SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- With more than 12 million Americans unemployed, community colleges and technical schools are collaborating to help people retrain for new jobs.

About 1,100 institutions nationwide are contributing to the Opportunity America survey on workforce development. California Community College System Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley said "upskilling" will be crucial to an equitable recovery from the pandemic.

"It isn't high-wage-earning, white-collar workers that have been impacted. It is blue-collar, front-line vulnerable workers at the lowest level that have been hit the hardest," Oakley said. "And these are individuals that community colleges have the greatest access to."

Ajita Menon is president of Calbright College, a state-run online community college. She said the survey results will promote best practices.

"It's a real tool for planning and innovation that we can share and understand and learn from what other institutions are doing," Menon said.

Colleges are being asked to complete the survey this month. Tamar Jacoby, president of the nonprofit Opportunity America, said she hopes the data will convince state lawmakers to allocate more for career education.

"The problem is, you have millions of Americans wanting these short, job-focused programs that the colleges are well positioned to provide, but in many states there's no way to pay," Jacoby said. "You can't use your Pell grant to pay for them. Most states do not fund them."

Salvatrice Cummo, executive director for economic and workforce development with Pasadena Community College, advises people looking for work to consider short-term community college courses that can lead directly to jobs in such hot industries as healthcare and computer science.

"Sit with the counselor and take a look at the programs that best fit your desires and interests and career path," Cummo said. "And have them share with you, what are the growth occupations?"

Cummo noted many of California's 116 community colleges now offer competency-based credentials that are designed to funnel graduates into fields that are in demand.


Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.




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A new report on Black students in the community college system found fewer are signing up to attend two-year schools, and the college enrollment downturn has been even sharper in the pandemic.

Debra West, chancellor of Arkansas State University Mid-South, an Arkansas college which has started to buck the trend, said her two-year school also has seen declining enrollment, and the drop was more dramatic among white students than Black students. But West pointed out the school has renewed its focus on adding programs to attract more students of color.

One popular course of study trains people for the in-demand field of commercial truck driving.

"The other area that we think we have tremendous room for expansion in is in health care," West explained. "We're going to start by focusing on our EMT program and hopefully expanding that into a paramedic program, because we know there's a lot of interest in health care programs in our area, and great demand for trained health care workforce in our area."

The report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies on Black students' experiences in community college showed enrollment dropped 18% for all Black students from Fall 2019 to Fall 2021, and detailed other pressures preventing students from completing school, including hunger and housing insecurity.

The report also found lower graduation rates among Black community college students. West said her school's overall graduation rate was only about 9% in 2015. However, they have implemented some recommendations from Complete College America, such as eliminating late registration, creating flexible scheduling and capping most associate degrees at 60 hours. Now, she reported the graduation rate is ticking up.

"We have actually increased our graduation rate by 19.8% over the past five years," West noted. "We're currently at 33.6%, which is pretty average for Arkansas, but indicates that we still have work to do."

Last year, the school's completion rate for African American students was 31%, and 32% for white students. West added student loans are not an issue at the school, as it does not provide them. Instead, students get locally-funded scholarships or federal Pell Grants.

Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.

Class sizes in New York City schools will be limited by 2028 - the result of a new state law.

The law will cap Kindergarten through third-grade classes at 20 students, 23 students in grades four through eight, and 25 students for high school classes. Gym classes would be limited to 40 students.

This effort originated in the mid-2000s with the first "Contract for Excellence" that indicated class sizes needed to be changed for students to have a better learning experience.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said he thinks the caps have been desperately needed - but said the city's Department of Education hasn't seen it that way.

"The Department of Ed really does not want to do it, so that's why the law had to be passed," said Mulgrew. "The rest of the state already lowers its class sizes; there's no law telling them they have to do it. But here in New York City, the entire legislature understood that if they didn't pass a law, the Department of Ed would never have done it. And this has been a constant struggle for years with them."

Mulgrew said he feels much of the opposition to limiting class sizes has been part of politicizing education funding overall.

He said, in the bout of "bureaucracy versus the classroom," the classroom has won. But the caps won't take effect for several more school years.

Mulgrew cited Francis Lewis High School in Queens as an example, with more than 4,000 students and a student-teacher ratio of 30-to-one. Just this year, the school got an annex building, after years of overcrowding.

As a former teacher, he predicted the new law will benefit educators as well as students.

"During the pandemic, this is what the teachers found," said Mulgrew, "because only 30% of the children came to school. And they were like, 'We were able to spend so much time with our children, and really started helping them with things they were struggling with,' because they had the time to actually do that."

New York City's school system is the largest in the nation, with over one-million students attending more than 1,800 schools - although recent reports indicate enrollment is on the decline.

Colleges and universities in Kentucky are looking at new ways to address the equity gap among their students, through specialized training for their governing boards.

President of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education Aaron Thompson explained that college governing boards are in a position to help increase student success, especially for people who come from historically marginalized communities.

"This relationship is about what data to use, how you use it, bringing people together," said Thompson. "It's an ability to create a whole new way of thinking about board training."

Thompson added that measures adopted during the pandemic are expected to help ease the financial burden for students.

According to data from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, last year nearly all schools voted not to increase their tuition or fees from the previous year - due in large part to the pandemic.

The state also launched a campaign to encourage students to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms for federal and state financial aid.

Thompson said higher education institutions in the Commonwealth will benefit from lessons learned about policies and practices that can help level the playing field for students from diverse backgrounds.

"We've got several of our campuses with our boards involved," said Thompson. "And we're looking at it from our two-year campuses and our four-year campuses, making sure that we're providing that research."

Thompson says he hopes the trainings provide boards with the tools needed to foster better communication with current and prospective students - which, in turn, should increase enrollment.

"Boards can get involved in helping their students to know there's a greater outcome here," said Thompson. "You are getting some lifelong learning while you're in college."

The statewide training is a collaboration between the Association of Governing Boards and the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education.