Identifying the Best Community Colleges for Workforce Training
In partnership with Harvard University’s Project on Workforce and Reimagining the Economy, AIR is examining how community colleges across the country approach and succeed with workforce training. Together, we are integrating multiple national datasets documenting community colleges’ workforce training outcomes.
With these data, we are identifying colleges that are most effective at graduating students with credentials that hold significant labor market value, which we define as the proportion of certificate and occupation-based associates degree completions at community colleges for jobs with annual salaries that are at least $45,000. We are also undertaking a complementary effort to estimate the average responsiveness of these completions to changes in employment and market shocks.
Finally, we are analyzing these completions for different state, regional, and institutional characteristics to examine how institutions may vary in different contexts for different groups, such as older students, students of color, and those from low-income backgrounds.
Using this analysis, we are undertaking a deep qualitative study of higher- and lower-performing colleges to better understand what characteristics and conditions may help explain their outcomes. In addition to a wider exploratory analysis of these colleges’ practices, our research will explore whether community colleges are implementing programs, practices, or approaches similar to those of sectoral programs that have been effective in increasing individuals’ long-term employment and earnings. We will explore whether and how these program features may vary across colleges and populations with the goal of generating hypotheses about the determinants of strong workforce programs that can be tested more rigorously.
Initial exploratory work for this project was supported by the AIR Equity Initiative, AIR’s $100+ million five-year investment to advance equity in several important areas: workforce development, education, public safety and policing, and health. The AIR Equity Initiative is committed to investing in the generation and use of high-quality evidence that address the harmful effects of segregation by race and place.
