r road less traveled 02 11

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institute for higher education

leadership &policy

Realizing the Potential o Career Technical Education in

the Caliornia Community Colleges

THE ROAD LESS TR AVELED:

Institute or Higher Education Leadership & Policy

6000 J Street, Tahoe Hall 3063 | Sacramento, CA 95819-6081

T (916) 278-3888 | F (916) 278-3907 | www.csus.edu/ihelp

Nancy Shulock

Colleen Moore

Jeremy Oenstein

Februar y 2011


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Executive Summary

Potential o Career Technical EducationMission is Not Fully Tapped

The Career Technical Education (CTE) mission o Caliornias

community colleges is not well understood by policymakers

in comparison to the transer mission o the colleges. This

exploratory study, to be ollowed by a more comprehensive

research agenda, is motivated by the belie that CTE is a vital

piece o the college completion agenda but is not receiving

sucient attention. While students can be successul in CTE

in ways besides earning a certicate or degree, the issuing

o workorce-related credentials is an undeniably important

unction o the colleges.

CTE is important to the college completion agenda becauseit can help Caliornia:

n Meet completion goals

n Meet workorce goals

n Meet equity goals

n Increase postsecondary productivity

n Realize benets o high school reorms.

Caliornia is not yet poised to take ull advantage o thepotential o the CTE mission area because CTE is generally

characterized by:

n A lack o priority across the system

n Weak credential structures and transer pathways

n Underdeveloped data and accountability systems

n Higher costs that are not well addressed

n A lack o integration with core institutional operations.

There is solid evidence o good job prospects or students

with certicates and associate degrees in career elds.

Student interest in vocational coursework is high, with 30%

o course enrollments in vocational courses. Yet o the more

than 255,000 degree/certicate-seeking students in the

2003-04 entering cohort (dened as enrolling in more than 6

units in the rst year), only 5% earned certicates and only 3%

earned vocational associate degrees within six years.

Key Findings: Apparent Lack o Priorityon Technical Credentials

As a basis or exploring CTE more generally, we studied

patterns o student enrollment and progress in our high-

wage, high-need pathways (inormation technology,

engineering technology, engineering, and nursing), visited

CTE programs, interviewed aculty and sta, and reviewed

college catalogs and other materials. We know we cant

generalize to all programs in all colleges, given the great

variety in both, but the ollowing ndings strike us as

important to any eort to understand and improve student

outcomes in CTE programs.

1. Data constraints limit knowledge and college actions.The absence o provisions or students to declare a

program o study seriously impedes eorts to understand

and improve student success in CTE programs because

it is dicult to know which students are pursuing which

programs.

2. Good student progress is not translating into

credentials. Few certicates and degrees were awarded

despite considerable student progress. Far more

students accrue 30 or more college-level credits and

pass degree-applicable math than the relatively ew whoearn certicates or degrees. Additionally, more students

completed at least 60 transerable credits than the number

who transerred.

3. Pathway structures do not promote attainment

o technical credentials. A picture emerged o CTE

pathways that do not refect a high priority on career-

oriented credentials or on sequencing lower-to-higher

credentials within a eld. The route by which entering

students are expected to attain the basic skills needed or

their programs was unclear. There was no strong pattern

o students attaining credentials in the chosen eld o

study, with the great majority o associate degrees in

interdisciplinary studies rather than in a technical eld.

There is a huge variety o programs in some elds and

an equally huge variation across colleges in unit and

programmatic requirements or the same credential. Few

students who transerred earned associate degrees and ew

who earned associate degrees earned certicates.


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Recommendations: More Structure toHelp Students Meet Career Goals

This study is the rst stage o a broader research agenda aimed at

understanding how state and system policies might best promote

the success o students pursuing occupational programs. CTE is a

richly complex mission area that we believe can benet rom more

attention and greater understanding by policymakers and other

stakeholders. We have much to learn rom the work ahead, but

this exploratory research, in the context o national momentum to

increase structure and simpliy pathways or students, leads us to

make the ollowing recommendations:

1. Require students to declare a program o study and

colleges to ensure access to programs

Having students ormally select, and colleges provide access

to, well-dened programs o study would have tremendous

advantages or student success. Students would have a clear

roadmap toward completion, colleges could better align the

course schedule with student needs, and the means to monitor

and improve program outcomes would be greatly enhanced.

2. Consider ewer and more consistent program oferings

Hand-in-hand with requiring students to declare programs

o study should be a commitment by colleges to ensurethat the programs they oer are accessible to students and

responsive to regional needs. The sheer number o and

variation across programs lead us to question how students

can navigate all o the choices and whether all programs

on the books are still vital. Leading national researchers

are calling or community colleges to review their multiple,

variable program oerings to ensure they meet labor market

needs, based on research ndings that many choices and a

lack o structure can deter student success.

3. Focus on basic skills or CTE

The system's high-priority Basic Skills Initiative has not included

an explicit ocus on students in CTE programs and it does not

appear to be serving CTE well. Few CTE students enroll in basic

skills courses and many CTE aculty believe such courses do

not benet their students. Yet there is no systematic alternative

or addressing basic skills deciencies among students in CTE

programs. Few certicate programs require English or math,

raising the question whether they are producing graduates with

the skills to succeed in the workplace. It is important that the

system address basic skills or the CTE mission - both curricular

requirements and means to help students meet them.

4. Reexamine associate degree

The associate degree in Caliornia has been asked to serve

the dual purpose o preparing students or transer and or

entry to the workforce. The passage of SB 1440 in 2010 is an

acknowledgement that the current degree does not work well

for transfer. But the degree may not work well for workforce-

bound students either. Most degrees earned by students

in the career pathways we studied were in interdisciplinary

studies a degree that does not signal to employers that a

student has subject matter expertise in a eld. As work begins

to develop a new set o associate degrees or transer, paralleleorts should examine how the existing associate degree

might better serve students who are not intending to transer.

5. Conduct additional research

The data we reviewed raised specic questions that, i the

Chancellors Oce could answer with additional research,

would expedite eorts to understand and improve CTE

outcomes. Why do students amass so many excess units

along the way to earning certicates and associate degrees?

What levels o math and English prociency do and

should individual certicate programs require? Are there

sucient opportunities or incoming students to receive

knowledgeable academic and career advising about CTE

program options? How many students satisy certicate

requirements but ail to ocially earn one and why?

Strengthening the CTE mission area in these ways should yield

substantial benets or students, colleges, employers, and all

Caliornians.

Acknowledgements

We thank the ollowing individuals who reviewed and

provided helpul comments on an earlier drat but,

o course, we take responsibility or the ndings and

conclusions: Pamela Burdman, Darla Cooper, Hazel Hill,

Davis Jenkins, Kelley Karandje, Nick Kremer, Jane Patton,

Jessica Pitt, David Rattray, Barry Russell, Kim Schenk, Eva

Schiorring, Bill Scroggins, Ron Selge, Vince Stewart, Chuck

Wiseley, David Wol, and the Caliornia Community College

Vocational Research and Accountability Committee.


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Career-Technical Education (CTE) andthe Community College Completion Agenda

and most certicates are awarded in occupational elds,

and there is evidence that the market value o associate

degrees in occupational elds is greater than other associatedegrees.2 That nding is especially relevant amid the

growing concerns that the completion agenda cannot just

be about the number o credentials but must be about

quality credentials with labor market value. Certicates, in

particular, can reduce time-to-completion o a meaningul

credential, removing a signicant barrier to completion or

the many students whose lives don't accommodate many

years o college-going. Researchers have ound that students

with clear occupational goals are more likely to complete

their programs o study,3 suggesting that community college

CTE programs can make important contributions to thecompletion agenda.

