This article reports on four synthesis findings from the Credentials to Careers (C2C) initiative -- a consortium of seven community colleges working to create and implement innovative programs to train or retrain unemployed and displaced workers for STEM, advanced manufacturing and health-care-related careers. These are 1) collaborating with…

Rural areas depend upon community colleges to train people for the fields that match their regions' current and growing needs. To do so, these colleges must keep abreast of the employment trends in their area, be aware of where jobs have been lost and where they are being gained and determine how to recruit students who might be reluctant to be…

Deciding which field to study is one of the most consequential decisions college students make, but most research on the topic focuses on students attending four-year colleges. To understand how students attending community colleges make field of study decisions, I link administrative educational records of recent high school graduates with local…

This study synthesizes lessons learned about the promising role of "career navigators" at community colleges to aid students in the transitions through disjunctures in their careers. Career navigators are student support personnel who follow students from recruitment, through their studies or training programs, to job placement. Findings…

Strategic planning decisions and determinations in higher education present significant challenges even during relatively uneventful economic periods. In times of economic turbulence, the only predictable factor is a constantly diminishing funding base. Community colleges in particular are affected most directly and immediately by downturns in the…

In 2007, Michigan undertook a bold mission: to retrain tens of thousands of adults to qualify for jobs in emerging and expanding sectors of the economy. The state's proposal to jobless, dislocated, and low-income residents was simple but appealing: enroll in up to two years of postsecondary education, and Michigan would cover up to $5,000 in…

Due to the severe economic decline in the automobile manufacturing industry in southeastern Michigan, a Dislocated Workers Program has been developed through the partnership of the Flint Area Chamber of Commerce, three community colleges, the National Center for Research in Vocational Education, the Michigan State Department of Education, the…

A study examined the Canadian-American Plant Closing Demonstration Project (CAPCDP) to assess the influence of the labor-management approach on factors critical to project success and to identify practices that enabled the labor-management committees set up under the project to work better. CAPCDPs in Idaho, Michigan, New Jersey, and Vermont were…

To comply with the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984 requirements, the Michigan State Advisory Council for Vocational Education reviewed data from the Michigan Department of Education to determine the accessibility of vocational education to secondary and postsecondary students as it relates to enrollments. The evaluation component…

The Future of Work project grew out of an essay of the same title by Frithjof Bergmann, a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan. In spring 1983, Professor Bergmann and a colleague, Richard Gull, founded the Center for New Work of Flint in Michigan, where the problems besieging the U.S. auto industry were focusing attention on the…

This document lists 35 training programs in Michigan that provide job training assistance to nearly 1,000,000 people, with an annual investment of more than $800 million in federal, state, local, and private funds. The programs illustrate the two-fold purpose of job training: to build and maintain Michigan's reputation for a skilled, versatile…

Income replacement and reemployment programs in Michigan and its neighboring states were examined in the context of recent changes in federal policy regarding compensation and services for individuals who have lost their jobs or sustained job-related injuries. The analysis focused primarily on the following programs: (1) Unemployment Insurance…