a day ago
AI Workforce Development At Colleges And Discerning Signal From Noise
How can education and training providers discern signal from noise in the AI economy? A national ... More capacity-building effort is making progress in testing the art of the possible.
More and more students and workers need and seek artificial intelligence (AI) literacy – whether they seek jobs in tech or in other industries affected by AI. Fundamental to that skill attainment are community college AI programs, which offer affordable, accessible, and employer-aligned training to upskill incumbent workers and educate the next generation of talent. This is especially true for the skilled technical workforce, which refers to STEM professionals who require more education than a high school diploma but less than a four-year bachelor's degree.
Community colleges have long been known as the go-to training destination for skilled technical workforce programs in traditional sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, IT, and automotive. However, since ChatGPT ignited the AI revolution in 2022, the sector has substantially expanded non-credit and credit-bearing certificates, bootcamps, two-year degrees, and work-based learning opportunities focused on AI.
But AI education is still the Wild West. Colleges must navigate hype traps, upskill faculty and staff, help students understand career pathways around AI, enhance campus facilities, and purchase requisite equipment, and go the extra mile to ensure their curricula are aligned with the needs of nascent and ever-changing clusters of industries, occupations, and skills.
As the emerging technology turns a new leaf for the economy, major companies such as Intel, Dell, and Amazon have invested in growing AI workforce programs at community colleges. Governor Gavin Newsom and NVDIA CEO Jensen Haug signed a major partnership in 2024 to expand AI offerings across California community colleges. In Washington, White House events have engaged community college students for AI 'red teaming' exercises to identify and negate risks in large language models, while lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation to expand AI education at community colleges, such as the NSF AI Education Act of 2024.
The sea change around AI education for skilled technical workers has required a highly precise approach to capacity-building coordination across the country. To meet that need, Miami Dade College, Houston Community College, and Maricopa Community College District won a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to launch the National Applied AI Consortium (NAAIC), a national consortium dedicated to helping community colleges build their capacity for AI education.
Following NAAIC's launch last year, the consortium has galvanized an impressive set of partners, participants, and initial activities to scale AI quality education across community colleges.
The consortium has served over 950 college and faculty administrators from 40 states through training, conferences, webinars, and mentorship organized as a community of practice. Over 400 faculty have obtained formal certifications, bootcamps, and industry-recognized credentials such as Microsoft's Azure AI Fundamentals and MSLE Foundational AI as well as Amazon's AWS AI Practitioner. Faculty have also leveraged course content from Intel's AI for Workforce and Grow with Google AI suite of learning modules to support their professional development.
Valencia College, Illinois Central College, and Des Moines Area Community College were selected for the consortium's formal AI mentorship program. The program connects colleges invested in scaling AI education with institutions that have experience with building capacity and program development.
At the K-12 level, NAAIC is collaborating with the University of Florida to develop a national AI framework for high schools to have AI standards framed as student learning objectives. The objective is to ensure teachers are equipped with the right skillset to teach AI by embedding AI concepts across the curriculum. Additionally, the framework will help better align career and technical education with core academic disciplines relating to tech career pathways.
And to foster peer learning in person, this past April, Houston Community College hosted the consortium's first annual conference, convening over five hundred attendees. Partner organizations such as the Computer Research Association have provided community college faculty with reserved seats to attend convenings such as the CRA Summit on AI Undergraduate Education.
Employers such as Intel, Dell, and Amazon have also invested in AI education capacity building at community colleges. Still, it hasn't been easy for colleges to find and participate in these efforts.
NAAIC has launched several partnerships with major industry partners, including Intel, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Google, and OpenAI Academy to aggregate and disseminate resources to colleges. Each partner is providing community colleges with its own set of resources.
For example, OpenAI Academy provides a suite of free in-classroom tools to apply AI in real-world scenarios. Intel is providing colleges 11 course modules with over 1,000 hours of content, peer learning for college faculty, and technical assistance for instructors from Intel staff. Google is offering its Career Certificates and Career Essentials training to community colleges at no cost.
A key goal of the consortium was to collaborate with employers, large and small, to aggregate their skilling needs and formulate a strategic approach for an AI skills taxonomy.
Later this year, the consortium's AI-focused Building Industry Leadership and Team (BILT), an NSF-born best practice in co-creating training curricula with employers, will publish a national curriculum framework for an applied AI associate's degree that any community college can use to create its own offerings.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have signaled an interest in expanding AI education support for community colleges. President Trump has signed several executive orders around AI education that have implications for community colleges. Although the Trump administration has mostly only cut funding for community college STEM education and workforce training at the time of writing, the case study of the NAAIC demonstrates the value of the NSF in supporting capacity-building for emerging tech workforce training as research from New America has found. But moreover, it's a pragmatic illustration of the ways colleges can collectively address shared challenges to meet student and employer needs for the AI economy and the future of work.
