Community Colleges and Employers Develop Online Course Content To Address High-Need Skills Gap

CorpU, a social learning platform, and Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit that focuses on addressing workforce demands, have assembled the College Employer Collaborative (CEC), a group of community colleges and employers that will work with CorpU to develop college curricula and credentials intended to meet the needs of high-growth industries.

According to a recent Gallup survey, approximately one third of business leaders think college and university graduates don't have the skills that meet their business needs. The CEC aims to help rectify the situation by developing online courses geared toward the skills employers are looking for in employees.

"Community colleges have always been a critical pipeline of talent," said Brian Inbody, president of Neosho County Community College, in a prepared statement. "By working with employers to actually develop course content, we are able to help students develop high-demand skills in the context of a meaningful academic environment."

The CEC will meet in mid-June to begin designing the courses. Employers and CorpU learning designers will work together to develop the courses using CorpU's social learning platform. Colleges will integrate the online course content into their on-campus courses beginning in the Fall 2015 semester. According to information from CorpU and Jobs for the Future, "students who successfully complete the courses will earn a credential recognized by employers in the Collaborative, which signals their mastery of these critical skills."

Community college members of the CEC include Neosho County Community College in Kansas, Everett Community College in Washington State, LaGuardia Community College in New York and Alamo Colleges in Texas. Employer members include AGCO, Boeing, MetLife Premier Client Group, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, Waddell & Reed and Securian Financial Group.

GAMA International, a professional development association for leadership and management professionals in the insurance, investment and financial services industry, helped to convene the employers that have joined the CEC.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • data professionals in a meeting

    Data Fluency as a Strategic Imperative

    As an institution's highest level of data capabilities, data fluency taps into the agency of technical experts who work together with top-level institutional leadership on issues of strategic importance.

  • stylized AI code and a neural network symbol, paired with glitching code and a red warning triangle

    New Anthropic AI Models Demonstrate Coding Prowess, Behavior Risks

    Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, its most advanced artificial intelligence models to date, boasting a significant leap in autonomous coding capabilities while simultaneously revealing troubling tendencies toward self-preservation that include attempted blackmail.

  • university building with classical architecture is partially overlaid by a glowing digital brain graphic

    NSF Invests $100 Million in National AI Research Institutes

    The National Science Foundation has announced a $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes, part of a broader White House strategy to maintain American leadership as competition with China intensifies.

  • black analog alarm clock sits in front of a digital background featuring a glowing padlock symbol and cybersecurity icons

    The Clock Is Ticking: Higher Education's Big Push Toward CMMC Compliance

    With the United States Department of Defense's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 framework entering Phase II on Dec. 16, 2025, institutions must develop a cybersecurity posture that's resilient, defensible, and flexible enough to keep up with an evolving threat landscape.