Community colleges have a well-earned reputation as affordable, accessible, and student- and employer-centered destinations for practical job training, but the sector is not a monolith.
Because of years of chronic underinvestment and policy frameworks that prioritize degree completion or transfer pathways to universities, many community colleges have capacity gaps when it comes to some of the most promising workforce practices, including quality nondegree credentials, apprenticeships, bootcamps, work-based learning, and high school programs that include career and technical education.
Over the years, a myriad of policymakers and national organizations, including my own, have focused on addressing these gaps. Those efforts have yielded a variety of important institutional changes across the sector—and more of that work is needed to identify and disseminate best practices at scale across more than 1,100 community colleges nationwide.
But as important as that national work is, our research over the past five years has shown us that we need to put far more focus on bottom-up resources for capacity building. Regional and state-level efforts around quality credentials, work-based learning, and wraparound supports are proving to be sustainable and enduring, but are underutilized and undersupported in helping colleges enact best practices and address shared challenges.
There are three specific ways that bottom-up capacity building can be particularly effective: navigating policy change, professional development for instructors and staff on the front lines, and support for specialized needs for institutional or practice change.
Navigating Policy Change
When Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 8, which replaced a community college funding model based on enrollment and program offerings with a new performance-based model, the Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC) saw its role evolve quickly. What had primarily been an association focused on policy advocacy suddenly needed to provide technical assistance and capacity-building for its colleges in response to policy change.
Under the new funding model, Texas community colleges’ short-term education programs, including noncredit ones, became eligible for funding. Colleges needed to modernize their data and reporting infrastructure around performance-based funding, and consider the best strategies to use state dollars to increase their economic and workforce development impact.
The funding formula was a substantial departure from decades of existing precedent, systems, and protocols at colleges and state agencies. Navigating such a shift required collective understanding, peer learning, and implementation. While national organizations provided resources and insights, TACC was there locally to connect the dots and focus on implementation.
“For calendar year 2024, TACC became a technical assistance and advocacy association,” says Ray Martinez, president and CEO of TACC. “The law cascaded a change of how [our] CEOs perceive the association.”
TACC’s 2025-2030 strategic plan emphasized the new dual mission of the association. While TACC maintained its core priority around advocacy and policy, it also emphasized enhancing “the ability of community colleges to provide affordable, high-quality postsecondary education and workforce training,” citing professional development, resources for policy compliance, and strategic capacity building.
TACC was especially helpful to the 31 small and medium-sized community colleges out of the 50 total spread across Texas’ sprawling and differentiated regional economies and labor markets.
Moving forward, TACC plans to continue its capacity-building work stemming from HB 8, including focusing on shared services models across member colleges. In addition, drastic changes in federal policy are requiring more coordination with national associations such as the American Association of Community Colleges and the Association of Community College Trustees than before.
Professional Development for Frontline Instructors and Staff
Few community college faculty or staff have gone through dedicated educational programs to learn how to do their jobs well. The need for upskilling, reskilling, and professional development for community college faculty and staff in workforce development often comes up in our research and technical assistance efforts focused on capacity building for community colleges.
A wide range of national professional development opportunities exists for community college presidents and aspiring presidents, and a few programs are oriented to the workforce and academic professional staff at community colleges. However, these programs can only serve a limited number of cohort members a year and focus on a broad-based general curriculum and national networking.
Regional and state associations are well-positioned to play a complementary role to support professional development for frontline workers and instructors, with a particular focus on the state or region’s policy landscape, economy, culture, and industrial mix and priorities. The Community College Leadership Development Consortium in Iowa is a good model.
Founded in 2022, the consortium formalized a long-standing partnership between Iowa State University’s School of Education, the Iowa Association of Community Colleges, Community Colleges for Iowa, and the Iowa Department of Education. This public-private partnership emphasizes “leading from where you are” and provides two yearlong, noncredit opportunities for mid- and senior-level managers as well as new and early career faculty and staff.
Through summer academies and curricula aligned with AACC’s Competencies for Community College Leaders but tailored locally by participating partners, the program covers governance, policy, student success, institutional culture, analytics, advocacy, fundraising, and leadership development. The program pools support from all 15 community colleges in Iowa, strengthening local relationships, collaborations, and networks.
Specialized Needs, Specialized Associations
Many states have community college associations that convene presidents, trustees, and staff for broad-based peer learning, advocacy, and capacity building. However, some states have associations that focus on specific aspects of workforce development that warrant dedicated attention.
Since 1974, the North Carolina Work-Based Learning Association (NCWBLA) has served as a grassroots regional professional organization comprised of more than 40 work-based learning leaders at community colleges across the state.
The association helps college leaders with process improvement, quality assurance, and peer learning around work-based learning approaches. NCWBLA maintains a contact book of work-based learning professionals in the state, organizes regular lunch-and-learn sessions, facilitates resource and employer connections, and hosts an annual conference to foster professional development among experiential and work-based learning leaders across North Carolina. The association even offers awards to employers, college professionals, and students engaged with work-based learning to support career advancement in the field.
NCWBLA isn’t alone. Across the country, a number of regional and state-level work-based learning associations support capacity building and professional development for workforce leaders.
As the federal policy environment becomes precarious at best—and deleterious at worst—for community colleges and their students and employer partners, more attention should be placed on understanding how states and regional associations can adapt and scale national initiatives and best practices while surfacing more bottom-up innovation along the way.
Doing so will help far more community colleges develop the capacity to build and offer successful workforce pathways at scale.
Shalin Jyotishi is the founder and managing director of New America’s Future of Work and Innovation Economy (FOWIE) Initiative, a research, storytelling, and policy incubator dedicated to improving and aligning science, workforce, labor, and innovation policies to renew the American middle class.