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Access to Success
Study suggests community colleges sold short as pathway out of poverty
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CONNTACT.COM
10/14/2002
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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A new study by the Workforce Strategy Center of New York suggests that community colleges may offer the best route out of poverty for distressed urban areas.
With welfare time limits taking effect and unemployment skyrocketing nationally, the study, “Building a Career Pathways System,” published October 3, found that community colleges may be the single best vehicle to move people up and out of poverty. However, the study notes, “Colleges and state policymakers are not taking advantage of this crucial [community college] option.”
“It's good to see this study back up what I have known for some time,” says Dorsey L. Kendrick, president of New Haven's Gateway Community College.
Among others, Gateway serves more than 529 students from New Haven's Empowerment Zone, many of whom must surmount financial barriers to completing an education. “The college is committed to the success of all students,” says Kendrick. “Our philosophy is one of access to success.”
The study details the economic-development role of community colleges, how they have the potential to move thousands into better-paying jobs, and how underutilized they are for low-income job seekers.
“Everyone knows that the single best ticket to the middle class is a college education, but no one - including the colleges - is doing much about it,” says Julian Alssid, co-director of the Workforce Strategy Center and one of the report's authors.
He adds: “Community colleges have a huge array of remedial courses and quick-hit training on one end, and high-level skill training on the other, but virtually nothing to bridge the two together into career pathways.
“The result,” concludes Alssid, “is that millions of America's low-income and struggling workers are not being offered the opportunity to train for better paying work.”
The study says the obstacles to building effective college pathways include:
• Colleges are failing to link students into career pathways by not effectively channeling remedial students into degree or long-term programs. The report found that up to 50 percent of students in remedial courses never advance beyond this basic level.
• Students languish in dead-end certificate courses because college credit departments resist incorporating non-credit students into their academic programs. The report found that up to 80 percent of students in such non-credit courses never graduate beyond the basic level.
• State policymakers rarely acknowledge the importance of college education as many remain focused on “work first” policies to move people off welfare. The report found that just one state - Washington - has focused its college system as a path out of poverty.
• A lack of institutional collaboration stems from turf issues between colleges and community-training programs.
“We're constantly reaching out to the business community to see where the jobs will be,” says Gateway's Kendrick. “It's our duty to respond to those needs by providing the training for a workforce that will find jobs.”
In 2001, Gateway initiated a biotech program by partnering with the Empowerment Zone to bring biotech companies, CEOs and New Haven residents together for information-sharing workshops that outlined employment needs in the bioscience industry as well as educational requirements for available careers.
In addition, the Gateway New Haven Adult Education Partnership (GAP) provides area residents with courses that give students marketable skills. Originally funded by the Regional Workforce Development Board to provide welfare-to-work training in business office technology, the GAP program had grown into a valuable community resource that has served more than 400 residents since the program began.
“Enrollment is up and more students are returning, but we won't stop here,” says Kendrick. Future plans for the college include the hiring of a retention coordinator and staff to provide specific academic counseling, tutoring and support to Empowerment Zone residents and others in need of assistance as they transition into college life - and, it is hoped, beyond.
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