Meeting Workorce Goals

Caliornia aces a severe shortage o educated workers as the

baby boom generation retires, the economy shits to ever-

higher dependence on high-level knowledge and skills, and

the astest-growing populations are not being educated at

levels to ll job openings. Data conrm projected shortalls

in both jobs requiring a bachelors degree and middle

skill jobs requiring more than a high school education but

less than a bachelors degree (e.g., engineering technician,radiological technician, dental hygienist). A recent study

ound that Caliornia could have jobs or one million more

bachelors degree holders than the state is currently on track

to produce.4 Other research has documented that a large

share o uture job openings are middle skills jobs.5 Clearly,

more Caliornians with occupationally-oriented certicates

and associate degrees are needed to supply the states

uture workorce.

Meeting Equity Goals

Dierential rates o completion across racial/ethnic groups

in the Caliornia Community Colleges (CCC) present a

severe social and economic challenge to Caliornias

eorts to increase educational attainment.6 Structured

career pathways that include certiicates and associate

degrees could be an important means to improve social

mobility or economically disadvantaged Caliornians.

Research suggests that high school students who take CTE

coursework along with traditional academic courses have

better employment outcomes, and at least comparable

Caliornia, along with most other states, has made community

college completion a major priority in the eort to boost

educational attainment or broad sectors o the populationand strengthen economic health. The research presented

in this report is motivated by the belie that the career

technical education (CTE) mission o Caliornias community

colleges is a vital piece o the college completion agenda

but is not yet receiving sucient attention. We are well aware

that students succeed in CTE in ways that do not involve

completing certicates or degrees. At the same time, the

issuing o workorce-related credentials is an undeniably

important unction o community colleges. In this study we

are interested in the CTE mission as it relates to completion o

certicates and degrees.

While eorts to address student success and college

completion are generally relevant to CTE, there are unique

aspects o CTE that warrant more specic study. In this

research we examine student progress through our career

pathways as a basis or exploring more broadly how CTE can

contribute to the college completion agenda. This report is

the rst part o a larger project to study whether state and

system policies could better support student success in

CTE programs. Although admittedly an exploratory study,

our ndings conrm our initial supposition that there isuntapped potential across the system or CTE to better serve

students and the state.

High Potential in the CTE Mission Area

CTE is important to the college completion agenda or the

reasons described below.

Meeting Completion Goals

National college completion goals, such as those

articulated by the Gates and Lumina oundations, includeassociate degrees as well as bachelors degrees, and

both oundations are investing in eorts to improve

understanding o the role and value o certiicates. The

Obama administration, by calling or more Americans to

get a year or more o college, also signaled the importance

o postsecondary certiicates. The report recently released

by the Caliornia Community College Leagues Commission

on the Future sets targets or increases in certiicates

as well as associate degrees.1 Many associate degrees


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postsecondary outcomes, compared to students taking

only academic courses.7 In the postsecondary arena,

research suggests that there are economic beneits tolow-income students who pursue longer-term certiicates

(30 or more units),8 and that such programs can lead to

well-paid careers, particularly among low-perorming

students.9 Students who earn credentials in occupational

programs can have substantial earnings advantages over

those earning traditional academic degrees.10 Todays

economy oers good-paying careers in many technical

ields that dont require our-year degrees. Moreover,

by one estimate 85% o occupational enrollments in

community colleges are in ields that have counterparts in

our-year colleges, raising the prospect o career laddersto higher paying positions i educational pathways are

structured well.11

Increasing Productivity

Streamlining and strengthening career pathways can

increase postsecondary education productivity. Poorly

structured career pathways can result in students taking

courses in pursuit o lower-unit credentials that dont

count towards higher-unit certicates and degrees. This

ineciency in the accumulation o units has been well

documented in the literature on community college transerbut may also be a actor impeding student movement

rom lower-unit certicates to higher-unit certicates and

associate degrees. I relevant units dont carry orward to

the next highest credential, the cost to the state and the

cost to students in time and money increase. Additionally,

CTE programs lend themselves to a cohort approach and to

integrating basic skills instruction into the curriculum, both

o which can contribute to increased rates o persistence

and completion.12

Complementing High School Reorms

A growing body o research points to the benets o

multiple orms o career-oriented education in high schools

and a growing body o practice is producing promising

results.13 Since community colleges serve the vast majority

o Caliornia high school graduates who proceed to

postsecondary institutions, strong career-oriented oerings

that align well with those in high schools would optimize

the benets o high school reorm eorts.

CTE Potential is as yet Unrealized

Caliornia is not yet poised to take ull advantage o the great

potential o the community college CTE mission area to help

with the states college completion agenda.

Lack o Priority

The legislature periodically rearms that the three core

mission areas o the CCC are transer, CTE, and basic skills

education, yet the attention paid to the CTE mission has

not matched that given the other two areas. Lawmakers

express ar more interest in and understanding o the

transer unction, even though they know o the important

contribution community colleges make to the states

workforce through career education. The Basic Skills

Initiative, a top priority o the system or several years,

has been pursued largely apart rom the CTE mission.

CTE programs are highly complex, as they oten involve

partnerships with state, local, and community organizations,

have multiple unding streams, serve students with a variety

o goals and prior experiences, and oer a wide array o

certications. Whether due to the sheer complexity o the

mission area, the dominance o academic aculty in college

leadership positions, or purposeul ordering o priorities by

policymakers and the college system itsel, CTE carries less

status across the colleges.

Weak Credential Structures and Transer Pathways

Despite the national research ndings that certicates o at

least one year and associate degrees in occupational elds

have good economic returns,14 such credentials appear

to be undervalued in Caliornia. Relatively ew students

indicate a goal o earning a certicate or an associate

degree and relatively ew certicates and associate degrees

are awarded. Many CTE students amass credits in career

elds without acquiring a certicate or degree or they earn

an interdisciplinary studies degree that does not refecttheir eld o study. The CCC does not di erentiate applied

associate degrees rom associate degrees as is done in

many states. The associate degree has been orced to serve

a dual unction but it has not served the transer unction

well nor does it clearly signal career-relevant competencies.

While the newly authorized associate degrees or

transer15 are aimed to align a subset o associate degrees

with transer requirements, there has been no parallel




discussion o the need to retool existing associate degrees

to better prepare students or the workorce and better

communicate to employers the learning outcomes romassociate degree programs.

Underdeveloped Data and Accountability Systems

Data and accountability systems are poorly suited to monitor

progress and success within the CTE mission. The CCC

systems Accountability Reporting or Community Colleges

(ARCC) reports student success rates without accounting

separately or CTE. The section o ARCC on vocational and

career education reports only the numbero certicates and

associate degrees awarded by program area, providing no

inormation about rates o student progress and success.

Only certicates o 18 units or more are required to be

reported, so there is no uniormity in reporting short-term

certicates and no basis or determining the extent to which

short-term certicates are earned as a step toward higher-

unit certicates or degrees. This would be important data

since research has ailed to document economic returns to

short-term certicates alone.16

There are two other major shortcomings o CTE accountability.

