City Partnerships Are Boosting the Profile of Community Colleges
A central mission of America’s community colleges involves job training. Two-year institutions have long been seen as places where mid-career workers could update their skills or high school graduates could get training that would lead to solid paying, blue collar job. President Obama lent credence to this notion over the summer when he emphasized the role that community colleges can play in helping the nation recover from the economic crisis.
Today, New York City displayed its belief in that idea by announcing a new partnership with CUNY’s LaGuardia Community College. The new venture formed by LaGuradia, the New York City Department of Small Business Services and the Mayor’s Center for Economic Opportunity, will create a Workforce 1 Health Care Career Center dedicated to “training New Yorkers for more promising careers and higher paying jobs in professions as patient care technicians, emergency medical technicians, paramedics, licensed practical nurses, and registered nurses, among other health-related occupations.” The program hopes to place 750 New Yorkers into jobs in health care related fields over the first two years of its existence. Health care is one of the city’s largest employment sectors and it’s getting larger (and it’s one of the few areas of the local economy that hasn’t shed jobs during the recession), so laying the ground work to get workers into a field that actually has bright job prospects is a great move for the city and raises the awareness of the opportunities available at community colleges.
Tags: Education