Book Review: Examining the impact of community colleges on the global workforce by Jones,S. J.,& Smith,D. J. (Eds.)

Examining the Impact of Community Colleges on the Global Workforce, edited by Stephanie J. Jones and Dimitra Jackson Smith, provides a very broad view of a range of practices at community colleges designed to prepare students for the workforce. The book brings together a compilation of 13 papers that highlight examples of innovative practices at community colleges. These practices may generate ideas for other colleges based on the research on these emerging practices. While each chapter highlights a distinctly innovative practice, insights from these chapters emerge in five broad areas related to how colleges prepare students for the workforce: advising, learning strategies, system-wide linkages, special populations of students, and industry-specific needs.

Advising is an essential community college function to help guide students’ selection of workforce programs and prepare for their transition to the workforce. However, as Wilson and Lowry point out, community colleges often have difficulty providing advising to all students, so their examination of strategies to provide advising on an institution-wide basis are essential to guiding students through college and into the workforce. Online education is another area where student advising is weak, and Garza Mitchell and Cano-Monreal highlight an approach to address this issue by providing students with an online learning orientation.

Beyond informing students of their program and career options, utilizing the most effective learning strategies is a key to helping students attain the skills needed for the workforce. Several chapters highlight innovative strategies to make learning relevant to the workforce through more active and relevant learning experiences. Treadwell and Mitra highlight the unique approach of harnessing the experience from service-learning to provide career development. In the health care field, Frankland and Bodily describe simulation as another approach to providing more hands-on and relevant learning experiences to students. Developing “soft skills” among traditional-aged students without workplace experience is a challenge for many colleges; Vorreyer and Miller highlight how industry collaborations can assist in their development. Finally, Valle, Jacob, Torres, and Hiatt recognize the crucial role of faculty in preparing students for the workforce and discuss a process to engage faculty in improving their pedagogy to promote the success of underrepresented groups.

Promoting more seamless transitions by building linkages between different systems is another essential innovation that community colleges promote to better prepare students for the workforce. In particular, the transfer transition is a foundational way that community colleges contribute to workforce preparation. Ryder and others highlight the increase in transfer to the baccalaureate from previously terminal associate in applied science (AAS) degrees, noting a “hidden transfer function of the AAS degree” (p. 1). Furthermore, Foote, Kranzow, and Hinkle highlight what is known about practices to promote the success of transfer students and provide specific recommendations to assist in the transfer process. Beyond alignment with bachelor’s degree programs, the alignment of community college programs with workforce needs is a crucial strategy to promote workforce preparation. To this end, Neal discusses the ways that workforce education programs engage with advisory committees to create mutual understanding and improve the quality of community college workforce programs.

Throughout the book, several chapters address the needs and concerns of specific groups of students given community colleges’ role in promoting equity and access in workforce preparation. Students living in rural areas can be underserved by the educational system, and Koricich highlights the many ways that community colleges play an important role in providing economic opportunities in rural communities. Community colleges can also provide a pipeline for teachers of color in K-12 education that does not exist in other sectors of education, according to Byrd and Louis. Providing education to prisoners in correctional facilities is another way community colleges help facilitate the transition to the workforce for a population that faces particular difficulties; Priester and Smith discuss innovative practices in this area.

In addition to special populations of students, community colleges also serve particular industries. They play a significant role in providing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education to meet important workforce needs. Lopez discusses the challenges in preparing the STEM workforce and, in particular, identifying the specific skills needed in the workplace. Byrd and Louis’ discussion of the teaching pipeline for students of color provides important insights on the contributions of community colleges to the diversity of the K-12 sector.

The book successfully highlights a diverse array of innovative practices. This wide range of practices reflects an openness to the conceptualization of the community college role in workforce education that is quite valuable. By including this range of practices, the book demonstrates that innovations in workforce education occur in nearly every function of the community college—from advising to learning strategies to system linkages—with diverse groups of students and numerous industries. The recognition makes an important contribution to the understanding of how community colleges are engaged in workforce education.

The book’s strength—its diversity of perspectives and practices highlighted—is also its weakness. Because the variety of approaches is so widespread, it is difficult to draw conclusions from across the chapters to provide some common observations or lessons on what is most innovative and why. The book provides a collection of chapters that individually provide useful insights on community colleges and their contribution to workforce education, but the book could do more to synthesize themes across the chapters. A broader framework to make sense of the lessons in these chapters would strengthen this otherwise very valuable but wide ranging collection of practices.

Furthermore, the book would benefit from clear definitions of some key concepts. First, what constitutes an innovative practice is not defined. Many of the practices highlighted are novel, but how they may be judged in terms of their actual effectiveness is not discussed. Second, the conception of the global workforce is also not defined. Given the local focus of community colleges, it is not clear how this emphasis balances with the conception of the global workforce that is in the title of this book. A discussion of these key concepts in the preface would have helped to better frame the book.

Despite some ways that the book could be stronger, Examining the Impact of Community Colleges on the Global Workforce provides a useful compilation of papers of importance to understanding aspects of the community college role in workforce education. Many of these topics are ones that do not traditionally receive much attention. This book provides a good reference for those interested in thinking broadly about workforce education and in examining novel approaches. It also highlights issues that are ripe for further examination in key areas, including advising, learning reform, system linkages, special student populations, and specific industry needs.