Community Colleges Reimagine Their Role to Transform Whole Communities
In The News Piece in Work Shift
Durham Tech
March 12, 2025
Shalin Jyotishi is quoted in a Work Shift article about Achieving the Dream's community vibrancy framework and how community colleges are expanding their role to work with communities' needs.
Community colleges have always been the open door of higher education—focusing on students and employers who might not otherwise get served. In recent years, as the accountability push in higher education evolved, that’s translated to an increasing focus not just on getting students to the finish line but beyond it into good jobs. Now, the leading community college reform organization, Achieving the Dream, is taking that a step further—focusing on how community colleges can not only be an engine for success for students, but for entire communities.
To this end, Achieving the Dream designed the “community vibrancy framework,” a model “based on the premise that completion alone does not go far enough to ensure lifelong student success, which is tied to the well-being of the community.”
Last month, the organization released a report with insights from its first cohort of 15 community colleges representing more than 200K students. The framework, using new data sources, helps colleges find students who have traditionally been left behind by postsecondary education. The model hopes to expand financial support for these students and ensure completion of degrees and credentials with a high labor market value.
Read more here.