Community Colleges at the Heart of Workforce Education and Training
Community colleges play a lead role within the State of California’s workforce development
system, which comprises a wide range of agencies, departments, programs and funding
streams focused on helping students, unemployed adults, incumbent workers, veterans,
and underemployed workers obtain the skills and credentials needed to participate
successfully in the workforce and move along a career and wage progression.
It is critical that the programs administered by the Chancellor’s Office be aligned to the
mission of the community colleges contribution to jobs and the economy. The
Collaboratives, Initiatives, Advisories, and Consortia must partner in new ways with a laser
focus on preparing students with the skills required to meet the demands of the new
workforce.
In that context, the programs administered by the Workforce and Economic and
Development (WED) Division of the Chancellor’s Office shall:
 Be responsive to the needs of employers, workers, and students.
 Collaborate with other public institutions, aligning resources to foster cooperation
across workforce education and service delivery systems, building well-articulated
career pathways.
 Have programmatic decisions that are data-driven and evidenced-based, investing
resources and adopting practices on the basis of what works.
 Develop strong partnerships with the private sector, ensuring industry involvement in
needs assessment, planning, and program evaluation.
 Be outcome oriented and accountable, measuring results for program participants,
including employers and workers.
 Be accessible to employers, workers, and students who may benefit from its operation.
Goals
The Workforce and Economic and Development programs goals are:
1. To advance California's economic growth and global competitiveness through
education, training, and services that contributes to continuous workforce
improvement.
2. To bolster California's economic and jobs recovery through labor market-aligned
education, workforce training services, and sector strategies that include workforce
improvement, technology deployment, and business development that meet the
needs of California’s competitive and emerging industry sectors and industry
clusters.
a. To use labor market information to advise the Chancellor’s Office and
regional community college bodies on the workforce needs of California’s
competitive and emerging industry sectors and industry clusters.
b. To the extent possible, all WED programs shall work with, share information
with, and consider the labor market analyses produced by the Employment
Development Department’s Labor Market Information Division and the
California Workforce Investment Board.
3. To provide logistical, technical, and communications infrastructure support that
engenders alignment between the career technical education programs of the
community college system and the needs of California’s competitive and emerging
industry sectors and industry clusters.
4. To collaborate and coordinate investment with other state, regional and/or local
agencies involved in education and workforce training in California, including but
not limited to the California Workforce Investment Board, the Employment Training
Panel, the California Department of Education, and the Employment Development
Department
5. To identify, acquire, and leverage community college and other financial and in-kind
public and private resources to support economic and workforce development and
the career technical education programs of the state’s community colleges
6. To work with representatives of business, labor, and professional trade associations
to explore and develop alternatives for assisting incumbent workers in the state’s
competitive and emerging industry sectors. A key objective is to enable incumbent
workers to become more competitive in their region’s labor market, increase
competency, and identify career pathways to economic self-sufficiency, a living
wage, and lifelong access to good paying jobs.
7. To supply in-demand skills for employers, creating relevant pathways and stackable
credentials, getting Californians into open jobs, and ensuring student success.
Workforce and Economic Development Program Objectives
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To analyze, secure, and disseminate labor market data in a way that informs and
supports state, regional and local decision-making regarding college programming,
including decisions to increase or decrease investments in programs of study in context
of the regional economy
To adopt a skills panel process, as a default process, when responding to labor market
needs.
To moderate the workforce system complexity for industry and partners who interact
with the community colleges – in particular, for those competitive and emergent sectors
that span multiple geographic regions and a multitude of colleges – through a network
of sector navigators, partnerships and collaborations.
DOING What Matters ™ for Jobs & the Economy
To better address the structural skills mismatch, the California Community Colleges
Chancellor’s Office, Workforce and Economic Development Division (WED) will embark on a
two-year campaign for DOING What Matters ™ for Jobs & the Economy. This four-pronged
effort will inform local decision making, address regional economies and focus on competitive
and emerging industry sectors.
DOING What Matters ™ for Jobs & the Economy
GOALS
Doing What Matters™ will reinforce student success through skills panels. Once an unmet labor
market need is identified:
 A sector navigator, if needed, will be designated to moderate the complexity of the
workforce system.
 An inventory of community college assets for expertise/capabilities/capacity will be
collected to address labor market need.
 Potential workforce partners: employers, unions, regions, agencies (CDE, CC, CSU,
UC, CWIB, local WIBs, ETP, EDD, etc.), other will be identified.
 Partners will convene into skills panel to drive deliverables:
 Curriculum model definition/approval
 Define career pathway or systems of stackable credential articulation, including
contextualized basic skills
 Map to career readiness assessment
 Insert career guidance module into CACareerCafé.com and
WhoDoUWant2B.com
 A proposed funding framework to build out blueprint will be developed (RFA should
include common metrics)