CORONADO, Calif. — Getting students skilled and into the workforce fast is not new to community colleges. But as the number of job openings climbs across multiple sectors, colleges are also ramping up short-term programs while adding new supports to make them more accessible.
College leaders spoke about their programs and partnerships during a panel at last week’s Workforce Development Institute (WDI), an annual event held by the American Association of Community Colleges.
North Central State College (NCSC) serves a rural area in Ohio and has strong industry partnerships in its region.
“Everybody is looking for talent,” said NCSC President Dorey Diab, who serves on the AACC board of directors. “They want someone to show up and have the right skills immediately.”
Related WDI article: Ensuring economic mobility for students
The local hospital, for example, was paying a lot of money to use traveling nurses to fill gaps in it’s workforce. The college helped to grow the hospital’s nursing pool through a two-semester licensed practical nursing certificate program designed for working adults. As a result, the hospital trimmed its number of traveling nurses from 120 to less than 40.
Other workforce preparation efforts start when students are in high school.
Tapping into dual enrollment
About half of its 3,000 students are dual-enrollment students, meaning NCSC already has strong ties to K-12. Through the state’s College Credit Plus (CCP), students in grades 7-12 can take college courses for little or no cost.
The college offers short-term certificate programs in business, engineering and manufacturing, which are open to dual-enrollment students. With certificates in hand, some of those students go into the workforce immediately after their high school graduation.
For high school graduates who participated in CCP, the state provides the Tuition Freedom Scholarship, a last-dollar scholarship, so they can continue on to earn an associate degree. The scholarship is now also available for adults 24 and older who enroll in specific certificate programs.
A newer program – College-NOW – allows high school juniors to start earning associate degrees in business and engineering tech.
Having these programs, which make college more accessible and attractive, is vital to recruitment, Diab added.
“They have to go to high school,” Diab said. “They don’t have to go to college,” noting that incentives, like free tuition and short programs, can make them want to go to college.
NCSC also has pathways to bachelor’s degrees, thanks to partnerships with four-year institutions. Ensuring no one gets left behind, the college also works with justice-affected students to get them ready for work.
And, as businesses need to up-skill its current workforce, NCSC does employee training for its industry partners.
Preparing industry for its workforce
Serving industry is a no-brainer for Patricia Sims, president of Drake State Community & Technical College in Huntsville, Alabama, and an AACC board member.
“This is a state-funded institution. We belong to the people,” Sims said during the WDI panel.
And there’s plenty of industry sectors to serve in Huntsville, including aerospace, biotechnology, IT and cyber, and advanced manufacturing.
Meanwhile, Drake State is fairly small, serving about 1,100 students a semester. Sims said the college is “very fluid,” though, in keeping up with changing industry needs.
In July 2024, for example, Drake State announced a collaboration with global company Leidos. The college agreed to provide computer systems analysts for the Enterprise Network Operating Center at Marshall Space Flight Center. A few months later, Leidos announced a $1.75 million donation to the college to support advanced manufacturing and IT programs, student apprenticeships, campus technical and infrastructure upgrades and more.
But as Drake State is working to get students skilled for their industry partners, the college also is preparing those partners for its students.
Sometimes, industry is “not ready to receive our students,” Sims said. “The students are bringing their best selves, but that doesn’t always mesh with the culture of the company.”
It’s up to Drake State, then, to help the company prepare its culture to receive employees who may be different. If companies can commit to these students – many of whom are “non-traditional” – there will be a high return on investment, according to Sims.
“These are people who will commit to the community,” she said. “Treat these people well, and you’ll have this employee for a long time.”
Following the data
While NCSC and Drake State are on the smaller side, Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) — which is across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. — enrolls about 73,000 credit students. In its service area is a highly educated population; about 70% of the population has a bachelor’s degree or higher. And a high number of jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree. For example, 92% of the IT jobs in the area require a bachelor’s degree.
Finding new workforce opportunities required digging into labor market data, said Steve Partridge, vice president of strategy, research and workforce innovation. And the college found it: data centers. Northern Virginia has the largest concentration of data centers in the U.S.
“We knew as data centers expanded that we could help,” Partridge said.
NOVA didn’t have the expertise, so it leaned on industry partners to help create the two-year data center operations degree program (and also a one-year certificate program). And the effort has been a success. It’s expanded to two campuses, with NOVA receiving federal funding to support it.
There are short-term training opportunities related to data centers, too. The Google STAR (Skilled Trades and Readiness) program helps NOVA host a five-week boot camp to learn about the construction workforce. Participants have opportunities to secure entry-level jobs, including working on building the Google Data Center.
Partridge noted that colleges and businesses have to work to recruit talent, though.
“The talent doesn’t show up just because you put a class out there,” he said, though it’s easier to recruit when there’s a big name, like Google. “Students don’t even know what half the jobs in demand are. But they may recognize company names.”
He suggested organizing websites so students can search by company name as well as by workforce program.
“We have to think with the end goal in mind,” Partridge said.