In August, I attended the Texas Tribune‘s daylong presentation featuring organizations that prepare future employees for the workforce. Several themes stood out.
Artificial intelligence will not eliminate every occupation. Declining birth rates are contributing to reduced school enrollment. And many school-age children still lack the reading and mathematics skills necessary to pass certification examinations.
I have addressed these issues before, and after many years in education, I appreciate the commitment and enthusiasm expressed during the discussion. Still, much of what I heard sounded familiar. One speaker emphasized that schools, community colleges, foundations, and universities must work together to prepare students for employment.
For me, this was a familiar refrain.
Corporations have been training employees for decades. In human resources, the current term for this practice is upskilling. The challenge is not simply to get students into college. It is to ensure that students leave education with the skills employers need.
There was, however, an encouraging point of agreement: schools, community and vocational colleges, foundations, and corporations increasingly recognize that the workforce lacks sufficient training and that undergraduate education must improve.
This is hardly a new concern.
At the same time, Texas is redirecting funding away from public schools. Without turning this into a partisan argument, it is worth asking how private schools receiving vouchers will be held accountable for preparing students for the workforce when they are not subject to the same accountability standards as public schools.
If workforce readiness is the goal, accountability should matter to all involved, reinforcing our collective responsibility to prepare students effectively.
Community colleges like Midland, Odessa, and Howard are well-positioned to respond swiftly to workforce demands, empowering education administrators to make impactful changes.
Why Community Colleges Are Built for Workforce Training
Texas community colleges have several structural advantages over universities in workforce preparation.
Community colleges were created for open-access, career-focused education tied to local labor markets. Their programs include certificates, associate degrees, and continuing education. Universities, particularly four-year and research institutions, are primarily organized around bachelor’s and graduate degrees, as well as research. Workforce programs can therefore be an addition to a university’s mission rather than serving as its central purpose.
Community colleges can often establish or modify programs much more quickly in response to employer demand. If a semiconductor plant needs trained technicians or a hospital needs additional health-care workers, a community college can respond directly to that local need. Universities, by contrast, generally face more layers of faculty governance and accreditation review when creating new programs.
Texas fundamentally changed community college funding through House Bill 8 in 2023. The new formula places greater emphasis on outcomes rather than on enrollment alone. Colleges receive funding for outcomes such as completing a credential of value, transferring to a university, and completing dual-credit coursework.
The credential-of-value approach also considers whether a credential yields a meaningful earnings return relative to the median earnings of a high school graduate. Additional performance funding is available for credentials in high-demand fields and for serving groups such as Pell Grant recipients, underprepared students, and adult learners.
In other words, the funding formula increasingly rewards credentials that lead to measurable economic results.
University funding formulas are not structured in the same way. Universities are driven by accumulation of semester credit hours, as well as research expenditures and bachelor’s and graduate-degree completions.
Community colleges can bring working electricians, nurses, welders, information-technology specialists, and other professionals into the classroom as adjunct faculty. Their industry experience can be more immediately relevant than a traditional academic career path. That flexibility helps keep instruction connected to current workplace expectations.
Many certificate and associate-level workforce programs can be completed in months rather than years and generally cost substantially less than a bachelor’s degree. That matters when industries change quickly, and workers need to reskill just as quickly.
Texas community college districts are locally governed and tied to specific service areas. Many maintain customized training programs and long-standing relationships with regional employers. Universities, even public ones, often have broader statewide or national missions, which can make it harder to focus exclusively on local labor market needs.
The result is a system increasingly designed to connect education with employment. House Bill 8 ties state funding to credentials, transfers to four-year universities, and participation in dual credit. Texas community colleges now serve more than 740,000 students—more than all Texas public universities combined—and are expanding workforce programs in response to those incentives.
A Refresher: Texas High School Programs of Study
What about the high school Programs of Study I mentioned earlier? I’ve written about them before, but they are worth revisiting because a coherent sequence of courses can make an enormous difference.
Programs of Study are a central component of Texas Career and Technical Education (CTE). They give students a structured pathway from introductory courses to advanced, career-specific instruction, rather than leaving them to assemble a random collection of electives.
Texas CTE is organized around 14 state-approved career clusters, including Health Science, Information Technology, Architecture and Construction, and Business. Within those clusters are specific career pathways. Federal Perkins V requirements also direct states receiving federal CTE funds to develop programs of study aligned with high-skill, high-wage, in-demand occupations.
Under the Texas graduation plan, students select an endorsement: STEM, Business and Industry, Public Services, Arts and Humanities, or Multidisciplinary. Programs of Study do not replace endorsements; rather, they provide structured coursework that can support completion of an endorsement while preparing students for a particular career field.
These programs are more than a collection of electives. They can include:
- A coherent sequence of career-focused courses
- Industry-based certifications
- Work-based learning opportunities
- Practicums or capstone experiences
- Coursework aligned with Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)
Students typically begin with introductory or principle-level courses that allow them to explore a field. If the field is a good fit, they progress to increasingly specialized coursework and, in many cases, complete a practicum, capstone, or industry certification.
That structure matters.
Students should have opportunities to discover what they like, what they are good at, and what they do not want to do. But high school is the ideal place to begin that exploration. By graduation, a student should have a better understanding of the options ahead—and, ideally, some evidence of workplace readiness.
After high school, students have multiple paths to choose from. They can attend college, enter an apprenticeship, join the military, or move directly into the workforce with a credential already in hand.
That is the promise of a well-designed Program of Study: it turns “take some CTE electives” into an actual pathway—one connected to a career field, capable of leading to a recognized certification, and aligned with the student’s graduation requirements.
The Bottom Line
Education should prepare students for the next step, whatever that step may be.
If college is the next step, students should be challenged from the beginning. If employment is the goal, students should know what the job entails before they enter the workplace. And if students need to explore their options, we should give them meaningful opportunities to do so while they are still in high school.
The answer is not to tell first-year college students that their grades don’t count.
Give them room to explore, yes. Give them support, absolutely. But give them honest feedback, too.
Because sooner or later, in college, in an apprenticeship, or on the job, the work has to count.
Michele Harmon
“Your employees are the heart of your organization.” Dr. Michele Harmon is a Human Resource professional, supporting clients in Texas and New Mexico that range in size from five to more than 3,000 employees. Email: micheleharmon1@gmail.com
Dr. Harmon’s line about students lacking the reading and math to pass certification exams is the one that lands in the trades. An electrician’s or plumber’s license exam is a lot of code tables and load calculations, and the hours requirements and reciprocity rules change at every state line, which is one more thing a kid headed into the oilfield or a plant job needs explained plainly. We run a job board for traveling trades workers, and we keep a dated list of the exam and hour requirements a state license board actually sets for four trades, Texas and New Mexico included, because the first thing a new hand asks is what the test looks like. The work has to count, and so does knowing what the board will ask for.