First, systemwide data do not record the program o

enrollment or students because, with a ew exceptions like

nursing, community college students in Caliornia do not

ormally declare a program o enrollment. Colleges report CTE

outcomes to the ederal government under the Carl D. Perkins

Vocational and Technical Education Act but this is limited by

the lack o data on program o enrollment. Student course-

taking patterns rather than declared program intent is the

basis or reported program outcomes. This method is unable

to identiy students until they are well along in their programs,

and is thus more valuable or compliance with ederal

requirements than or inorming college eorts to improve

student success. Second, there is no systematic reporting o

employment outcomes or CTE programs even though the

purpose o most programs is to help students obtain paying

(or higher paying) employment. Anecdotal reports that

students get job oers or raises beore earning a credential

are sometimes oered as explanations or successul

non-completions but lack rigorous labor market outcomes

data by program to back up the claims.

Higher Costs Not Well Addressed

CTE programs tend to be more costly than other

instructional programs. They are heavily dependent onequipment, many have class size restrictions due to access

to equipment or specialized accreditation requirements,

and they involve more requent curriculum change as well

as structured engagement with the employer community.

The state unding ormulas employed at most colleges do

not accommodate these higher costs (even accounting or

ederal Perkins unds received or CTE programs) and CTE

program administrators must seek external unding or

what many would consider core instructional costs.

Lack o Integration with Core Institutional

Operations

Finally, at many colleges CTE seems to operate quite

separately rom other instructional units, with separate

administrative structures, less integration with core student

support areas, and separate unding structures that leave

CTE program administrators much more dependent on

external resources to keep their programs operating.

Eorts to strengthen CTE are generally undertaken as

separate projects or initiatives apart rom the states multi-

billion dollar investment in its community colleges

usually through grant application opportunities at localor regional levels that aect small numbers o students.17

This lack o integration suggests that emerging eorts to

address college completion could have less impact on

CTE programs and student outcomes unless special care is

taken to reduce silos that can interere with college-wide

planning or student success.

The Complexities o Studying CTEStudent Success

Any eort to study student progress in CTE conronts aproblem o language and denition. Career technical

education has largely replaced vocational education as

the term used to describe educational programs designed

to prepare students or employment opportunities that do

not initially require our-year degrees. Yet neither career nor

technical helps us understand the distinct nature o these



community college programs. Many our-year programs are

just as career oriented as are one- and two-year programs

and many are highly technical. Some elds designated asCTE in the community colleges, like nursing, have well-

established transer pathways to universities and others

do not. The Chancellors Oce data system classies

certain programs and courses as vocational or purposes

o compliance with the Perkins Act but about 20% o the

vocational courses are transerable and eorts are underway

to increase the transerability o CTE coursework.18 The term

sub-baccalaureate credentials to reerence certicates and

associate degrees connotes something o lesser value and

could impede eorts to strengthen these pathways into

well-paying careers that are a prominent eature o todayseconomy.

While the nation could benet rom new terminology that

better refects the economy, which oers good technical

career options at all levels o postsecondary education, we

raise the issue here as context or our eorts to examine

student success within the CTE mission. Our prior work has

documented patterns o student success or all degree/

certicate-seekers, but in this report we examine success in

occupational programs specically. We learned that both the

denitions o CTE programs and the pathways along whichone might measure progress are ambiguous. For example,

we chose engineering as one pathway to study but wrestled

with whether engineering technology and engineering

are one pathway or two, and certainly between them they

span the CTE and the transer missions o the colleges. We

chose nursing, which could potentially be the upper end o

a career pathway that includes allied health elds, and which

certainly encompasses the transer unction. We settled on

our pathways (explained on page 9) that admittedly do not

represent the ull breadth o CTE oerings and consider the

research merely exploratory and illustrative o issues thatshould be addressed on a larger scale.

Tracking student progress toward occupational program

completion is complicated by variability in the value o

certicates and degrees across occupations and by thedierent goals o the diverse populations that enroll in CTE

courses and course sequences. Genuine questions have

arisen, with respect to the national college completion

agenda, about the wisdom o using the number o

baccalaureate degrees as a measure o college success,

irrespective o degree eld and measures o degree quality.

But with CTE we encounter more fundamental questions of

whether and which credentials should be counted and how

well a count o completed credentials measures the value o

these programs. As examples:

n Associate degrees in some transerable technical elds

lack or are perceived to lack market value, so many

transer-bound students do not bother to satisy degree

requirements.

n Many students earn an interdisciplinary studies associate

degree that does not accurately refect their occupational

eld o study, making it hard to dene and monitor success

in those occupational programs.

n Many CTE students are older, working proessionals who

need coursework rather than degrees, oten or improvedjob security or advancement; many already have degrees

(10% o the students who earned certicates in our study

already had bachelors degrees).

n There is a huge variety o certicates o varying lengths,

many o which are shorter than the 30 units ound by

researchers as a threshold or economic return but may

nevertheless have career advancement value or students,

raising questions about which certicates should be

counted as completions.

n Some students are seeking industry certication and/

or licensure as opposed to college-awarded certicates,

outcomes that are not tracked by the colleges.




A Summary Look at CTE Enrollmentsand Outcomes

In spite o deinitional issues and the challenges

o studying student progress and completion, the

importance o preparing Caliornians to ill good middle

skill positions in the economy and to acquire the

oundation or urther education justiies the eort to

understand these complex issues. To that end, we present

some summary data as background or the analysis that

ollows.

Unlike the transer mission o the colleges, the CTE mission

area exists in a highly competitive arena in which or-prot

institutions play a large and growing role. Figure 1 showsthat while the or-prot sector enrolls ewer than 10%

o all undergraduates in two-year (or less) institutions in

Caliornia, it awards over 20% o the associate degrees

in career elds19 and between one-hal and two-thirds

o certicates. Figures 2 and 3 compare the career elds

in which certicates and associate degrees are awarded

by the or-prot and public sectors. Each graph shows

the our largest program areas in that sector and, or

comparison purposes, the share o awards in the other

sectors top our programs. (Not shown in the or-prot

TotalUndergraduate

Enrollment

AssociateDegrees in

Career Fields

Certifcateo Less than

1 Year

Certifcate o1-2 Years

Certifcate o2-4 Years

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Source: The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Survey year 2009.

Figure 1

Share o Total Enrollment Compared to Share o Completion in Career Fields, For-Profts and Community Colleges in Caliornia

Public Private, or-proft < 2 years Private, or-proft, 2 years

graph is amily and consumer sciences, which accounts

or 11 percent o CCC awards but a negligible share at the

or-prots.) Health proessions account or the largest sharein both sectors and business is also among the top our in

each sector. While 91% o the awards by the or-prot sector

are in our areas (health, mechanic and repair, business, and

personal/culinary), those our areas account or only 55% o

the awards by community colleges, which have a broader

range o oerings.

Figures 4 and 5 present data on CTE course-taking, progress,

and completion in the CCC. Figure 4 shows that nearly

one-third o all credit enrollment in the community colleges

is in vocational courses.

Despite these robust course enrollments, ew students

earn certicates or associate degrees in vocational areas.

