Workforce Education Research and Tools

What distinguishes partnerships that succeed? How can they be built? This publication answers those questions, offering guidance to employers seeking to build strong partnerships with community colleges.

Through quantitative and qualitative research on practices at 30 high-performing community colleges, and using concrete examples and step-by-step instruction, Aspen highlights what colleges can do to build more effective workforce programs.

This guide explains how colleges can improve graduates’ labor market success by using available data to inform their program alignment to labor market needs and to measure the labor market outcomes of their graduates, offering concrete examples and describing six data sets that colleges can use today.

Featuring eight brief papers from leading education and workforce experts from around the country, the report offers practical advice for institutional leaders, policymakers, students and their advisors about how to use the increasingly available information on the economic value of higher education.

These tools leverage Aspen’s research to help college leaders better understand how to craft messaging (and consider better program designs and supports) to encourage these populations to pursue strong community college technical programs.

An interactive activity to allow college staff to practice drafting effective messaging to unemployed, underemployed, and opportunity youth populations. Use in conjunction with “Outreach and Messaging to Underrepresented Populations: Tools and Resources.”

In 2018 - 2019, the Aspen Institute, with support from the Siemens Foundation, conducted eight focus groups and a national survey to better understand how unemployed, underemployed, and opportunity youth populations think about work, training, and community college. This brief summarizes our findings.