Indeed, community college leaders perceive that postsecondary vocational education programs do not fulfill their workforce development mission. A recently released report of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), titled The Knowledge Net (2000) does not mention vocational education as part of the future course for community colleges. Community college administrators at the recent AACC convention rushed to panels on future trends in customized training, employer use of the Internet, and even the application of the Department of Labor's Workforce Investment Act, but there was no panel devoted to Tech Prep, and only passing reference to the new Perkins Act. While high-skill high-wage work in American industry appears to rely on vocational education beyond high school, the influence of postsecondary vocational education is waning within community colleges. Clearly, vocational education must "reinvent" itself if it is to survive.

In this article I argue that, both in substance and as a learning system, a revitalized vocational education that links itself with other strategies for workforce development and charts a course different from secondary vocational education is needed. If postsecondary vocational education can be understood within the context of the changing structure of work and education, it will not only preserve and strengthen postsecondary education, but provide a means to perhaps redefine and shape the secondary education system as well.

The Quiet Crisis of Postsecondary Vocational Education

The 1994 National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE) concluded that postsecondary vocational enrollments have increased in spite of rising costs, apparently because students are attracted by improved "job opportunities and pay." The NAVE study also found that employers viewed postsecondary vocational education positively, and that empirical evidence existed that wages were higher for program completers. The NAVE study, however, compared postsecondary with secondary vocational education, and the study is very critical of secondary vocational programs. When examined within the context of postsecondary education only, the stability of postsecondary vocational education is not as clear.

The demand for higher education has increased sharply among American youth, many of whom assume that a four-year education is the means of obtaining a stable, good paying job. At American community colleges, however, over 90% of students pursue their educational careers while holding a job. Vocational education has found it difficult to relate to this group within the context of its classical mission: the preparation of individuals for entry-level jobs. Postsecondary vocational students also base their futures increasingly on completion of a college degree. This is in sharp contrast to another growing group of individuals attending community colleges called "reverse transfers." These are individuals with a college degree attending a community college, often for specific occupational skills.

The increasing emphasis companies place on incumbent worker training is also impacting postsecondary education. Company-sponsored tuition programs and specific training and education programs use - sometimes regularly - community colleges because of their proximity and flexibility (Doughtery, 1998). Yet, postsecondary vocational education has only marginally benefited from this trend (Grubb, 1996). Often customized training programs are designed and developed by units that are independent from traditional vocational education. As a result, program enrollments can be adversely affected, and transmission of leading technology and corporate contacts are limited for faculty within the traditional vocational programs.

Vocational programs are often not designed to service adult learners in particular, and introductory courses do not appeal to older worker-students. While these students sometimes need cross training, they often return to school to further specialize in a particular area. Unless these specializations can be tied to some form of portable credential recognized by employers, there is little need for employees to demand credit.

There is also the dilemma of how well postsecondary education is tied to its secondary counterpart. Tech Prep programs with articulation agreements and specific courses of study are not always used. In many states the two subsystems remain fairly separate and the students distinct. Still, postsecondary vocational education is not without success stories, such as the allied health and nursing areas. A nursing pinning ceremony at a local community college provides a moving testimonial of how community colleges provide relevant job skills for people. Similarly, automotive service technician programs can combine the interests of manufacturers with labor demands of local dealers and qualify graduates for high-skill, high-pay work. These programs can combine secondary and postsecondary degree programs and a seamless transition into the world of work. They have a strong business-led organization, Automotive Youth Educational Systems, that aids in guiding the process.

Finally, some of the finest community college teachers, who can interrelate classroom and practical hands-on learning, are in vocational programs. However, few community colleges have supported vocational instructors and attempted to use them as models for other teachers. They may be missing an opportunity to improve the quality of teaching and learning in community colleges overall when they overlook these highly skilled instructors.

Disciplines Within Vocational Education

What accounts for the current dilemma? What can be done to restore vocational education and give it more recognition in community colleges? Part of the dilemma rests with the adoption of an academic model by which postsecondary vocational education organizes its knowledge. This is a major problem since knowledge linked to jobs and the labor market is continuously changing. Vocational fields such as welding, accounting, and machine tools are particular technologies linked to an occupational process, and as the process of work organization is altered, the specific technologies change.

In contrast, academic disciplines do not define their relevance in terms of preparation for occupational achievement. Vocational education, however, must continually sort and re-sort its subject matter based upon an external standard: mastering skill sets that lead to employment. In fact, mastering the particular processes embedded within the work organization of a firm may be of even greater importance than mastering the technology.

Educators sometimes take for granted the distinction between vocational education and many traditional forms of liberal arts education. The specific body of knowledge to be mastered in vocational education is far more changeable and adaptable than in other parts of the college. In almost all postsecondary institutions the organization of vocational education departments mimics the academic units contributing to enormous problems in maintaining relevance for a vocational unit. Compared to secondary educators who teach the fundamentals, postsecondary instructors provide a strong emphasis on more advanced technical skills and mastery of these skills within the context of the workplace. Thus, unlike the academic area, vocational content has to meet a relevance test that is externally controlled by a specific local industry or process, assuming most students are educated for jobs within their communities.

Changes in Labor Markets

A significant change has occurred in U.S. labor markets. Traditional mechanisms by which firms have sought workers and workers have found jobs are of diminishing importance to hiring and promotion decisions. Employment security is declining and implicit commitments of mutual loyalty have ended, especially to middle age workers (Osterman, 1999). The number of workers who experienced involuntary layoff because of plant closings or mergers has increased. Average job tenure in the U.S. is the lowest of any industrialized nation. Prosperity appears interconnected with enormous fluidity and volatility on the job (Bluestone et al., 1999).

