As the Parkland College finally opens the doors of its long-awaited Trades and Technology Centre, it’s a good time to look at why what they’re doing was possible. There are plenty of educational opportunities out there, and students can be as mobile as they want to be in order to get them, so a college needs a hook to keep people interested. It comes down to an institution responding to community needs above all else, and their growth is built on local needs.
The Trades and Technology Centre itself is an example of this. If you look at every room which has naming rights within the building, an essential part of building up a new college facility in this day and age, you’re going to be looking at the companies most likely to hire students who are attending class in that room. A company like Mosaic will put their name on a lot of things, but one of the main reasons they supported the college’s capital campaign is that they need the eventual students coming out of the program. Same deal with a lot of the companies that got involved, it was a campaign supported not through mere kindness, there’s a big advantage for these companies to have that link to education. A heavy equipment mechanic, for example, is an employee that is necessary, and students at Parkland will know your company is a place to work.
The college is growing by providing what businesses in the area need, students leaving the institution trained to jump into different careers within the region. It’s a smart move for getting projects funded – it’s easier to push for a donation when there’s going to be a clear benefit – but it’s a smart move for getting students. For many programs, training will lead to a job, generally a job in this particular region, which is handy when you are trying to recruit students. Through their programming, Parkland can promote the idea that a student can stay close to home and get a career, and students who don’t want to go too far afield for whatever reason have options. There are plenty of reasons why this is a good thing, especially in terms of building a region and its workforce, but in terms of running an educational institution it means you have a market.
That’s the strength of the college right now, they know what people need, and the programming is reflecting it. There’s a need for nurses in Sunrise, so there’s a nursing program. There’s a shortage in the trades, the new facilities are dedicated to filling that need. It’s a rural area, so going with the ECRF to start a research farm is a sensible outgrowth for the area, after all there’s more than enough farming here to have research a priority. The result is that their programming and their expansion makes sense for the area.
There are naturally going to be gaps in programming for a smaller institution, there is only so much programming that can be offered in any one location. The smart plan is to keep your programming for people who want to stay within the area – if you get trained somewhere and can just stick around, then it becomes a bit of a recruitment plan of its own. Parkland College works, and can expand, because it’s very much focused on regional need. It responds to what people need in the region, and can expand because the region has a wide variety of needs that have to be met.