Figure 5 shows that o the 255,253 degree-seeking students

entering the CCC in 2003-04, only 5% and 3%, respectively,

had earned certicates or vocational associate degrees ater

six-years - ar ewer than the share that transerred to a our-

year institution. (We dene degree-seeking as enrolling in

more than six units in the rst year.) Only 29% o all associate

degrees awarded across the CCC in 2008 were in elds

identied by the system as CTE, while 56% o all degrees




Health proessionals and related clinical sciences

Mechanic and repair technologies/technicians

Business, management, marketing, and related support services

Personal and culinary services

Security and protective services

Family and consumer sciences/human sciences

Other

5%11%

27%21%

13%

5% 18%

Figure 2

Certiicates and Associate Degrees Awarded in Career Fields by Private For-Proit 2-Year Colleges in Caliornia by Field


Health proessionals and related clinical sciences

Mechanic and repair technologies/technicians

Business, management, marketing, and related support services

Personal and culinary services

Security and protective services

Other

67%11%

8%

7%

6%1%

Figure 3

Certiicates and Associate Degrees Awarded in Career Fields by Public 2-Year Colleges in Caliornia by Field




Figure 4

Distribution o Credit Enrollments, Fall 2009

Transer, not vocational

Basic Skills

Vocational - transerable

Vocational - non-transerable61%

16%

15%7%

Figure 5

Milestone Attainment within 6 Years among All Degree Seekers

Source: Community College Chancellors Oice Data M art, relec ting the systems course classiication deinitions

Note: Students may be included in more than one completion measure as they could have, or example, earned both

a certiicate and an associate degree.

Source: Divided We Fail, IHELP, 2010.

100%90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%PercentofDegreeSeekersAchievingMilestone

Retained2nd

Term

73%

3%

23%

Retained2ndYear

Certifcate Non-VocationalAssociate

Degree

VocationalAssociate

Degree

Transerred

56%

5%8%



were in interdisciplinary studies.20 We know that these

general purpose associate degrees dont serve students well

in qualiying them to transer as juniors into specic majors,

21

and this has been addressed through new legislation

(Chapter 428, Statutes of 2010 - SB 1440) to develop associate

degrees or transer. We also suspect that they dont help

students qualiy or jobs in technical elds since they dont

provide students with core content in a technical area or

signal to employers what skills students have gained.

With nearly one-third o course enrollments in vocational

courses and an economy that is growing more dependent

on workers with technical postsecondary preparation, it

seems reasonable to explore how students pursue and

progress through CTE programs, why so ew students earn

vocational credentials in the community colleges, and

whether community college programs are structured to

meet student and employer needs. This report only begins

to address these questions.

Research Plan

Our research methods were necessarily adaptive because

o the undamental data constraint o not being able to

identiy which CCC students are attempting to pursuewhich occupational pathway. Most students do not declare

a program o enrollment so system data cannot track

enrollment by academic program. We had to use course-

taking behavior to judge which students were likelypursuing

each pathway. The ndings are necessarily less conclusive

than our previous studies o student success where we did

not try to draw any conclusions about specic academic

programs. We take care to oer appropriate caveats in the

presentation o our ndings.

Our research involved the ollowing steps:

1. Select CTE pathways. We selected our pathways that

were o interest in their own right as high-wage, high-

need elds, but primarily as a sample o the universe o

CTE programs in order to learn more generally about

issues o student progress and success in CTE programs.

2. Learn about the pathways. We studied the

demographics and the enrollment patterns o

community college students who completed programsin these our areas those who had earned certicates

or associate degrees at a community college or had

transerred and earned a bachelors degree at a

Caliornia State University. This helped us know what

patterns o progress and success to look or when we

studied a new cohort o incoming students. In order

to learn more about the pathways, we visited CTE

programs at several colleges, conducted telephone

interviews with CTE program sta and other experts,

reviewed catalogs or 20 colleges o varying sizes

and rom dierent regions o the state to understandcurricular requirements in these our elds, and

reviewed published material.

3. Learn about progress o students attempting the

pathways. As best we could, given data limitations, we

applied the milestone and success indicator ramework

we have used in previous research22 to learn where

students may be encountering obstacles on the path to

completion. We drew on the ndings about completers

(step 2 above) to determine what milestones and

success indicators to monitor.

The remainder o this report describes these steps in order and

oers ndings and recommendations that are necessarily

preliminary given the exploratory nature o this study.



Four Career Pathways Setting the Stage

Choosing Pathways to Study

To select the high-wage, high-need, career pathways or

study, we examined the Occupational Employment Projections

2008-2018 o the Caliornia Employment Development

Department to nd elds with relatively high expected

growth in employment and relatively high median

wages.23 We also examined data on the annual number o

undergraduate certicates and degrees awarded by the

CCC and Caliornia State University (CSU) systems in related

programs.24 Based on these data, as well as conversations

with workorce and education experts, we selected our

occupational areas or study:

1. Nursing

2. Engineering

3. Engineering technology

4. Inormation technology

Our ocus on high-need, high-wage elds led to a selection

o elds with more rigorous math and science requirements

and more obvious opportunities at the baccalaureate level

than is the case or many CTE programs. While this limits

the ability to ex trapolate specic ndings to other CTE

programs, examining student success in these elds may stillserve as a oundation or a broader research agenda on the

CTE mission o the community colleges.

Each o the elds includes a number o occupations. Nursing

occupations include registered and vocational nurses and

nursing assistants. Engineering includes the various subelds o

engineering (e.g., electrical, civil) and engineering technology

occupations include engineering technologists, draters, and

designers. We had originally grouped engineering technology

and engineering into one pathway o engineering-related

occupations, on the presumption that pathways might

exist rom engineering technology in community college

to engineering at the university level. But our early research

indicated that, despite similarities, the two disciplines unction

as separate pathways with dierent levels o oundational

skills and little movement between the pathways. So we

studied engineering technology as a separate pathway despite

airly modest growth and numbers o people employed.

Inormation technology occupations include computer

programmers, sotware and hardware engineers, network

administrators, and various inormation technology specialists.

Description o PathwaysNursing

There are our major nursing pathways in the community

colleges:

1. Programs, typically certicates, that prepare students to

become licensed vocational nurses (LVN)

2. Programs that prepare students or registered nursing

(RN) and award an associate degree in nursing (ADN)

3. Programs that prepare LVNs or RN licensure

4. Preparation or transer to bachelors programs in

nursing (BSN) at four-year universities; BSN students holdthe same licensure as ADN students but take additional

coursework in subjects such as public health and

management.

Nursing programs generally admit students in cohorts that

progress through coursework and clinical training on a ull-

time basis. Admission to an ADN program in the community

colleges requires that students pass an entrance exam that

tests skills in math, reading, English, and science. Students also

have to complete prerequisite coursework prior to admission

to the ADN program. Although prerequisite courses varyby community college, college-level English, microbiology,

chemistry, human physiology, and human anatomy are

common. There are ewer requirements or admission into

LVN programs than or ADN programs. LVN applicants are

not required to take an admissions exam (although they may

have to demonstrate competency in math, English, or other

subjects) and generally have ewer prerequisites. Although

some community colleges oer programs that train LVNs to

become RNs, articulation between LVN and ADN programs

remains dicult because the programs have dierent

prerequisites. The dierence in prerequisites occurs bothbetween programs oered in dierent community colleges

and between programs in a single college or district.

Although some consistency is achieved through accreditation

requirements, the lack o a statewide ADN curriculum creates

articulation problems between ADN and BSN programs and has

led to a system that requires program-by-program articulation.

Through our interviews we learned that articulation

problems are greatest between the community colleges

and the CSU and University o Caliornia (UC). Students who


13/32THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: REALIZING THE POTENTIAL OF CAREER TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES FEB RUAR Y 2011 | 10

earned an ADN degree in the community colleges have an

easier time transferring to BSN programs in private universities.

Engineering

There is one dominant pathway in engineering ollowed by

community college students transerring to a our-year

university without earning a community college certicate

or associate degree. Lack o alignment between associate

degree requirements and transer requirements is partly

accountable or this pattern, as the heavy unit requirement

or some majors does not t well within the current associate

degree format. (This should change under SB 1440, the

newly passed law that requires development o associate

degrees or transerin specic disciplines.) In addition,

there is little market demand or engineers with less than

a bachelors degree, refecting licensure requirements.

