Ensuring an Equitable Recovery

Pam Sornson, JD on September 13, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

September 13, 2021

The ongoing turmoil in the global economy is forcing businesses, industries, and societies to reassess how their systems support or impede their communities. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed some glaring voids in access to employment, education, digital connectivity, and medical care, among many other issues. These dire circumstances present significant challenges to everyone, not just governments, economies, or industrial sectors. However, they also offer significant opportunities to reassess how current societies function (or not) and to develop new methodologies to address those gaps and failures. 

The Economic and Workforce Development department (EWD) at Pasadena City College (PCC) will discuss these and more equity-related barriers and opportunities during its third annual Future of Work conference, happening virtually Tuesday, November 9th. Panelists, who come from a diverse range of EWD sectors, and the keynote speaker, Vijay Pendakur, Ph.D., will discuss how California’s community colleges can refocus their systems to ensure all learners, regardless of their background, thrive as both students and as contributing, employed members of society.

 

Facing Down the Equity Gap

The social failures encompassed within the equity gap are significant. Entrenched discrimination practices that limit opportunity because of gender, race, sexual orientation, and other fundamental human elements have eroded whole segments of society and reduced their capacity to both achieve their full potential and share that potential for the benefit of the rest. The current disrupted state of the community offers many now open pathways to approach this equity schism with new strategies that will bring fairness and justice to all members of society, not just a selected few. 

 

California Combats Inequity with Education

California’s State government is taking affirmative steps to address the equity imbalances that hamper its economy and its future. The State currently experiences the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the country, and its Black and Latinx populations are disproportionately represented in that metric. The San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys are experiencing unemployment rates that equal those of a full depression at 29% and 27%. Those racial and geographical realities are stark indicators of the current disparate access to the State’s employment-related resources. They also represent an immense waste of invaluable talent and energy, resources that should be embraced and directed toward helping California recover from the pandemic.  

In response to these concerns, the Governor convened a “Recovery with Equity” task force (TF) from the State’s Council for Post Secondary Education to evaluate the full scope of the challenge. The TF’s purpose was two-fold:

determine how California’s higher education resources (its state universities and community colleges) contribute to the equity concern and also 

determine how to redirect those educational resources to eliminate inequities while also contributing more to the state’s overall economic health. 

Research completed by the TF drew five significant conclusions:

    1. COVID-19 has exacerbated difficulties across all educational sectors, especially in communities of color and diverse ethnicities. 
    2. The State suffers from a significant gap in educational attainment by both ethnic and racial divisions and regional geography.   
    3. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous high school students, who make up the majority of the State’s public high school population, are less likely to achieve the high school credits necessary for entry into California’s state university systems. Students who face additional challenges, those who identify as LGBTQ+, have disabilities, or come from economically challenged backgrounds, face even steeper obstacles.    
    4. However, demand for workers with higher-than-high-school educations is rising even in industries that previously had not established those standards. Workers who earn these credentials are also better paid and less likely to rely on unemployment benefits. 
    5. Barriers to success for all of the State’s college-aged populations (but that are especially dire for ethnic, non-traditional, or regionally dispersed populations) include:
      • insufficient support for basic needs, such as food and accommodation;
      • lack of coordination between the K-12 school system and California’s three higher education resources, the two state university systems and its community colleges;
      • a lack of clear pathways from entry to college to job attainment, which is made more difficult by a shortage of available classroom seats and course availability, and
      • a lack of data tracking student access, persistence, and attainment throughout their educational career. 

With the assistance of the TF, the State’s new goal is to address these barriers with intention, appropriate resources, and, especially, with an equity equalization goal in mind.

 

Innovational Approaches Can Pave the Way    

At least one educational scholar has a theory that could provide the foundation for equity-equalizing strategies at California’s colleges and universities. Vijay Pendakur, Ph.D., is the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer for Zynga, a social game development company based in San Francisco. Zynga is the host of top-rated online, multiplayer games, including FarmVille and Words with Friends. Zynga’s corporate footprint spans three continents and maintains a globally diverse employee population with workers in North America, Europe, and India. Dr. Pendakur’s previous experience included 3+ years as Cornell University’s Presidential Advisor on Diversity & Equity, membership on the National Institute’s of Health Director’s Working Group on Diversity, and several years as a diversity advisor and leader at both California State University, Fullerton, and DePaul University. 

Working for fifteen years in these disparate industries has honed Dr. Pendakur’s focus on equity and diversity issues, particularly those that arise in post-secondary school settings. Noting that students of color or from different/alternate cultures are often less successful than their white, ‘traditional’ cohorts, he began evaluating what parts of the post-secondary systems might be contributing to that reality. 

What he saw – the factors that now form the basis of his theory – was that most post-secondary systems address their student’s ethnic and alternate details separately from their educational details. There’s one ‘identity-centered’ support system directed at addressing the ‘equity’ challenges and another support system directed at achieving academic goals. ‘Identity-centered’ equity supports are designed specifically to address the student’s particular social, racial, or economic challenges.  

The problem, he finds, is that there’s no clear nexus between identity-centered supports and academic supports. The equity supports (housing, food, finance, etc.) aren’t directly connected to helping the learner achieve their desired educational, employment, or career credential. That gap, he surmises, perpetuates the equity challenge for the student. The two distinct support systems don’t work together to further the student’s efforts towards success as a student and success as an eventual contributing member of society. 

Pendakur uses the term ‘identity-consciousness’ as an alternative descriptor for equity supports that both address the student’s specific challenges and engage with their academic goals, too. He believes that higher education support systems should aim at achieving student success while also addressing individual social, racial, or other challenges. Students can achieve their employment or career goals because their college support systems help them overcome their unique equity-related challenges. 

 

Today’s challenging communities are struggling to find new footings as the COVID-19 pandemic erases their previous foundations. Discussing how to rebuild those communities and the economies that support them will be the topic of PCC’s upcoming Future of Work Conference. Register to attend this online event to hear Dr. Pandekur speak about his theory and what it might mean for your community college.   

Exploring Barriers to Economic Recovery

Pam Sornson, JD on September 9, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

The lack of skilled workers for millions of unfilled job openings is hampering America’s big plans for a strong, post-COVID economic comeback. The President’s proposed infrastructure bill would exacerbate that challenge by adding even more occupational opportunities to the already long list of unfilled job openings. At the same time, the number of unemployed workers is also at its highest point in decades. Addressing these two distinct but interrelated challenges requires understanding the barriers posed to unemployed workers in the face of such significant employment opportunities. Finding solutions also requires understanding how the evolving nature of work is compounding the problem. The data suggests that the overarching solution to both challenges is to upskill workers to meet the enhanced employment opportunities that are defining the post-COVID workforce.

 

Lots of Jobs but No Employment Candidates in Sight

A recent survey revealed that more than 40% of America’s businesses were struggling to fill job openings, and 91% of those respondents added that they found few or no qualified candidates when reviewing submitted applications. The situation is causing distress across the country as businesses that survived the economic upheaval of ’20-’21 are now looking to build a stronger organization within the context of those lessons learned.

In many cases, the coronavirus remains the culprit causing the gap.

Millions of jobs were rendered obsolete due to corporate accommodations made to facilitate the sudden, COVID-19-driven, ‘all online’ service delivery format. The majority of those occupations will likely never return as the country embraces the newly ‘normal’ digital workplace.

As COVID-19 vaccines became available, businesses opened but with restrictions that curtailed earning opportunities, especially in the hospitality industries. Limited seating numbers in restaurants also limited tipping opportunities, and many previous hospitality workers weren’t enthused about either their lower revenue options or risking potential virus exposure when patrons weren’t required to be masked or vaccinated.

And many previously employed people have taken up roles that preclude an outside-the-home job. The closure of day-care centers eliminated the option for many moms and dads to seek outside employment. (Note here that the most recent April jobs report revealed that all those 266,000 job gains went to men; the number of employed or seeking employment women dropped by 64,000 during the same period. Gender apparently plays a significant role in who’s looking for work, too.)

