Community Colleges Can Fill the Bill

Note: This article is from the latest edition of BBA Economic Digest, a weekly online publication for economic developers and business people. Subscribe?here.

Well before the pandemic, automation and artificial intelligence were disrupting jobs. In 2017, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that?as many as 375 million workers—or 14 percent of the global workforce—would have to switch occupations or acquire new skills by 2030 because of changing technologies.

In?a McKinsey survey?last year, nearly nine in ten executives said they were experiencing skill gaps in the workforce or expected them within a few years. But a minority had a clear sense of how to address the problem.

I believe that no institutions are better positioned to provide job-focused skills training than the nation’s 1,100 two-year community and technical colleges. That is not to say that all of them are doing it or doing it well.

Noteworthy is the fact that skills training for many students does not have to involve the granting of academic degrees, although it can. A certificate of training completion is often what employers want at least initially.

An estimated 3.7 million ‘noncredit’ learners currently attend U.S. community colleges, enrolled in skills-focused programs that do not grant degrees.

What?Communities Must Do

As a consultant to economic development organizations, I have concluded that if a community truly seeks to grow its local economy by attracting employers and good-paying jobs, simply targeting them is not enough. It has to leverage its local community college to provide a long-term talent pipeline.

A community college can only do that by providing robust vocational training to fill open positions, particularly in the skilled trades and industrial-related fields.?Doing so will not only make that community more attractive to prospective employers, but it will also help the unemployed and the underemployed.

Sadly, I come across too many communities where industrial training is lackluster or an afterthought. In such places, incumbent manufacturers have to depend solely on in-house training and because the local community college cannot or will not meet its training needs.

I happen to believe that if a community college does not respond to the needs of employers, that it is or will become largely irrelevant. I recently toured one community college where I was told that it would take one year to create a tailored, short-term training program for an industrial employer. No surprise to me then that most of the existing manufacturers in that community were not working with this school.

Creating an industrial skills pipeline requires not only proactive outreach to local employers but also to students and younger workers who have shied away from career and technical education in recent years.

It also requires retraining middle-aged and other nontraditional job seekers; supporting work-based learning opportunities, including apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships, that are essential to qualify for manufacturing jobs.

More than half of the country’s 11 million community college students are now in programs designed to prepare them for the workplace, according to a recent survey by Opportunity America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group working to promote economic mobility.?Among noncredit students, nearly 60 percent are job-focused, and nearly 75 percent are 25 or older.

Bottom line: Workforce development is economic development. The two cannot exist without the other.

Decline in Enrollment

While all postsecondary schools have been affected by a drop in enrollment during the pandemic (3.5 percent or 603,000 students in the spring of 2021), a June report by the?National Student Clearinghouse Research Center?found that community colleges have been the hardest hit.

Community colleges saw a 9.5 percent drop-off in enrollment over the previous year, totaling 476,000 fewer students. Students enrolled in associate degree programs declined by 10.9 percent. Students enrolled in undergraduate certificate programs declined by 4.8 percent.

The reasons for the decline are varied, according to the experts. Some prospective students have feared the specter of Covid-19 infection, while others are disinclined to participate in remote instruction.

Also, community colleges have traditionally attracted students of lesser financial means who tend to need greater guidance from?administrators and faculty at a time when many pulled back from offering such services.

The danger: Fewer students means less revenue for community colleges, which could lead to cuts at the very institutions so many depend upon as a first step toward building a career and livelihood.

Dean Barber is the principal of BBA, a Dallas-based advisory firm that finds answers to change lives and create better places. Visit us at barberadvisors.com