By Bruno Manno
“Community colleges may prove the saving grace of college-level learning in America,” wrote historian Sean Trainor in a 2015 article in TIME magazine.
Today, almost a decade later, two recent reports echo this notion in their call for community colleges to up their game and make a major contribution to improving the futures of young people and working-class Americans who don’t have college degrees.
Both reports describe the role these institutions should play in expanding America’s workforce education and training efforts, especially by greatly increasing the number of employer-connected apprenticeships and creating a new learning campus that combines paid work and education.