Career Tech

What works for career-tech programs

·         a common college-level mechanism in high-performing colleges was an early alert system, which provides a proactive and potentially consistent way to identify students who are having trouble with a course or a program of study and intervene before they fall too far behind.

·         Higher performing programs were less likely to emphasize the associate degree and more likely to promote long-term vocational certificates that require fewer general education courses and let students enter the workforce quickly.

·         . . . an emphasis on earning a long-term certificate and then immediately seeking paid employment could provide students with more motivation to complete than a bigger picture focus on an associate degree to improve long-term career options.

·         Low-performing programs offered more short-term certificates, which tend to be less valuable in the workplace. It’s possible programs with low graduation rates begin offering short-term certificates so “students would have at least some credential even if they dropped out,” the study concludes.

http://communitycollegespotlight.org/content/what-works-for-career-tech-programs_11157/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CommunityCollegeSpotlight+%28Community+College+Spotlight%29

Structure in Community College Career-Technical Programs: A Qualitative Analysis (CCRC Working Paper No. 50)

By: Michelle Van Noy, Madeline Joy Weiss, Davis Jenkins, Elisabeth A. Barnett & John Wachen — October 2012. New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

Using data obtained from interviews and program websites at Washington community and technical colleges, the authors of this study examine the structure of community college career-technical programs in allied health, business and marketing, computer and information studies, and mechanics and repair. A framework for structure with four dimensions—program alignment, program prescription, information quality, and active program advising and support—is used to examine the practices of relatively high- and low-performing colleges within each field of study. The allied health, computer and information science, and mechanics and repair programs were found to be highly structured; the business and marketing programs were found to have a moderate level of structure. Overall, there was limited evidence of a connection between program structure and program performance.
http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/Publication.asp?UID=1143&utm_source=October+papers+%26+news&utm_campaign=UA-2832117-7&utm_medium=email