Many parents have also embraced their new role as ‘home school’ teachers.

More recently, the surge of infections in unvaccinated people and equally concerning ‘breakthrough infections’ have caused additional community lock-downs and other restrictions. These developments only further dampen the desire to head into what can be seen as a threatening and inhospitable work search.

 

Other, non-COVID challenges are also influencing the decision not to seek new employment:

In many cases, the available jobs don’t pay a sufficient wage to justify going back to work. Again, the hospitality industry is impacted especially hard because it has traditionally paid workers low wages while also facilitating their opportunity to earn more through tipping. Many former servers, baristas, etc., aren’t willing to return to a job that offers low pay and no benefits.

Many emerging job opportunities also require special skills that have become significant only in light of the pandemic’s impact. These ‘middle’ skill occupations require more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year university degree. The 40-year trend that emphasizes a university education versus a trade education has reduced the opportunities to gain training in these critical practices. Without the skills, workers aren’t qualified to take the jobs.

Not insignificantly, jobs that require previous experience are also hard to fill these days. Many of the currently unemployed had been working in the same position or industry for years. Without skills in other occupations or industries, many workers are not adequately qualified to secure a job in a new-to-them field.

These realities are just some of the challenges posed to the post-COVID recovery effort.

 

Reassessing the Nature of Work

Experts are now suggesting that addressing the current labor shortage/high unemployment quandary requires more than just introducing workers to employers. Both workers and industries are reassessing what ‘work’ is or should be, and the pandemic has provided the platform on which they can explore those concerns.

 

Changing Worker Priorities

The past 18 months of uncertainty and stress have caused significant psychological discomfort, as isolation and economic losses triggered depression, anxiety, and worse. Those who’ve weathered the darkness are now looking more closely at how they want to live – and work – going forward.

Some have found occupational freedom in their new work-from-home situation and want to retain that option in their future career searches.

Others are looking for a deeper work/life meaning, seeing their paycheck now as an ancillary benefit to working and not its primary objective. They want their work to offer meaning and value to their lives.

Still others are looking to move into jobs and careers they’ve never explored. Many people continued working in the fields where they first secured employment, not because they intentionally chose that career path. The pandemic ‘reset’ has allowed them to revisit those choices and make better ones for their future.

 

Emerging Employment Choices

The parameters defining jobs, occupations, and careers are changing, too.

COVID-19 revealed that the ‘distributed workforce’ is a viable option for many businesses. Not only does it provide comparable productivity, but it can also reduce costs by eliminating the need for office space, commuting requirements, etc.

Automation is also growing in popularity as companies implement machines to replace their now off-site workforce. That development, however, also revealed the need for ‘automation management,’ a job that transcends the unique specificities of all industries.

The lack of workers with high-quality middle skills is also driving innovations in industries that now recognize the high value offered to their organization by middle skills training. Many are considering adding training and upskilling capacities to lure potential employees who bring talent and willingness but lack just those specific skills to do the work.

 

The anticipated growth of the economy has been tempered by recent surges of coronavirus cases, further inhibiting both job seekers and employers from moving forward too fast. However, the continuing delay of a full economic recovery offers the opportunity for all involved to evaluate what kind of economy it will be and participate as both employee and employer in its creation.

Non-Credit Education: An Open Door to a New Future?

Pam Sornson, JD on August 1, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

What if you’re ready to work and you’ve found a job opportunity that provides everything you’re asking for, but it requires skills you don’t have and you have no money with which to get them? It’s entirely possible that your best bet to finding a solution to this dilemma is a non-credit course or program offered by one of California’s Community Colleges (CCC). Chances are, thousands of Californians who were displaced from their jobs by COVID-19 will be seeking further skills training through one of the many free non-credit courses that are available through the community college located  just down the street.

 

An Alternative Route to Tomorrow’s Jobs

Right now, across the country, millions of out-of-work former employees are pondering their next step toward their future employment. The COVID-19 virus has been especially difficult for lower-wage earners, who were among the first to lose their jobs when the pandemic rolled through the country and are often among the last to find new employment as it recedes. In many cases, their former jobs were replaced by machines or computer software programming. In other cases, the work was modified to accommodate the ‘work-from-home’ phenomenon, which also pared away those workers who didn’t have the skills or resources to engage with their occupation through those filters. Still others struggled to find any kind of occupational purchase, and the mass shut-down of many industries blunted their prospects even further.

All these calamities added additional weight to the already serious challenge facing workers in the bottom 10% of the national workforce, whose earning capacity rose by just 1.6% between 1979 and 2018. (By contrast, those workers in the 50% sector saw their annual earning capacity grow by 6.1% and those in the 90th percentile experienced a 37% growth in earning power over the same period.) The reasons behind the lag in low-wage earning capacity are many:

Technological advancements eroded many industries that used to pay living wages to their workers, including the automobile and manufacturing industries.

Increased competition driven by increased global trade also contributed to the challenge, as companies outsourced less skilled work off-shore to foreign regions where annual pay is a fraction of that in the United States.

Evolving labor practices also added to the suppression of low-wage job earnings. For years, Congress has refused to increase the national minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. The decline of labor unions also negatively impacted earning capacity as big business and new regulations silenced those aggregated voices.

Add these concerns to the already eviscerated, COVID-eroded labor market and it appears that low-skilled workers will have a very challenging time finding new work, especially work that pays them a living wage.

Consequently, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many of them are considering furthering their education to improve their economic situation. For many, the non-credit courses offered for free at their local community college are an optimal option.

 

‘Non-Credit’ Doesn’t Mean ‘No-Value’

Essentially, non-credit courses offered through the community college portal are just that: educational programs that provide training but don’t also include a credit that would count toward a certificate, diploma, or degree. Typically, these courses and programs offer more fundamental skills training, such as learning English as a second language or basic numeracy skills. However, for learners who weren’t able to finish high school or who want to improve their employment opportunity for work but elect not to pursue a certificate or degree, the non-credit option offers excellent educational value at a really reasonable price.

Their rudimentary purpose doesn’t mean, however, that the courses themselves don’t offer high value. In most cases, these non-credit programs are as rigorously vetted and structured as for-credit classes. The skills attained through them are as valid as those gained through other educational resources. Students who complete these programs are as skilled in their new abilities as any other college student who completes a course.

 

California’s Non-Credit Education Opportunities

California’s community colleges offer non-credit learning opportunities through two primary portals: General Basic Skills (aimed at facilitating finding work and participating in society), and through dedicated Career & Technical Education (CTE) pathways.

General Basic Skills

According to a 2017 report:

almost all of the State’s community colleges (85%) offer non-credit classes teaching English reading and writing skills as a Second Language (ESL) or ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages);

more than half (57%) offer high school equivalency classes – Adult Basic Education (ABE) or Adult Secondary Education (ASE), and

slightly less than half (44%) provide non-credit courses for students with disabilities – Disabled Student Programs & Services. These programs assist learners with challenges to improve their quality of life by teaching independent living skills, pre-vocational skills, computer instruction, and access technology instruction, to name just a few.

Many colleges also provide recreational and wellness course options, too, for students who simply want to learn new hobbies (Arts & Crafts, Music, and Literature/Writing are popular) or improve their personal health (Health & Wellness, Body Dynamics and the Aging Process, and Nutrition attract older learners).

CTE Pathways

While less than half of the schools (43%) offer CTE programs with non-credit options, most of those that do provide courses related to three major industrial clusters: Health Science & Medical Technology, Building & Construction Trades, and Business & Finance. Fewer schools offer non-credit courses in other CTE sectors, such as Information & Communication Studies, Energy, Environment, & Utilities, and Arts, Media, & Entertainment, to name just three. Learners will have to seek those out to find the campus that can fill their particular non-credit CTE needs.

Note, too, that as the pandemic recedes and more jobs become available, many colleges are looking at how their non-credit courses can fill job-seeking students’ needs and possibly find ways to attribute credits to those efforts. Driving the project is the fact that many currently jobless people are forced to put ‘some college, no degree’ on a job application when that training or course actually provided them with a usable skill. Having that non-credit educational asset attributed to a certification or diploma may mean the difference between collecting a paycheck or collecting unemployment.