Consequently, while most colleges have engineering

articulation agreements with universities, many lack ormal

engineering programs that coner associate degrees. O

the twenty colleges whose catalogs we reviewed, 11 oer

associate degrees in engineering and two oer certicate

programs. Students seeking to transer in engineering, with

or without the associate degree, take a heavy load o math

and physical science courses, but ewer engineering courses,

as most o those courses are taken at the university ollowing

transer. As engineering elds become more specialized,

evolving into dierent disciplines, transer becomes more

problematic. The choices are more dicult or students to

navigate and the array o specialized course oerings are

more dicult or community colleges to oer.

Relatively ew associate degrees are awarded in Engineering

compared to the number o colleges oering the degree,

likely because students nd they are better served by

ollowing individual articulation agreements or transer

requirements than by satisying degree requirements. Most

o the associate degree programs we identied were generalengineering programs, suggesting that they may become

even more under-subscribed as the eld becomes more

specialized. They were also extremely variable, ranging

rom 19 to 29 general education units and 9 to 53 major

units. The new legislation authorizing associate degrees

or transer could change this situation dramatically. New

engineering transer degrees should be designed to ensure

that students take an ecient route toward meeting lower

division major requirements or transer to CSU in their

engineering specialty. Determining the core competencies

or such two-year engineering degrees is a challenge acing

the engineering eld nationally.

25

Calculus and physics are the gateway courses that students

must pass in order to proceed to the subsequent set o

calculus-based math and physics courses. These courses

set this pathway apart rom the engineering technology

pathway.

Engineering Technology

There are two major pathways in the community colleges or

students studying engineering technology:

1. Certicate and associate degree programs covering a seto entry-level technical skills, with the associate degree

adding general education coursework to the technical

courses that the certicate requires

2. Preparation or transer into baccalaureate programs

in engineering technology and related elds - elds

less prevalent in the states public universities than

engineering but ones that are increasingly viewed as

preparing important parts o the engineering team.26

Students preparing or direct entry into the workorce

may have more opportunities i they earn the associatedegree because o the addition o the general education

coursework, but the certicates and the degrees are both

aimed at preparing students or the workorce and cover a

diverse set o elds such as laser technology, mechanical

drating, and surveying. O the 20 colleges whose catalogs

we reviewed, 11 oer certicate programs and most o them

oer more than one engineering technology certicate. One

college oers 11 dierent certicate programs in engineering

technology elds. We ound a huge variety o certicate

program lengths as well, ranging rom 4 to 55 units o credit.

Only 5 o the 36 certicate programs require a math courseand none requires English. The associate degree oered

at 11 o our 20 sample colleges alls under the systemwide

requirements or English and math but beyond that, they

exhibit signicant variation as well, ranging rom a low o 18

to a high o 35 general education units required and rom 18

to 50 required major units.

Table 1 (top hal) shows more specically the variation we

ound across one particular certicate program in three



Four Career Pathways Setting the Stage

colleges in southern Caliornia. One college requires ar

ewer total units and, or the two colleges with the same unit

requirement, specic requirements vary considerably.

Engineering technology coursework is rarely transerable to

engineering because it is not calculus-based or suciently

science-oriented. One program aculty we interviewed

thought, however, that a curriculum could be designed

to provide such a pathway. Transer is possible into other

our-year programs such as engineering technology,

manuacturing technology, and construction management.

The variety o associate degree requirements and an

unsettled denition o a lower division engineering

technology core amid rapidly changing elds, make it

problematic or students to use the associate degree as a

route to transer eligibility.

Inormation Technology

In the area o inormation technology, there are three major

pathways in the community colleges:

1. Industry certication, where students pursue

coursework to prepare them or exams that lead to

certication o skills by industry associations (e.g., Cisco

Certied Networking Associate, Microsot Certied

Systems Administrator)

2. Community college certicate and degree programs

covering a set o entry-level skills, with the coursework

or a certicate oten applicable to a related associate

degree

3. Preparation or transer into baccalaureate programs in

computer science, computer engineering, or other IT

programs.

Students intending to transer generally do not seek

an IT-related associate degree along the way, as therequirements or those degrees are not well aligned with

the requirements or transer. Those interested in industry

certication may or may not seek a CCC certicate in the

process (some colleges have certicates that consist o

courses students would take to prepare or certication

exams). In addition to these pathways, many students,

including some who already have related degrees, take IT

courses to upgrade specic skills, and others take courses

to learn computer skills needed as part o non-IT certicate

and degree programs. The wide range o roles played by the

CCC in the IT area increases the complexity o understanding

student pathways and student success in these programs.

Even or the pathways involving completion o a CCC

credential, there is wide variation across the colleges in

the types o certicates and degrees oered and the

requirements to obtain them. O the 20 colleges whose

catalogs we reviewed, IT-related programs were oered at

19. On average, each college oered 7 dierent certicates

and 3 dierent associate degrees, but one college oered

28 dierent IT certicates and another oered 9 dierent IT

associate degrees. Certicate unit requirements also varied

considerably, including, or example, an 8-credit certicate

in Cisco Networking Associate and a 39-credit certicate

in Computer Network Engineering. Fewer than 10% o the

certicate programs require English or math courses. Associate

degree program requirements or units in the major varied

rom 16 to 43 with comparable variations in general education

requirements.

Table 1 (bottom hal ) illustrates the variation we ound or one

associate o science program in the IT pathway. Among three

southern Caliornia colleges, there is considerable variation

in general education requirements, number o credits

required in the major, core course requirements, and thelevel o math required. The breadth and variation o program

oerings, combined with the various pathways, suggests

that it may be challenging or students to understand

their options. The numerous short-term certicates oered

also raises questions about market value given research

demonstrating that workorce and economic benets may

only be associated with longer-term certicates o at least 30

credits.27 Some colleges are moving to structure programs

as a series o stackable short-term certicates to encourage

completion, but that may prove to be a benet only to the

extent that completion o the shorter-term certicates actuallyencourages students to continue the program.

Our interviews and review o documents revealed several

common issues conronted by colleges oering IT programs

including the prevalence o math barriers, the challenge o

proessional development in ast-changing elds, limited

adoption o new pedagogical approaches that may be more

eective in engaging students, and employer opinion that

such programs do better at providing technical skills than the

business and project management skills employers value. 28



Table 1

Certifcate and Associate Degree Program Variability Across Colleges

Certicate: Drating/Computer-Aided Design (CAD)

El Camino College Citrus College Santa Barbara City College

31 credits

n Intro to Mechanical Drating

n Wirerame w/Suraces, Solid Modeling &Assemblies

n Advanced Parametric Solid Modeling &Assemblies

n Orientation to CATIA

n Product Mo deling w/CATIA

n Analyses & Simulations w/CATIA

n Adv. CATIA Functions

n Geometrical Dimensioning and Tolerancing

n 2-Dimensional Mechanical CADD I & II

n Technical Mathematics

19 credits

n Beginning Drawing

n Digital Media Production I

n Computer Aided Design and MechanicalDrawing OR Beginning Computer AidedDesign (CAD)

n Intermediate Computer Aided DratingOR Introduction to Engineering CAD

n Technical Illustration

n Advanced Mechanical Drawing

n Advanced Computer Aided Design andDrating - Mechanical (CADD)

31 credits

n Basic Drafting

n Computer-Assisted Drat and DesignI and II

n 18 credits o drating elec tives, up to 16 owhich may be Work Experience in Drating

Associate o Science Degree: Computer Science

Glendale Community College Chabot College Santa Barbara City College

37 major credits

30 GE/other required credits

n Intro to Programming

n Concepts o Programming Languages

n Programming in C /C++

n Java

n Computer Architecture & AssemblyLanguage I & II

n Data Structures I & II

n Intro to Algorithms using Pascal

n Math required: Interm ediate Algebra, Calculusoptional

31-33 major credits

19 GE/other required credits

n Intro to Programming Using VisualBasic.Net

n Intro to Programming in C++

n Object-Oriented Programming in C++

n Java Programming

n Intro to UNIX

n Intro to HTML

n Math required: Statisti cs or Trigonometr y,Calculus optional

40.5 45.5 major credits

29-31 GE/other required credits

n Programming Fundamentals

n Computer Concepts

n C Programming

n Java Programming

n Intro to UNIX

n Assembly Language Programming

n Intro to Data Structures

n Math required: Discrete Math andCalculus I & II



Four Career Pathways What Can We Learnrom those Who Succeed?

