EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY POST-COVID: MIGHT COMMUNITY COLLEGES LIGHT THE WAY?

“We have top-end universities, yes, but with the capacity to teach only a microscopic percentage of the 4 million new 18-year-olds in the U.S. each year. . . Why not educate every 18-year-old? Isn’t that the most important thing we can possibly do?”

Marc Andreessen, technologist and venture capitalist, “It’s Time to Build,” post-COVID essay

“Your level of education is the single best predictor of how you well you are going to age…” The big divide is not necessarily young versus old, it is skilled versus unskilled…We have to fix the skill deficit in the younger generation.”

Camilla Cavendish, award-winning journalist and former director of Public Policy for UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking on Harvard Business Review’s Exponential View podcast with Azeem Ashar

“Americans’ intentions about where to enroll have shifted compared to pre-COVID. Trade schools, online-only college programs, and community colleges have seen the largest increases in expected likelihood to enroll.”

Strada Education Network COVID-19 Work and Education Survey Data

The “future of work” that has been envisioned, debated, and charted has arrived with a bang.  Its arrival was accelerated not by technology as many of us predicted, nor by demographics as some of us expected, but by a virus, fast and deadly.  Now that the future is now, we appear not at all to be ready. 

Federal, state and local governments can only go so far as champions of the workforce and education transformation we need.  They must first prioritize public health efforts, which seem to be challenging them enough.  They may also lead us toward new strategies that disappear along with the next election.  And while the education and nonprofit sectors have and will turn to government for funding, those outside of it have the ability to move quickly and decisively to generate ideas within and across the institutions. 

What if there are loud and visible voices shouting out the new visions and ideas before the funding request?  Might such a timeline improve the likelihood that new funding models can be found?

Our community and technical colleges are institutions, both national in scale and local in access, uniquely positioned to play a leadership role in this critical transformation.  These institutions vary in size, adaptability and resources, but have a real potential to lead the effort to restart and reconstruct the economy. 

Here are five ways community colleges are best positioned to lead a lasting education, employment, and economic recovery:

Fast-acting deliverer of COVID-responsive educational services – The Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) has announced a flexible fall mix of online, in-person and hybrid classes, with multiple possible start dates, to capture the full mix of prospective needs and experiences.    Strada Education Network’s COVID-19 Survey data show across job fields workers prefer that education and training are delivered online and offer non-degree and short-term credential options.  Community colleges have the ability to respond to immediate, tactical needs in a way that leads to bigger, future opportunities.

 On-ramp for the displaced – as displaced workers in shrinking and redefining industries look for a path forward, they can find one here.  Partnerships with businesses and industry associations are already in place and can adapt and expand, offering “earn and learn” and personalized pathways that don’t exist elsewhere.

 Convener and designer of updated industry sectors – For the past ten + years, a collaborative collection of businesses, industry associations, public workforce agencies, and community colleges has developed and delivered industry sector-based training and education to better align what is provided to individuals with what businesses need. COVID has shown that those common “high-demand” sectors - manufacturing, health care, logistics, IT, and construction - need to be updated to reflect that “future of work” and the new realities we have just seen.  Logistics and technology are an integrated part of all industries and are not standalone sectors.  Health care will rapidly migrate to a completely different mix of hands-on v. remote services with resulting skill reboots.    Community colleges have the reach and the history to host a fast and important redesign effort.

 Hub of many things students need to keep advancing.  The barriers to accessing jobs, education and training have never been more visible:  child care, transportation, housing.  Community colleges have tackled these barriers in large and small ways in the past, as providers of early childhood training to teachers, as points of connection to community housing, transportation, and other resource needs among students.  The innovative among them like Community College of Vermont have already and can continue to demonstrate the model for and value of diving in to help address these crucial education barriers, leading as the community partners that they are.

An education commons bringing together all levels of students, young and old, less and more educated.  Education plans and priorities are already shifting in profound ways, toward exactly what community colleges offer:  a close-to-home, “on-demand” model that has something to offer the displaced hospitality worker, the 18-year-old intending to pursue a four-year degree but rethinking the cost and location, and the older tech worker in need of new skills.  This broad reach matters for the institutions because it enables them to draw from distinct and in some cases healthier sources of students and funds, and for the students for the exposure and opportunity they need in order to compete in a post-COVID world.

Partnerships and collaborations among community colleges, businesses, industry associations, workforce boards, nonprofits, and various forms of government must and will continue and evolve from this moment.  Consider this a challenge to the first partner on that list:  if not you, then who better, and if not now, when?  Time to shine, lead the transformation, and to evolve into the critical force in our society that many of you were already on your way to becoming.