The Missing Piece

Increasingly, community colleges are measuring success by the outcomes their students achieve, in addition to the number of students they serve. The national push for completion of degrees, certificates, and transfer to four-year institutions has helped to focus colleges on measurable goals. However, while completion outcomes are important metrics of success, they do not measure all of the goals of community colleges. There are also significant metrics of success related to workforce development—like gains in earning and job retention—which can occur outside of the completion framework. Examining non-completion pathways and better measuring employment outcomes can help colleges develop stronger programs that reflect the diverse goals of their students.

Community colleges support a variety of job training programs that provide significant benefits to students but do not result in college certificates or degrees, such as apprenticeship programs, courses that prepare students to earn an industry certification or professional license, and contract education programs that enable employees to upgrade their skills in fields such as technology or public safety. In addition, some community college students take only the few courses that they need to secure a new job or advance in an existing one, with no intention of completing a credential or transferring. As more states seek to link funding to student outcomes, colleges need ways to measure and evaluate non-completion successes, just as they have developed methods of measuring completion outcomes.