 

If you’re one of California’s millions of unemployed people, you may find the support you need to find work through your local community college’s free non-credit programs. Or you might want to invest in yourself and obtain a credential or diploma through its CTE programming. In either case, Californians can be proud that their community college system is working hard to get its residents – and economy – back to work.

Continuing Education: Why ‘Adult Education’ is Critical to Today’s Economy

Pam Sornson, JD on August 1, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

The economic chaos that has ensued through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond will take decades to repair. However, in that repair process, global and American businesses can take advantage of lessons learned during the public health crisis and rebuild themselves to be stronger, bigger, and better than before. One group that will almost certainly benefit from this ‘revisioning’ of the global industrial complex is the world’s population of ‘adult’ learners. These people have attained a certain age or level of experience and find themselves in need of additional education or training to become employed in the new global economy. 

Fortunately for those who live in California, the State’s Adult Education system (AE), based in its community colleges, is prepared to provide the programs these grownup learners need. Through them, AE students can meld their existing occupational skills with new, 21st Century capacities to enhance their value to their current or future employer.  

 

The High Value of Adult Education

Adult education has been a staple of America’s higher education system for decades. In the last century, as millions of immigrants arrived from distant places, the adult education courses that popped up across the states focused on teaching reading and writing English as a second language (literacy), fundamental math (numeracy), and basic skills for finding and keeping a job. These programs were different from those that represented the formality of the ‘university education’ or those training courses directed at developing specific trade skills. Instead, the AE programs gave learners the fundamental skills they needed to engage in and become part of their local community and society. 

As the need for AE grew, so did the recognition by learners and others that it offered not just the worker a step up into the community but also the community a cadre of laborers who brought their new talents as well as their already well-honed skills to their new jobs. Likewise, employers reaped the benefits of both the energy of the new American residents and the experience and knowledge they brought with them. 

The adult worker population also proved to be economically beneficial to their community too. The maturity of the worker often facilitated their swift onboarding into their new career, cutting down training time. In addition, their work ethic and work-related wisdom added depth to their labor and enhanced the quality of their productivity. And because many learners also had family and economic obligations, they remained motivated to stay on the job, reducing the associated cost of employee turnover. 

As the world turns to address the wounds inflicted over the past 18 months, millions of people now find themselves categorized as ‘adult learners’ since their previous occupation either no longer exists or has evolved into work for which they no longer have sufficient skillsets. These displaced workers will need additional training to find their 21st Century economic footing, and California’s community colleges will be the AE training provider through which they can achieve that end. 

 

California’s Adult Education Program – CAEP   

 California has invested millions in its CAEPs, which are situated across the state, in all of its 72 community college districts and more than 300 K-12 school districts and county offices of education. Aligned with the State’s equally ambitious Vision for Success (V4S) initiative, the CAEP offers the educational resources to assure that all state residents can find the additional training they seek, regardless of its purpose or goal. 

How the CAEP works:

Like the V4S program, the CAEP tracks AE student activities to determine the value of their continuing education inputs and how those connect with their employment goals. It is designed to follow students who aren’t ‘traditional’ college students – generally, they’re not right out of high school (although allocations of AE funding are for any student ‘over 18 years’); they’ve most likely already been in the workforce so they have job experience, and they need or want additional training to advance their earning capacity or their career or both. 

The CAEP tracks the same metrics as the V4S initiative does for California’s ‘traditional’ community college students:

enrollment numbers

improved literacy skills

student progress (through a course, program, or certificate process)

high school diploma or GED equivalent attainment

job placement activity

wage increases post-CAEP

transitions to 4-year schools

transitions to other post-secondary education opportunities, and

degrees and certifications that support employment.

By offering training in non-traditional AE subjects, the California community college system incorporates the needs of all its learners, regardless of their ultimate goal or intent.

Further, the CAEP emphasizes a series of ‘priority’ themes that overlay all of its activities:

That CAEP programs treat all learners equitably, as well as all partners and community members that engage in the CAEP system. 

That leaders lead based on the needs of their students and their communities, building partnerships and finding resources that support and grow the opportunities available to their particular student population.

That leaders focus on helping learners move through the CAEP system to achieve their personal goals, whatever those may be.

That communications are sufficient to attract the attention of all potential learners, whether those are through traditional means (such as billboards or radio ads) or through today’s many social media channels.

That courses and programs are both currently relevant and evaluated continually to ensure they stay that way. 

That technological advances are available to support all learners, whether they attend a physical campus or gain their education through remote means.     

The past year has demonstrated that ‘equity’ has many facets, from how classes are taught, how achievement gaps are addressed, and how historically disadvantaged students are supported to building cultural responsiveness and awareness into every aspect of every course. It also revealed how educational needs are changing and how technology plays an ever-growing role in educational policy and economic development. 

Economic and social chaos currently roils the community education landscape, just as they do every other social arena in the post-COVID era. Despite that reality, however, California’s CAEP continues its evolution to provide today’s and tomorrow’s adult learners with the training resources they need to find their way in the new post-COVID order. Moreover, considering how many workers were displaced and careers were disrupted by the pandemic, it appears California’s investment in its CAEP is both timely and critical to the State’s recovery from the crisis.    

  

Recovery is Opportunity: New Knowledge = New Vision

Pam Sornson, JD on July 6, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

The vaccines have significantly reduced the threat of serious illness or death due to a COVID-19 infection. Now, California’s Community Colleges (CCC) are looking to re-open and get back to business. However, to do so, they must first assess the full scope of the coronavirus’s impact on the systems where that ‘business’ will happen. Once the assessment is complete, they’ll have the opportunity to revamp and revise their programs to address the many gaps the COVID-19 pandemic revealed. As odd as it sounds, the response to the coronavirus crisis may result in significant improvements in how CCC’s train their students and the state’s future workforce.

 

COVID Stalled CCC Learning Progress

Evolving data indicates that California’s college students lost a lot of educational momentum while campuses were closed, and that, across the country, community college students lost more than those attending 4-year schools:

After eight years of consistent growth, the number of associate degree earners stalled completely during the 2019-2020 school year. The total number of undergraduate credential earners for the last full school year was 3.7 million, the same number that achieved that goal in the previous year.

Compared to data from 2012-2013, the number of first-time undergraduate award earners dropped by 1%, while the number of students earning ‘stacked’ credentials (adding to degrees and certificates already achieved) grew by 2%.

Overall:

the number of Bachelor’s degrees awarded rose from 1.475 million in ’18-’19 to 1.503 million in ’19-’20, while

the number of Associates degrees awarded dropped from 768,000 t0 738,000 and

the number of Certificates awarded dropped from 468,000 to 444,000, which is just slightly above the baseline 441,000 developed in ’12-’13.

The research also notes a critical distinction between Associate degree and Certificate earners, which are the CCC’s primary populations. Unlike Associate degrees, which are awarded in the spring, certificates are awarded throughout the calendar year, and half of all first-time certificate earners achieve their awards between July and December. In early 2020, the number of certificate earners dropped by 20% over 2019 levels, indicating that they were the students most drastically affected by the COVID-driven school closures.

In too many cases, a lack of adequate resources prevented these learners from acquiring their education through any channel except an on-campus experience. Other research notes the lack of internet access, unreliable digital devices, and overarching social drivers (transportation, existing employment obligations, and family care concerns) that also impaired the certificate candidate from pursuing their educational goals during the public health crisis.

The study concluded that the COVID pandemic essentially stopped undergraduate progress at community colleges, especially for learners seeking certifications, not associates degrees. That conclusion acts as a directive for today’s community college leaders to address the disparities that created such a startling gap between students with access to educational resources and students without.

 

Recovery will Happen – Let’s Make the Best of It

It’s not possible to adequately measure the losses caused by the pandemic, from the absence of educational opportunities to the loss of so many family members and friends. Those scars are permanent.

