You Can't Handle the Links

• College strategic plans for increasing student success are by nature long-term efforts, so concrete measures of progress often take years to appear. What do you do when your work to “move the needle” is slow going, or when initiative fatigue sets in at your institution? According to Inside Higher Ed, Monroe Community College has “started a series of modest but tangible 100-day projects to improve the college.” These projects are intended as small steps toward larger goals, but they also foster broad engagement and keep motivation high. Their first project is to “streamline the application and enrollment process so that prospective students have to create one password instead of three.” As blogger Dean Dad points out, this idea requires widespread institutional buy-in. If people don’t take it seriously, it won’t work. Wondering how to get that buy-in? Nick Bekas of Valencia Colleges offers his advice on building alliances in an Accelerating Achievement post earlier this year. 
• A substantial portion of our nation’s workforce is unemployed or underemployed, but many companies can’t find the workers they need to fill high-skill jobs. Why are we struggling to train workers for existing positions when so many are in need of work? Maureen Conway of the Aspen Institute says that workforce training and education programs don’t do enough to address the real-world challenges adult students face. She sees a need for increased funding and budgetary flexibility for integrated student support services. Check out Colin Austin’s guest post on an approach that weaves together education and training, income supports, and financial services. Another reason that we can’t fill those open positions? It isn’t readily apparent to students or colleges what employers are looking for. Jobs for the Future’s Credentials that Work initiative uses real-time labor market information to help students choose credentials that will get them jobs, and to help institutions craft programs with local labor market value.  
• Last week in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, developmental English professor Brian Hall of Cuyahoga Community College (a DEI Institution) shared some insight into “What Really Matters to Working Students.” Frustrated by students’ seemingly constant absence and inattention, Hall asked one of his developmental English classes to explain why so few students are successful. The biggest reason his students gave: the difficulty of balancing academics with life. Between work schedules and family responsibilities, many students feel that their motivation to do well in class is eclipsed by unforeseen hurdles. While developmental educators can’t eliminate these hurdles (see the previous bullet for what colleges can do), Hall and his students recommend ways professors can keep students on track, and caution against behavior that could knock them off course permanently. They propose that professors should make expectations and rules apparent from the start, treat students with the respect they require in return, make class work relevant and engaging, and show students that it is ok to make mistakes if you learn from them. 
• The College Board has released a new “web based tool that provides quick and easy access to national, state and initiative-level data that describe the progress and success of community college students.” The Completion Arch establishes indicators for five areas: enrollment, developmental education placement, progress, transfer and completion, and workforce preparation and employment outcomes. You can filter the indicators by data source, state, and student characteristics. The site is easy to navigate, so check it out for yourself! 
• The Hartford Courant ran an op-ed from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University last week on Connecticut’s recent developmental education legislation. Tom Bailey, Katherine Hughes, and Shana Smith Jaggers expressed their concerns over the potential negative impact that the legislation could have on students in need of significant skill development before they are ready for college-level coursework. They also noted their concerns about buy-in from college faculty and staff: “A policy that gives community college practitioners flexibility and support to try out new models — and that includes accountability measures to accelerate real change — would make them far more likely to embrace reforms on an institutional and state level.”