- Develop partnerships with local businesses in a variety of arenas as seeds for future projects
- Develop relationships with foreign sister cities to attract foreign students
- Establish cooperative ventures for functions (grant-writing, etc.) with other institutions
- Improve coordination and communication with community-based institutions
- Join with other area educational institutions to form coalitions to support revenue enhancement initiatives
The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A traveling flake of snow
Across or through a rut
Debates if it will go.
A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.
- Emily Dickinson, The Sky is Low, The Clouds are Mean
Colleges, universities, public schools, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and businesses are realizing that they cannot achieve their desired outcomes independently. Through greater collaboration and partnering, they can increase people’s educational levels and vocational skills, which in turn make them more employable. Employers have a skilled and capable workforce and, thus, can be more productive and competitive. Improved employment results in a better qualify of life (i.e., access to health care, increased learning activities for their children, etc.). A better quality of life is an engine for building a stronger economy.
ReplyDeleteRelationship building is everyone’s job. While the board, president, and workforce development employees have important roles to play, staff and faculty members across the organization should accept responsibility for building relationships through which to communicate the college’s interest in partnerships and community service. Some partnership guidelines for colleges are:
ReplyDelete-- Partnerships are essential to ensure that colleges address the needs most important to the economic vitality of their communities.
-- The market-responsive college selects strategic priorities for its partnerships after thoughtful assessment and research.
-- College staff members take an entrepreneurial, proactive, and creative stance toward operating partnerships.
-- College leaders recognize employees for their partnering activities.
-- Partnerships are assessed, not simply by their bottom line, but rather by their potential for providing immediate benefits to the community and long-term opportunities for leveraging.
-- Market-responsive colleges embrace a continuous improvement philosophy and convey that commitment to partners and to the community.
-- Enlightened self-interest is at the heart of successful partnerships—with the ideal being to identify win-win-win arrangements that benefit students, businesses, and the community at large.
A number of the academic disciplines recognize the need to have a better understanding of the marketplace, student needs, employers’ requirements, community demographics, etc. KH has adapted the basic principles set forth in "The 21st Century Community College: A Strategic Guide to Maximizing Labor Market Responsiveness (LMR), Volume 2, Promising Practices and Lessons from the Field," for institutions to apply to both the labor market and student needs in general. By market responsiveness, KH emphasizes the importance of market responsiveness to meeting students’ goals (outcomes), community needs, and labor market opportunities. The comments below are by topic and are consistent with the LMR principles.
ReplyDeleteLeadership and Governance
ReplyDeleteRelationship building is everyone’s job. While the board, president, and workforce development employees have important roles to play, staff and faculty members across the organization should accept responsibility for building relationships through which to communicate the college’s interest in partnerships and community service.
-- Partnerships are essential to ensure that colleges address the needs most important to the economic vitality of their communities.
-- The market-responsive college selects strategic priorities for its partnerships after thoughtful assessment and research.
-- College staff members take an entrepreneurial, proactive, and creative stance toward operating partnerships.
-- College leaders recognize employees for their partnering activities.
-- Partnerships are assessed, not simply by their bottom line, but rather by their potential for providing immediate benefits to the community and long-term opportunities for leveraging.
-- Market-responsive colleges embrace a continuous improvement philosophy and convey that commitment to partners and to the community.
-- Enlightened self-interest is at the heart of successful partnerships—with the ideal being to identify win-win-win arrangements that benefit students, businesses, and the community at large.
Organizational Structure and Staffing
ReplyDelete-- Each college needs a structure that would accommodate both the development of new, large-scale, market responsive initiatives and the everyday activities of monitoring existing programs, implementing continuous improvements, and responding effectively to external demands.
-- Program development, outreach, and interaction with employers can be everyone’s job. Institutions need to invest in professional development and support to help faculty succeed in these new roles.
Organizational Culture
ReplyDelete-- Colleges must balance multiple and sometimes competing missions. Cultural beliefs, values, and expectations on campus will determine the relative priority assigned to those missions and which ones are successfully accomplished.
-- Responsive colleges have established cultures that support workforce development and value the personal traits of entrepreneurship, innovation, flexibility, and risk-taking.
-- Structural changes alone will not successfully engage faculty in the process of market responsiveness. A corresponding cultural shift is also required.
-- Colleges need to forge connections with the surrounding cultural communities to meet their educational and workforce needs.
Resources and Funding
ReplyDelete-- It is difficult to be a truly market-responsive institution while relying on traditional sources of college funding. For example, labor-market-responsive programs tend to be expensive because of specialized equipment requirements. Institutions must access a wide range of funding sources and be creative in their fundraising strategies.
-- Many colleges should figure out creative ways to reach beyond their communities to tap regional, State, and Federal income sources.
-- The college president and board play key roles in developing resources for new large-scale workforce initiatives and partnerships.
-- Public-private partnerships are a leverage point for significant new college resources.
-- A commitment to market responsiveness requires more resources, but can also lead to more resources.
Information and Data
ReplyDelete-- Market-responsive colleges use information and data to understand their environment and evaluate their effectiveness in meeting local educational and employment needs.
-- Responsive colleges regularly use published data to learn more about student and labor market trends. They capitalize on opportunities to partner with others and survey local employers.
-- Responsive colleges improve by evaluating their services to employers.
-- Responsive colleges do not rely solely on student enrollment as a measure of employer demand. They independently assess this demand and find ways to boost enrollment in courses for which there are high wages and employer demand but low student interest.
-- The best indicators of market responsiveness come from determining the extent to which coursework helps students attain their educational goals. The primary sources of this information are surveys of former students and employers and matching of enrollment data with State wage data.
Approaches to Market Responsiveness
ReplyDelete-- Colleges vary in their approach to market responsiveness; some of the approaches that colleges take are:
-- Remain current on the skills most in demand by local employers.
-- Offer courses that address student needs and the training needs of employers.
-- Develop increased ability to rapidly respond to these needs.
-- Offer more targeted and contract-training courses, beyond those listed in the catalog, to benefit employers and others seeking to upgrade their skills.
-- Focus on becoming increasingly adept at curriculum development and modification to meet the changing needs of students and employers.
-- Integrate non-credit training into for-credit programs, and visa versa.
-- Use technology and distance learning to expand capacity to deliver credit and noncredit training.
-- Collect relevant data, maintain good information management systems, and ensure that decisions are data driven.
-- Establish and maintain strong links to the local secondary school system (Tech Prep, Dual Enrollment, School-to-Work).