Inside Higher Ed - Short Path to Jobs - by Gena Glickman (December 19, 2011) - It's no secret that the community college sector and the completion agenda in particular, derived in large part from the American Graduation Initiative (AGI), have gotten a lot of attention recently. It's inarguable that we need an educated citizenry and that community colleges have a significant role to play in educating our workforce. Full federal funding didn't follow the ideas in AGI, but the basic premise of certificate and degree completion as a primary measure of student success has gained ground among our federal and state leaders, and among private foundations. The goal of performance based accountability measures is laudable, as is identifying appropriate metrics to benchmark both institutional effectiveness and student success.
There are, though, a few caveats to consider seriously. There is an assumption that community colleges can be more efficient in these austere times and, at the same time, provide the growing number of services our students deserve, and that we can increase student success rates without compromising open access. Further, a narrow definition of student success as degree or certificate completion discounts the myriad of reasons beyond a goal of graduation that students attend community colleges.
The American Association of Community Colleges' Voluntary Framework of Accountability defines multiple measures and practices that lead to student success. Other organizations have sought to define student success through a more limited and prescribed lens. For instance, Complete College America (CCA) is benchmarking awards granted as a primary metric for community college students. However, when considering certificate awards they have chosen to count only those certificates of 30 hours or more. Futureworks, commissioned by CCA to produce "Certificates Count: An Analysis of Sub-baccalaureate Certificates," recommends that "short-term programs that lack significant labor-market payoffs should be discouraged" based on their analysis of available data. The organization carries this too far, however, in that the core metrics of CCA exclude the short-term certificates (less than 30 hours) that in many cases meet academic standards and local labor market needs very effectively...
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