Education
MDC has long focused on education as a critical part of its mission to create equity and pathways to opportunity. Emphasizing the importance of educational attainment to personal, community, and regional economic security—and identifying the barriers that make it a more difficult goal for some students than others—has been a key part of MDC’s research and practice. That has led MDC to focus much of its work in community colleges, which are often the most accessible and best equipped institutions to connect students with educational opportunity, job training, and local employers.
MDC uses the following strategies to help people succeed in school and in finding careers:
- building institutional capacity to better serve disadvantaged students and their communities
- removing the structural and economic barriers that make it difficult for students to stay in school
- reforming public policies and systems to improve the quality and accessibility of higher education
- connecting educational institutions, business leaders, government agencies, and community members to identify and address achievement gaps
- promoting the critical link between postsecondary education and economic well-being for people and communities
MDC has received a $1.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create and lead a program to help low-income young adults in four communities complete their postsecondary education and acquire good jobs.
For too many community college students, particularly low-income students and students who have returned to school after a long absence to train for a new career, developmental (remedial) education becomes an unnecessarily difficult barrier to cross. Nearly six out of ten community college students need at least one developmental course, and fewer than a quarter of them earn a certificate or degree within eight years. Many quit before ever getting to credit-bearing courses.
Durham, N.C., is thriving. It has a strong employer base, it’s not short of good jobs, and its employment growth rate is projected to outstrip the state and the U.S. by 2021. Yet too few of its young people are getting these good jobs, and too few have the academic and workplace skills to compete with more qualified candidates from other cities and states. Leaders may not be able to change the market, but a system can be built that equips Durham’s youth and young adults with the skills necessary for rewarding careers in the Triangle.
In partnership with Achieving the Dream and the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, MDC is exploring strategies that link financial capability training to student success. The Financial Empowerment Strategies for Student Success project seeks to identify and help grow effective practices for providing financial capability services (e.g., financial education, benefits access and/or work supports) to community college students with the goal of promoting financial empowerment and postsecondary completion.