However, through a lens of optimism, the upended, post-coronavirus education situation presents an opportunity to remake the community college experience into one that’s truly tailored to meet the student’s needs. It gives the opportunity to eliminate traditional attitudes about ‘higher education’ and introduce 21st Century resources that provide 21st Century supports. It should be centered on student success and set occupational and career achievements as its goal. Looking forward, then, schools can use emerging research to drive their decisions and create solutions for learners that address their current and future challenges while also fulfilling school mandates.

What the research tells us:

    1. Remote learning provides unique benefits for many students. Those who have other obligations in their days can access materials at their convenience. Transportation isn’t required, which avoids unnecessary travel expenses. And in many cases, online lessons are comparable to in-person teaching, so students experience as much academic gain as they would if they attended in-person. Schools that excelled at adapting their programs to virtual classes via an online connection were able to keep many students engaged. In the future, offering coursework remotely will keep more school doors ‘open’ for some students.
    2. Students also need to have an on-campus experience, even if it’s limited. For many young people (actually, people of all ages), school provides social opportunities that are unmatched in the non-academic setting. Both daily interactions and long-term relationships are essential for long-term overall health. The ‘isolated learning’ situation imposed by COVID-19 was a significant impediment even to learners who were eager to ‘attend’ virtual classes. However, the COVID crisis also revealed the infection risks inherent in shared spaces, which caused the closure of the physical campuses. It also demonstrated that sanitation practices are critically important if public education institutions want to maintain accessibility under adverse circumstances. Building up campus resources to facilitate safe attendance on-site will help develop resilience for both students and faculty in the event another pandemic or similar crisis arises.
    3. The pandemic underscored the critical significance of technology as the conduit for every student to achieve the education of their choice. As a community, both public and private investments in developing reliable internet access for everyone, regardless of their location or device, will close the gap between students with adequate technological resources and students without. Perhaps schools themselves could consider adding technological devices for those learners who don’t have the means to obtain them otherwise.

In addition to modifying the methodology and facility for providing school services, community colleges will also have to consider overhauling some or all of their curricula to reflect these new expectations. Doing so will reveal elements that are now obsolete and provide openings to build newly designed options that give a better 21st Century education for today’s 21st Century students.

The 20-21 academic year will likely be a bit rocky as schools and students adapt to all these ‘new normals.’ However, with appropriate care to let go of what’s no longer working and capture the opportunities emerging from the coronavirus rubble, California’s community colleges can establish themselves as leaders in both public education and workforce development.

 

CTE: Critical to The Economy

Pam Sornson, JD on July 6, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

There currently are millions of Americans out of work, which suggests that they should be able to apply and be hired for any of the millions of unfilled job openings. That suggestion would be wrong, however, not because there aren’t jobs, though, and not because there aren’t willing workers. Instead, America’s current employment crisis is driven by the fact that there aren’t enough qualified workers to fill jobs that require specified skills and abilities. Many of today’s job candidates lack middle skills. 

The lack of trained workers for middle-skill jobs was a significant concern before the Covid-19 pandemic, and it has become an even more critical concern as that crisis is passing. Accordingly, many state governments are developing their ‘Career and Technical Education’ (CTE) resources, which are typically training facilities that certify learners have gained the proper ‘middle level’ skills and experience to find work in their chosen occupation. In California, the State’s network of community colleges is tapped as its workforce development engine, and the government is investing billions to help them provide this critical middle-skills training for all of its industrial sectors.

 

Jobs + Workers (Does Not Always) = Employment

‘Middle skilled jobs’ are those that require more training than is available in high school but less advanced education than is necessary for a four-year university degree. Jobs that require ‘middle skills’ abound in virtually all industries, including human services, hospitality and tourism, all forms of trades (plumbers, electricians, etc.), STEM industries (science, technology, engineering, and math), and healthcare, to name just a few. Yet, despite the huge demand for workers across all these industries, jobs remain open because people haven’t pursued these occupations.

In 2015, for example, even with 53% of all jobs available in the U.S. labor market, only 43% of the country’s workers had training in those fields.

Despite a recent surge in U.S. manufacturing that reached a 37-year high, more than half a million jobs in the sector remain unfilled. There aren’t enough trained tradespeople such as welders and machinists to filled the jobs that are so critically needed to maintain the country’s manufacturing output.

In 2019, a New York Times article noted that by the end of 2021, there would be up to 3.5 million open and unfilled cybersecurity jobs. Not only does that number represent a missed employment opportunity for millions of wanna-be cybersecurity experts, but it also suggests a significant risk of cybercrime due to a lack of appropriate oversight and monitoring of global cyber resources.

The lack of a well-trained labor force is a decided handicap for the country. Not only are critical services and products now in short supply, but the existing workforce producing them is wearing out under the added burden. To remediate the problem, many companies raise pay and benefit values to attract more employees and lower their hiring standard to accept anyone who walks in the door, even when their skill-set isn’t up to par.

The economic costs are enormous, too. In 2018, national construction costs rose over 5% due to short product supply and not enough workers to produce new goods. The American heavy equipment sector loses more than $2.4 billion each year for lack of qualified workers to produce and manage its goods. The global manufacturing sector expects to lose over $600 billion by 2030 for lack of workers.

 

CTE: Skills for Jobs

California is investing heavily in its Career and Technical Education programs to build its middle-skilled workforce. Its community colleges are now ground-zero for these essential training programs. Organized into 15 ‘Career Pathways,’ the CTE programs offer training in fundamental industrial sectors, all of which exist in all areas of the State and all of which are vitally important to the State’s economy. Each pathway provides a variety of coursework and training options for the myriad of jobs available within the scope of its specified industry, so there’s likely to be some form of occupation within that industry for anyone who wants to participate in it. Many courses can also be used as foundations for further education, and obtaining additional credentials for related occupations can build a ‘job’ into a life-long, well-paid career.

To ensure a consistent talent pool across the State, California also mandates that its schools follow CTE model curriculum standards. Industry and education experts designed these standards:

as guides for students looking for work that meets their interests;

for schools to use when developing programs and curricula, and

for businesses to use in designing their production and development processes.

When all three industry ‘participants’ – learners, schools, and companies – engage in common training activities with common expectations, then the effort of pursuing that training can meet the needs of all of them.

“Standards” Breakdown

The standards themselves are a framework of three separate but related concepts, each of which delivers a different element of the ‘occupational training’ format. Programs designed to be part of a Career Pathway must follow these standards:

      1. The first standard element ensures students understand the fundamental principles of the work they’re planning to perform. This standard uses a “Beyond Knowledge Construct” that encompasses the factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive aspects of the work they are training to do.
      2. The second standard element, the “Standards for Career Ready Practice,” articulates those fundamental employee habits and behaviors that lead to job and career success, including behaving ethically and developing effective communication skills, as examples.
      3. The third standard element, the 11 ‘anchor’ standards, connects the Career Ready Practices to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Training that complies with these standards provides the education that workers need to find jobs in their field and jobs in the communities they live in, both in California and across the country. Forty-one states, four territories, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have all adopted these standards as the standard they expect their workers to achieve.

In many cases, any individual CTE program can be a stand-alone training for a specific job, a part of a more extensive CTE sequence, or integrated as an element in preparation for additional educational goals.

 

The receding pandemic leaves behind millions of unemployed workers, many of whom don’t have the skills needed to engage in the rebuilding economy. The CTE programs offered by California’s community colleges offer the training they’ll need to qualify for those jobs and to pursue virtually any career that attracts their attention.

Industry-Academia Partnerships: Engaging for Everyone’s Future

Pam Sornson, JD on June 30, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

There are significant differences between what and how one learns in the classroom versus what and how one learns in a real-world job. Marrying the two – providing both classroom and real-world experience during a single training season – offers the best opportunity for a student learner to evolve into a future employee. This ‘industry-academia’ partnership provides excellent benefits for both entities: the students receive invaluable job training and experience while the business gains an additional worker and contributes to the knowledge base of the course or program. 

