For more than three decades, community colleges have been asked to do more with less while continually justifying their value to students, employers and policymakers. Since the 1990s, accountability reforms and performance‑based funding have elevated workforce outcomes as a central measure of institutional success. Completion rates, credentials earned and job placement dominate dashboards and funding formulas.
This emphasis on employment outcomes is not misplaced. Community colleges serve working‑class, first‑generation, immigrant and adult learners who depend on education as a pathway to economic stability. Workforce education has helped millions of students secure jobs, reskill after displacement, and contribute to regional economies.
Yet, as workforce alignment has shifted from an important responsibility to the primary lens through which community college success is judged, a quieter question has faded from view: What kind of learning is taking place, and to what broader purposes does it serve?
Surveying the sector
Historically, community colleges were never intended to function solely as training centers. They were built to expand access, respond to local needs and strengthen democratic life at the community level. This idea was reinforced in the 1990s by the learning‑centered movement, which challenged institutions to move beyond delivering instruction toward producing meaningful learning. Leaders such as the late Terry O’Banion argued that colleges exist not simply to award credentials, but to cultivate learning that transforms students and their communities. The defining question of that era was not “Did students complete?” but “What did students actually learn, and why did it matter?”
The recent acceleration of workforce‑first policy risks flattening this vision. When success is defined primarily by labor-market metrics, learning becomes narrowly instrumental. Students are trained to meet immediate employer demand but are given fewer opportunities to engage critically with the social, environmental and civic conditions shaping that demand. Education becomes adaptive rather than participatory.
This matters because labor markets are not neutral. They reflect political choices, economic priorities and development models that do not always align with community wellbeing. Training students for available jobs without situating those jobs in civic and ethical contexts limits both learning and agency. It prepares students to enter systems, but not to question, improve or sustain them.
Folded into workforce efforts
Calls to “reawaken the civic mission” of community colleges are often framed as aspirational or values‑driven. But civic learning should be understood as a learning strategy, not a departure from workforce preparation. Centering community issues within academic and technical programs creates powerful conditions for applied, problem‑based learning. When students engage with real community challenges, such as public health, environmental sustainability, housing or local governance, they develop technical competence alongside critical thinking, ethical reasoning and collaborative problem‑solving.
This approach aligns squarely with the learning‑centered tradition that has shaped the field for decades. Deep learning happens when students integrate knowledge across contexts, engage with complexity and reflect on consequences. Community‑based civic learning provides precisely that environment, particularly for students whose lives are already rooted in the places their colleges serve.
Importantly, strengthening civic learning does not require abandoning workforce commitments or adding new layers of bureaucracy. It requires administrative clarity about institutional purpose. The country and state leaders set the agenda. Presidents, provosts and trustees, however, decide how to operationalize these agendas, including which partnerships to prioritize and which kinds of learning to consider essential. When civic engagement is framed as peripheral or extracurricular, institutions send a subtle message about what counts. When embedded in workforce pathways and program design, it becomes part of the learning infrastructure.
Not just about credentials
The stakes are especially high in communities facing economic precarity, environmental stress and declining trust in public institutions. Community colleges are often the most accessible and most trusted public institutions in these regions. They educate future workers, as well as future caregivers, neighbors and civic actors. Preparing students for work without preparing them to engage with shared challenges undercuts both individual mobility and collective resilience.
Reframing workforce education through community‑centered learning offers a path forward. It honors the economic mission of community colleges, while reconnecting that mission to democratic purpose. It recognizes that strong communities are not built by credentials alone, but by graduates who can think critically, reason ethically and take responsibility for shared futures.
The call to action is straightforward. Community college leaders should treat civic learning as core workforce infrastructure, integrated into curriculum design, program review and institutional accountability, rather than relegating it to the margins. Doing so does not weaken workforce alignment; it deepens it by grounding learning in the realities students will inherit.
Terry O’Banion once reminded the field that community colleges exist to produce learning that matters. In an era defined by urgent economic and civic challenges, reclaiming that insight may be one of the most practical workforce strategies we have.
