| In recent years, interest has grown in the role of community
colleges in helping low-skill and low-income individuals advance out of
poverty and toward self-sufficiency.[1] In part, this interest is a reaction to the shortcomings
of traditional workforce and adult education programs.[2] It also reflects the impressive
efforts of innovative community colleges to focus resources and leadership
attention on strategies to improve postsecondary attainment, persistence,
and program completion for lower-income working adults.
MDRC’s Opening Doors to
Earning Credentials project and its early reports echoed the conclusions
of Norton Grubb, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley,
and others regarding the potential of community colleges — that community
colleges are the local educational institutions with the greatest potential
for helping low-wage workers earn skills and credentials that lead to
both educational and career advancement.[3]
At the same time, Opening Doors identified serious obstacles to realizing
that potential, including the characteristics of the low-wage workforce,
the institutional structure and priorities of most community colleges,
and the external policy environment in which they operate.
MDRC has identified three strategies that might enable colleges to be
more effective in helping working adults obtain college credentials. These
are: (1) financial incentives that can address the high cost of college
for low-income individuals; (2) student supports that can help working
adults cope with academic, personal, and other problems that often result
in their dropping or stopping out; and (3) program and curricular innovations
and redesign that can cope with the severe time constraints, skill needs,
and job advancement hopes of working adults.
MDRC asked Jobs for the Future to look at curricular and program redesign
strategies being used in community colleges today to speed advancement
from lower levels of skill into credential programs and to shorten the
time commitment that earning a credential demands of students. This paper
presents a framework for understanding the range of experimentation with
program and class reformatting and redesign. It identifies programs that
exemplify promising approaches. The paper concludes with issues and questions
that MDRC will need to address in assessing whether to proceed with a
research program focused on program redesign efforts geared to working
adults’ needs.
Notes:
[1]Low-wage workers are defined here as those
who earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. This includes
current and former welfare recipients, long-term unemployed, adults
with low literacy skills or limited English language proficiency, incumbent
workers in dead-end, low-wage jobs, and young adults who lack high school
diplomas.
[2]Basic skills programs include remedial or
developmental programs in community colleges, adult basic education
(ABE) programs, English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, General
Educational Development (GED) programs, and alternative programs for
out-of-school youth.
[3]Grubb, 2001; Kazis, 2002; Jenkins, 2002.
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