How to Increase Enrollments in High-Value Programs that Lead to Good Jobs

An Opening Note

Contrary to the recent public discourse, a college education remains crucial to economic mobility and a thriving economy. By 2031, it’s estimated that over 70 percent of American jobs will require a college education or training.?

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce recently released its latest good jobs report; it projects that graduating from college will remain a very strong predictor of who in our country can secure a job that pays a living wage.? From now until 2031, there will continue to be about 16 million good “middle-skill pathway” jobs available, typically requiring an associate degree or certificate that takes one or two years to complete. Over the same period, 58 million good jobs will be available to those with bachelor’s degrees (and beyond). That is an increase of 11 million good bachelor’s level jobs over 2024 levels.?

Community colleges provide an affordable, accessible path to a college education or training, enrolling about 40 percent of all college students, many of whom are first-generation, students of color, or from lower-income households. In order for their students to have access to the kind of good jobs highlighted in the Georgetown report, community colleges must ensure that students not only enroll and graduate, but that the programs they complete lead either directly to a job in their region that pays a sustaining wage or to efficient transfer to a bachelor’s degree program. One challenge: most community colleges don’t have actionable data to assess which of their programs and students achieve strong workforce and bachelor's outcomes. This week Aspen and the Community College Research Center (CCRC) released tools that help fill that gap.??

The new classification and enrollment tools can help reform-minded colleges understand which of their programs are most likely to lead to strong post-completion outcomes. This work is critical for students who come to college seeking a better life. It matters for colleges aiming to bolster enrollments by delivering greater value. And it is essential for employers looking to fill good jobs with local talent and communities that will benefit from a more prosperous and better-educated populace.?

The more colleges are able to strengthen their programs and help more students into high-value programs, the more they will be able to prepare students for the good jobs of the future and fulfill the promise of higher education. Read more below to learn about a variety of ways that colleges and universities across the country are working to ensure that all of their students have strong post-graduation outcomes that lead to good jobs and thriving lives—the heart of College 3.0.

Best, Joshua Wyner

Vice President, The Aspen Institute and Founder & Executive Director, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program

Lessons from Unlocking Opportunity and Tools to Help Colleges Start this Reform

Unlocking Opportunity is a three-year project with CCRC that has two main objectives: (1) to increase the number of students in high-value programs that lead directly to a well-paid job or to transfer and a bachelor’s degree in the student’s field of interest, and (2) to decrease the number of students in lower-value pathways that are unlikely to prepare them for good jobs or further education at the bachelor’s level and beyond. Ten community colleges from around the country are part of the network.???

In the first 20 months of Unlocking Opportunity, the 10 community colleges in the network set quantitative goals to collectively enroll at least 28,000 additional students in high-value programs and 16,000 fewer students in low-value programs by the end of 2025. In order to set those specific goals and devise strategies to accomplish them, the colleges needed to classify their programs using labor market, transfer, and program enrollment data—and look for patterns and gaps where students were or were not achieving strong post-graduate success in the labor market and in attaining a bachelor’s degree.?

Now, using lessons learned in this process, Aspen and CCRC have developed tools to help all community colleges analyze their data and classify their programs as high- or low-value for students. This blog explains the tools and shares key lessons from the 10 colleges, including too many students in general studies degrees with poor outcomes and pre-health students failing to finish a degree of high value if they don’t get a slot in a selective-admissions program.??

The classification and enrollment analysis tools can be found here . In the coming months, we will have more research and tools to share with the field, including case studies, assessment tools, and other products. This work is possible because of the generous support of Arnold Ventures , Ascendium's Education Philanthropy , ECMC , and Strada Education Foundation .

New Maryland Initiative Aims to Substantially Improve Transfer Outcomes Across the State?

Nationally, only 16 percent of community college students transfer and attain a bachelor’s degree within six years of starting community college. This is troubling both because surveys show that 80 percent of community college students want a bachelor’s and because, as noted above, research shows that most good jobs require a bachelor’s degree.?

Aspen has been working for the past seven years with leaders and teams from community colleges and universities across the United States to improve transfer outcomes and help more students earn a bachelor’s degree affordably and efficiently. Now, we are partnering with the Maryland Higher Education Commission to scale our transfer intensive program to the state level, gathering presidents and teams from public and private two- and four-year colleges across Maryland to strengthen policies and research-based practices associated with improved, more equitable transfer student success.?

Earlier this month Aspen kicked off the program with a meeting of the Maryland Presidential Steering Committee on Transfer Success, co-chaired By Prince George's Community College President Falecia D. Williams (a former Aspen President Fellow) and Towson University President Mark R. Ginsberg (Towson is also an American Talent Initiative high flier, a national leader when it comes to enrolling talented students from lower-income backgrounds). These two leaders bring extensive experience in successful transfer practices from their prior roles at Valencia College and George Mason University, both exemplary institutions for their guaranteed admission and dual admission programs for transfer students.

The new effort is supported by generous funding from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation . For more on the Maryland transfer work, please contact Bernard Huggins ([email protected] ). If you’re interested in Aspen’s broader portfolio of state-based offerings—including leadership development—please contact Millicent Bender ([email protected] ).

Apply to Join a 2025 Cohort of Leaders Committed to Improving Transfer Outcomes?

Are you a community college or regional public university leader eager to improve your transfer student outcomes? There’s still time to apply to join the Transfer Student Success Intensive, a partnership between Aspen and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) , where teams consisting of an AASCU-member university and a partner community college spend a full year developing a strategic plan to measurably increase bachelor’s attainment among students starting at the community college. Since 2021, the Transfer Intensive has included teams from 91 universities and community colleges in 23 states, impacting over 16,000 transfer students each year.?

The one-year Transfer Intensive consists of monthly virtual sessions and consulting hours designed to support transfer partnerships—including identifying and analyzing critical disaggregated transfer data—and a national community of practice focused on elevating excellence in transfer reform. The program is free for all participants, thanks to the generous support of Ascendium. Apply by September 16 to be considered for the 2025-26 cohort.

College Excellence in the News

• A fifth of students at community college are still in high school , Joshua Wyner quoted on dual enrollment in EdSource
• There’s still a FAFSA crisis, here’s what colleges can do now , Tania LaViolet co-authors op-ed in The Hill

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Have questions? Reach out to Tatiana Johnson , Communications Associate, [email protected] .