Data Used to Study SuccessulCerticate/Degree Earners

The CCC Chancellors Oce maintains student-level data or

each college or each term with inormation on every course

enrollment as o the census date, and certicates and degrees

awarded. The CSU Chancellors Oce maintains student-level

data or each university or each term including all degrees

awarded by major eld. We obtained two sets o data or the

analysis o certicate/degree earners:

1. Records or all CCC students who earned associate

degrees or certicates in one o the our pathways in 2007

or 2008. All o the course enrollments or these students,over whatever period o time they attended a community

college, were included (records dated back to 1992-93). All

certicates and degrees earned as o 2008 were included,

although colleges are required to report only certicates

o 18 credits or more, so shorter-term certicates are not

ully represented in the data.

2. Records or all CCC transer students who earned a

bachelors degree rom CSU in one o the our career areas

in 2007 or 2008. The CSU Chancellors Oce provided the

relevant student identiers to the CCC Chancellors Oce,

which then provided all CCC records or those students

(the same inormation as described in item 1 above).

As an initial eort to learn about students in these

our career areas and their progress along the

educational pathway, we studied the patterns exhibitedby community college students who successully

completed a postsecondary credential in one o these

areas. There are limits to what can be concluded based

on studying successes because there is no way to

determine whether the patterns observed among

successul students are any dierent rom what we

would observe among unsuccessul students (i.e., no

way to conclude that the observed patterns were the

reasons or the students success). Nevertheless, we

hoped to gather some initial inormation about the kinds

o course-taking patterns students who succeeded hadengaged in that might have helped to account or their

success, inormation to be used in additional analyses

and as the basis or interviews with subject-area experts.

We examined data or all transer students who earned

a bachelors degree rom the CSU or a certiicate or

associate degree rom a CCC in one o the our areas in

2007 or 2008 (see box at right).29

Figure 6 shows the total number o students studied by

pathway and type o credential earned. The our pathways

present an interesting variation in the mix o credentials.Engineering is almost exclusively a bachelors degree eld.

While there were a small number o associate degrees

Figure 6

Certifcate/Degree Earners in the Four Pathways (CSU and CCC, 2007 and 2008)

Bachelor's degree Associate degree Certifcate

16,000

14,000

12,000

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0

Nursing Engineering EngineeringTechnology

IT

14,531

2,621

1,169

2,952



Table 2

Demographic Characteristics o Completers

awarded (imperceptible in the graph), nearly all completions

in the eld were bachelors degrees awarded to students

entering the CCC directly rom high school and transerringto the CSU. The other three elds are a mix o credentials

at all levels with the associate degree dominating the

nursing pathway and engineering technology being the

most balanced across the three credential levels. The mix o

certicates, associate degrees, and bachelors degrees across

the our program areas allows us to explore pathway issues

rom certicates to associate and rom associate, via transer,

to bachelors degrees.

Demographic Patterns o GraduatesTable 2 shows demographic inormation about these

certiicate and degree completers, organized by

the highest credential earned as o 2008 (students

included in the group with an associate degree as the

highest credential could have also earned a certiicate

at some point, and the CSU graduates could have

earned a certiicate and/or associate degree during

their enrollment at the CCC). Among the interesting

demographic indings:

Gender.There were signicant gender disparities in thesecareer pathways. A large majority o students earning

certicates and degrees in nursing were emale, while

similarly large majorities o graduates in IT, engineering, and

engineering technology were male. The gender gap in IT

programs increases with each higher level credential.

Age. Students earning a certicate as their highest

credential were more likely to be older at the time o initial

enrollment in the CCC than students earning a degree.

Most bachelors degree earners entered the CCC shortly

ater high school graduation, especially those earning

degrees in engineering, engineering technology, or IT.

Race/ethnicity. Black and Latino students were generally

underrepresented among completers in these pathways

compared to their shares o enrollment in the CCC, while

white and Asian students were generally over-represented

among graduates compared to their shares o enrollment.

In general, the racial gaps in each ield grow with progress

along the educational pipeline, with smaller gaps at the

certiicate level and larger gaps at the baccalaureate level.

Highest Credential Completed

Cer ticate Associate Bachelor's

Nursing

GenderMaleFemale

16%84%

16%84%

15%85%

Average Age at CCCEnrollment 25.9 24.2 22.7

Race/EthnicityAsianBlack

LatinoWhite

29%8%

26%37%

28%6%

21%44%

30%7%

18%44%

Engineering

GenderMaleFemale

--

86%14%

84%16%

Average Age at CCCEnrollment - 21.1 19.5

Race/EthnicityAsianBlackLatinoWhite

----

15%0%

25%60%

34%4%

21%41%


GenderMaleFemale

85%15%

84%16%

90%10%



16%6%

39%38%

15%3%

30%51%

18%1%

20%60%

Inormation Technology

GenderMaleFemale

72%28%

77%23%

87%13%



24%7%

24%43%

22%6%

20%50%

34%4%

15%46%



Four Career Pathways What Can We Learn romthose Who Succeed?

Course-taking Patterns o GraduatesIn examining the course-taking patterns o graduates or

signs o what might be important milestones and indicators

o likely success, we ound some interesting results that span

across the our career areas:

Basic skills. Students completing certicates and degrees

earned very ew credits in basic skills courses (i.e., pre-college

level courses), an average o only a credit or two. This tells us

that a majority o graduates completed no basic skills courses.

Excess credits. On average, graduates had completed

signicant numbers o excess credits, i.e., more credits than

would have been required or the level o credential earned.The total number o CCC credits earned ranged rom 60 to

80 or students earning a certicate as the highest credential,

where the number o credits required would be 18 to 60

(with certicates o less than 30 credits most common).

Associate degree completers earned an average o 90 to

over 100 credits, while 60 credits are generally required.

Those earning a bachelors degree had earned an average

o 80 to 90 CCC credits beore transer. While more research

is needed on the reasons or so many credits, the patterns

may suggest a need to simpliy and/or clariy options or

students through better advising, curriculum design, and/orcourse scheduling.

Technical coursework. As would be expected, the number

o math and science courses taken increased with the level

o credential completed. Also as expected, given the ocus

o transer students on general education and lower-division

prerequisites, students earning bachelors degrees in these

elds took substantially less major coursework in the specic

discipline (i.e., engineering technology, nursing, IT) than did

those earning certicates or associate degrees.

Pathway issues. Successul students navigated througha complex environment in which the pathway was more

aligned at the certicate and associate degree levels:

n Associate degrees in these elds are not generally

serving as a step on the pathway to a bachelors degree.

