Community Colleges Receive $4 Million in State Grants

From a release from Gov. Deval Patrick's Office

Governor Deval Patrick Tuesday announced $4 million in grants to support increased skill training and workforce alignment, improved student learning outcomes and efficiency measures at community colleges across the Commonwealth.

These grants deliver on the goals of the Governor’s community college initiative to put more people in Massachusetts back to work and to strengthen the connections between community colleges, employers and the workforce.

"A stronger community college system is good for students, employers and the whole Commonwealth," said Governor Patrick. "These additional resources will further accelerate this transformation, and help get people to work.”

Included among the awards are Bristol, Cape Cod and Massasoit:

• Bristol Community College - $299,994 to address college readiness, improve developmental education and increase student retention.
• Cape Cod Community College - $137,211 to enhance college readiness in the Cape Cod area and to retain increasing numbers of students at the college.
• Massasoit Community College - $215,000 for a new civic engagement initiative, enhanced student success activities and more focused work force training.

“By partnering with our community colleges and strengthening their ties to businesses and career training, we will help close the skills gap facing many industries,” said Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray. “Ensuring more students and those seeking work are trained in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is a major component of our efforts to increase skill training and support job creation and professional growth.”

The community college grants awarded today through the Performance Incentive Fund (PIF) deliver on Governor Patrick’s pledge to invest further in our community college system, and will give campuses the additional capacity they need to promote higher completion rates of degrees and certificates, be more responsive to the needs of local economies as well as of the state’s fastest growing sectors and adopt a system-wide standard core of course offerings.

The FY13 budget, supported by the Legislature and signed by the Governor in July, set aside $5 million for community colleges to be used for 1) the development of efficiency measures that may include consolidation of information technology platforms and services; 2) creating innovative methods for delivering quality higher education that increase capacity, reduce costs and promote student completion; 3) engaging in statewide and regional collaborations with other public higher education institutions that reduce costs, increase efficiency and promote quality in the areas of academic programming and campus management; and 4) improving student learning outcomes assessments set forth by the Board of Higher Education under the Vision Project. These grants also support the Administration’s goals of increasing workforce alignment between community colleges and local/statewide employers and providing students with additional skills training in high-demand fields. 

“These grants will support our efforts to connect more of our students to meaningful work and will help provide more of those students with the educational and skill-building opportunities they will need to succeed in our knowledge-based economy,” said Education Secretary Paul Reville.

Of the $5 million allocation, $2.9 million is being awarded to fund new initiatives, $500,000 is being awarded as second year grants to projects funded last year under the PIF and $400,000 will be used to implement a system-wide credit transferability infrastructure. Grants to award the remaining $1 million balance will be announced later this year to incentivize credit transferability and efficiency measures among campuses.