Shaping and Launching a New Community College
for the District of Columbia
Rationale, Guiding Principles, and Philosophy
Introduction: Opportunity and Obligation
We have aunique opportunity and an obligation to develop a community college to serve the diverse and evolving needs of citizens and employers in the District of Columbia. There is a mismatch in our City’s labor market needs and the education and skill levels of our residents. Census estimates for 2005 suggest that more than 111,000 working-age adults in the city have no post-secondary education. D.C. residents with a high school degree or less have higher poverty and unemployment rates than those with some postsecondary education and college degrees.
The worsening economic landscape, volatile labor market, and spiking unemployment situation requires an expeditious and effective response. We have an imperative to put into place an exemplary community college that will fill the educational gap in DC, meet the workforce needs of our community, and incorporate best practices and lessons learned from research and evaluation.
About the Contributions of Community Colleges
America’s 1,200 community colleges are engines of local and national economic growth. Every dollar state and local governments invest in America’s community colleges produces $18 in future economic growth, according to a July 2004 study sponsored by the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT).
And the return on investment is tremendous. The study, titled “The Economic Contribution of America’s Community and Technical Colleges,” found that a single year of community college instruction saved the nation $750 million in avoided welfare costs and $550 million in avoided unemployment costs. The study also discovered community college graduates earn more than $9,000 more per year on average, every year they work, than they would have if they hadn’t attended classes. Nationally, the economic contribution of community college graduates accounts for nearly 5 percent of all U.S. income—or $300 billion.
About UDC’s New Community College: Purpose, Priorities & Principles
The University of the District of Columbia’s Community College will serve the City’s residents by integrating workforce preparation, employability skill development, quality education and remediation, economic development and employer linkages, school-to-career—providing a seamless transition from K-12 to adult education and literacy to college prep—and continuous lifelong learning. This new institution is of great importance to DC citizens, employers, the University, and the District of Columbia.
The University of the District of Columbia fulfills a unique set of needs in our community. Located in the heart of DC, surrounded by embassies, government agencies, associations, and other knowledge-based institutions, the University has a long tradition of higher education, serving undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education students for more than 100 years. As the nation’s only urban land-grant institution, the University struggles with the dual missions as a state university, and an open admissions community college. We now have the opportunity to create the latter and improve the former.
Guiding Principles
Within this context, the University seeks to share our guiding principles as a framework or “Planning Charter” for the development of the new Community College in the areas of Internal Business Planning; Academic and Workforce Development Planning; Transition and Ramp-Up Planning; Public Outreach and Partnership Development Planning; and Sustainability Planning:
Internal Business Planning
Shape the vision, first working in a “quiet phase” to coalesce internal leaders; seeking feasibility and planning advice and counsel from subject matter experts, local leaders, and key stakeholders. We must define success and how we will know it when we achieve it.
Be strategic in the “carve out.” Ensure that the community college is “in” the larger system (for efficiency, economies of scale, and pipeline purposes), but not “of” it (remaining agile and working toward autonomy).
Understand the political and economic landscape. Build a living blueprint that can adapt to the shifting focus of community colleges as technology, global competition, and demographic,employment and economic shifts continue to impact students, prospective students, graduates, faculty, and staff.
Assess assets and resources, including financial, human, institutional, partnerships, allies, and other assets to be deployed.
Include action plans and timelinesfor efficient, cost-effective management, transparency, and accountability.
Workforce Development Planning
Target high-opportunity populations and serve the entire city’s continuous learning needs. Preparelow-income, low-literacy, minority, and immigrant students to access information, gain essential employability skills and competencies, and enter competitive careers in a knowledge-based economy. Serve new workforce entrants, including immigrants, ill-prepared, chronically unemployed, TANF recipients, and those who enter the workforce directly from high school;temporarily or permanently dislocated workers due to job elimination, layoffs, relocation, etc.;currently employed, but seeking to update skills to maintain, advance or changecareers; and seniors and retirees who wish to enrich their lives, learn new skills, take on second careers, or simply stimulate their minds; andall residents, including those who have graduate degrees and just want to take classes for continuous lifelong learning. Likewise, the Community College will also be the place where employers can help shape new training courses and serve as adjunct faculty for trade, technical, and/or technology skills so they can ensure a ready pipeline of qualified workers for their current and future hiring needs.
Maximize community access. Use web-based learning technologies for 24/7/365 access, and hardware and software support for selected programs. Strategically place sites within communities where programs are co-located with District agencies and other partners.
Use labor market information to shape offerings. Course offerings will be market-driven and employer-informed. We will help DC residents compete in a unique Washington, DC, labor market where college graduates who move here take jobs that would be suitable for high school students; where there is a scarcity of true “basic entry-level” jobs and an abundance of jobs requiring technological, analytical, and other critical thinking skills.
