TROY — The five community colleges serving the greater Capital Region announced a partnership Tuesday to create better career paths for students.
The Capital Community College Career Coalition, or C5, seeks to have a greater combined impact doing what each of the five has been doing on its own to greater or lesser degree for decades: identifying and addressing gaps that some students show in broad skills for all jobs, and creating partnerships with local employers and workforce development agencies to fine-tune skills for specific jobs.
On board are Adirondack, Columbia-Greene, Fulton-Montgomery, Hudson Valley and Schenectady County community colleges. The cooperative agreement took about 18 months to finalize, and the presidents formally signed it Tuesday morning at HVCC in Troy. Joining them were several private-industry partners who recognize (and suffer from) the shortage of workforce-ready personnel, particularly for manufacturing and production jobs.