“We will not solve these issues without a fundamental transformation of the Virginia Community College System.” The VCCS State Board has approved a six-year, multi-million-dollar plan to address Virginia’s needs to put people to work and provide the skills that employers require in the 21st century.
Meeting in Richmond September 21, members of the VCCS governing body unanimously adopted the plan, which has been months in the making by stakeholders throughout Virginia’s 23-college community college system.
The strategic priorities outlined in the plan include:
- Building state-of-the-art career and technical programs and labs
- Major new efforts to recruit more adult learners to better serve the more than three million Virginia adults who face limited career prospects because they have no post-high school credentials
- Optimize college facilities and offer programs when, where, and how our students need to be served
- Focus not just on course completion, but also on job placement
- Ensure that every high school graduate has a meaningful post-secondary credential
- Scale up successful pay-for-performance training programs, such as the VCCS’s growing and cost-effective FastForward workforce training
In the coming weeks and months, the VCCS will be working with the governor and Virginia lawmakers to secure funding for the six-year plan.
The proposal OK’ed by our state board anticipates a cost of $622 million in the upcoming two-year budget cycle.
You can view the entire slide presentation approved by the Board.
Worth noting: even in the midst of challenges presented by the Covid pandemic and the long national higher educational enrollment decreases, Virginia’s Community Colleges have achieved important improvements in performance, including increased graduation rates, increased transfers to four-year institutions, decreased student borrowing and serving growing percentages of under-represented students.
The six-year plan closely tracks the strategic goals outlined by VCCS Chancellor David Doré during the Chancellor’s Retreat event in early August, when he said, “We are aiming for transformation on nearly every level; to create a truly effective shift into the ‘second curve’ for higher education is an all-hands on deck opportunity. This is not only a system office effort, but also a system-wide effort. Everyone has a role to play in our success.”
You can read more from the Chancellor’s retreat.
