ABOUT Ben
I’ve been a passionate college advocate for 25 years.
Let's expand university partnerships, job placements, and learning options.
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…. with enhanced university partnerships, better job placements, and more lifelong learning options.
One way to do this is to work with partner institutions to create innovative initiatives that blend high school, community college, four-year college, and workforce development on one campus.
Curricular alignment partnerships promote the streamlining of educational requirements across institutions and businesses. These activities are focused on creating an easy-to-follow pathway to and through various educational levels so that students easily move from high school to community college and then to a baccalaureate degree and employment. The emphasis is on creating standards to allow for ease of transfer.
These activities require partnering institutions to converse with one another and come to a consensus regarding what they expect their students to be able to know and do. This means that community college instructors must communicate with high school instructors and also listen carefully to four-year college instructors and employers.
Expanding curricular alignment activities would also require City College to examine course offerings to determine whether or not they build students’ skills in a sequential way that ensures adequate preparation for successive educational or employment steps. Currently, City College has 6 community college-baccalaureate partnerships that specify a sequence of courses that are easily transferable to partnering colleges. In this way, a City College student completing an articulated course of study at a community college could transfer all of his or her credits directly into a baccalaureate program at the partnering four-year institution.
Another common partnership activity is the development of common course numbering — where institutions work together to determine the content of a course such as English 101 and commit to using this content in any course with that number. This allows students to transfer their credit to other institutions since it is understood that the content is the same.
Finally, City College could engage in alignment activities with employer partners, in which colleges align their course outcomes with San Francisco business hiring requirements that meet the labor market needs. Major San Francisco employers include Salesforce, Kaiser Permanente, Sutter Health, and Wells Fargo. Why not align City College training programs with actual employer needs that offer well-paying job opportunities?
