Virtually every community college now offers contract education--typically, short-term programs ranging from a couple of hours to several days--for employees of specific companies that pay a substantial share of the cost.[50] Because individuals being taught in contract education are already employed, the education is almost always upgrade training rather than initial education or retraining; typical subjects include new computer applications (e.g., word processing and spreadsheets), TQM, statistical process control, communications skills, and human relationships. Remedial English, remedial math, and ESL are also frequently taught, particularly when employers find these skills are necessary for upgrade training or for work reorganization involving communications skills.
Potentially, contract education provides another kind of contact with employers both in the sense that it allows employers to see the offerings of a particular college and that it enables administrators and instructors to see what skills are required in employment. Indeed, this contact may be more useful than that provided by advisory committees because it requires employers and educational providers to collaborate on a specific task. Contract education also requires employers to be specific about the skills they require and to back their requests with funding rather than to provide advice about probable trends in employment which may not be accurate. On their part, educational institutions become responsible for providing precisely what employers request, not what students enroll in or what their faculty wants to teach. Several community college deans mentioned contract education as a model for relationships with employers that ought to replace the advisory committee approach. Indeed, several community colleges who boasted about their connections to employers referred to their contract education programs (not their regular vocational programs), and contract education is the major contact between providers and employers in the Palmdale and Rosefield areas.
However, the potential for contract education to strengthen the communication between employers and education providers is unrealized in most community colleges. While contract education may sometimes employ regular occupational faculty and use "off the shelf" some of the courses normally provided by the college, contract education in the institutions we examined tends to be established as an independent office with its own distinct offerings. Instructors are often drawn from the large pool of free-lance "consultants" that exist in most cities, with few connections to the regular occupational programs.[51] As a result the opportunity for contract education to convey information to employers about the regular offerings of a community college and to occupational programs about the skill requirements of employers is lost.
[50] In the survey conducted by Lynch, Palmer, and Grubb (1991), ninety-four percent of community colleges reported providing some form of contract education. Employer funds averaged forty-two percent of total funds supporting contract education. For other evidence that contract education has expanded at the sub-baccalaureate level, see Bowers and Swain (1992): Based on CPS data from 1983 and 1991, the fraction of individuals with "some college" who received formal on-the-job training increased from 15.1% to 20.4%.
[51] For corroboration of the independence of contract education from the rest of the vocational program, see also Lynch et al. (1991). Our understanding of the development of contract education is that in many institutions, vocational education departments have always provided some contract education; but with the inevitable variation from department to department in the intensity of these efforts, community colleges have moved to centralize contract education in independent offices that are more "business-oriented"--more entrepreneurial and aggressive and more focused on the needs of business--rather than "education-oriented," emphasizing the needs of students. The establishment of an independent office may promote contract education more strongly and give it greater prominence in the business community, but it also isolates it from the offerings of the regular vocational program.