Improving Academic Pathways: Workcred Releases Resources for Community Colleges

NEW YORK, Jan. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Workcred has released several resources showing how community colleges can better connect academic curricula with local job market skill needs. The comprehensive resources, developed under grants with two Texas foundations, focus on helping first-generation and underserved students earn both an academic credential and an industry-developed certificate or certification that improves their employment outcomes.

Credential Pathways for Local Labor Markets

Through a Greater Texas Foundation grant, Workcred collaborated with Houston City College (HCC) and Texas Southmost College (TSC) to align credential pathways to match local labor market needs. Each college is helping students complete their programs, earn valuable postsecondary and industry credentials, and transition into employment.

Several case studies were developed under this grant, highlighting the processes used to create and maintain alignment of these pathways. They include:

• Aligning Electrician Programs with Industry Demands in the Rio Grande Valley, which focuses on developing residential and commercial electricians at TSC to support the economy in the Rio Grande Valley.
  
  
• Meeting the Need for HVAC Technicians, which explores how HCC's heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration (HVAC) program addresses the high demand for HVAC technicians in the Houston metropolitan area.
  
  
• Powering the Rio Grande Valley's Automotive Workforce, which examines the automotive technology program at TSC maintains the alignment between academic curricula and industry credentials, creating effective pathways to employment.
  
  
• Strengthening Business Technology Pathways, which provides insights on how HCC aligned their business technology program and its numerous specialization areas to create pathways that equip learners with the technical, communication, and organizational skills necessary to succeed in today's high-demand office and business environments.

A guidebook was also developed, Integrating Academic Programs, Third-Party Industry Credentials, and Labor Market Skill Needs, that showcases how community colleges can improve the effectiveness of career pathways.

Supporting Student Success Through Policies

A separate Powell Foundation grant allowed Workcred and HCC to further examine how state and institutional policies can better support students in credential programs that meet regional workforce needs.

The resources developed under this grant include:

• Aligning Policies and Practices: A Case Study about Houston City College, which provides examples of the institutional policies and processes that HCC developed or refined, and how they were implemented to align with changes in Texas policy. For example, HCC created 24 for-credit and 21 non-credit continuing education credentials for students seeking to gain in-demand technical skills. This aligns with the state's outcomes-based funding model goal to support stackable, industry-aligned pathways, and prepare students for licensure or certification.
  
  
• Recommendations to Align Policies to Support Career Pathways that Include Industry Credentials, which provides lessons learned from how HCC created, revised, and implemented institutional policies and processes that better align with state policies and support learners in their career goals. The recommendations address critical issues such as developing and maintaining systems to capture data about credentials issued by third-party organizations, strengthening alignment between credit and non-credit courses that include industry credentials, and establishing an authorized on-campus testing center for students to take third-party credential exams.

These resources can be used by other community colleges to inform institutional policies that can more effectively support learners to enter and complete career pathways that include industry credentials.

"Every region has specific workforce needs, but many colleges are still using one-size-fits-all approaches. These resources provide actionable insights for redesigning programs that actually match their local job market," said Dr. Roy Swift, executive director of Workcred. "We're grateful to Houston City College and Texas Southmost College for their partnership, and to Greater Texas Foundation and Powell Foundation for making this critical work possible."

For more information about the projects and to access the reports, visit Workcred's page on creating credentialing pathways.

About Workcred
Workcred, an affiliate of ANSI, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening workforce quality by improving the credentialing system. Workcred's vision is a labor market that relies on the relevance, quality, and value of workforce credentials for opportunities, growth, and development.

About ANSI
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a private non-profit organization whose mission is to enhance both the global competitiveness of U.S. business and the U.S. quality of life by promoting and facilitating voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems, and safeguarding their integrity. For more information, visit www.ansi.org and access the latest news and content on LinkedIn, X, and Facebook.

SOURCE Workcred