K-12 to Career

Three Ohio community colleges offer free industry-recognized credentials in manufacturing to more high school students. Also, new career-connected AP courses designed with industry input, a partnership on skilled trade prep for K-12 students, and essays on the race to define the future of credentials and how data and research can inform Workforce Pell. (Subscribe here.)

Reaching the Full Classroom

Dual enrollment is a good way for high school students to learn about careers. To help students explore what’s possible in advanced manufacturing, Ohio is experimenting with easing eligibility requirements for the state’s cost-free dual-enrollment program.

To participate in the subsidized college courses, dubbed College Credit Plus, Ohio high school students typically must have a 3.0 GPA or pass placement exams. But the state’s Legislature approved a waiver pathway for students who don’t meet traditional college readiness requirements.

In an interesting twist, participating colleges must offer dual-enrollment courses that lead to an industry-recognized credential or certificate tied to an in-demand job field.

Three community colleges got a green light in May for the waiver, specifically for courses in advanced manufacturing. The goal is to reach more students who might not be aware of what’s possible in that industry—with 6K+ open jobs in Ohio.

“This waiver broadens access to include those students who might not have planned to pursue a college credential or a career in a high-demand field, but who we know have the potential to be successful based on our past evaluation of program performance data,” says the Ohio Department of Higher Education. 

Dayton’s Sinclair Community College is participating in the pilot, along with Lorain County Community College and Columbus State Community College. Sinclair’s focus is exposing K-12 students to in-demand jobs that pay living wages, says Elizabeth Cicchetti, chief school partnership officer at the college.

The waiver will help the college expand in high schools, she says, and “allow us to reach full classrooms.”

Dual-enrollment students typically complete their courses at Sinclair, with a 92% success rate in College Credit Plus. Under the new waiver, participating colleges provide wraparound supports to dual-enrolled students. That includes academic advising from Sinclair, while partner school districts offer career navigators and tap results from YouScience assessments to reach students with aptitude for specific careers.

Cicchetti says Sinclair wants to offer career-aligned academic experiences—including pre-apprenticeships and other forms of work-based learning—to K-12 students who are just floating in school and don’t have a plan for what comes next.

“You don’t have to complete a whole degree, you just have to take one class,” she says.

Direct Connections to In-Demand Careers: More than half of U.S. colleges now offer structured credential pathways—ranging from certificates to associate degrees—through their dual-enrollment programs, according to a new analysis from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships.

Early access and engagement with careers has an impact for students, says Amy Williams, the alliance’s executive director.

“This is a smart move for Ohio if they want to expand this program to reach students with the most ability to benefit the state,” she says. That includes students “who are less likely to go to college but also interested in and already engaged with CTE career fields that are workforce aligned.” 

Ohio’s 3.0 GPA threshold for dual-enrollment eligibility is fairly high, and Williams says a significant number of states feature less prescriptive guidelines for colleges. But a waiver targeting a specific high-demand industry appears novel.

The advanced manufacturing pilot is designed to help bulk up partnerships between colleges and industry partners, says the state’s Department of Higher Education, including through hands-on experiences for students like job shadowing and connecting with mentors in the industry.

Any public college or university in Ohio can apply to opt in. And the pilot could be expanded into other high-demand, high-wage fields.

“The hope and goal is that all 22 colleges would be doing this,” says Marcia Ballinger, president of Lorain County Community College, where a whopping 52% of graduating students across the local school district took dual-enrollment courses this spring, earning an average of 22 college credits. 

An early example of the waiver’s impact is a new CTE pathway at Midview High School in Grafton. More Midview students now can take courses in microelectronic manufacturing, an academic track from LCCC that has earned wide praise for deep industry partnerships and strong student success rates.

The college delivers those courses on-site, in a clean room designed to offer real-world experience. A locally based foundation and a tool company contributed funding so LCCC could quickly ramp up the program. “The students receive five industry-recognized certificates,” says Ballinger. “This is so much more than an array of classes.”

The three Ohio community colleges are applying for a second waiver this fall that will be broader, Ballinger says, with a goal of addressing the technician-level skills gap under the industry 4.0 umbrella. Certificates and degrees in data analytics, automation and robotics, additive manufacturing, system integration, and cybersecurity will be included.

Ballinger says the strategy is about ensuring that colleges are preparing a skilled workforce.

The Kicker: “This bold move enables colleges and K-12 partners across the state to work together in building direct pathways to in-demand careers.”

Career-Connected Courses in High School

Two recently formed partnerships seek to bring career exposure and industry-recognized learning into K-12 classrooms. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the College Board have teamed up to create two business-backed AP courses for high school students. And Edmentum, an established digital learning provider in K-12 education, is offering trade-prep courses from Interplay Learning as part of its CTE curriculum.

