• Advisory Councils Many community colleges across the nation have established advisory councils or boards to share information from experts to help make the community college and its programs stronger. Advisory Council members often include faculty, students, community members and business leaders. These groups can serve the institution as a whole or be established by discipline, and activities could include everything from offering high-level strategic planning to implementing local partnerships. Advisory Council connections are often a great way to connect to a community college partner.
  • Career Placement Test Career placement tests, sometimes referred to as pre-employment tests, are one method of screening applicants for a particular job or industry, and are used by some businesses in the skilled trades. These tests measure an individual’s aptitude for a range of capabilities, like math or industry knowledge, tied to the type of position or program the applicant is applying for. Some partnership programs offer lessons and learning geared towards helping participants pass career placement tests.
  • Community-based Organizations The term community-based organizations or CBOs refers to a wide range of grassroots groups that address community needs. Community-based organizations include groups such as: a local United Way, food bank, human service organizations, skills-focused training centers, or community foundations. There are a wide variety of community organizations unique to a local area that can help facilitate or be part of public-private partnerships.
  • Community Colleges Community colleges are postsecondary education and training institutions that enroll almost half of all undergraduates in America, with the mission of providing education for individuals, many of whom are adults, in their service regions. There are 1,132 regionally accredited, primarily associate degree granting community colleges across the country. While offering degrees in many fields, community colleges have the flexibility to also offer credentials or certifications in a shorter time period or in more targeted areas of expertise. Although some community college students enroll with the intention of eventually obtaining a degree from a four-year institution, many students in fact never intend to go beyond an associate’s degree and other students only seek to get a certification or credential for professional purposes. Some students seek to enroll in a class or specific program to enhance their skills, knowledge or training.
    Community colleges are inclusive institutions. Most have open enrollment. Approximately 13 million students are enrolled in America’s community colleges and two-thirds of community college students attend part-time. People of color comprise 45% of students. The average age of community college students is 28, and more than half are already employed. Learn more about community colleges and community college students at the American Association of Community Colleges or Skills for America’s Future.
  • Consortium (Plural: Consortia) Often when discussing business-community college partnerships, a consortium is generally a grouping of individuals or businesses within a similar industry that are experiencing similar workforce challenges. It often is used specifically to refer to a group of businesses, and sometimes community colleges, that join together based on a common interest – industry, geographic region, training need, etc. – to achieve more success as a group than they could as individuals. One example is the multistate Auto Communities Consortium (ACC), which was established in 2010 by community colleges in the Midwest to address pervasive economic losses faced by communities whose major employers were auto industry related, and now consists of 37 community colleges located in 17 states.
  • Industry Associations Businesses both large and small join together in industry associations or trade associations to accomplish any number of activities, from forming a powerful voice for advocating on their specific industry needs to organizing standards or providing research. As business-community college partnerships are established and grow, industry associations can play a key role on agreeing on new credentials or training programs that should be recognized and valued in their hiring practices and helping make skills and credentials accepted across businesses. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is an example of an industry association that has focused on addressing many of the challenges businesses are facing when it comes to finding workers to fit their skills requirements.
  • Industry-Recognized Credentials Credentials are recognition of an individual’s knowledge and training in a certain subject area, typically given by a higher-education institution or training center and used by businesses to evaluate the capabilities of future employees or to consider incumbent employees for new positions. Education institutions may develop curricula and credentials, not necessarily understood or aligned with other training or employment opportunities in other regions. To help combat misalignment, industry-recognized credentials are a set of specific skills and training programs with value within a certain industry, allowing businesses to be assured of an individual’s skills and individuals to better market themselves with proven skills.
  • Stackable and Portable Credentials There are many types of knowledge and skill sets that form the base of other higher-level skills. Instead of repeating basic information in new training or certification programs, many higher-education or training facilities are offering what is known as “stackable” credentials, allowing individuals to continually build new skills and knowledge on top of their already granted certifications. These credentials help an individual through a career pathway, accumulating and building on each past credential to eventually form a strong training background to advance their career. The goal of stackable credentials are to first build a foundation of basic academic and workplace requirements, followed by cross-cutting technical competencies and finally more specialized, occupationally specific skills. For this method to be successful, credentials also should be “portable,” meaning that they are recognized and accepted not only at other businesses, but also at other educational institutions and in other regions. See more on credentials from the U.S. Department of Labor, or learn about the Manufacturing Institute’s NAM-Endorsed Manufacturing Skills Certification System, a system of stackable, nationally portable and industry-recognized credentials that can apply to all sectors in the manufacturing industry.
  • National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC) Administered by ACT, the non-profit organization that administers the widely-recognized college admissions test, the NCRC assesses employability skills by looking at three areas: “applied mathematics, locating information, [and] reading for information.” This test is used by employers and training programs as a pre-screening tool to determine how candidates respond to a variety of questions on applied skills and “work-related behaviors,” sometimes referred to as soft skills.
  • Skills Gap/Skills Mismatch/Talent Mismatch The skills gap is a term that generally refers to the large number of open jobs in businesses across the country that is said to be due to businesses’ inability to find workers with the right skills and training to match position requirements. While there has been much discussion on the existence or breadth of the skills gap, the phrases talent mismatch or skills mismatch may more appropriately describe the current situation faced by businesses in the skilled trades, as factors such as rapid changes in technology, increasing skills demands from employers and globalization have impacted the labor market in an unprecedented manner.