Monday Message Guidance: The Benefits of Flexibility

Following the release of NOVA’s second annual Northern Virginia Workforce Index, the communications team would like to share a few key messages about another external communications theme: flexibility.

As a reminder, our themes can be summed up in two statements: NOVA is affordable; flexible for today’s college students and achievable. With a NOVA education, our graduates are employable.

So why is NOVA’s flexibility so important to our students? Here are a few key points to answer that question:

• Today’s community college students are more likely to be: older, the first in their families to go to college and from families with fewer financial resources.
• Many of our diverse students also balance work, family and school.
• NOVA provides flexibility with part-time, full-time, remote and hybrid class options. 72% of NOVA Nighthawks are enrolled part time.
• NOVA offers a wide variety of affordable pathways, from degree programs to short-term workforce certification programs

In fact, NOVA has seen an increasing number of students looking for shorter-term workforce certification programs that lead directly to employment!

As the Workforce Index showed, employers can significantly increase their talent pipeline if they embrace flexibility and shift to skills-based hiring. More than 70 percent of businesses said that filling job openings was more difficult in 2022 and over 60 percent identified an overall shortage of interested or available candidates as the key barrier.

But as President Anne Kress noted in her keynote remarks at the recent event unveiling this year’s Workforce Index, “When employers remove what Opportunity@Work calls ‘the paper ceiling’ of a four-year college degree, the pool of talent expands dramatically. More than 70 million adults in the U.S. are…STARS: individuals skilled through alternative routes who do not hold a bachelor’s degree. They comprise fully 50 percent of the U.S. workforce.”

She went on to highlight the role that NOVA is so proud to play in preparing our students for in-demand, family-sustaining jobs.

“We have six campuses and almost 80,000 students right in your backyard who represent the full diversity of our communities, we serve and are the source of many of our region’s STARS—brilliant potential and future employees who could make your companies shine brightly.”

To bring it all together, we’ll leave you with President Kress’ concluding call to action to local employers – a call to embrace flexibility:

“Northern Virginia is a region rich in talent—if only we can break through the ‘paper ceiling’ and see the STARS all around us. We have the opportunity to expand our workforce, build an inclusive economy and strengthen our region. Now, we need to take it.”

Submitted by:
Dawn Selak, Director of Communications, DSelak@nvcc.edu