Deysi Perez was still in high school when she completed a college dental assisting program, earning an industry-recognized certificate and securing a job in the field—a pathway made possible through the workforce-development efforts at West L.A. College.

Today, Perez, who first enrolled through the institution’s concurrent enrollment program—which allows high school students to take free classes on a community college campus—is continuing her studies toward becoming a dental hygienist.

Andrea Rodriguez-Blanco, career center director at West L.A. College, said Perez is one of many students who have benefited from the college’s focus on work-based learning and career readiness.

“We have students like [Perez] who are a testament to our work and who have really taken advantage of our services and support systems,” Rodriguez-Blanco said.

Despite California’s significant investments in K–12, higher education and workforce development, Rodriguez-Blanco said the lack of coordination among them can leave students struggling.

To address this, West L.A. College works in partnership with Compton College, El Camino College and Los Angeles Southwest College to create a regional, cross-sector strategy that expands career opportunities for community college students in Los Angeles County’s Second District.

Matthew Jordan, interim president at West L.A. College, said the initiative originated during the pandemic.

“The colleges had a large amount of both federal and state funds coming in to help us deal with the challenges of COVID,” Jordan said, noting that Keith Curry, president of Compton College, contacted California Competes to brainstorm ways to use the funds to benefit students and improve career-readiness programs.

As a result of that conversation, Curry and California Competes, a nonpartisan organization focused on research and policy to improve the state’s higher education and workforce-development systems, brought other neighboring colleges into the discussion.

“What surfaced was working on pathways to better the lives of residents in our community,” Jordan said. “How do we make career readiness transparent? How do we make it a campuswide responsibility?”

The strategy: Since the partnership began in 2021, Rodriguez-Blanco said the four colleges have met quarterly to compare approaches to work-based learning and identify ways to collaborate.

A key focus has been mapping the industries and employers each college works with. When programs overlap, the colleges coordinate outreach so employers don’t have to repeat the same conversation with multiple institutions.

“By really looking at what we have in common and what our strengths are as a region, we can scale and have a bigger impact on our programs,” Rodriguez-Blanco said. “We’ve shared how each campus uses work-based training, how it’s integrated into our college … and found common ground so that whatever we do at [West L.A. College] can be easily replicated across other programs.”

Jordan said this approach is important because “employers don’t necessarily want to be contacted separately by five colleges to have the same conversation five times.”

“If we all have a similar program, we can approach the employer and build out the pipeline and work-based learning opportunities together in one process,” Jordan said.

He added that the colleges have found it particularly useful to collaborate in fields such as biotechnology, artificial intelligence, child development and information technology.

The stakes: Rodriguez-Blanco said the partnership helps amplify each college’s work-based learning programs while making it easier for students across all the campuses to access career opportunities.

“The reason why these colleges came together is because we found that we had a really strong work-based learning support system,” Rodriguez-Blanco said. “We’ve already been bringing employers to the table, but how do we triple the effect?”

Jordan said the partnership is important because students at their community colleges often face barriers to academic success, from food insecurity to long commutes to balancing family responsibilities. The initiative provides more pathways for students to participate in work-based learning and career programs while still in school, making it easier to gain practical experience while managing their schedules.

“This program really seeks to address that issue of access to work-based learning,” Jordan said, noting that a specific goal of the partnership is to increase the number of paid internship opportunities, since community college students often don’t have the ability to take on unpaid internships.

“If we can structure the work-based learning experience as part of their coursework, or ensure that it’s a paid internship, I think that really helps address one of the multiple barriers that students are facing,” he added.

Ultimately, Jordan said, there is a lot of value for institutions in sharing practices when it comes to work-based learning.

“Sometimes there’s a tendency to be elbowing each other, like we’re all fighting for the same opportunities,” Jordan said. “I would encourage colleges to abandon that attitude and really think about how they can work together to leverage the limited resources we have and benefit the communities we serve.”

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