Community Colleges Champion Diversity in Their Classrooms – Here’s How Employers Can Too.
Nearly half of U.S. workers have enrolled in community college at some point in their lives.
That’s a stunning number – and it speaks to community college’s foundational role in powering our nation’s workforce. Community colleges offer accessible career training to adult learners from all walks of life in communities all across the country.
Serving such a large swath of the U.S. workforce means that community colleges reflect the incredible diversity, skills, and experiences of U.S. workers:
55% are women.
Half are “nontraditional” students, ages 25 and above.
60,000 are international students, many with degrees, credentials and experience from other countries.
45% are first-generation college students.
42% are parents.
1 in 3 come from Latino/Latinx backgrounds.
40% are English learners.
This diversity brings strength to classrooms and workplaces across the country: Study after study links diversity to increased innovation, problem-solving, and improved bottom lines for employers. Yet many of the factors listed above – like emerging English proficiency – also drive systemic barriers that can stymie learners’ educational outcomes, along with career and economic mobility.
Community colleges are constantly innovating to ensure that learners’ potential translates to accessing careers in high-demand fields. And across classrooms and campuses, that innovation is often tied to meeting learners’ diverse needs. Employers can take a page from community colleges’ playbook to do the same in championing diversity in their workplaces.
With a goal to share insights, innovative ideas, and educational strategies related to serving the needs of diverse learners, EnGen recently convened three dozen adult education leaders – representing community colleges and organizations in nearly as many states – in a lunch and learn session at last month’s Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE) National Conference.
Here are three insights from our conversation – along with examples from the field that can be replicated at other colleges or workplaces across the country.
Insight 1: Differentiated instruction is foundational.
Community colleges’ increasingly “non-homogeneous” classrooms – serving learners with different learning goals, different skills, and who may speak different languages – require a differentiated, personalized approach to instruction. Adult educators are increasingly supplementing their face-to-face instruction time with online learning platforms like EnGen, which deliver learning plans that are hyper-tailored to students’ interests and needs.
A Texas-based community college, for example, uses EnGen to open career pathways for Internationally Trained Professionals (ITPs), learners who have experience or earned credentials from countries outside of the U.S., in fields ranging from healthcare to engineering to technology and more. Instructors use EnGen’s career-aligned English platform to connect learners with tools to search for jobs, network, and prepare for interviews – with content catered to ITPs’ career goals and interests.
Employers can use the same approach when designing training programs for diverse workforces. Here too, online, on-demand learning can deliver personalized training designed around workers’ roles, skills, and goals, ranging from English instruction to digital literacy to specific on-the-job skills and pre-apprenticeship programs.
Insight 2: Technology-mediated learning can serve everyone.
Community college classrooms include learners with widely varying levels of digital literacy, described as the ability to access, create, and share information on computers and digital media platforms. An estimated 1 in 3 U.S. workers, including 2 in 3 workers with emerging English proficiency, don’t have these skills.
Community colleges are innovating with orientation courses that ensure all learners understand how to use the technology required for classes – along with drop-in office hours, peer support, and time in computer labs. They’re also using AI-based tools in the classroom to support students with hands-on learning: Examples from courses for adult English learners include revising ChatGPT texts for accuracy or using AI-based tools to create a resume or cover letter for real-world job scenarios.
Employers can support workers in learning critical digital skills too, ensuring that technology isn’t a barrier to doing their jobs, accessing on-the-job training, or taking on more responsibility. When companies invest in EnGen to support their workforce in learning English, for example, they see a two-for-one ROI: In a recent survey, 85% of EnGen learners said their digital skills have also improved as a result of learning English.
Insight 3: Strong workforce pipelines span community, classroom, and careers.
Beyond simply supporting learners from diverse backgrounds, community colleges are actively building partnerships, pipelines, and referral programs that actively recruit students into their campuses. Instructors, in turn, are building classroom environments focused on respect, empathy, and cultural sensitivity.
A California-based community college system, for example, partners with local immigrant-serving agencies and organizations to get feedback on instruction, optimizing practices to meet specific needs and cultural backgrounds of English learners.
Employers can adopt similar practices, ensuring that their hiring, training, and employee engagement programs intentionally include workers who come from underrepresented backgrounds – women, speakers of other languages, justice-involved individuals, nontraditional students, and more. Practices like skills-based hiring and training on subjects like unconscious bias are critical first steps – as is offering inclusive training programs, like workplace-based English, that can support new hires and incumbent workers alike.
Community colleges reflect the diversity of learners and workers across the U.S. When classrooms – and companies – fully embrace and support this diversity, everyone benefits.
EnGen partners with community colleges and employers across the country to provide a contextualized, real-world approach to English instruction. Request a live platform demo: https://getengen.com/demo