SAN DIEGO—The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) will tweak its application for Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAAACCT) grants to improve some areas in the program, such as communication among consortia members, according to Jane Oates, the department's assistant secretary for employment and training.

The $2-billion, four-year TAAACCT program funds community colleges that develop job training partnerships with local employers. The department will begin accepting applications for the third round of the grants at the end of April or early May, Oates said during a virtual address at the American Association of Community Colleges’ Workforce Development Institute last week. Grant winners will be announced in September.

There might be two time frames, Oates noted, with applications for consortia given a little more time than those from a single college.

Employer commitments

The department has adjusted requirements for the program with each round. After the first round, DOL realized there was a need for more evaluation, so in round two it required third-party evaluations, Oates said.

“This is crucial as a roadmap when you reinvent yourselves in 10 years,” Oates said.

In the second round of grants, the department learned that the idea of capacity building can vary greatly, so more flexibility will now be allowed.

“We don’t think every project should look exactly the same,” Oates said. Online learning, accelerated learning and more compressed schedules are all acceptable. “Not every community college needs to do the same thing,” she said.

Oates added community outreach and return on investment are important, as well as the need to build bridges between credit and non-credit-bearing programs. What’s most crucial, she said, is the need for “real, rigorous, meaningful partnerships with employers.” 

Even though employers can’t guarantee jobs, Oates encouraged colleges to try to secure some type of workplace-related activity for students, such as internships and cooperative learning.

Better communication

As it reviewed the progress of programs in the first two rounds of TAACCT, the department has observed poor communication within some consortia. To shore that up in the next round, DOL will seek more detailed descriptions of consortia and how partners will communicate. The lead college will need to spell out how it will resolve problems and how it will maintain communication when the key players change, such as college presidents and deans and company CEOs.

There won’t be any flexibility when it comes to deadlines. If an applicant has trouble uploading the application and misses the deadline, there is no recourse, so “don’t wait until the last minute,” Oates warned.

Entrepreneurship encouraged

In the next round of grant applications, DOL will especially be interested in proposals that incorporate entrepreneurship education, Oates said. Displaced manufacturing workers will have difficulty finding jobs that match their former wages, so they could benefit from programs that help them start a business, from writing a business plan and handling taxes, to accessing capital and marketing.

When asked about specific industries the department would like to see supported by TAAACCT funding, Oates said cybersecurity has a shortage of workers and needs employees with two-year degrees, particularly in the banking and private contracting industries. She also encouraged rural colleges to apply, citing the need to retrain dislocated coal workers in Appalachia.

“You’ve done incredible work with DOL money in this program and in decades past,”  Oates told the audience. “You’re making a dream for a good job a reality for millions of people.”