At Pasadena City College (PCC), the Economic and Workforce Development department (EWD) connects with local businesses and industries to find on-the-job training opportunities for its students. It also assists those businesses to tune up their internal processes, upskill their workforce, and strategize their growth trajectory. In this role, the college is playing its part in growing California’s economy beyond the COVID-19 recovery and into a much brighter future.  

 

Theory vs. Practice

Even the best designed coursework can’t impart the wisdom gained from hands-on doing. Classroom parameters of space, materials, budget, etc., constrain the lesson by ‘building in’ the problem-solving process. In a real-world setting, the complexity of the activity, its environment, and the multiple variables influencing its outcome are rarely so constrained. Furthermore, achieving an appropriate outcome in the real world requires applying a broader set of skills, many of which don’t develop in the classroom. So even though the professor can impart the full value of the theories behind the work, it takes hands-on practices in the field to develop a fully fleshed-out skill base. 

 

How Companies Inform PCC’s EWD

PCC’s EWD focuses its attention on building the industry-academia partnerships that will best support its student population, and consequently, its business and industry neighbors. Within the region are a wide variety of industries, including (to name just a few) finance, academics, healthcare, and engineering, all of which utilize the products of the individual companies involved in their sector. The skills needed by these companies are the skills PCC is working to instill in its students. 

On the flip side, each of these businesses requires a skilled workforce to remain competitive, and those skill sets are becoming increasingly more complex. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated just how much technology impacts day-to-day functions. Those enterprises that have thrived through the crisis are also often the ones with the most advanced technology and the best-skilled workers. As communities re-open, more workers will need to obtain those advanced skills to find work in the newly emerging economy. PCC is determined to provide those workforce training opportunities.  

Working with individual businesses or industry collectives, EWD leadership can identify the employment trends, industry directives, and economic opportunities that will inform its curricula and program development. Those programs and courses will provide learners with the foundations they need to develop excellent work skills and qualify for a well-paying job in the industry of their choice.   

 

Share Resources with PCC

To advance these partnerships even further, the PCC EWD actively seeks local business partners to participate in learning and training sessions in the classroom, on campus, and in the community. Depending on the work, the company, and the industry, corporate leaders are encouraged to share their knowledge with their local college students by participating in one or more work-based learning activities sponsored by the college. In return, students bring to their ’employer’ the work-related skills they’ve learned in life or at PCC’s Freeman Career Center:

JOIN ADVISORY COMMITTEES

No one knows an industry better than the people who work within it. Remaining competitive requires understanding how the system is evolving and changing and adapting to the new iterations. PCC places high value on the experience and perceptions of industry experts who share their insights with the school to develop a better experience for its students. The advisory committee is the place where this magic happens.  

PROVIDE APPRENTICESHIPS

Who better to teach than the master of the craft? Apprentices work alongside master artisans and skilled business people to learn the unique techniques, skills, and theories that make their products and services exceptional. Typically lasting one to three years, apprenticeships allow business owners to develop a student worker to become a uniquely qualified and highly valued employee.  

PROVIDE INTERNSHIPS

The shorter termed internships – one to six months – offer a different service to the company, often providing extra hands and eyes to get more work done in a shorter timeframe. However, the role offers the student an equally valuable experience to the apprenticeship by exposing them to real-world work conditions and requiring real-world work effort. 

 

How PCC’s EWD Informs Companies

PCC isn’t passive in its interactions with its industry partners, either. As per California state mandates, PCC is evolving into a workforce development engine, creating the workforce training programs and support that its economic community needs to thrive. These services come in many forms, all of which are designed to provide the business with exactly the support it needs to overcome COVID and other economic barriers and grow into the new economy.  

WORKFORCE UPSKILLING & RETRAINING

The COVID-19 pandemic irrevocably changed how the world works, and many companies are struggling with upskilling their existing labor force to remain competitive. PCC can assist in that endeavor by providing many of the resources that companies need but frequently do not have – training space, materials, time, and professional teaching access. The Workforce Training service customizes its effort to respond to specific company needs, helping it achieve the improved skill base its workers need without excessive expense or investment.

SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER

The SBDC provides expert inputs and advice on all things related to ‘business,’ including human resource management, financial management, entrepreneurship, and more. Its roster of experienced business owners and industry leaders volunteer their time to help small, start-up, and mid-sized companies evolve to meet the times and grow to meet emerging opportunities. These seasoned veterans understand the difference between classroom instruction and hands-on learning and happily help their clients achieve their highest corporate goals. 

 

The economy is recovering after COVID, and all businesses must adapt to new realities to retain their market share and capture emerging opportunities. At the same time, newly unemployed workers need retraining and new skills to find work in that emerging economy. The industry-academia partnership opportunities developed by PCC’s EWD offer an optimal situation to combine classroom and work-based learning into a single, formidable education opportunity. The services assist community partner companies to achieve their aspirations while also helping PCC students in their quest to enter the labor force. 

           

Community College “Instruction” – It’s More Than Just the Classroom

Pam Sornson, JD on June 30, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

Despite a recovering economy and vaccines diligently battling back against the Coronavirus, employment numbers in many industries remain stagnant. This reality is perplexing not just because so many people really need work but also because so many businesses really need workers.

While the reasons causing the problem are many and varied, the foundational challenge is often a lack of worker skills and experience. Compounding that challenge is the fact that so many jobs are different now from what they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, even experienced employees don’t necessarily have the skills needed to meet the new demands of their old job.

Fortunately, to the aid of all businesses come California’s community colleges (CCC), where students gain the education they need to find work, and businesses find both workers and workforce training opportunities. Connecting the two populations is the work of college ‘Instruction’ leaders, who clarify emerging skills trends, assist with developing responsive curricula, then introduce their CCC learners to their future occupations and employers.

 

Dr. Laura Ramirez – Assistant Superintendent and Vice President of Instruction, Pasadena City College (PCC)

Although she only recently arrived at PCC, Dr. Laura Ramirez is already immersed in discovering the employment gaps in the Los Angeles and Pasadena area and looking for ways to connect her new student body to those job and career opportunities.

She has a daunting adventure ahead of her, however. At any time, developing educational materials for a rapidly evolving industrial base is a challenge. In the age of COVID-19, that challenge is multiplied. California has the country’s second-highest unemployment rate as of the end of April, standing at 8.3% even while more than 100,000 new jobs were added in the previous sixty days. In the Los Angeles region, the unemployment number rose from 11.4% in March to 11.7% in early May, despite thousands of jobs going unfilled. The new VP-I must find a way to attract the attention of those potential workers while assuring their potential employers that they’ll be well-trained the day they are hired.

It’s not like she’s not busy otherwise, either. As the VP of Instruction, Ramirez oversees all aspects of the ‘college learning’ spectrum, from reviewing programs, tracking student progress, and curriculum development and implementation to monitoring distance learning resources and tutoring and academic support. Therefore, any effort she puts into workforce development must fit through these prisms as well as respond to the very specific needs of individual companies. However, she also comes to the job with a wealth of experience in the CCC/Instruction sphere, and she’ll make good use of those skills moving forward.

 

Three Avenues – One Direction

In a recent interview with PCC’s Economic and Workforce Development (EWD) Director Salvatrice Cummo, Ramirez sees her job as having three primary functions, each of which removes unnecessary barriers to the career-attainment process:

Developing and facilitating comprehensive training programs and resources that are relevant to today’s industrial environment.

It doesn’t help a learner to complete an education without also being qualified to find and maintain a viable job. To accomplish this objective, she’s evaluating existing academic and ‘career and technical education’ (CTE) programs to determine where they might need tune-ups to respond more closely to current industry demands.

She’ll also be working closely with the EWD department and local and regional businesses to deepen her – and their – understanding of the high potential to be gained through a business/college collaboration. All the data will inform her decisions regarding what students will need to know to be an employee and where to allocate financial, staffing, and other resources to help them learn those lessons.

