Community colleges are poised to take on a more central role in federal job-training programs as policy makers lay the groundwork for a long-overdue renewal of the multibillion-dollar Workforce Investment Act.
The two-year colleges have not, for the most part, served as primary providers of the education and training that is financed by the federal program. The grants regulated by the law have been used more often to help people find jobs than to train them for new types of employment.
College officials and job-training advocates say Congress and the Obama administration appear interested in changing the law to distribute money in ways that would make it more attractive for community colleges to participate and would more closely align the efforts of the Department of Education and the Department of Labor, so that basic-skills education, in areas such as reading and mathematics, could be combined with work-force training.
The legislation’s reauthorization is essential to providing America’s workers with the skills they need to compete in today’s economy, says Andrew W. Van Kleunen, executive director of the Washington-based Workforce Alliance, an advocacy group.
“A program like WIA, if properly structured, can provide the infrastructure that connects basic-skills education, technical training, on-the-job training, and support services from across a range of different public agencies and local institutions, including community colleges,” he says. “We need an improved version of WIA.”
The 1998 law has essentially lain dormant since 2003, when it expired, although Congress continues to appropriate money based on the current version. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed versions of bills to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act in 2006, but legislators never convened a House-Senate conference to iron out their differences, and the bills died.
One-Stop Centers
A key part of the law was the creation of local “one-stop centers” that offer resources to job seekers. They can get not only advice about their options for education and training, but also vouchers to pay for the services.
From the outset, community colleges were expected to be a primary provider of such services under the law, but some have opted out. College officials had concerns about eligibility rules that require participating institutions to report various performance data; a lack of a strong emphasis on training; and financing issues that hamper the colleges’ ability to pay for the full costs of offering programs.
“There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm when it was enacted,” says David S. Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges. “But results have been mixed. It works better in some places than others.”
He attributes the inconsistency partly to the fact that local Workforce Investment Boards, which develop policies under the law and oversee the operation of the one-stop centers, are usually dominated by representatives of businesses rather than of community colleges. While the law requires that representatives of education agencies sit on the boards, it doesn’t stipulate that they be from a community college.
Local Inconsistencies
In some places, the partnership between a local board and community college is strong, as it is at Mt. Hood Community College, near Portland, Ore., which became the area’s one-stop center in 1999.
At the center, which is staffed by both the community college and the state Employment Department, job seekers can consult job listings, attend life-skills workshops, and learn about training opportunities. The college itself can provide the job-training services, notes Kimberly S. Freeman, dean of economic and work-force development and industrial technology at Mt. Hood.
Oregon’s Workforce Policy Cabinet also regularly brings together various agencies—including the Oregon University System, the Oregon Business Development Department, and the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries—to make decisions about work-force issues. The state’s 17 community colleges and seven local work-force boards also report to the commissioner of the Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development.
The collaboration in Oregon is an exception, however. More often than not, community colleges end up becoming nothing more than vendors in the federal work-force system, policy experts say.
For James Jacobs, president of Macomb Community College, in a Detroit suburb, that is a concern. As he sees it, community colleges are uniquely positioned to train the nation’s work force because of their commitment to their communities, expertise in teaching adults, and the high quality of their technical instructors.
“For the legislation to work,” he says, “there has to be recognition from states to view the community-college system as the national infrastructure for work-force development.”
Employers don’t want just to fill a job vacancy with a skilled worker, Mr. Jacobs argues, but to hire an employee who has the potential to grow within the company. Community colleges can fill that need because they can both teach people broad capabilities, such as critical thinking, and train students in industry-specific skills.
That is not the case, he says, at other job-training providers, such as some for-profit institutions that job seekers can choose through the one-stop centers.
A Shift to Contracts
One sign of change has already come in the economic-stimulus bill, which President Obama signed in February. It changes how federal training services are financed by allowing local work-force boards to sign contracts with institutions—including community colleges, for-profit groups, and community-based nonprofit organizations—that provide job-training services.
