supporting economic growth.”

As one illustration, through the association, Forsyth Tech learned about Central Piedmont Community College's experience digitizing its previously paper-based WBL operations, such as the way the college formalized internship descriptions, agreements, and placement forms. After learning about Central Piedmont’s experiences, Forsyth Tech implemented the digital program management tool Simplicity to streamline its operation, freeing up staff to focus on student and employer-facing engagements.

NCWBLA isn’t alone. Across the country, a number of regional and state-level work-based learning associations support capacity building and professional development for workforce leaders. Launched in October 2022, the Illinois Work-Based Learning Innovation Network (I-WIN) serves a similar role, spanning K-12, postsecondary institutions, employers, and community-based organizations alike. Meanwhile, the Iowa Work-Based Learning Coordinators group specializes in serving high school coordinators focused on youth apprenticeships or other forms of hands-on learning at the secondary level.

Enhancing state associations’ support of work-based learning

However, little is known about these organizations' full spectrum of activities and how their impact on colleges’ programming could be enhanced. Brown, who plans to step into the presidency of NCWBLA next year, said she would like to see the association expand programming beyond compliance and process improvement-oriented capacity building and more towards collaboration among institutions and with employers.

For example, members could workshop strategies to pool resources to purchase data platforms to better track work-based learning participation across the state or foster more multi-institutional collaborations with employers located in multiple service areas.

The association could also pursue collaborations with other state associations such as the North Carolina Community College Faculty Association, the North Carolina Association of Community College Presidents, and the North Carolina Association of Community College Trustees.

Association-to-association collaborations could be especially beneficial in strategizing how work-based learning can support colleges' response to state policy changes. Just earlier this year, North Carolina Governor Stein signed an executive order at Forsyth Tech focused on expanding apprenticeships. Meanwhile, initiatives like Propel NC are shifting North Carolina’s state funding formulas for community colleges away from funding per general enrollment and towards funding for credential attainment relating to strategic high-growth areas like advanced manufacturing and biotechnology.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution to ensuring that all community colleges offer high-quality work-based learning experiences for students, grassroots approaches like state associations can help accelerate the promulgation of work-based learning capacity building across institutions.