Local employers are likely to start workers at a low wage and advance them when "they see how they perform" within the system (Grubb, 1996). Students entering the job market with an associate degree must demonstrate their competence to the prospective employer so the issue of credentials, skill certification, and their legitimacy becomes important. Still, many important things can be learned on the job. How can vocational classes mesh with work site learning? Outside the allied health and nursing programs, many vocational programs have limited emphasis on student placement.

Failure to provide a strong work-based component may compromise an employer's acceptance of course work and willingness to hire community college students with certificates and degrees. Unless individual teachers maintain specific ties with specific firm owners-in a real sense continually marketing their programs and their students-there may be little recognition of graduates. The lack of meaningful credentials may also hold back postsecondary vocational education from developing more interest on the part of students and employers and maintaining or increasing enrollments.

What Is to Be Done

To resolve these problems we will need to employ specific programmatic strategies as well as broader policy changes. Systemic change and paradigm shifts may be tempting, but may prove to be both expensive and unworkable. Assuming the present funding streams and federal priorities remain the same, I offer the following short-term strategies.

1. Concentrate and focus on local sub-baccalaureate labor market needs.

Postsecondary vocational education should develop niche market programs, rather than comprehensive programs, which should be determined by the particular makeup of the local community served by the institution and fit within the regional labor market. Clusters of local firms should be directly involved through technical training and work-based components. Local industry should also help create career pathways allowing students to advance into a four-year degree, and thus be prepared for a career involving advanced degrees. Critical thinking competencies, communication, and math should be thoroughly integrated within the curriculum. Niche market programs should allow postsecondary vocational education to distinguish itself from more broad-based secondary programs, freeing them up to provide broader exposure to work processes and related careers. Exceptions to this local orientation include meeting the needs of adults reentering the labor market, and program development for institutions that do not serve a particular labor market or are in rural and urban settings with small or weak labor markets.

2. Integrate activities within a broader workforce development focus.

Workforce development in the broadest sense is the process of preparing human capital for productive work within a community. Community colleges prepare individuals for work under federal programs such as the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Act. Vocational education is the preparation of individuals with specific occupational skills. It is, therefore, the specific role of the community college to develop its community workforce and economy. Programs include those that serve specific firms, customized training for incumbent workers, and counseling in One Stop centers.

3. Maintain ties with secondary vocational education through Tech Prep-like approaches.

Postsecondary education should maintain close ties with secondary school systems, and specifically with students enrolled in secondary vocational programs. Instead of attempting to articulate programs in specific fields, such as accounting, machining, relationships should be structured around career clusters that match the businesses and industries found within the community. This will help insure that secondary students do not see a high school degree as a termination of education before the postsecondary level. The combination of secondary and postsecondary systems should be available to penetrate local labor markets and develop a career path for students. This Tech Prep-like approach can be an extraordinarily powerful attraction for the postsecondary programs. Secondary vocational education provides entry level and foundation competencies for career pathways fitting with local industries. These postsecondary programs should offer more specialized courses that include a work-based learning component. If this focus could be achieved, I believe we would see much of the squabbling between the secondary and postsecondary levels disappear.

4. Understand the importance of college completion.

Part of the success of any program includes understanding the needs of the customer. If most students attend postsecondary education because they want a four-year college degree as a means of obtaining a secure job, it is critical to consider this motivation when designing a program and courses in vocational education. Many postsecondary vocational educators spend incredible amounts of time debunking liberal arts and other college level programs to their students, seemingly unaware that students' dreams are to complete four-year programs eventually. In this case, the issue becomes one of making vocational education fit together with liberal arts for a coherent program of study, not diminishing the role of liberal arts and denying its criticality to postsecondary vocational education programs.

5. Enhance staff development of postsecondary administrators.

Who will train the vocational administrators of the future? Since most schools of education have virtually ceased supplying any postsecondary vocational instructors, they are probably not good sources. It is more likely that the training and education practices of leading companies may be potential models for administrators to follow. Firms that have undergone organizational and cultural change should be examined to understand how to introduce this change within postsecondary vocational education. Models for good vocational administrators may be found in the human resource departments (HRD) of companies, and these models should be researched to determine their transferability.

Conclusion

It has been disappointing that those in the field have taken up so few of these core issues-either in the vocational education or community college leadership arenas. The real issue is not whether postsecondary vocational education is better organized, funded, and growing in comparison with secondary education, but whether postsecondary vocational education is playing a role in the development of a new generation of people prepared to enter the workforce. It is only when postsecondary vocational education can see itself as playing a role in HRD that it will have a future at the postsecondary level. Let's hope this vision is realized before it is too late.

References

Adelman, C. (1998, November). Selected tables on community college enrollments, students and curriculum. Unpublished tables from the U.S. Department of Education, distributed following presentation at Community College Research Center Conference, Old Westbury, NY.

American Association of Community Colleges. (2000). The knowledge net. Washington, DC: Community College Press. www.theknowledgenet.org/know-net.pdf.

Bluestone, B., Harrison, R., & Leone, C. (1999). Growing prosperity, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company

Dougherty, K. J., & Marianne F. B. (1998). The new economic development role of the community college. New York: Community College Research Center.

Grubb, W. N. (1996). Working in the middle. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

National Assessment of Vocational Education. (1994, July). Final Report To Congress, Vol.I-V. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.

Osterman, P. (1999). Securing prosperity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.