Career Opportunities: Career Technical Education and the College Completion Agenda. Part II: Inventory and Analysis of CTE Programs in the California Community Colleges
Author: Moore, Colleen
Date: 2012-02-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Higher Education,Educational Attainment,Community Colleges,College Role,Labor Force Development,Human Capital,Certification,Vocational Education,Associate Degrees,Enrollment,Efficiency,Partnerships in Education,School Business Relationship,Demand Occupations,College Credits,Administrative Organization,Coordination,Credentials,College Programs,Labor Market,Employment Opportunities

The Obama Administration has once again demonstrated the important role community colleges play in educating the nation's workforce and boosting the nation's economy with its recently proposed Community College to Career Fund. This $8 billion fund is aimed at forging partnerships between colleges and businesses to train workers for good-paying jobs in high-demand fields. To be positioned to benefit from this and other potential opportunities, the California Community Colleges (CCC) should accelerate efforts to strengthen and streamline career technical education (CTE). The authors' research reveals a potential for much greater value to be realized from the CTE mission area. Despite healthy course enrollments and credit accumulation in vocational coursework, only a small percentage of students earn certificates or vocational associate degrees. The colleges collectively offer a vast array of CTE programs that their research tells could be better shaped to meet student and employer needs. As a follow up to their February 2011 report, &quot;The Road Less Traveled,&quot; the authors have embarked on a four-part project to examine the status of the CTE mission area of the California Community Colleges and ultimately to identify ways that state and system policy can best support colleges in operating CTE programs that meet the needs of students and their regions. The first report, released January 2012, concluded that fragmented and complex organizational structures and funding arrangements preclude development of a coherent systemwide strategy for CTE. For this second report, the authors examine the full set of career-oriented credentials offered by the CCC. They inventory CTE programs across the system and analyze program information as a basis for understanding how the breadth and complexity of CTE programming within and across colleges contributes to the overall performance of CTE. They also strive to determine how well the CTE programs offered across the system are meeting students' needs to identify, enroll in, and complete programs with real value in today's labor market. Regional Consortia for the California Community Colleges are appended. (Contains 20 figures and 27 notes.) [For related reports, see &quot;Career Opportunities: Career Technical Education and the College Completion Agenda. Policy Brief&quot; (ED534075) and &quot;Career Opportunities: Career Technical Education and the College Completion Agenda. Part I: Structure and Funding of Career Technical Education in the California Community Colleges&quot; (ED534073).]