Building and sustaining linkages to local employers is only one in a long list of faculty responsibilities. Our survey suggests that full-time faculty are working a lot of hours--the mean for academic and vocational faculty is about forty-six hours a week (there is no statistical difference between the two); about 21% of faculty claim they work fifty or more hours per week on average. Most vocational faculty we spoke with at our sites said their workload far exceeded forty hours a week, leaving little time for additional activities. Faculty in vocational departments and divisions repeatedly pointed out that their teaching loads were much heavier than those of faculty in academic departments. For example, faculty in one California community college did not receive any workload credit for teaching laboratories or practica. In addition, many (arguably most) vocational departments have fewer faculty full-time equivalents on average than academic departments, so that each faculty member must assume a greater share of the work of running a department, including curriculum development, participation in campus initiatives, and routine administration. Beyond the real time limits of vocational faculty experience, the perceived discrepancy between academic and vocational faculty teaching loads leaves at least some vocational instructors disinclined to invest extra time on behalf of their college.
Additionally, the distribution of work responsibilities is also a barrier to connecting with local labor markets. Specifically, many vocational faculty teach in the evening because their students work during the day. This prevents them from attending professional association meetings and other community events that would provide opportunities for building linkages. Similarly, faculty often are unable to attend conferences or workshops, if such events conflict with their teaching schedules.
Beyond heavy workloads, faculty pointed out that building linkages to the labor market competes with other special initiatives. All four colleges we visited participated in some kind of School-to-Work or Tech Prep initiative, but these primarily involved building linkages to local high schools (and, in one case, a nearby polytechnic university), not the labor market. Other special initiatives, including integrating academic and vocational education, VESL programs, and major strategic planning initiatives also require "extra" time from vocational faculty, time that could, under other circumstances, be spent on building labor market linkages.
When asked on our survey if lack of time was a barrier to building linkages (Table 9, item a), faculty were fairly neutral, with academic faculty significantly more likely to agree this was a problem. However, when contrasted with the other seven options given as possible barriers, "I have no time to develop links" was the one which faculty were least likely to disagree with. Thirty-eight percent of all faculty strongly agreed or agreed that they had no time; 39% disagreed or strongly disagreed (Appendix A, Appendix Table 4, item a). Importantly, lack of interest on the part of employers was not considered a barrier by most instructors, with all types of faculty disagreeing with this notion (Table 9, item d). Similarly, faculty themselves disagree with the idea that stronger links are not needed (Table 9, item g). The case studies underscore the fact that building labor market linkages is just one among many responsibilities facing community college faculty. Although faculty and administrators all spoke of the importance of such linkages, the work of building and sustaining them may be a lower priority than other initiatives and goals. Moreover, in our interviews, vocational faculty emphasized that the heavy teaching duties they face, and the differences between their duties and those of academic faculty, are a disincentive for vocational faculty to spend additional time connecting with local labor markets.
All the community colleges we visited had highly constrained resources. Insufficient funding deters vocational faculty from connecting with local labor markets in several ways. The lion's share of available institutional resources cover salaries and benefits for faculty and staff. Very little is left over for operations and even less is available for professional development. Of the four schools visited, one had no means of reimbursing faculty for any professional development activities. The available pool of professional development funds in another school averaged sixteen dollars per year per faculty member. Administrators here emphasized that, although the school was unable to reimburse faculty for professional development activities, it would grant release time whenever possible and help faculty find substitute teachers so they could miss classes; the faculty, however, reported that the lack of funding for these activities was a major obstacle to participation. A third school had convened a faculty committee to allocate limited faculty development funds; on average, individual faculty members received well under one hundred dollars per year from this committee. The fourth school provided faculty with six paid "professional development days," by far the largest allocation of resources for this purpose, but still quite limited. In sum, across all four institutions, faculty who want to attend a workshop, conference, or special event in most cases must use their own funds to do so and cannot expect reimbursement for their time or for their direct costs (e.g., gas, meals, or enrollment fees).
