Governor Patrick announces $4 Million for community colleges

Governor Deval Patrick 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 on September 25.

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.”

“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 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.