Continuing Education
Across the United States, employers are seeking workers with skills that align closely with current workforce needs (Bass & Valdez, 2020; D’Amico et al., 2018). Yet, community colleges often separate career and technical education (CTE) from continuing education (CE), creating parallel systems that serve similar students and industries, but lack intentional alignment. This division limits scalability and leaves untapped opportunities for credentialing and advancement. By building pathways based on labor market intelligence (LMI), colleges can create stackable systems that build upon the...
From Training to Credential: Aligning TDCJ Officer Development With Postsecondary Workforce Pathways
Coastal Bend College (CBC) is a rural community college in South Texas serving nine counties and two partial counties, with the main campus in Beeville and other sites in Alice, Kingsville, and Pleasanton. CBC’s service area spans 8,633 square miles and maintains a population of over 160,000, with 20 percent of those individuals living in Bee County (Hatch et al., 2023). The region’s largest employers include Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) (City of Beeville, 2019; Data USA, 2023).
In March 2024, CBC signed...
