How CUNY Can Expand Pathways for Job-Focused Education

A Corporation-supported report creates a roadmap for CUNY community colleges to build on recent innovations in support of economic mobility and career success

By Carnegie Corporation of New York October 22, 2021

Future of Learning & Work

As the economy recovers from a debilitating pandemic, demand for fast, job-focused upskilling is increasing. These essential trainings include IT training, safety training, technical training, and more. The seven community colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system, which are spread across the five boroughs of New York City and boast a long history of enabling socioeconomic mobility among New Yorkers, are committed to providing those educational opportunities.

CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez has made career success a priority, proposing reforms that center on job-focused education. A recent Corporation-supported report released by Opportunity America provides a roadmap to build on those innovations. The recommendations in the new report urge CUNY to strengthen their commitment to economic mobility and career success, which is part of the university’s mission.

Farhad Asghar, program officer with the Corporation’s Education program, manages the Pathways to Postsecondary Success portfolio. By prioritizing college access and completion, particularly for low-income and first-generation students, the portfolio works to better align K–12 learning, higher education, and careers to prepare young people for the future of work.

“There exist structural inequities in American education leading to the several barriers that we know about postsecondary success,” commented Asghar, a CUNY graduate himself, who spoke at the release event for the Opportunity America report. He continued, “As a result, the way the system is now configured forces high school graduates into a false choice: either enroll in college and delay income while accruing debt, or find entry-level work and lower chances for social mobility…. We’ve had a failure to effectively update the educational system, which has led to the reality that we have policymakers cynically questioning the value of a college degree without investing in other viable postsecondary options. Families continue to see the affordability of higher education as a big concern daunted by the complicated processes, unclear about other viable pathways.” Asghar concluded, “What we need to do is make sure that we are connecting the system, creating a line between K–12, higher ed, and the world of work because we need solutions that present an all-in-one-system perspective.”

The Opportunity America report tackles these concerns at CUNY community colleges. Among the report’s top proposals:

Monitor the New York City labor market and adjust course offerings to respond as it shifts, teaching skills in demand in today’s workplace. This begins with a state-of-the-art labor market information research center that provides granular, real-time data on industry trends, job postings, in-demand skills, and the supply of talent likely to be available to fill anticipated openings. The next step is strategic, systemwide coordination to ensure that CUNY has the right programs in place to meet citywide demand – next year and in years ahead.
Create a central employer outreach hub that generates industry partners and job-focused programs for campuses across the university. A workforce solutions hub focused on career education and training will serve as the system’s central portal for employers, marketing what’s available at the colleges, recruiting industry partners, and sharing business contacts with colleagues on other campuses.
A pilot project that combines credit and noncredit workforce education under one roof. By breaking down existing silos, the aim is to enable students to more easily transition from one to the other and create a continuum of credit and noncredit job-focused programs.
A pilot project, modeled on CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs initiative, to help students chart a path to a high-demand, high-paying job. This proposal includes a varied package of services: “intrusive advising,” instructors with industry work experience, a streamlined sequencing of instruction, aggressive contextualized remediation, experiential learning for every student, and financial aid. Most importantly, this initiative would involve an on-campus job placement service in the model of a staffing agency, dedicated to employer outreach and helping students bridge the gap from college to career.

The proposal also suggests that CUNY prioritize a more intentional emphasis on midcareer adult learners and a more aggressive approach to embedding competency-based industry certifications in workforce education, among other recommendations.

The report equips CUNY community colleges with recommendations they can implement and utilize to leverage attention and assistance from policymakers and advocates who can support these long-term efforts.

To learn more, read the full report Today's Students, Tomorrow’s Workforce: A Roadmap for Change at CUNY Community Colleges.

TOP: Plaque at the City University of New York headquarters in New York City. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)