Community and Technical Colleges Targeting Industry Clusters
Around the world many regions are choosing to focus their economic development efforts on industries in which they have particular or potential competitive advantages. They understand that companies constitute production systems and that proximity to one another lends special advantages. These systems are typically called “clusters,” i.e. groups of interdependent companies with similar, related or complementary products or services. Among the most important local advantages to clusters is an ample workforce with the particular skills and experiences needed by the cluster. Unlike supplies, materials, and even upper management, which can be sourced globally, the workforce is generally a local commodity.

The dominant sources of that skilled workforce are the pre-baccalaureate postsecondary institutions that serve local communities and regions. In many parts of the world these intermediate colleges, driven either by high customer demand or recognized opportunities for clusters and individuals, have seized the opportunity to focus resources on their local industry cluster. Further, providing students with better employment experience and connections to labor markets improves their employment and economic opportunities, as sector-based employment initiatives have shown. Targeting cluster/college program linkages:

  • provide the opportunity for students to ground their education in the experiences of a locally dominant cluster and create a real life context for learning;
  • encourage informal learning through closer contacts between students and the workforce industry;
  • increase access to informal labor markets, generating more opportunities for career advancement;
  • provide economies of scale that allows college to achieve excellence within selected niches; and
  • create the opportunity for community colleges to concentrate their resources, making them more apt to become a center of excellence with expertise, knowledge, and technologies that are locally important.
Regional Technology Strategies (RTS1), under a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has begun to document colleges that have chosen to address specialized needs in the form of a compendium. We hope that the information contained in the database will provide useful insights for other colleges, cluster organizations, and economic development agencies that wish to take greater advantage of their colleges to improve the employment and economic opportunities of their students, and operate more cost-efficiently. RTS has compiled information from the colleges into a compendium of two-year colleges that have developed specialized programs and/or services for strong linkages with specific industry clusters.

The compendium is based on information from colleges, economic developers, cluster associations. Information about the program was obtained through web-based research with follow-up telephone interviews, and emails form verification and to gather more in-depth information.

The compendium highlights 21 industry clusters and about 90 community colleges that respond directly to their regions’ key industry clusters through specialized programs and/or services. The compendium provides detailed information about the community college program, including program strengths, weaknesses, outcomes, partnerships, support, means for sharing products with other colleges, and counties within the college service area. The criteria used to identify community college programs that meet cluster needs are:
  • Certificate and degree programs for critical occupations;
  • Optional courses that allow occupational programs to relate skills to cluster;
  • Customized and occupational training programs;
  • Specialized equipment/technologies or labs;
  • Faculty that work in the cluster or have recent cluster experience;
  • Use of special cluster-based industry certifications/skills standards;
  • Internships, externships, and or/consultancies within cluster;
  • Advisory boards and participation on cluster councils;
  • College facilities devoted to use by the cluster including incubators; and
  • Programs aimed at cluster workforce and their dependents
We anticipate this compendium will generate a lot of Internet traffic and be useful to policy makers, practitioners within education, economic development, and private sector arenas.

1RTS is a private, non-profit economic and workforce development organization in Carrboro, North Carolina that pursues strategies to build and strengthen regional competitive advantage by encouraging higher value-added commerce performed by highly skilled people.