Career training geared toward students who are seeking to learn a trade or skill has long been a mission of the Community Colleges. With high growth and emerging fields as the backbone of California’s economy, a skilled labor pool is necessary to meet employer needs and ensure California’s long-term economic vitality. Through workforce training, the Colleges play a critical role in the state’s economic development efforts.

Ensure that Community College programs are aligned and coordinated with state and local economic and workforce development needs. Go to Strategy 1 Home...

As the largest provider of workforce training in the state, Community College programs must be aligned with state and local workforce development needs. Key steps toward this goal are to improve collaboration of workforce development and education programs throughout the state; explore ways to leverage traditional college resources with noncredit programs, K-12, adult schools, and other public workforce agencies to support a market-responsive workforce system; develop alternative sources of funding; and expand existing College Economic and Workforce Development Program initiatives to attract additional investment in workforce training.

Create links between academic and career fields to provide clearly defined career pathways that encourage and support a lifetime of educational career opportunities. Go to Strategy 2 Home...

The career pathways approach creates links between academic and career fields. In California’s economy, high-wage and highgrowth employers require a workforce with proper levels of basic skills as well as the ability to adapt quickly to changing technology. To meet these goals the Community Colleges will build on existing models, disseminate best practices, and develop new programs for enhancing the career pathways approach.

Ensure high standards and academic rigor in Community College programs while delivering timely, relevant, and high quality offerings that meet the needs of business and industry. Go to Strategy 3 Home...

For California to meet the demands of an ever-changing business and economic environment, employers and students must have access to timely, relevant, and high quality training programs. To better serve employers and students, nontraditional program formats and shortened development cycle times are being addressed in ways that are consistent with college-level quality standards. Strategies must be implemented to increase partnerships and mutual understanding between employers and the Colleges.

Encourage and support Community College initiatives to collaborate with other economic and  workforce development agencies and industry sectors to develop regional partnerships and networks. Go to Strategy 4 Home...

Community Colleges routinely collaborate with employers and other agencies to develop programs for workforce development. These regional collaborations provide greater leverage of available resources, allow for responsiveness to local needs, and offer a greater ability to respond to both short-term and long-term needs. With greater support for regional collaboration, the Colleges can support business and industry needs and develop institutional mechanisms to address regional economies.

Ensure that the Colleges have access to the tools and resources needed to track and respond to long-term economic and workforce trends. Build on the California Community Colleges’ Economic Development initiatives to define and develop emerging career clusters. Go to Strategy 5 Home...

To plan effectively for future needs, the Community Colleges must be able to identify long-range economic and workforce trends, and also develop programs to meet the educational needs of the future. This strategy will ensure that the Colleges have the capacity to analyze local, state, and regional economic trends for early identification of and support for emerging career clusters.

Ensure that resource allocation mechanisms equitably address infrastructure and staffing needs of critical programs. Go to Strategy 6 Home...

The Community Colleges’ career technical programs vary greatly from academic programs, yet the funding for these programs does not recognize this important distinction. For instance, nursing programs have higher laboratory costs and lower faculty-student ratio, but they are funded at the same level as other academic course offerings. Strategies need to be developed to address the compensation of faculty and practitioners, especially for high-demand programs such as nursing.