Recent Research Explores Community College Students’ Motivations and Outcomes

by Samson Adeoye --

What comes to mind when you think of affordable education, workforce training, flexible education paths, transfer opportunities, local community impact, and diversity? Community colleges are perhaps your foremost thoughts. They are carriers and deliverers of such possibilities in a single package (American Association of Community Colleges, 2022; Kolesnikova, 2009; Warner 2022). Community colleges are two-year colleges, originally called junior colleges, and have their origin knit into the fabric of the US education system as far back as the Morrill Act of 1862 which established Land Grant Universities (Dury, 2003).


Investigating students’ motivations and outcomes, Strada Education Foundation conducted research on the value of community colleges to understand how these specialized groups of educational institutions can better serve their purpose to students. The researchers collected data across the US from alumni of community colleges who graduated in the past 10 years. While work-related motivations were found to be most prevalent, “student’s work aspirations were the least likely to be fulfilled.” On reported outcomes, “fewer than half of students strongly attribute their development of skills to their community college education.” This stresses the question of how community college education can be well-positioned to deliver on one of its top mandates – student skills acquisition and professional development.

These results confirm the gap that the Agriculture Workforce Training for Collaborative Leadership (AWT4CL) project is working to bridge. The AWT4CL “designs, develops, and evaluates curricula for community colleges” to equip students with durable skills needed for the contemporary agriculture workforce. “Think about durable skills like the roots or trunk of a tree,” (Pelosse, 2022) that remain stable in and out of season, unlike the leaves that are seasonal. In what appears to be a twist of events, employers now can afford to teach technical skills on the job but require students to ‘come to the table’ with durable skills (Herget, 2023). Graduates who will successfully enter and thrive in the current and future workforce will need to be adequately trained in durable skills.

The AWT4CL itemized the Association for Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) durable skills in carefully designed learning with the opportunity to earn digital badges. Which of these skills are most relevant to your field? Learn more from the AWT4CL engagement and outreach and blog posts about how to facilitate learning, and measure the acquisition, development, and application of durable skills.


Acknowledgments

Graduates in ceremonial dress photo by University of Hawai’i on flickr.com 

Graphical image from Strada Education Foundation


References

American Association of Community Colleges. (2022, July). The economic value of America’s community colleges. https://www.aacc.nche.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/AACC_ExecSum_1920_Formatted-Finalv2.pdf

Dury, R. L. (2003). Community colleges in America: A historical perspective. Inquiry, 8(1), 1-6. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ876835.pdf

Kolesnikova, N. A. (2009, September 30). The changing role of community colleges. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Luis. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/bridges/fall-2009/the-changing-role-of-community-colleges# 

Warner, A. (2022). 5 reasons to consider community college. U.S. News. https://www.usnews.com/education/community-colleges/articles/reasons-to-consider-community-college


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