Among students who completed an associate degree

beore transerring to CSU, ar more earned that degree

in interdisciplinary studies than in a specic eld. The

exception is nursing, where about hal o the associate

degrees were in nursing. This is likely because manystudents who earned a bachelors degree were practicing

nurses who had earned an associate degree at an earlier

point, and returned to college to get a BSN (a number of

CSUs have specic programs designed or practicing RNs

to get a BSN degree).

n A certicate in one o these elds is somewhat likely to

serve as a step on the pathway to an associate degree, as

about one-third to one-hal o the associate degree earners

had also earned a certicate, most in the same eld. This

was less the case in nursing, where the transition rom a

nursing assistant certicate to a degree in vocational or

registered nursing is more dicult. Associate degrees in

engineering technology and inormation technology are

oten specically designed to layer general education

coursework on top o the technical courses that count

toward a certicate. We imposed no backward time limit

or when a student earning an associate degree might

have earned the related certicate, so some o these

students may have earned the certicate well beore they

proceeded to the next credential level.

Questions Raised about CTE Pathwaysrom the Data on CompletersOur analysis o the patterns among certicate and degree

earners in these our career pathways raises a number o

general questions about CTE pathways in the CCC.

Why have the students completing certicates and

degrees in CTE areas earned so ew basic skills credits?

We know that a substantial majority o CCC students enter

college with skills in English/Language Arts and/or math that

place them below college level.30 There would seem to be

several possible explanations or nding so ew basic skills

enrollments among the completers:

1. A lack o requirement or math/English coursework (e.g.,

most certicates involve only technical coursework with

no English or math course requirements, possibly allowing

certicate-earning students to avoid basic skills courses)



2. A preerence among CTE program aculty or addressing

students basic skills deciencies in the context o the

occupational curriculum over relying on the college basicskills oerings

3. A low rate o completion or students who enter the

CCC with remedial needs. Certainly the amount o math

and science coursework required or degrees in nursing,

engineering, engineering technology, and IT could pose

a challenge or students who enter the CCC without a

good oundation in math skills.

In our site visits and our consultation with the systems

Vocational Research and Accountability Committee, we learned

that many CTE aculty do believe that students stand a betterchance o persisting i they avoid regular basic skills sequences

and learn requisite skills in their CTE coursework. A 2011

research study ound better outcomes or CCC students who

took contextualized developmental math compared to those

in the basic skills math sequence.31 Given the importance o

sound basic skills or career and college pursuits and the very

poor completion rates o students beginning in developmental

math,32 it is important to learn more about the degree to which

basic skills are required in certicate programs and the extent

to which skill deciencies are impeding the completion o

certicates and degrees, especially in high-growth elds suchas the ones we have studied.

Why are so many students in technical elds earning

their associate degrees in interdisciplinary studies?

We know that associate degree requirements are not

ully aligned with the requirements or transer, leading

most transer students to transer without irst earning an

associate degree.33 The transer students who did earn an

associate degree beore earning their bachelors degree

in one o our selected ields mostly earned a degree in

interdisciplinary studies rather than in their ield o study.Most advanced occupational courses at the CCC are not

transerable, so students intending to transer ocus on

general education courses at the community college,

saving the technical coursework or the university. Since the

associate degree is not serving the transer mission well,

we might assume that the current set o associate degrees

is designed or direct entry into the workorce. Yet we

learned rom interviews and other conversations that the

associate degree in many technical ields does not have

strong market value and does not give employers suicientinormation about students skills and competencies. This

raises the prospect that the current array o associate degrees

may not be serving the needs o either transer students or

those seeking to go directly to the workorce.

Does it serve students well to have so many diferent

oferings o certicates and associate degrees within

the same general eld, and so much variation within

and across colleges in subject matter and credit

requirements or certicates and degrees in similar

elds?

The considerable curricular variation we ound across

colleges could be an accurate refection o the specialization

within these elds. Alternatively, it could refect some

lag in curriculum planning by which emerging programs

are added aster than lower priority ones are removed. I

greater consistency is easible, it could simpliy the choices

acing students and possibly reduce the excess credits

that we documented among completers especially at

the certicate and associate degree levels. Additionally,

more consistency across programs and colleges could

send clearer signals to employers about the set o skills

and competencies they could expect rom a student with

a given credential. That could, in turn, increase the market

value o the credentials that the colleges oer but that are

apparently not highly valued by students.



Four Career Pathways What Can We Learnrom Students Attempting these Pathways?

Data and Methods Used to IdentiyNew Students Pursuing the SelectedPathways

We obtained a data set rom the CCC Chancellors Oce

that included all rst-time students who entered thesystem in the 2003-2004 academic year and tracked them

or six years through 2008-09.* The data included student

demographic characteristics, all course enrollments, and

degrees and certicates earned and transers to a university.

Because the data do not contain information on program

intent, we used enrollment behaviors as a proxy to identiy

students pursuing a degree, certicate, or transer in

one o the our areas o interest.** To limit our analysis

to degree/certicate-seekers we selected students who

enrolled in more than six units o any type in the rst year,

Identiying Students in Each Pathway

Building on what we learned from our interviews,

literature and catalog reviews, and analysis o students

who successully completed a program o study in one o

the our career pathways, we examined a cohort o rst-

time students who entered the system in the 2003-2004

a criterion we have applied in other research. Guided

by our analysis o course-taking patterns by completers,

interviews with CCC aculty and administrators and

other experts in these elds, and a review o program

requirements as specied in a sample o college catalogs,

we chose a set o enrollment behaviors that wouldbest identiy certicate/degree-seeking students in

each pathway. We used multiple criteria to dierentiate

students in the targeted pathways rom students in

related pathways (e.g., identiy nursing students but not

biology majors).

* Concurrently enrolled high school students and students enrolled only

in non-credit courses were not included.

** See Appendix 4 in the online appendices at http://www.csus.edu/ihelp/

pds/cte_web_appendix.pd or the specic enrollment behaviors used

to identiy students pursuing one o the our elds o interest.

Degree-Seekers

(>6 units year 1)

(N = 255,253)

Nursing

(N = 10,034)

Engineering

(N = 4,350)


(N = 1,381)

IT

(N = 8,136)

Gender Male 47.0% 33.4% 55.7% 80.5% 69.1%

Female 53.0% 66.6% 44.3% 19.5% 30.9%

Age Mean 23.5 22.7 20.2 24.8 25.7

Race/Ethnicity White 39.2% 37.5% 43.1% 42.5% 39.2%

Latino 33.5% 22.4% 27.0% 38.2% 22.2%

Asian 17.7% 33.2% 23.7% 16.1% 30.1%

Black 8.6% 6.3% 5.3% 2.7% 7.9%

Table 3

Characteristics o 2003-04 Cohort o First-Time CCC Students in Selected Career Pathways

academic year to learn about the patterns o student

progress in and through these pathways (see box below).

Table 3 shows the number o students in each o the career

pathways, as we were able to identiy them with our criteria,

and their demographic composition.



Cautions Due to Proxy Method oIdentiying Students in Pathways

To the extent that we have misidentied students in a

pathway, our results would be skewed. For example, some

students who ailed to reach a pathway milestone (e.g.,

completing our nursing courses) may have aced barriers

that would be important to understand; others who ailed to

complete those courses may not have been seeking a nursing

credential. While we used course-taking behaviors as best

we could to identiy students in each pathway, the ndings

cannot be interpreted with the same level o condence as our

ndings or the entire degree-seeking cohort, where it was not

necessary to determine students academic program goals.