All four of our case study schools have programs for faculty to gain workplace experience by spending some time (ranging from two weeks to a semester) working in industry. In all cases, however, funds for such programs are scarce, and only a handful of faculty could participate each year. The functional value of these programs for building linkages is therefore very limited.
One of the colleges also offered students a workplace experience program. Through this program, students could gain course credit for workplace experience, provided they were supervised by faculty who would (among other responsibilities) visit the students at the work site at least twice during the semester. Faculty pointed out, however, that the payment they received for providing this supervision (less than a hundred dollars) had not changed since the 1960s and did not even begin to compensate them for their time. Thus, few faculty were willing to serve as supervisors in this program and those that did often failed to make the required site visits, thereby losing an opportunity to link with a local employer. Moreover, the paltry payment offered symbolized to some the low value placed on such activities by the administration.
Resources also hinder institutions' abilities to respond to the needs of the workplace, especially in technology-intensive fields. Faculty in programs ranging from computing to fire fighting reported that they were largely unable to keep up with the rapid progress of technology. Moreover, colleges would ask local employers for input on program design (e.g., through advisory committees), but would then be unable to respond because they could not afford the needed equipment, leading to disappointment and frustration for both educators and employers.
Despite widespread acknowledgment that labor market and community linkages are vital to the success and well-being of colleges in general, and vocational programs in particular, our survey and site visits reveal that there are remarkably few formal incentives used by institutions to encourage faculty to develop or nurture linkages. This is likely due in part to lack of available resources; it may also be related to college governance (discussed below). Asked if building linkages were rewarded in tenure and promotion decisions (Table 10, item g), the mean response was under 2 (1 = "does not describe my institution," 5 = "very much describes my institution"), regardless of type of faculty. None of the four schools we studied appeared to consider faculty connectivity in promotion and tenure decisions, although at least some respondents in two schools stated that community linkages were considered in initial hiring decisions. Similarly, none of these sites offered rewards or other forms of recognition for faculty that invested special effort in connecting with local employers or other community organizations. Thus, faculty are not directly rewarded for building linkages to the labor market. The survey also suggests that most faculty do not believe their institutions reward innovative activity (Table 10, item i). Community colleges are marked by formalism (54% of faculty agree or strongly agree with Table 10, item h--"formal policies and rules govern most activities"), although faculty are very divided as to whether there is "a lot of resistance to change," Table 10, item j (about one-third disagree, one-third agree, and one-third think neither).
In Table 7, we reported faculty responses to whether they had undertaken a range of linking activities across the four dimensions we previously identified--for example, if they had "asked an employer about the skills desired in new hires" (career assistance), "asked an employer to review and comment on a course syllabus" (curriculum and pedagogy) or "asked an employer to donate funds or equipment to your college" (institutional activity). We also asked faculty if they "had received college support" for these activities. We did not specify the type of support in the survey instrument, so that respondents' interpretations of this item could range from tacit approval to something more tangible. However, the results are relatively clear: in general, few faculty received any institutional support for connecting activities. The second column for each type of faculty shows the proportion of all faculty that say they received support. For example, only around 7% of all faculty (10% of full-time vocational faculty) report receiving college support in efforts to co-teach a course with business or community representatives (item i) or in attempting to convince an employer to offer a training workshop or seminar for faculty. College support was reported strongest for career assistance type measures (items a, b, and c) where more than half of all full-time vocational faculty said they received institution support. For example, almost 55% of all full-time vocational faculty received support for asking employers about new skills (item a), and 53% received support for asking an employer about the performance of their graduates (item c).
In considering the barriers to building links, Table 9 indicates that departments and colleges do not discourage linkages: asked if they agreed or disagreed with statements that this was the case, the model response of all faculty was to disagree (mean around 4, with 5 = strongly disagree). Interestingly, there is no statistical difference between academic and vocational faculty on these items, although item h suggests some tension: academic faculty tend to agree that vocational faculty receive more support than they do, while vocational instructors disagree that this is the case.