“Colleges that are already locked in on institutional effectiveness and continuous improvement should already have programs that they know are successful and are making an impact in the economy,” Bange says.
Community colleges and technical schools are well equipped to handle the demands of Workforce Pell, believes Bange, simply due to their nature. Industry moves fast, and these programs are used to keeping up.
Community Colleges Face a Data Dilemma
Bossier Parish and Lorain County Community College are examples of accelerators. These are institutions ahead of the pack because they’ve been making data-driven decisions to support their students’ success before Workforce Pell was announced.
Lorain County Community College aggregates data from multiple sources to get its longitudinal data for Workforce Pell, but these partnerships and projects began years ago, when Ohio started offering financial aid support for short-term certificates. One of the college’s job placement data sources is the Census Bureau, thanks to the Ohio Department of Higher Education participating in the bureau’s post-secondary employment outcomes data. It also works with CredLens, a national nondegree data trust.
“Over the past few years, there’s been a shift in the conversation and a focus on what we call Community College 3.0, which is building on the access and completion but adding this focus of post-graduation outcomes,” says Thomas Benjamin, vice president for institutional research, data analytics and campus technologies at Lorain County Community College.
DISCOVER: Community colleges can use data to align curriculum with workforce needs.
The focus is data: How do colleges get the data that accurately shows how students fare post-completion, and what can colleges do with that information? Historically, institutions gleaned employment outcome data from student attestation via surveys, a fruitless endeavor that does not satisfy Workforce Pell requirements.
“Anyone who tells you that this is not a huge data conundrum is not paying attention,” says Cayanna Good, deputy commissioner for innovation and impact at the Technical College System of Georgia. “Workforce Pell is asking states to have very sophisticated data systems for a lot of different data points for a lot of different actors.”
Advice and Considerations for Community Colleges
Georgia’s technical colleges are focused on stronger data and better data integrations, says Good. Given the approval process for Workforce Pell, it’s a statewide, collaborative effort. Good says that Georgia seeks to create a data set that all 22 colleges can use.
Benjamin suggests starting with the data and dashboards that are already being offered, such as CredLens or the National Student Clearinghouse. He cautions against “perfect being the enemy of good when it comes to understanding data.” Having a place to store the large quantity of data is the first step.
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“Colleges or states that don’t have a singular system of record for all of their data for all available programming — whether that’s credit, noncredit or anything in between — are at a huge disadvantage,” Bange says.
A key to success at Lorain County Community College has been being open to opportunities that provide data while at the same time adjusting based on what the data is saying. For example, the college uses Handshake to connect students with jobs, in addition to strengthening local business and industry partnerships. For the latter, negotiating for routine employment data from those businesses can help with the Workforce Pell reporting requirements.
While time is of the essence once a program is approved, the focus should be on quality. Ultimately, as the state must sign off before the government approves, colleges should be focused on improving what exists and creating solid data foundations.
“We have time to do this with quality,” says Good. “We have time to do this in a way that allows for us to meet the needs of as many students as we possibly can and as many employers as we possibly can in a meaningful way. Workforce Pell isn’t something that’s been put upon us. It’s an opportunity.”
