Ohio Bridges to Opportunity

As Ohio moves into a future that requires its workforce to meet global challenges with new ideas and new skills, we bring the knowledge and insights gained from a rich history of advocating for low-wage workers to bear on the state’s workforce education needs.

Starting in 2002, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, in partnership with the Ford Foundation, developed the Ohio Bridges to Opportunity Initiative to give more Ohioans, especially adults working for low wages, access to higher education by pushing for policy change that supports their career development.

Bridges aimed to transform state policy so that more working adults can earn the education and credentials necessary to succeed in a knowledge-based economy. It called on Ohio's workforce education institutions to work together more closely and align their various missions — workforce preparation, degree education and remediation to help adults close gaps in their education — in ways that better served Ohio's low-wage working adults and their employers.

Bridges developed recommendations to policymakers to help more working adults access higher education:

State-level stakeholder group
Because many barriers to income improvement for low-wage workers existed at the state level, the 50-member Ohio Bridges to Opportunity Initiative stakeholder group developed a strong action plan for policy improvement. Its policy agenda included:
- building pathways for job and educational advancement for low-income adults;
- recruiting low-income adults into education and training programs that help them advance;
- retaining low-income adult students;
- advocating public polices that support the educational and career advancement of low-income adults.
Leadership group
A group of community ccllege presidents and career center superintendents collaborated on practices and policies to improve student success.
Advocating for policy
Some adult students never pursue additional credentials because career-related coursework they've completed at one institution is not recognized at another. The Ohio Bridges to Opportunity Initiative stakeholder group advocated for policies that would allow these students to transfer coursework and credentials between public adult workforce education centers and two-year campuses. By strengthening the connections between these institutions, this policy would make higher education and training shorter and less expensive for low-income students.

This five-year initiative, which ended in June, 2009 was praised by the Ford Foundation as one of the most successful states in the initiative due to the passing of several bills to advance a more cogent workforce system.

The Bridges work led to extensive work advocating for Ohio’s low-wage workers that continues today.

New careers and you

Green jobs

Greener Pathways: Jobs and Workforce Development in the Clean Energy Economy explores the kind and quality of jobs in the clean energy economy; the skills needed to fill these jobs; and how existing businesses and their workers can move to the center of the clean energy economy.

Jobs for older workers

In August, the U.S. Department of Labor awarded $10 million to organizations that connect older workers to jobs. About $1 million each was given to 10 organizations to retrain workers age 55 and older for jobs in high-growth industries such as healthcare and green jobs. The organizations were in Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

Adult classes, a la carte

Community colleges have long tailored courses to meet the demands of local employers, but Kellogg Community College’s Regional Manufacturing Technology Center in Battle Creek, Mich., has done away with traditional classroom-bound courses altogether and, instead, has cut up its offerings into more than 1,200 individual skills, or “modules,” that students can take whenever they wish on a walk-in basis.