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Helping Low-Skilled Adults Enter and Succeed in College and Careers |
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Around the country, innovative community colleges are playing a larger role in helping low-skilled adults gain the valuable skills and credentials that are the gateway to family-supporting careers. Breaking Through, a multi-year demonstration project, promotes and enhances the efforts of community colleges to help low-literacy adults prepare for and succeed in occupational and technical degree programs. The evidence is increasingly persuasive that a postsecondary credential is the key to jobs and careers that pay family-sustaining wages, yet, almost 90 million adults in the United States lack the academic skills needed for admission to community college occupational/technical degree programs. For example, only about 2 million adults annually enroll in Adult Basic Education, the major federal program geared to this population. Of ABE students, 7 percent complete the GED, about one-third of those who complete the GED enroll in college GED, and a mere 4 percent of GED completers earn a two-year college degree. A grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation is supporting the first year of a multi-year initiative to promote colleges' implementation of strategies and programs to help low-literacy adults prepare for and succeed in community college occupational and technical degree programs. These leadership colleges will receive funding and technical support to expand and institutionalize their approaches. In addition, 10 institutions have been selected as learning colleges. These colleges already have begun to restructure their offerings to support the advancement of low-literacy students to degree programs, and they have demonstrated their commitment to doing more. They benefit from opportunities to learn from one another and also will receive technical assistance from NCWE and JFF.
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