Address the remedial education and career preparation needs of DC residents who have been poorly served by the DC public schools and the second-chance workforce investment programs, and who lack the requisite knowledge, preparation, and basic skills, aptitudes, attitudes, employability skills, or other credentials to help make them learning-ready and career-ready.
Provide a seamless continuum of education from high school (and equivalency) to the 13th year; to workforce development, certificateand school-to-career programs and associates programs, literacy, and adult education; to a four-year degree and beyond. Incorporate best practices and lessons learned from research and evaluation.
Incorporate existing Workforce Development and Community Outreach offerings. These include more than 30 courses in healthcare, hospitality, administrative and IT, construction trades, and jobs in the green economy. All students must complete with technology literacy, and most programs feature customer service training. Students can earn the industry recognized National Work Readiness Credential.
Academic Planning
Pursue academic excellence. Make qualitative distinctions about programs, processes, and personnel. Take systematic steps to eliminate low-performing and low-demand programs, to recruit new talent and adjunct faculty who meet rigorous standards, and to put into place incentives for high-performance results and outcomes.
Begin with analysis of current offerings that can migrate to the Community College. Carve-out two-year programs that can transfer to the new Community College.
Expand and augment course offerings based on labor market and employer needs. These include recommendations of the Workforce Investment Council’s Industry Sector research, and updated to reflect current and projected labor market realities and opportunities, and economic stimulus initiatives and the America’s Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law on February 17th, 2009.
Transition and Ramp-Up Planning
Start with cohorts of existing students in 2-year programs. Expand future student enrollment through active outreach and recruitment in neighborhoods where needs are most acute.
Develop ramp-up plan that broadens target student populations to include all residents who need or want further education and training, skill-building, vocational interests or avocation or hobbies, and lifelong learning. Initial plans for enrollment are 1,500 students, and we envision a full-scale system that can serve approximately [8,000] students per year.
Streamline support systems, student records, and management systems. Incorporate new web-based technologies wherever possible.
Public Outreach and Partnership Development Planning
Brand, position, and market the Community College to diverse populations with different language, cultural, social, and economic characteristics. Address branding/image/identity, positioning, messaging, and public perceptions.
Pinpoint target audiences. Key constituencies include:
Current students
Prospective students
Parents
Public schools
Job training providers
Faculty and staff
Alumni
Potential donors
Potential partners
Local businesses and employer, industry, and trade associations
Local elected officials
Government agencies
Legislative leaders
Neighborhood leaders
Community based organizations (CBOs)
Differentiate UDC’s Community College in a clear, crisp, compelling way that distinguishes it from the University and makes it distinctive in its own right and among peer institutions throughout the country.
Define communications and public outreach strategies to include internal, student and alumni, and external, using strategic advocates and allies, peer-to-peer, and champion-to media.
Sustainability Planning:
Provide admissions services, student supports, and vibrant campus life. We recognize that the ultimate success of the Community College is based upon student success while enrolled, and on successful transition to higher education or employment upon graduation.
Create branded tools fur student success. Provide every Community College student the tools to help be successful in their job search. And create a technology tool that will provide greater access to information and resources available from the US Department of Labor and the DC Department of Employment Services so that students can gain greater career security.
Promote academic excellence and innovation. The pace of change is accelerating exponentially, and it is incumbent upon our institution to anticipate change and prepare our students with portable skills and a capacity for lifelong learning.
Cultivate alumni relations and community college development prospects to foster continuous improvement.
Promote community service and civic engagement. Actively foster good community relationships by being a good neighbor and a contributing, civic-minded institution.
Conclusion
The new Community College can play a consequential role in the District’s education, workforce preparation, and economic development needs and goals:
It can provide cost-effective training, trade, and technical skills for those who need more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year degree.
It can serve our diverse population of adults from all socio-economic backgrounds — well-educated and working class — who want to upgrade or update their skills, keep current on technology, or simply pursue lifelong learning.
It can help the District’s public school and adult literacy students matriculate to the next level of education, and earn necessary workplace certificates, associates degrees, and credentials, and transfers to a four-year degree program.
It can help serve the employer community by shaping and teaching curricula that are employer-driven, labor-market responsive, and contemporary.
It can help other community-based training and service providers fulfill training, technical, and technology skill needs.
It can help the District and the region respond to high-demand and fastest growing career opportunities.
It can forecast and anticipate new needs, such as preparing DC residents for jobs vacated by retiring government workers, filling a need for local and federal government first responders in emergencies, or helping create health-promotion/disease prevention specialists who play a key role in healthcare reform.
This is our vision, and we enlist the City Council’s support in helping make this vision a reality and a success.
UDC’s Community CollegeGuiding PrinciplesDraft 1/16/19, page 1 of 6