2008 Annual Report

Needs Assessment - The Role of Continuing Education

Residents need to obtain or keep current with the job skills that will provide a living wage... and the road to economic self-sufficiency runs through education. It's estimated that: "To maintain competency (and employability) individuals in the workforce of the next century will need to accumulate learning equivalent to that associated with 30 credit hours of instruction - every seven years" (Transforming Higher Education, see this 2006 Denver Post op-ed for a more recent assessment).

This premise demonstrates the need for continuing lifelong education in an economy where the divide between the technologically-skilled and the unskilled is already increasing. Unfortunately, according to the Bell Policy Report: "To be considered a state of opportunity in the 21st century, Colorado must provide its adults with access to lifelong education and training and traditional educational paths are not always the answer.

Colorado is considered to have a weak system of adult education (ranked 35th in affordability for independent low-income individuals to access higher education)." Colorado State University and Front Range Community College have been shown to be cost-prohibitive for independent low-income students. And yet, two-thirds of the poorest of Colorado students receive no state financial aid, which is a barrier to accessing higher education. In fact, only a minority of Colorado high school graduates (39%) continues their education by going to college.

In addition, Government training programs have largely proved ineffective. Nationally, most welfare-to-work programs, like TANF, and the jobs associated with them, fail in key areas: They have short training times, resulting in jobs that pay low wages, offer no benefits, and lead nowhere.

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