Adult Education Responds to Workforce Needs With a Focus on Rider 82

Making the Case for Career Pathways¹

Career pathways typically comprise an integrated, articulated continuum of programs and services designed to prepare high school students and/or working adults for employment and advancement in targeted industry sectors, fields, and occupations. Career pathways provide opportunities for:

• Development of core academic, technical, and employability skills
• Continuing Education and Training
• Placement in high demand/high opportunity jobs
• Vertical and horizontal movement in a career field.

Pathways may also include “wrap around” support services based on the needs of participants: tutoring, career counseling, case management, child care, transportation, financial assistance, and job placement.

It makes good sense to tie the available public resources of education and workforce training to the industry clusters identified by Governor Perry. This represents a change from workforce development programs that focus on getting disadvantaged workers a job – usually at entry level. But training efforts usually stop once the individual is employed, and employers rarely focus their training resources on workers at the entry level. This creates a gap in the pipeline.

While many public and private agencies and systems train workers, too rarely do they work together. By working on parallel tracks rather than together, they limit their reach. Mistakenly, many workforce development programs develop their own training strategies with private and proprietary schools and bypass adult education and community colleges. On a similar note, neither an adult basic education by itself nor a limited number of college level courses provide much benefit in terms of enhancing employment or earnings.

The potential for community colleges to serve as a pathway for low-skill adults to college and career path employment is begging to be explored. Across the nation, several projects are underway to develop policies and procedures supporting this potential. These initiatives include the Ford Foundation’s Bridges to Opportunity project and the National Governor’s Association’s Pathways to Advancement project funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education.²

The career pathways approach seeks to bridge the gaps in our education system and forge stronger connections between employers and industry associations, community-based partners and economic development, workforce training and social service agencies.

1. Career Pathways Toolkit, Community College Bridges to Opportunity.
www.communitycollegecentral.org/careerpath.

2. Building Pathways to Success for Low-Skill Adult Students: Lessons for Community College Policy and Practice from a Statewide Longitudinal Tracking Study, adapted from the Tipping Point research conducted by the Community College Research Center, 2005.