Abstract
Community colleges often are catalysts for economic and workforce development in localities with high unemployment or large numbers of dislocated workers. Increasingly, dislocated workers—individuals who have experienced job loss due to occupational closings, reduced workforces, or severe local economic downturns—are enrolling in educational and retraining opportunities, career counseling, and other supports offered by their local community college in partnership with federal and state assistance programs. Although benchmarks for two-year college success include providing institutional supports to address students’ academic, social, and personal adjustment needs, little research exists to help guide effective practices aimed at supporting dislocated workers’ two-year college adjustment, retention, and success. To help fill this gap, this study collected data describing 117 dislocated-worker students’ academic, social, personal-emotional, and institutional adjustment. Next we compared dislocated worker adjustment factors with those of 143 nondislocated worker students. Contrary to our expectations, the dislocated workers in our study actually reported better academic adjustment and better academic performance than other students. Also contrary to our expectations, we found no differences in adjustment needs between the two different groups on the basis of social support, goal-directedness, or barriers to employment success. We discuss implications for practice arising from our unexpected findings and present limitations of the study and directions for future research.
Published Version
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