Dissertation

Community college and community-based nonprofit partnerships: Supporting the college pipeline for opportunity youth

Opportunity youth are young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor working. With limited resources coupled with the need for innovative strategies to address access to higher education, partnerships are increasingly considered a key mechanism to meet institutional and organizational goals, facilitate resource sharing, and provide quality service delivery (Amey, Campbell, & Eddy, 2010). In this study, I examine the key aspects of strategic partnerships between community colleges and community-based nonprofits to support college access for opportunity youth. This study employs critical race theory (CRT) to guide a qualitative analysis of the student and practitioner experience and to challenge the dominant discourse of opportunity youth, partnerships, and community colleges. Evidence in this study suggests that the core of successful college-nonprofit partnerships are people. Four major findings were derived from an analysis of 12 practitioner interviews and one youth focus group: (a) personal connection to opportunity youth as the framework to working with such population; (b) identifying champions in key decision-making roles; (c) building and maintaining trust within and across sectors; and (d) acknowledging the limitations in time and institutional capacity as a barrier to partnership development and institutional transformation. The implications of these findings are intended to augment the understanding of the perceptions of why some opportunity youth are unable to access post-secondary education opportunities and why some partnerships are unable to be sustainable.

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