The AP Career Kickstart courses are in cybersecurity and business principles with personal finance. Both will be available next fall. An AP course in networking is slated to go live in 2027. The courses will lead to a credential.

The College Board says it’s seeking to develop a portfolio that reflects the interests of students and the evolving needs of the workforce in areas with high growth, strong wages, and advanced skills that can be pursued via various paths. “The goal is not just to offer more credentials,” says a College Board spokesperson, “but to ensure they are accessible to all students, regardless of whether they’re college-bound or entering the workforce directly.”

The courses, which lead to college credit, were co-designed by high school educators, college faculty, and employers, including CompTIA, Oracle, IBM, U.S. Bank, and Sephora. Through its growing industry advisor program, the College Board says roughly 300 employers and 70 local chambers have endorsed the courses. Those endorsements are a market signal to students.

“Advisors review the framework for each course and credential, offering feedback to help shape the content and weigh in on in-demand skills,” the spokesperson says.

Job-Ready Training: More than half of U.S. high schools have no skilled trade programs, says Doug Donovan, CEO of Interplay Learning. But that appears to be changing rapidly, due in part to increasing Gen Z interest in those careers.

“It’s going from chatter to action,” Donovan says.

The Austin-based Interplay Learning taps applied AI, immersive simulations, and VR to prepare students for careers ranging from plumbing to clean energy. The company’s roots are on the employer side of the education-to-work connection, says Donovan, and instruction is designed with the support of industry experts.

Hands-on learning in many high-demand skilled trade fields requires a significant investment in equipment and specialized staff that is out of reach for many schools, says Jamie Candee, president and CEO of Edmentum, which reaches 5M U.S. students annually.

The trade-prep add-on to Edmentum’s career-connected learning program expands what’s possible for school districts by giving students access to immersive, virtual content for nine in-demand fields: electrical, plumbing, HVAC, appliances, facilities maintenance, clean energy, multifamily maintenance, residential construction, and solar. Students earn an Interplay job-ready certificate at the end of each program.

The pilot launched this spring. It was slowed down by the Trump administration’s temporary freeze of more than $5B in federal education funds this summer. But a handful of big school districts have taken the leap, including ones in California and Florida.

“This partnership helps districts disrupt the status quo of trade prep, dissolve barriers to experiential learning, and scale access to job-ready training,” says Candee.

Open Tabs

H-1B Visas and Jobs
The White House says its $100K fee for new applicants for H-1B visas will prevent American workers from being replaced by lower-paid foreign labor, citing rising unemployment among recent computer science grads. Employers argue that they can’t find enough qualified Americans workers for tech jobs. It’s unclear how the new restrictions will impact H1-B program revenue, which the U.S. Department of Labor previously has tapped for workforce training.

AI, Jobs, and Politics
AI-related job loss could be a growing political issue on the right, Mohar Chatterjee reports for Politico. Several Republican policymakers have pushed back against the notion of AI supplanting humans, in addition to concerns about impacts on child safety and mental health. The depth and breadth of AI’s impacts on jobs could help determine whether the technology will gain the political traction of other Big Tech issues with conservatives.

Earnings Data
A new dashboard tracks the effectiveness of career training programs in Colorado with data on earnings and industry placements. The tool unveiled by the Colorado Wage Outcomes Results Coalition seeks to be a proof of concept, showing the feasibility and urgency of securely connecting workforce training program records to verifiable earnings and employment data. The dashboard matches program participant records with employer-submitted payroll data.

Opportunity Agenda
New Jersey should set a goal for 75% of adults in the labor market to have a postsecondary degree or credential of value by 2040, says the New Jersey Council of County Colleges. The state’s community college leaders also released an update and reframing of some strategies from a 2024 blueprint for boosting student success and economic mobility. They are seeking an expanded coalition of partners, including employers and philanthropies.

Enrollment Declines
Almost all of the decline in U.S. postsecondary enrollment since 2010 has occurred at colleges with weak outcomes, according to an analysis by Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. For-profit colleges saw some of the largest declines. But community colleges in the bottom fifth of student outcomes—as defined by graduation rates, student loan repayment, and earnings—also lost a significant chunk of their enrollments.

Certifications and Degrees
Aligning academic degrees with certifications allows learners to get a broad-based education with occupationally specific skills assessed through a certification exam, according to Workcred, which partnered with the Higher Learning Commission and the League for Innovation in the Community College on a resource collection to support these skills-based career pathways. The package includes case studies on certifications in IT and behavioral health from four community colleges

Job Moves
New America has named its 2025 cohort of Future of Work & Innovative Economy initiative fellows. They are Jeffrey Alexander, Phillip Singerman, Francie Genz, Adam Fagen, and Celeste Carter.

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