The Aspen Institute

This publication summarizes research from AspenWSI’s Courses to Employment project, which studied how six community college-nonprofit partnerships work together to help low-income adults succeed in the classroom and the labor market. The report provides an overview of the approach and strategies these partnerships use, how these partnerships are structured in terms of institutional roles and responsibilities, what factors influence how these partnerships are structured, and describes the education and employment outcomes participating students achieved during the Courses to Employment project. This publication is geared towards policymakers and investors who are interested in supporting models that increase the success rates of adults in community college and to workforce development leaders who are interested in building or sustaining collaborative efforts to support workers in their labor markets as well as learning about innovative approaches to curricula, training and instruction, employer engagement strategies, and support services. This in-depth look at Courses to Employment (C2E) strategies will be useful to those already engaged in this work as well as to newcomers to this field of practice. Courses to Employment was funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.