Assisting students to access the full depth and breadth of PCC’s resources to overcome the life barriers they face on their educational journey.

A significant proportion of today’s CCC students arrive at the school with a myriad of challenges, from housing and food needs to basic transportation and financial concerns. PCC has resources that respond to those needs when the learner knows how to access them.

But Ramirez takes addressing this concern to a higher level by analyzing for and providing the service options students need to become – and be – good workers as well as accomplished learners. At the PCC Freeman Center for Career and Completion, all learners have access to services providing fundamental job-acquisition skills, including (among many other supports):

determining an appropriate area of education that responds to the student’s innate talents, abilities, and preferences;

how to seek out and participate in job interviews, and

how to apply for internships, apprenticeships, and jobs.

Not only do PCC students gain job-related skills, but they also learn how to be reliable and productive employees too.

Assisting the community to recognize and engage with PCC assets as a workforce training entity.

In addition to training future workers, PCC also has the resources to retrain and upskill the existing labor force, whether that’s for a specific company or to meet the growing needs of an evolving industry. The unemployed workers/unfilled jobs numbers suggest that even with a willing worker available, they’re not actually an employee option without the right skills.

Ramirez reaches out to corporate leaders of individual businesses and industry groups to create workforce development collaborations throughout the Pasadena and Los Angeles community. The business leaders contribute a much-needed ‘hands-on’ perspective to the instruction director and offer job and employment insights that may not be known outside their workspace walls. At the same time, they can suggest workforce development investments and strategies that will enhance the value and quality of their current and future staffers. Their efforts at the college ensure that they will have a steady stream of well-qualified employees as their company grows.

 

High unemployment and unfilled job openings plague the economic recovery efforts of every industry and every government. Today’s community colleges are becoming the nexus in which those two challenges each find innovative and effective solutions. And when those colleges are also tuning their education work to meet the needs of their economic business and industry neighbors, they’re serving the needs of not just their students but their entire community, too.

Moving Forward: CA’s Community Colleges and Economic Recovery

Pam Sornson, JD on June 17, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

Mask-wearing, rising vaccination rates, and a growing pool of COVID-19 survivors are indications that the Los Angeles region is moving closer to ‘re-opening’ and returning to however that ‘new normal’ might look. The Governor is stepping up to support the momentum by heavily investing public dollars in workforce and employment recovery activities. At the top of his ‘California Comeback Plan‘ prioritization is tightening the relationship between California’s community colleges (CCCs) and its Labor and Workforce Development Agency. The investments recognize the value of encouraging industry participants to inform workforce training and education decisions. Through these partnerships, the industry-building efforts of both – the business and its future employees – start and continue on the same page. And informing the actions of the emerging collaboration is the High Road Training Partnerships (HRTP) initiative.

 

Follow the Money

In his ‘Comeback Plan’ proposal, Governer Newsom includes $157 million to build out the HRTP infrastructure. While building on existing business/CCC relationships, the initiative also embraces social and cultural elements emerging as the COVID-19 pandemic and roiling social concerns reveal them. Three specific challenges – Equity, Climate, and Jobs (the ECJ Initiatives) – impede forward momentum by both the State and its residents:

Economic Inequities – California’s communities of color and those with differing abilities or characteristics have borne much of the brunt of economic declines driven by the pandemic. In addition, discrimination against gender, race, or social ‘status’ erodes both personal and community resources, leaving everyone poorer in the process.

Climate Change Realities – While endeavors continue to slow the progress of adverse climate change, efforts to build in resilience to its impacts are also critical for the future economic success of the State and its residents. In California, higher temperatures, less rainfall, wildfires, etc., create challenging environmental situations in the areas least able to withstand them. Communities that don’t have access to ameliorating resources (like air conditioners) or are situated in geographical areas that are more innately hazardous (located closer to pollution-emitting sites).

Job Quality Concerns – Underpaid and under-represented workers have also suffered unnecessarily excessive losses over the past several years. Employees who don’t receive healthcare benefits, don’t have union connections, or aren’t paid a ‘living wage’ despite full-time employment are more likely to have suffered more and more adverse health and economic challenges since the onset of the coronavirus concern, and, in most cases, for years or even decades.

All of these factors adversely affect all of California’s industries. The HRTP is already establishing partnerships with key participants in eight industrial sectors as a launch to the ‘high road’ industry/CCC collaborations needed in each: logistics, janitorial, healthcare, hospitality, the Port system, the public sector, public transportation, and water management. California’s leaders now realize that resolving the economic challenges driven by these factors will contribute immensely to California’s recovery from the pandemic while also addressing decades-old injustices that have hobbled its progress.

 

LA County Realities

With its enjoyable climate, strong industrial base, and encouragement of innovation, Los Angeles County supports thousands of businesses that generate billions of dollars every year. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic caused stoppages and delays in all of its industries, which seriously eroded the County’s economy and that of each of its residents. Recovering from those negative impacts will require innovation and collaboration amongst all its stakeholders, including its individual businesses and its 47 community colleges.

While the Governer’s Comeback Plan provides a framework for building the future economy, the COVID-19 situation will also continue to impact – and sometimes delay – forward movement. CDC COVID-19 guidance and protocols from LA County continue to control re-opening efforts for all of its community colleges. Because an independent Board of Governors governs each school, each school will make its own ‘re-opening’ decision. All, however, remain subject to overarching state-issued rules:

Until more vaccinations are received, the mandate for maintaining social distancing and mask-wearing standards remains. As of June 10, 2021, LA County ranked 70th of 584 counties for its high number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents (12,409). Also as of that date, the County had fully vaccinated 55% of its residents aged 16+, with an additional 10% having received at least one dose. Millions remain unvaccinated, however.

Those schools that choose to open in-person classes and events must limit attendance to 50% capacity and adhere to rules governing informal social gatherings.

The housing of students on-campus can resume within specified density and cleaning parameters.

Entry screening and exposure containment rules guide actions to reduce exposure to the virus as well as appropriate responses when it is detected on campus.

With summer’s arrival and the Fall ’21 term imminent, all LA County community colleges and their constituents must comply with COVID-19 limitations, rules, and protocols.

 

Pasadena Realities

The City of Pasadena continues to evolve its protocols and practices as COVID-19 waxes and wanes within its borders. While also encouraging everyday precautions such as hand-washing and mask-wearing (following California’s June 15 mask-wearing guidelines), in early May, the City also lowered its ‘risk’ level to the ‘Yellow Tier.’ Most businesses can open for customers up to a 50% capacity at this tier, although physical distancing protocols remain in place. In addition, indoor gatherings, including those occurring at Pasadena area colleges, are subject to additional restrictions that include limitations on the number of guests per facility capacity, restrictions on food and beverage consumption, and ventilation requirements.

At Pasadena City College, the Board of Directors continues to evaluate situational realities, so the protocols put in place for the Spring 2021 term remain in effect until further notice. The school’s COVID-19 Transition Task Force has issued a series of recommendations for the criteria that will guide safe re-opening procedures to protect the health and safety of all of PCC’s constituents. In the meantime, PCC staff and students who intend to return to the school in person for any reason must follow Current Campus Access practices. And there’s a new FAQ web page to help everyone assess the School’s COVID-19 related activities to determine if those impact a personal sense of risk or safety.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an irreversible change on everything from the Governor’s Office down to a PCC student’s backpack. As the State, the County, the City, and the School look to resuming ‘normal’ operations, everyone must do their part to reduce and contain the spread of the disease. By doing so, they not only improve the odds that their lives will soon return to ‘normal,’ but they’ll also play a role in getting California back on its economic feet and maximize the Governor’s investment in its community colleges.

Online or In-Person: Re-opening California’s Community Colleges

Pam Sornson, JD on June 17, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

To say that the COVID-19 pandemic up-ended California’s community colleges is the understatement of the century. Enrollments plunged as the system prioritized student health and safety. Whole programs were moth-balled when they couldn’t reiterate in the all-digital format. For leadership, the Coronavirus has proved to be a much-needed wake-up call to pay more attention – MUCH more attention – to the needs and realities of its entire student population, especially those learners who face higher obstacles and steeper challenges.

