Strengthening Transitions by Encouraging Career Pathways (continued)

Connecting Two- and Four-Year Colleges

The transfer of credits between community colleges and four-year institutions has historically been problematic. Universities may be reluctant to issue credit for courses not taken on their campus. If community college faculty do not know the expectations of university faculty, they may not be able to prepare their students accordingly. Consequently, students who earn credits at a community college cannot always apply all of them toward a bachelor’s degree and thus must retake some classes whose content they already mastered. Technical students may have an even more difficult time when trying to apply previous college coursework to a bachelor’s degree; many technical associate degrees focus on discipline-specific coursework, while traditional liberal arts education usually includes general education in the first two years. Thus, aligning applied associate degrees with bachelor’s degrees has been challenging. Fortunately, many states are now creating systems that allow students to transfer credit between institutions seamlessly. The systems include the requirement that certain courses transfer among all state institutions; common course numbering, whereby institutions statewide use the same numbering for courses teaching the same content; and a transferable core, in which general education courses transfer to the baccalaureate degree as a block. For example: Florida has a statewide coursenumbering system among all its public, and some of its private, two- and four-year colleges. Credit for a course within this system is guaranteed to transfer to any other institution that offers a course with the same number. Washington State requires that the Higher Education Coordinating Board develop transfer associate degrees that will satisfy lower-division requirements at public four-year institutions for specific majors. Further, a pilot program in Washington State allows four community colleges to offer students who hold an associate of applied science degree an applied baccalaureate degree in fields where there is demonstrated employer demand.

Employers’ Involvement

Because career pathways are meant to prepare students for both postsecondary education and employment, it is important that employers are involved. Employers can (and should) help institutions select the occupational areas included in career pathways, in order to ensure that students are being prepared for economically viable jobs. They can advise faculty and program administrators on issues of curriculum and provide students with work-based learning and job-shadowing experiences to enhance their classroom learning. Employers can also help students gain employment in the pathway’s field, either part time for those still in school or full time after graduation. The individuals we spoke with agreed on the importance of employer involvement in career pathways, and federal policy often gives employers a place at the table, for example, by requiring employer participation on Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) as part of the Workforce Investment Act. Yet, many of the interviewees reported that their programs did not have prescribed roles for their employer partners. Moreover, we found few policies that served as incentives to formalized employer participation. A few states, however, have implemented policies that support systematic and sustained involvement of employers. For example: Iowa’s Accelerated Career Education program provides funds for associate degree programs leading to high-wage employment. In order to receive the funds, colleges must work with employer partners who promise to employ 25 percent of the program’s graduates and to pay them a reasonable wage. Kentucky’s Workforce Investment Network System provides funds that can be used for career pathways initiatives that demonstrate the commitment of employers.

Collection and Use of Student Data

In evaluating whether career pathways help students prepare for rewarding careers, it is important to collect data on student outcomes that demonstrate whether students are following a coherent sequence of courses spanning secondary and postsecondary schools, and whether they are more successful than their peers who did not participate in career pathways. Such knowledge can also be used to continually improve and upgrade career pathways so that they remain relevant and connected to the current occupational structure. Because pathways encompass multiple educational sectors, data collection is complicated. Ideally, we would like to be able to follow individual students from high school to college and into the labor market, accounting for all of the steps in between in order to understand what happens to participants at each stage in their educational and career path. Unfortunately, few states collect and use such data.

High schools and colleges collect student data, but the two types of institutions may define variables differently, and fail to share their data with each other, making it impossible to connect data across sectors. In addition, educational data are rarely linked to employment data, making it difficult to understand what happens to graduates in the labor market. A few states have begun to combine data systems so that student progress through their entire educational careers can be followed. For example: A grant from California’s Community College Chancellor’s Office supports the Cal-PASS system, which encourages consortia of four-year institutions, community colleges, and K-12 school districts to work together to track students’ educational paths by collecting and analyzing data. Florida has created a K-20 Education Data Warehouse, a system allowing for longitudinal analyses of educational data spanning from elementary to graduate school. The data can also be linked to the state’s unemployment insurance database, allowing for analyses of labor-market outcomes.