The proxy method o using enrollment behaviors to identiy

students in pathways also likely overstates completion. We

cannot recognize students as belonging to a pathway until

they have achieved a air amount o success, i.e., enrolled

in the courses that we set as criteria or pathway status. We

miss those students who intended to pursue the pathways

but dropped out beore enrolling in those courses. Our

analysis is necessarily limited to those students who areurther along and, thereore, more likely to be successul. In

addition, the criteria applied to each pathway are dierent

and thereore completion ndings across the pathways are

not meaningully compared. For example, completions could

look better in nursing than in IT because more students

who intended to complete a nursing program dropped

out beore meeting the criteria or us to identiy them as a

nursing student than was the case or IT.

Milestone Attainment How Far DoStudents Get?

We used the milestone and success indicator ramework that

we have developed or previous research (see Steps to Success,

Divided We Fail) to analyze student progress along the pathways

and to determine whether certain enrollment behaviors were

more predictive o student success. We included the generic

milestones and success indicators that we have applied to all

degree-seekers as well as ones that we developed specically or

students enrolled in the our pathways. Our ndings come with

a caveat due to the proxy method required to determine which

students belong in each pathway (see box below).

Figures 7 through 10 show the number o students who

reached the intermediate milestones or each o the our

pathways, as well as those who completed a credentialor transer.34 The analysis shows that across all elds many

students are lost beore completing 30 college-level credits

and many more are lost between completing 30 or more

college-level credits and earning a certicate or degree

or transerring. Math seems to be a more serious barrier

or engineering and IT than or nursing or engineering

technology, perhaps because o the higher levels o math

required in engineering and because many IT students are

returning adults who may have lost some o their math skills.

Specialists in each o these ields may ind some speciicpatterns o note in the attainment o intermediate

milestones. Here we point to just a ew ield-speciic

indings that suggest how such an analysis could help

target eorts at key stall points particularly with better

data that allowed earlier and more accurate identiication

o students in the pathway.

n Nursing. Anatomy/physiology seems to be a bigger

barrier than either math or chemistry, likely accounting

signicantly or low rates o completing all nursing

prerequisites.35

It is likely that our data refect studentailure to pass anatomy/physiology rather than their

inability to enroll in the courses. Because we used

enrollment in prerequisite courses to identiy students

seeking a nursing degree, most students that stopped

pursuing a nursing program because they could not

enroll in a prerequisite class were probably excluded

rom our analysis.

n Engineering. Math seems to be a bigger barrier than

physical science.

n Engineering technology. No single barrier stands out,

particularly as the drop o to the second year and beyond

could be partially explained by students completing

short-term certicates, which are a bigger portion o the

completions in this pathway than in the others.

n Inormation technology. Math appears to be a

signicant barrier and ew students persist to the point

o completing our IT courses.



Four Career Pathways What Can We Learn romStudents Attempting these Pathways?

Figure 7

Milestone Attainment among Students in the Nursing Pathway

Figure 8

Milestone Attainment among Students in the Engineering Pathway

Award in Interdisciplinary Studies

Award in Other Field

Award in Field



Award in Field

Note: Students can be counted in more than one category o completion, e.g., they may earn a certiicate and an associate degree.

Note: Students can be counted in more than one category o completion, e.g., they may earn a certiicate and an associate degree.

Completion

Completion

12000

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

0

Number inPathway

30+College-level

Credits

DegreeApplicable

MathCourse

Anatomy/Physiology

Course

ChemistryCourse

NursingPrerequisite

Courses

Four Nursing/HealthCourses

TranserCurriculum

Transerw/o Assc.

Degree

Transerw/ Assc.Degree

Certifcate AssociateDegree

Intermediate Milestones


5000

4500

4000

3500

3000

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

0

Number inPathway

30+College-level

Credits

Two transerablePhysical Science

Courses

Two TranserableMath

Courses

TranserCurriculum

Transerw/o Assc.

Degree


Certifcate AssociateDegree


23/32THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: REALIZING THE POTENTIAL OF CAREER TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES FEB RUAR Y 2011 | 20

Figure 9

Milestone Attainment among Students in the Engineering Technology Pathway

Figure 10

Milestone Attainment among Students in the IT Pathway



Award in Field



Award in Field

Note: Students can be counted in mo re than one category o completion, e.g., they may earn a cer tiicate and an associate degree.

Note: Students can be counted in mo re than one category o completion, e.g., they may earn a cer tiicate and an associate degree.

Completion

Completion



Number inPathway

Number inPathway

30+College-level

Credits

30+College-level

Credits

DegreeApplicable

Math

Course

DegreeApplicable

Physical Science

Course

Four Eng TechCourses

TranserCurriculum

TranserCurriculum

Four IT CoursesTwo DegreeApplicable Math

Courses

Transerw/o Assc.

Degree

Transerw/o Assc.

Degree



AssociateDegree

AssociateDegree

Certifcate

Certifcate

9000

8000

7000

6000

5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

0

1600

1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0



Four Career Pathways What Can We Learn romStudents Attempting these Pathways?

Observations about Completions andPathway Structure

The ndings in Figures 7-10 show a generally low level o

associate and certicate awards, particularly certicates,

with the exception o the engineering technology pathway

where the completions are more evenly balanced across

transer, certicate, and associate degree. The last three bars

in each gure are intended to help us understand the extent

to which there may be eective pathways rom certicates

to associate degrees to transer in each eld. Those bars

show the alignment o degrees earned to the eld o study.

Most certicates and degrees are outside the eld o

study. In all our pathways (Figures 7-10), the bottom slice othe associate degree and certicate bars indicating those

awards in the eld o study is the smallest. We assume

that this partly refects some misidentication o students

in the pathway. Beyond that, we suspect that some of the

other elds are closely related. For example, aeronautical

and aviation technology, automotive technology, and

electro-mechanical technology are not included in the

engineering technology eld (as we dened it based on

Classication o Instructional Program [CIP] codes and the

corresponding Taxonomy o Programs [TOP] codes used by

the CCC36) but those elds seem closely enough related tosuggest that more o the awards are refective o a students

eld o study than the graph suggests. It could also be that

students struggle with the huge variety o certicate and

degree programs oered (especially certicate) and the

limited advising resources available at the colleges, and

end up with certicates that dont best refect their career

intentions. Our nding that most associate degrees are

outside the eld (mostly in interdisciplinary studies top bar

in the gures) suggests that those degrees are not serving

well those students who want to use their degree to enter

the workorce in a technical eld. Another possibility is that

colleges do not have the resources to oer courses required

or all o the programs in their catalogs. Students may end

up earning awards in other programs or interdisciplinary

studies because they are unable to nd the courses needed

to complete their intended program o study.

Most associate degree earners do not earn

certicates. With the exception o engineering technology,

many more students earn associate degrees than certicatesduring the six year period meaning that the certicate

does not unction as a stepping stone or the majority o

degree earners in the elds we studied, although some

students who earned only a certicate within the six years

could go on to earn an associate degree at a later point.

However, the proportions o certicate and degree earners

within the eld is much closer, suggesting that when the

associate degree is well aligned with the certicate

involving mostly the addition o general education the

certicate does unction as a step toward a degree.

Few transer students earn associate degrees; most

degrees are outside the eld o study. The majority

o transer students do not earn an associate degree prior

to transer and most o those who do, earn it outside the

eld o study. This is consistent with what we heard rom

those we interviewed and other research ndings about

the poor articulation between community college degree

programs in career elds and the transer requirements into

our-year programs.37 In particular, interviewees

r road less traveled 02 11

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