Workforce Development and Community Colleges

Workforce Development Community Colleges	Comments/Synopsis
In dire need of STEM students	·         Recent studies indicate that U.S. employers require 800 to 1,000 new photonics (laser and optics) technicians each year. ·         Despite this need, the 31 U.S. colleges that currently offer photonics programs enroll fewer than 800 students and produce fewer than 300 new technicians each year.
Bridging the Skills Gap; Higher Education and Businesses work together	·         People entering the workforce, specifically students with some form of higher education degree, do not have enough skills and education to take on the jobs that are available. ·         “There’s a disconnect between higher ed and the workforce,” James Applegate, vice president for program development at the Lumina Foundation, said on a panel at the Institute for a Competitive Workforce’s Help Wanted Conference in late September.
Help Wanted; Assessing the Skills Gap	·         America remains a leader in innovation, but its workforce is falling behind. Education and workforce development systems have not kept pace with the demands of the 21st ·         century, and we all bear the costs of this failure… Basic training programs alone cannot bridge the skills gap. As a result, more than 3 million jobs continue to go unfilled despite high, persistent unemployment. ·         The choice is clear: We can act swiftly to bridge the U.S. skills gap, or we can sit back and watch our competitors prosper while our economy plods along. ·         So how do we bridge the skills gap?
Cracking the Credit Hour	·         higher education can be successfully organized on a basis other than time. ·         learning-focused programs are a hallmark of educational models that best serve nontraditional students ·         But competency-based higher education remains relatively uncharted territory. In an era when college degrees are simultaneously becoming more important and more expensive, students and taxpayers can no longer afford to pay for time and little or no evidence of learning. ·         Federal policy should encourage traditional institutions to think differently about how they deliver and award credit for learning and also create a space for nontraditional institutions and organizations to prove their ability to help students achieve real, objectively verified learning outcomes.
Community Colleges:  A bargain	·         is it really necessary to spend tens of thousands of dollars in pursuit of a college degree? Community colleges offer an overlooked alternative.