Any topic (writer’s choice)

Share a professional experience illustrating the benefits enjoyed by the institution as well as the students when stakeholders meet learning accountability demands.
Provide additional implications associated with an institutions inability or unwillingness to meet societys accountability demands for student learning.
Note a similarity or difference to your posting.

Here is my colleagues post

Your statement about higher education being responsible to “increase capacity to incorporate partnerships between educational institutions and the business world at all levels” is so true. There is so much benefit when these types of connections are made to develop service learning and internships opportunities which support intentional learning. Kuhl (2001) explains “the most profound learning often comes through concrete experience when the deeper meaning of knowledge is revealed and internalized” (Kuhl, 2001, p. 295).

One of the main tenants of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) is to align education with industry through agreed upon collaboration leading to a singular goal, get people working (WIOA, U.S. Department Of Labor, n.d.).  However, in my experience partnership making is one-sided. The program I manage encompasses a work study program. The goal of the program is to employ students in their field of study, ideally off-campus in the real world. We have a job developer who reaches out to employers and makes partnerships for current or future students. It is very labor intensive and difficult to convince employers this is a good thing for their business let alone their industry (our program is able to pay up to 75% of a students wage, up to 25 hours per week). Small businesses are more receptive since they like the help with wages, larger businesses not so much. It just sounds like more paperwork to them. We very, very rarely get a call from industry saying, “hey you’re our local community college in town, I’d like to tap your student pool for prospective employees.” We are always seeking them out not vice versa.

Kuhl, G. D. (2001). College students today. Why we cant leave serendipity to chance. In In defense of American higher education (pp. 277303). JHU Press.

Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act | U.S. Department of Labor. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2020, from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/et

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