I have been working with two-year colleges for over 30 years, and one thing hasn’t changed: most don’t know how to interest students in their subject matter. So, they blame the prospective students for their low enrollment.
“Young people aren’t interested in the family farm like they used to be (for a high-tech agricultural program).”
“No one is interested in the trades anymore - they don’t want to get their hands dirty. They all want to sit in an office.”
“No one wants to go into manufacturing; they consider it a dying industry; it has a bad reputation.”
Yet these same programs were able to increase female and male enrollment when they changed what they were doing.
One of the most significant changes was to talk about the careers students could enter if they enrolled in their class, who was hiring, and what type of salary they could expect.
Here’s what community colleges usually talk about: these are the requirements of the major, these are the prerequisites for the course, and this is the course sequence. The Labor Market information, if available, is often not local.
The other significant change is to have biographies of students who have graduated from the program that prospective students can identify with.
Compare your school’s program pages to the schools where we developed the outreach materials.
I work with schools to help them develop outreach materials that will be effective for recruitment. We can create an entire outreach package for your school, including role model biographies. These strategies have helped schools increase their overall enrollment. Talk with me about developing outreach materials for your school so you don’t have to do it all yourself.
“There was a big difference in how we recruited for our 1st cohort of Pre-Apprentices—which had no women—and our 2nd cohort that had 7. We thought it would be a lot easier than it turned out to be. The first time we partnered with community-based organizations to help us with recruitment, but after the WomenTech Training | realized we weren't welcoming to women.
The WomenTech Training gave us a robust Version 2.0 Outreach Strategy. We had an entire platform and the messaging including: a Women and Automotive website, flyers featuring female role models, and a fact sheet with talking points about why automotive and apprenticeship is a good field for women. Plus, we had 3 Women in Automotive Meet & Crests with female automotive technicians.
The knowledgebase that IWITTS provided us on how to build an outreach strategy that targeted women helped us to tap existing resources within the college and led to our great results—from zero to 7 women in the Automotive Pre-Apprenticeship program in 2.5 months.”
~ Monique Forster Pascual, Director of Apprenticeship & Instructional Service Agreements, Workforce Development, CCSF, CA hosted a 2018 WomenTech Educators Onsite Training: Customized to Automotive, Apprenticeship, Grant Goals and Timeline
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