The Urban Institute’s Career and Technical Education CoLab (CTE CoLab) aims to reduce inequities in academic and career outcomes for students of color—especially students who are Black, Latinx, or Indigenous—enrolled in credit-bearing online postsecondary CTE programs.

Students of color have long faced barriers to accessing and completing high-quality credit-bearing CTE programs and to realizing their goals for further education and employment. As CTE programs increasingly move online, the CTE CoLab will partner with 12 community and technical colleges to ensure shifting coursework partially or fully online results in expanded access and strong outcomes for students of color.

With support from ECMC Foundation, the CTE CoLab is a collaboration led by the Urban Institute in partnership with five national organizations: World Education, Inc., the National Council for Workforce Education, the Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Instructional Technology Council, and the National Coalition of Advanced Technology Centers. This coalition supports selected college programs in the College Community of Practice, which is designed to build knowledge about online CTE programs, develop and share resources to improve them, and center equity in their goals and delivery.