Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Promising 'Pathways': Advancing Low-Skilled Adults to Jobs, Degrees

Photos and story by James Hill

by Susan HerefordJose "Carlos" Alvarez, age 40, turned to Portland Community College’s Career Pathways program when he lost his entry-level job in customer service at one of the area banks last July. Alvarez, who is a native of Havana, Cuba, and has political asylum, made three separate attempts to flee Cuba on a raft and finally reached the U.S. in 2000, not knowing a soul in Oregon and hardly knowing a word of English. "I didn’t even know how to ask for a glass of water," he said.When Alvarez first arrived in Oregon, he got help from the local refugee center and began taking English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at Portland Community College. He returned to the community college after losing the bank job, this time to train in accounting and bookkeeping through the Pathways program, which provides short-term training for people who are either disadvantaged or lack needed skills to enter college-level programs. Losing a job in his new country created family stress and financial setbacks. But he was determined to turn it around. Alvarez recently completed the six-month training and local consulting firm ProfitNet hired him as an account processor. He is now taking lower-division classes at Portland State University and Portland Community College through a dual enrollment program "I have been getting a lot of help," says the 40-year-old, who gives back by providing volunteer medical translator services for a Latino low-income clinic. "I want to convince people that if you are serious, responsible, in this country you can succeed. America is a great country." Career Pathways breaks up traditional curriculum into smaller pieces so job seekers and workers can more easily get the skills employers need. The program includes 12 career choices, from accounting clerk in Alvarez’ case, to 9-1-1 dispatcher to pharmacy technician. "Breaking Through" – Report Gives Road Map to Success"Breaking Through: Helping Low-Skilled Adults Enter and Succeed in College and Careers," is a report prepared by Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education, an affiliate of American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) to share programs like the one at PCC. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation funded the project, which identifies four strategies to increase access and success to help low-literacy adults prepare for and succeed in occupational and technical degree programs: the integration of institutional structures and services; accelerated learning; labor market payoffs; and comprehensive support. In April, the Mott Foundation announced an additional $750,000 in funding for a demonstration project to implement the report’s recommendations. The common thread is the desire to improve the odds for low-skilled and low-income adults to earn technical and occupational skills and succeed. Unfortunately, there are obstacles at every point in the pipeline to move this group from adult education programs into degree programs. Evidence points to the 65 percent of GED students who state the desire to go to college, yet only 4 percent end up earning an associate degree. The "Breaking Through" report shares approaches from 14 programs across the country that use one or more strategies to increase student access and success. The report states, "Traditional degree programs are not designed to reflect the realities of life for low-skilled working adults, many of them with families … These obstacles are compounded by the fragmented, disconnected, and difficult-to-access nature of the education, training and support services they need. These barriers weaken persistence at every level." Pathways "chunked" curriculum Portland Community College, in partnership with Mt. Hood Community College in Portland, Ore., wanted to pull together a broad range of programs and funding streams to set up modularized career pathways from adult education and workforce development programs into credit-level degree training programs. They also wanted to address the stop-out and dropout rate of many low-skilled and low-income adults. Nan Poppe, a national leader in workforce development education and vice president for academic affairs at Portland Community College, said, "We are losing too many people before degree completion. Every single community college in America, no matter whether rural, suburban or urban, is struggling to help the students who come who are not ready for college."The only way this will be effective, stressed Poppe, is an institutional mind-set change to bring the credit and non-credit side of the institution more closely together. "We’re taking existing college programming and making it more accessible so that students can move from our Pathways trainings into credit programs," she said. Poppe said the approach is to streamline curriculum into manageable "chunks." It is providing results. The program serves approximately 250 people each year. Students can gain a foothold in a career while providing an opportunity to move into credit programs following the three-to-six-month Pathways certification, or to return to college later for degree completion. At PCC, the college has now created these chunked pathways in 17 separate career areas, which also includes "bridge" training designed for non-native English speakers. Training ranges from accounting/bookkeeping to HVAC installation to medical lab assistant, with options in each for students to go on to a two-year degree in a professional technical field, or in a few instances, a bachelor’s degree. Strong partnerships with local employers and curriculum driven by labor market skill needs is key. For PCC and other community college across the country, successful strategies include close relationships with local, state and federal training agencies, primarily workforce investment boards, to provide the opportunities for economic and educational advancement. Judith Taylor, program director at Jobs for the Future and one of the authors of the report, stated that the challenges of developing career pathways for low-skilled adults are many. "It requires community colleges to build strong partnerships with employers, develop new competency-based curriculum, piece funding from multiple unconnected streams and gain the support of leaders and practitioners from multiple programs."The payoffs are great, however, for helping low-skilled adults gain the training they need to get good jobs and support their families. A value-added benefit is the increase in student enrollment and retention at community colleges. And importantly, these promising pathways are addressing the shortage of America’s skilled workers and helping create a better-trained workforce to help the nation compete globally.