Community College Journal - December 2010/January 2011

Q&A
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program. Some of the great work that colleges are doing with dual enrollment with high schools, for instance, you couldn’t expand those programs with these funds because they are geared toward high-school-age students, not trade-impacted workers.

OATES: My mental picture of a trade-impacted worker is somebody who is a hard worker—somebody who might have been with the same employer for 20 years or more—and has a very targeted skill. That skill might be something we would call middle skill; it might be something we would call high skill. But it usually is not academic. So how do we take that high- or middle-skilled person and work with local employers to figure out what kinds of programs would get them credentialed and degreed and up to speed and ready to be employed quickly? Acceleration clearly is going to be a big deal.

Workers demonstrate their hands-on job training experience.

JOURNAL: So when colleges are devising plans to apply for these grants, it’s important to ensure that their grant applications demonstrate how these programs will impact a particular group of students—in this case, students eligible for TAA?

OATES: That’s right. Picture a trade-impacted worker. It’s often somebody who is between 35 and 55. If you think about what some of the hurdles are for these workers—men and women— coming back, some of them might not have been in formal education since they were 18 years old; they might have some real developmental and remedial education needs. So revamping how we deliver remedial and developmental education would be something that directly responds to some of these workers, and that could be something that people go after.

JOURNAL: What are some of the characteristics of a strong TAA job-training program? What questions should colleges ask when developing proposals for this grant?

JOURNAL: OK. Give me some examples.

What could these grants be used for?

OATES: Some of the things that community colleges are doing already in terms of boot camps, for instance. Like truncating and accelerating industry-recognized credential acquisition and degree recognition by having classes not Tuesday and Thursday at 9: 45 a.m. to 11: 15 a.m., but by having classes Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with a lunch break, and getting people where they need to be, academically and occupationally, in six weeks rather than 15 weeks—that’s the kind of thing that I think that our colleges know makes sense, but they just don’t have the resources to devote faculty

22 COMMUNITY COLLEGE JOURNAL December 2010/January 2011

to that kind of effort while they are bursting at the seams with traditional students.

JOURNAL: One need that many dislocated workers have is an updated skill set, particularly if a person has been out of work for a year or more. Job requirements are constantly evolving. To win jobs, prospective employees need to be on the cutting edge of their professions. How can this program help?

OATES: For a trade worker, a lot of things are going to be about technology. A lot of these workers—when they came into the business—didn’t have to use technology as they do now, whether in construction or manufacturing or working with a local utility company. When they came into the business, they didn’t have to know the technology; now, they do. Some colleges might really want to put some effort into using online as a resource. Clearly, there are some things—from remedial education to academics—that can be done efficiently by workers online. Many community colleges have dabbled in this, but they have not put whole credential programs or whole degree programs through the test of what should be online and what shouldn’t.

JOURNAL: What is the department looking for in applications from colleges? Is it focusing on certain high-growth industries or giving preference to coalitions or coordinated approaches?

OATES: The one thing that we’ll definitely be looking for is the evidence base. Just like when ED has run some programs, we understand that there is not a strong evidence base for everything, but we really do want colleges not just to pick and choose something that looks good and smells good, we want them—if there are things where there is a strong research base—we’d like them to include that evidence. If they don’t have an evidence base for what they are pursuing, we’d like them to explain in their application why they chose a particular methodology.