This report describes how six Colorado community colleges used $1.4 million of pandemic relief funding to support individuals pursuing short-term credentials. The authors examined state and college decisions about program eligibility, student eligibility, grant amounts, funding uses, and application requirements as well as outcomes for those…

Black learners and workers face particular disadvantages in the labor market: casual and explicit racism, stereotypes about skills and professionalism, and limited access to the social networks and social capital required to connect to opportunity. Numerous research studies confirm that Black employees in the same fields and with the same degrees…

Community colleges offer a variety of workforce-oriented programs intended to help students gain skills and knowledge for a specific career or occupation. Among these are short-term credentials, designed to teach students a specific skillset related to an occupation, often in response to local labor market needs. Types of short-term credentials…

Efforts are underway by the Senate education committee to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Lawmakers are focused on establishing a state-federal partnership program to increase investments in higher education, providing more information to students and their families so they can make informed choices about where to go to college, and…