As the 20-21 school year ends and the Fall 2021 term nears, decision-makers are now grappling with a series of questions: whether to ‘open’ the campus earlier rather than later; which courses to offer, and when, if at all, it is advisable to expect a ‘return to normal.’

 

Return Considerations …

As is everything else ‘COVID,” the most appropriate response to the ‘how do we recover our colleges?’ concern is dependent on who’s answering the question, the location of the school, and the types of courses their school offers. A total of 73 college districts administer California’s 116 community colleges, each of which is managed by an independent Board of Directors. Each Board can take the CCCCO’s guidance while also crafting re-opening policies that better fit its particular school constellation.

College districts in economically advantaged communities are more likely to continue providing predominantly online learning because their students have the assets available to access those – computers, reliable internet access, and fewer family or job constraints. Communities without those economic benefits serve students without those assets, who would benefit more from an in-class return option.

The types of offered programs can also influence the decision. Many classes at the community college level are specifically ‘hands-on’ opportunities, such as auto mechanics or entry-level nursing. Schools that offer a higher number of hands-on courses may continue to experience enrollment declines if it’s not safe for their learners to return in person.

Virus saturation and vaccine engagement also play a part in the decision. Communities that are still experiencing spikes in active case numbers have a higher risk of viral spread across campus should they re-open too soon. Communities that have welcomed vaccines have some semblance of assurance that in-person learning doesn’t also mean potential hospitalization or premature death because of the disease. They could open their on-site learning options with more confidence in experiencing a close-to-normal academic year.

These factors demonstrate the challenges faced by the State’s community college administration, from the top office to the smallest school. Consequently, it’s almost impossible to gauge how each college will respond, as each must balance the realities of their individual constituencies.

 

 

… From the Student Perspective

For too many students, the possibility of returning to college in any format just isn’t viable yet. In the year since schools closed, circumstances forced many into situations that aren’t amenable to returning to school in any capacity:

Some dropped out completely as the pandemic grew because they had no digital tools to maintain their connection. Their situation hasn’t changed.

Others were not able to move forward in their education using only technology. In-person classes are optimal to facilitate the best education outcome, especially for kinetic learners who absorb information better by watching and doing.

Others assumed new responsibilities as family caregivers, supporting those still-employed family members as they worked to maintain the household.

Still others simply found work, not in their chosen field, but any job they could find. Making ends meet by whichever means were available became their new reality.

These concerns will continue to play out in re-enrollment numbers as students balance their desire to further their education with the other demands in their lives.

 

 

… From the Education Perspective

The schools themselves must balance a myriad of concerns as they determine when, how, or even if they will re-open. Fundamentally, their priority is to provide educational resources in as optimal a fashion as possible. However, in reality, a myriad of concerns impacts the provision of those resources, many of which are beyond their control.

Courses requiring lab attendance also require additional safety precautions. Decisions must consider the number of students who want to take the course with the amount of space and time in which limited lab space can be available.

Classroom teaching opportunities must also take into account social distancing mandates when students are expected to gather indoors. Mask-wearing will help reduce transmissions but may also inhibit the value of the presentation.

The digital versus in-person dilemma also remains relevant since some students have the resources to learn from anywhere while others simply do not.

 

… From the Facilities Perspective

Just having students, faculty, and staff arriving on campus can cause problems, too.

The social distancing mandate requires space to spread out. While some campuses have the available square footage to accomplish that goal, the shift may seriously erode the value of the lesson. Reducing class size to accommodate the spread may also mean that some students are just excluded from the course altogether.

Maintaining campus sanitation is also a concern. Most college campuses host thousands of people every day, all of whom move about from building to building and room to room. Keeping clean all those surfaces – doorknobs, desktops, washroom counters, etc. – is a daunting task even without the potential presence of a deadly virus. Adequate ventilation is also a necessity in the time of the air-borne Coronavirus.

Actual physical access also may be impeded if in-person classes resume with safety precautions in place. For example, at Glendale College, an elevator connects the uphill parking garage with the bottom-of-the-hill campus. Maintaining appropriate social distances between students limits the elevator’s capacity to one student at a time, which is untenable when hundreds of learners need to use it every day.

 

… From the Administration Perspective

In addition to the preceding realities, administrators must also weigh the significance of equity in their decision-making process. The COVID pandemic has starkly revealed the inequities inherent in the community college system, where students of color, differing abilities, and reduced economic situations have been particularly hard hit. For these college leaders, remaining a viable education opportunity requires attention to a different level of concerns.

Rural community colleges reported steep enrollment declines throughout 2020 as students who also worked to support their education lost their jobs.

Some students may have experienced significant personal losses due to the pandemic, becoming homeless, or losing supportive family members to the disease. Reconnecting with them requires both additional resources and the staffing and logistics resources to manage those supports.

For many students, the pandemic made the goal of pursuing an education just too challenging to achieve. The lack of resources and no true educational alternatives have caused many learners to give up their dream of a better economic life through higher education. School administrators who wish to reconnect with these students will need a different set of skills and resources to regain their trust and interest in returning to school in any capacity.

 

With summer here and the Fall 2021 term just weeks away, each of the constituents of the California Community College system is wrestling with how to return to the college experience, if there’s a decision to return at all. Community members with vested interests in the re-opening of the schools will be best informed by tracking the circumstances occurring in their communities and keeping up with the actions and decisions made by their local community college leadership.

 

Economic Recovery and California’s ‘Vision for Success’

Pam Sornson, JD on June 4, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

California state law charges its California Community College Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) with implementing its higher education and workforce development goals. To do so, the CCCCO works in conjunction with state, local, and regional governments and businesses to pursue policies and connect its community college resources to the economic needs of all of its constituents. Its Strong Workforce Program is one element of that process.

At the same time, however, the CCCCO is also laser-beam focused on the needs of its California Community College (CCC) students, all 2.1+ million of them, who access its services across 116 colleges and attend their choice of its 380,000+ courses. Coordinating the efforts of all those resources to achieve the nebulous goal of ‘student success’ is a daunting task, one that requires attention to innumerable details while pursuing a singular vision. In the case of the CCCCO, that ‘vision’ is titled the “Vision for Success” (Vision), and it sits as the guiding star of all the work done both at the CCCCO administrative office and across all those schools.

 

The Vision for Success

For California’s community colleges, ‘success’ is now defined as a well-educated graduate who finds personal and career fulfillment in whatever realm they choose, whether that’s a career-trajectory job, the launch of their own new business, or just the accomplishment of skills that bring them joy. To meet these diverse needs, the CCCCO launched its Vision project several years ago by clarifying its seven core commitments and four strategic goals.

 

CCC Vision for Success Commitments

The strategic pursuit of each goal is imbued with seven fundamental commitments that hone its focus even more tightly to ‘student success’:

Prioritize the student’s end goal – every student, every time.

Maintain ‘student success’ as the guide for course design and program decisions.

Match high success expectations with equally high support services.

Use information to inform decision-making as well as reveal outputs and outcomes.

Be a role model for transparency and fluidity, demonstrating the ability to flex to meet needs as demands change.

Encourage innovation and creative action through all educational levels, academic activities, and administrative processes.

Lead the way to success for the student, the school, the business, and the community.

These commitments guide the Vision development process.

 

CCC Vision for Success Goals

Each of the four CCC Vision goals builds on the commitments to pursue a specific objective:

Closing the achievement gap that unnecessarily impedes the progress of too many students of color and varying abilities. Inherent biases built into the system a century ago continue on as barriers to today’s learners, inhibiting their growth and their capacity to contribute fully to their community.

Streamlining the student experience by simplifying the education process. Early data revealed that many CCC students accumulated excess and unnecessary credits that did nothing to improve their enjoyment of life, their capacity to work, or their employment prospects. By eliminating the courses that don’t serve student needs, the CCC’s now direct student attention and resources toward programs that will help them accomplish their personal goals in a reasonable timeframe.