The government has given vouchers to people to use at their institutions of choice. But students with those vouchers trickle in for services at various times and in differing numbers, making it hard to plan for course work and programs. As a result, community colleges often choose not to participate as job-training providers. Their new ability to sign contracts gives them a better handle on planning.
It also allows them to use federal funds to cover more of their costs. Vouchers given to individuals typically cover only tuition. Through the contracts, community colleges can use the money for other purposes, such as hiring faculty members, paying for equipment, and providing new curricula.
The contracts should become a permanent part of any new legislation, says Mr. Baime, of the community-college association. There is a consensus in Congress that the voucher system hasn’t worked the way it was envisioned, he says. He expects lawmakers to change the process when the Workforce Investment Act is revisited.
Another criticism of the current work-force law is the lack of alignment between federal education and labor programs. The law finances both work-force development and adult basic education, but the efforts are paid for separately. That makes it difficult to support programs that provide both types of services jointly.
The result is that job seekers who receive occupational training are not always referred to adult-education services, such as courses in basic reading, writing, and mathematics. And if the training provider doesn’t receive federal money for those adult-education services, it usually has no other federal resources to support basic-skills courses.
Linking work-force development and adult basic education would provide people with an opportunity for dual enrollment and put them on a quicker path to employment, says Mr. Van Kleunen, of the Workforce Alliance. For example, a student in a nursing-assistant program could take English-language courses alongside her nursing courses. That would strengthen her language skills and make her more marketable to employers.
Both Martha J. Kanter, under secretary of education, and Jane Oates, the Department of Labor’s assistant secretary for employment and training administration, have said they are committed to getting their agencies to work more closely together as discussions begin on revamping the legislation. Education Department officials, though, say it is too early to discuss the details of what they will press Congress to include in a reauthorization of the work-force law.
Rules for Eligibility
Some community colleges have limited their involvement or opted not to participate in the federal work-force system because of the law’s reporting requirements, which many colleges officials consider onerous. For the colleges to receive money, they must report on the employment and earnings outcomes of all of a program’s students even if only a few were financed through the federal Workforce Investment Act.
The data, submitted to local boards, are made available to job seekers to help them choose a training provider. Providers that fail to meet performance standards may become ineligible to receive the federal funds.
The community-colleges association advocates that public colleges be automatically deemed eligible as training providers. The group argues that the main purpose of eligibility requirements—to weed out unscrupulous providers and those of questionable quality—doesn’t apply to their institutions because they are already subject to accreditation, state performance requirements, and federal reporting mandates.
Even if changes are made to the eligibility rules, though, concern remains among community-colleges officials about the limited amount of money provided for job-training services.
Mr. Van Kleunen says some community colleges have concluded that it doesn’t make sense to continue to stay on lists of training providers kept by local Workforce Investment Boards because of the costs of collecting and reporting the required data compared with the limited number of training dollars now provided by the Workforce Investment Act.
The amount of money available for training is linked to how the one-stop centers are structured. Job seekers who turn to the centers for help must go through a three-step process that emphasizes access to job listings and life-skills workshops rather than training.
As a result, most work-force-investment dollars are spent on program costs such as job-search assistance, case management, and administration. Of the $2.4-billion spent by local Workforce Investment Boards on dislocated and other adult workers in 2003, the most recent data available, only 40 percent went for training, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The Workforce Investment Act is “more concerned with getting people back to the labor market quickly,” Mr. Van Kleunen says. “The opportunity for training services has become a last resort.”
Both the American Association of Community Colleges and the Workforce Alliance want to see the required three-step process eliminated. Job seekers should be given the opportunity to get training services immediately, the groups say.
Mr. Baime is optimistic that Congress will modify the wording of the law to make the process less stringent, especially since he heard Ms. Oates, of the Labor Department, say during a meeting that there seemed to be a misunderstanding about the current law’s requirement. She seemed to be opening the door to compromise, he says.
Renewing the work-force law is expected to take a back seat this fall as the administration and Congress focus on health-care legislation. But debate over the work-force measure is expected to intensify by early next year.
