Higher education must adapt. I have said that for years because adaptation is part of our responsibility. Learning has changed. Work has changed. Expectations have changed. The ways colleges plan and invest in their missions must evolve, too.

Community colleges have long been asked to do more with less. As demographic shifts, evolving workforce needs, and fiscal pressures reshape higher education, institutions must find innovative ways to maximize existing resources while expanding their impact...

Community colleges often measure student success through outcomes: enrollment, persistence, completion, transfer, employment, and mobility. Those measures are important, to be sure. But students do not experience college as a dashboard. They experience it as a personal human journey...

In 2025, Moraine Valley Community College released a five-year strategic plan outlining five priorities to guide the college’s efforts: student success, program development, community engagement, resource advancement, and technology.

A community college’s employees are often considered its greatest resource. We invest significant effort into recruiting talented faculty and staff because we know our mission depends on the people who carry it forward each day. Yet once a new employee accepts an offer,...

In the year 2025, if you have lots of resources and are well funded, then perhaps you don’t need to read this. However, for many, where we get our resources is changing. For some, that change might be happening quickly. For others, it’s a slow, erosive process where inflation is overlooked or tuitions are frozen...

At Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), we believe that powerful ideas, when clearly defined and widely shared, can change lives, communities, and even economies. Our recently concluded Skills to Succeed fundraising campaign is proof of that...

Across the U.S., community colleges grapple with the same challenge: how to provide a high-quality, responsive, and innovative education with limited fiscal resources. State allocations and student tuition alone are often not enough to sustain the wide range of academic programs, student services, and forward-thinking innovation our communities depend on, leaving institutions in danger of becoming stagnant...

We are amid a major socioeconomic shift. Emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, mobile platforms, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and semiconductors—are accelerating a digital transformation that demands greater public-private partnership to remain agile, resilient, and relevant...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, community college leaders have faced challenges related to enrollment; funding; identifying and retaining qualified faculty and staff; and continuing to meet the demands of our students, employers, and communities. Now, we must plan to address declining birth rates combined with unprecedented vacancies in high-demand jobs...

Community colleges have always operated on lower per-student funding than other public higher education sectors and are, thus, more vulnerable to up and down funding cycles from their state and local public funders...