Streamlining student success by easing the completion, graduation, and next-step process. The CCCs worked diligently to increase their student body’s degree and certification attainment numbers, develop programs that matched industry certification requirements, and assist learners in completing those programs in a timely and economically feasible way. They also enhanced their connections with California’s 33 four-year universities, easing the transfer process so that their learners could achieve their prerequisites at a CCC cost while also moving forward to attain the more expensive four-year degree.

Connecting with local businesses and industries to facilitate job placement of graduates. They developed a two-way sharing arrangement that benefits both the school and the company:

companies share their expertise to enhance training programs (work-based learning) and develop their own worker training programs (workforce training) while

the schools would modify/add courses and programs that respond to current and future labor force needs.

Pursuit of these four goals, colored as they are by the seven commitments, assures the community, the school, and the student that a CCC education is now a reliable and high-quality path to a better job and an improved economy.

 

Vision for Success Optimal Outcomes

Reliance on data to direct attention works in other areas as well as informing program decision-making. The CCCCO also uses it to track its own performance metrics, and it’s now approaching the end of its first five-year metric-tracking cycle. The Vision launched in 2017 and gave itself five years to establish both processes and baselines for its goals. It also layered desired metrics over those goals, creating a firm foundation upon which to measure success. To track the efforts that calculate these metrics, the CCCCO also had to overhaul its data tracking system, which previously stopped gathering student information when they completed their programs. Those systems didn’t include data revealing subsequent student success metrics such as job attainment, career placement, or transfer successes.

Using the upgraded data gathering process and in correlation with industry and labor force data, the CCCCO set for itself six metrics that, if accomplished, would demonstrate its success and truly connecting its colleges to the needs of the State’s industries. By 2022:

    1. increase by 20% the number of students achieving job and career accreditation for known and identified in-demand jobs.
    2. increase the number of CCC-four-year university transfer students by 35%.
    3. reduce the number of unnecessary credits earned by students to reduce their cost and their time to completion.
    4. increase Career and Technical Education (CTE) student attainment of ‘field of study’ jobs by 15+%.
    5. reduce by 40% the equity gaps between white and non-white/differently-abled students to ensure they receive their full share of the CCC promise. This metrics includes full closure of the gap by 2027.
    6. improve success rates across all measures in regions where adult educational achievement levels are low. Not all of California’s nine economic regions are equally adept at serving the educational needs of all of their diverse populations. This metric compels the State to look at those regions where gaps exist and find resources and solutions to reduce those gaps.

 

California’s Vision for Success for its many community college students is also its vision for the success of its communities and economies. The State’s dedicated focus and investment in assisting its diverse learner populations in attaining their goals also further the State’s goal of improving its economics, currently and in the future. The Vision for Success foundation provides all involved in those processes the parameters and guidance they need to follow through with its mandate while also following through with personal, social, and community goals.

California’s Strong Workforce Program

Pam Sornson, JD on June 4, 2021

Pam Sornson, JD

All successful initiatives require the coordination of resources. California’s economy will flourish post-pandemic when the coordination of all its resources unite to accomplish that singular goal. Fortunately, that’s the actual goal of the California Community College’s Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO), which is tasked with manifesting state mandates at the ground level through the modernization of its community college system. And the whole process hinges on the Strong Workforce Program (SWP) department of its Economic and Workforce Development Division (WEDD).

 

Many Resources + Enlightened Leadership = Strong Schools and an Educated Workforce

The CCCCO is itself the product of several coordinated resources – its ‘divisions,’ – each of which provides an integral infrastructure element and all of which combine to create a unique and formidable education leadership enterprise. These nine divisions together embrace all the initiatives set for the CCC system by both the State and its own internal directives, from its relationship with governments and funding management to technology acquisition and ‘institutional effectiveness.’ Division leaders oversee the system’s operations within their purview to ensure that those conform to standards and policies and facilitate the success of its overall day-to-day, term, and annual practices.

Looking forward, however, is the work of the WEDD, which uses data and economic realities as the foundations of its program, funding, and grant development strategies. The WEDD applies these resources to achieve its overarching goals of providing CCC students with 21st Century skills and abilities they need to fulfill the purposes of the State’s 21st Century industries and businesses.

 

‘WEDD’: An Enlightened ‘Marriage’

Within the WEDD are seven individual initiatives. Each of them also plays an integral role in the Division’s success, and all address the issues that affect each of the State’s 116 community colleges:

Approaching the needs of students of all ages through the California Adult Education Program (CAEP) and the California Apprenticeship Initiative (CAI).

Manifesting the intent of the federal Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V). When re-adopted in 2018, enhanced support for underserved student populations, adding even more financial and other supports to ensure all California learners can access the education of their choice.

Responding to a state-wide shortage of nursing resources through its Nursing and Allied Health strategies, which coordinate entry-, mid-, and advanced-level nursing opportunities throughout the CCC and broader California University systems.

Setting policy and practice guidelines through its economic and workforce development goals that knit together the schools’ resources with the needs and drivers of their local businesses and industries.

Setting processes in motion by investing in youth education through its K-12 Strong Workforce Program (K12 SWP). In 2018-2019, the State invested $150 million to develop, support, and expand Career and Technical Education (CTE) resources that assist high school students transition into both post-secondary education and the job of their dreams.

Focusing on the issue through its Strong Workforce Program (SWP).

 

SWP: Better Education. Enhanced Mobility. Stronger Economy

While it began as a simple assignment – spend $248 million a year to add one million more middle-skilled workers to California’s labor pool – the execution of the SWP is oh-so-much more complex. The project builds on the three fundamental elements of a successful business: people, process, and product.

 

People

Strong workers grow from successful students, and ‘student success’ is really what the SWP is all about. The program gangs six target areas to encompass all CCC students with the supports they need to succeed.

Standardized career pathways that lay out the courses and directives learners use to navigate their way into, through, and out of school and into the career or work of their choosing.

Curricula design that matches employers’ needs with educational resources. When coordinating the efforts of both those parties, each of them benefits, as does their mutual student/worker.

CTE faculty expertise that draws from business and industry to inform and direct school investments and asset acquisitions.

Regional coordination across California’s nine industrial regions. The State’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency tracks job numbers, worker numbers, industry developments, and more to determine where people might find work and the type of work they might find there. With that information, local and regional leaders can invest in the supports needed by those businesses, including supporting the local schools that are developing their workforce. The parameters of the nine regions correlate to the various resources that are innate to the geography and climate of the region, and the State directs its resources to individual regions based on the needs of those specific regional assets.

Appropriate funding dispersed where it’s needed the most – to students, so they can complete their education and move forward into their careers, and to schools so they can invest in the resources that best serve their communities.

Data collection and analysis, which provide the evidentiary foundation upon which sound educational decisions are made.

 

Process

Pursuing outcomes rather than milestones, the SWP uses data to track student success through to its actual desired end: a well-trained worker ensconced in a well-paying, satisfying career, fulfilling the dreams of a happy employer. But the SWP process also adds the elements of innovation and entrepreneurship to support those learners who have more to give than just an honest day’s labor. While the curricula support training for all students, those who want to put their education to work following their personal paths to independence are fully supported. Encompassing the needs of all learners according to their needs, the SWP provides the processes required to facilitate their dreams and launch their careers.

 

Product

While still a work in progress, the ultimate end product of the SWP is already visible: across the state, community colleges are building programs that support workforce development and forging new and collaborative partnerships with local and regional businesses. At the same time, they are also executing their State mandate to become the workforce development engine envisioned by California’s enlightened leadership those several years ago.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the immense and growing value of the SWP and the State’s WEDD. Investments made a decade ago by people who could not imagine the economic chaos of 2020 are now not just paying off but proving prescient in their wisdom. Because so much groundwork is already in place, the process of rebuilding the economy post-pandemic can be built upon its infrastructure, which will certainly speed the process and move the State more quickly into a thriving, economically sound future.

Get the PULSE in your inbox!

Name(Required)