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Community colleges adapt to needs of students and businesses
By SCOTT SIEVERS
News-Gazette Correspondent
SAVOY – Want to tack new skills onto your resume,
master the latest computer software, rack up college credits, finish high
school or simply bone up on cultural anthropology at 3 a.m. while clad only
in your pajamas?
Better get to Parkland – Parkland College in Champaign,
that is. Or maybe try Danville Area Community College. Either way, many
find the 20th century innovation known as the community college to be the
perfect fit for the future.
"They are accessible, . . . they are affordable,
and they have high-quality educational opportunities, and they need to make
sure that people are aware of that and take advantage of that," said
state Rep. Rick Winkel, R-Champaign, a member of the House Higher Education
Committee.
The nation's first community college – Joliet
Junior College – opened in 1901 in Illinois. The concept gained momentum
following the passage of the GI Bill of Rights in 1944 and a report published
by President Truman's Commission on Higher Education in 1947, according
to the American Association of Community Colleges. The so-called Truman
Commission Report popularized the phrase "community college" and
championed the colleges' creation.
Illinois now has the nation's third-largest community
college system, with 48 community colleges, according to the Illinois Community
College Board. The colleges enroll high proportions of minorities, legal
immigrants and low-income and urban youth.
"They were designed especially to serve a population of people who normally would not be able to go on and participate in higher education," said Zelema Harris, president of Parkland College, which opened in 1967.
Community colleges have long provided college classes whose credits could later transfer to a four-year college or university. They've also offered classes so students could earn a high school-equivalent diploma or focus in on a specific occupational field such as auto mechanics or nursing.
"Those are . . . key areas, the traditional transition, the bridge between high school and college or university, but also the developing area of employability training and job-skill training," Winkel said.
While still committed to serving the student bound for a four-year college or university, community colleges now find their mission – and market – broadening.
People already working are turning to community colleges to freshen their skills or build upon them. Others are finding community colleges ideal for getting up to speed on the latest computer software. Still others are relying upon community colleges to supply their companies with employees already trained for their new jobs.
And students throughout East Central Illinois and beyond are finding that community colleges are more accessible than ever, thanks to creative approaches and flexible technology.
"Education is so important to people, and people realize that it's something that they're going to need throughout their lifetime," said Alice Marie Jacobs, president of Danville Area Community College, which was established in 1946.
Illinois community colleges attracted more than 31,000 college and university graduates to their campuses in 1995 for more schooling, according to the state community college board. What draws many are the computer courses. Both DACC and Parkland, for example, offer dozens of courses on software packages popular in most workplaces – word processors, spreadsheets, databases and the like.
"It used to be you'd go back to school maybe once every two or three years, but now with the development of new software and modern equipment all driven by technology, people have to come back and retrain every few months," Harris said. "We love it. We love that explosion because that means we're going to stay in business if we do the right thing."
For some businesses, the right thing to do is turn to their local community colleges for help finding skilled employees. DACC, for example, has worked with the Danville Area Economic Development Corp. and area businesses to create what they call "clusters."
The idea is to get students interested in developing skills in a certain field by alerting them to clear paths to jobs within a "cluster" of area businesses operating in those fields. One cluster includes two dozen area metals manufacturing companies, while another includes logistics and transportation-related businesses.
"The Economic Development Corporation has formed a metals cluster, a logistics cluster, and now they're forming an information technology cluster, and we're able as a result of that to develop very specific, targeted programs for those specific industries," Jacobs said.
In some cases, a company within a cluster will pay for students' schooling while also hiring them on for apprenticeships.
Employers' needs have spurred similar programs at Parkland to match up businesses to students.
"I was hearing from employers like Plastipak, 'We need workers! We need workers! We're having to go outside this area to find workers! We're having to go outside the state to find skilled workers!'" Harris said. So Parkland staff began meeting with companies, and now the college has more than 35 arrangements with area employers, who provide internships and jobs for trained students while they're in school and afterward.
"It's easier to recruit students if you can tell them, 'Look, if you come into this program, we guarantee you a job,'" Harris said. Parkland can say that about its automotive technology program with Ford Motor Company, for example, where students both go to school at Parkland and work jobs at Ford dealerships. "It's one thing for a company to say 'We want workers' and leave it to us to figure out how to get them to them; it's another thing when they feel strongly that they're willing to partner with us."
Both DACC and Parkland have found it vital to keep abreast of the needs of their customers, including students and employers, and both colleges do it by regularly surveying them.
"The college is very much interested in whether or not the constituents that we serve are satisfied with the services we provide," Jacobs said. Those surveyed have given DACC high marks, she said.
The college also uses committees of graduates, area business people and those employed in a certain field to advise DACC program coordinators how to configure their curriculum.
"I just attended an advisory committee. It happened to be the accounting advisory committee, and there was discussion . . . about the need for graduates to have skills that were developed in terms of solving problems in teams," Jacobs said, "and there was a component added to the curriculum to address that."
Parkland, too, relies on input from those outside the college through what it calls its "Futures" conferences.
"We invite the various chambers of commerce, school board members, superintendents, business owners to come and talk to us about their needs and to make sure that we're doing the best possible job in serving the needs of our various constituencies," Harris said.
The college has had four such conferences in the past year, each focused on a particular field, including health care, information technology and manufacturing technology.
"We held one in agriculture so that we could bring prominent people in to talk about the trends in agriculture," Harris said. "Our faculty and staff were there, and they're able to take that information and translate it into curricula to make sure we're meeting those needs."
DACC and Parkland aren't just meeting employers' needs, though. They're also crafting courses to better fit students' lives.
While they naturally offer courses during the daytime for conventional students, they also offer an array of options, including nighttime, self-paced and shorter-term courses.
"People are pushing us to provide the kind of delivery systems that meet their needs," Harris said.
At DACC, the traditional semester system is just a starting point for class schedules.
"We have a lot of classes that don't start right at the beginning of the semester, and that's just an indication of how flexible Danville Area Community College is. Not every class starts lockstep at the beginning of the semester. We have late-starting classes," Jacobs said.
The college is even considering starting some classes during the break periods between semesters. "There are some students, they really don't want to take three weeks off, and they'd like to use that time to perhaps earn three credits."
Both DACC and Parkland offer classes on campus, but they also offer televised, interactive video and even Internet courses.
"With technology, it's becoming easier for people to access the education that they need at times that are convenient for them, and I think that people are going to expect more education that is available to them when they want it so that we really need to concentrate on . . . being very flexible in terms of our delivery systems," Jacobs said.
Harris agreed.
"I think we'll see nothing but growth in that area, because what people want, they want to be able to take courses whenever they want them, wherever they want them. They don't want these constraints such as time and location," she said. "If it's . . . midnight and they want to get online and work on their class work, they should be able to do it."
And with more people facing a world without public assistance, community colleges' flexibility could make them essential in the transition from welfare to work.
"For people to make that transition, they . . . need to have training in job skills that will not just limit them to the lower-paying minimum wage sort of entry-level jobs, but actually try to move them up the employment ladder with the job skills that will give them a living wage," Winkel said.
Community colleges can provide that training, Harris said.
"We're moving people from welfare to work and . . . getting people jobs, getting them in school, moving them from where they are to a level of self-sufficiency where they can enjoy a better quality of life," she said, "and I think that's what community colleges ought to be. They ought to transform communities, they ought to transform people's lives, and that's why we're here."
The News-Gazette welcomes comments from readers on the
issues raised in this article. Please send your comments to: Editor, The
News-Gazette, 15 Main St., P.O. Box 677, Champaign, IL 61824-0677. Send
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