As the need for skilled technicians in manufacturing grows in the U.S. alongside advances in robotics and other forms of high-tech automation, community colleges are playing an important role in providing training and coordination in their regions.
The Big Idea: A new set of reports from the Rutgers University Education and Employment Research Center found that community colleges generally have been responsive to local labor market needs in turning out credentialed technicians. And beyond training, the researchers found, colleges play an important—and often overlooked—role in organizing economic development activity.
The primary study began over five years ago, looking at advanced manufacturing associate degree programs at eight community colleges in Arizona, Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Michelle Van Noy, a co-author of the report, says the goal of the study was to look beyond individual outcomes and at colleges’ role in the health of an entire industry or region.
“There’s been a good amount of work trying to look at how those kinds of programs lead to wage and employment outcomes for individuals, but the idea here was to take a look at that at a different scale, at the regional level, and look at what’s happening from an economic development lens,” Van Noy says.
The report concludes that the colleges act as a convener for regional manufacturers, filling in knowledge and coordination gaps and playing a larger role in overall economic development. The authors claim that colleges’ contributions to high-tech manufacturing are often “hidden” and should be a bigger part of economic development planning.
Among the findings are that colleges engage with their labor market in many ways to provide technician training, not just through curriculum. They also set up advisory boards, regularly reach out to employers, and focus on meeting students’ as well as employers’ needs. “Learn and earn” models, for example, benefit students and employers equally and are often initiated by the colleges.
On the Ground: Clark State College in Springfield, Ohio, was one of the institutions studied. With a Honda auto plant located nearby, the college offers 14 manufacturing certificates that are all stackable into an associate or bachelor’s degree.
Jo Blondin, president of Clark State, says paid internships and work-based learning experiences are key to responding to labor market needs in the field. In addition to employers, the college regularly reaches out to the state’s economic development corporation, legislators, and organizations like the National Council for Workforce Education, which Blondin also leads.
“Generally there are a number of quarterbacks throwing us the ball,” Blondin says. “We have a process on campus to set in motion how we will respond and who we will bring to the table. Sometimes the solution is literally a two-week robotics refresher, and other times it’s a yearlong training around different types of welding. We will do whatever the business needs are.”
Like Clark State, all the institutions studied were responding to multiple groups, including students seeking economic mobility, employers, regional industries, and communities, Van Noy says. She pointed to growing efforts to elevate community colleges’ role among these groups, including Achieving the Dream’s “community vibrancy framework,” which targets students who have traditionally been left behind in higher education and emphasizes working with community organizations and employers to zero in on the community’s biggest needs.
“The lesson here is that partnerships are essential for colleges to know where their programs fit and then to have an influence on some of those regional activities,” Van Noy says.