Every year at graduation, university students across the country begin the transition from the world of academia to the workforce.

For some, the move stalls because they lack the necessary skills to secure employment. Enter the finishing school of the 21st century - community college.

Community colleges provide the practical skills and applied knowledge university graduates need to break into the competitive workforce, says Berta Vigil Laden, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto who studies the impact of community colleges.

"Community colleges are also known as open-door institutions and as open-access institutions because they are intended to serve everyone in the community who can benefit - that is their mission," she says.

The number of students entering college with university degrees has increased by 48 per cent since 2000, according to Ontario College Application Services (OCAS). For the fall 2004 term, nearly 10,000 of the 167,000 applicants to Ontario's community colleges had attended university and either graduated or partially completed their degrees.

"What happened is the workforce became more specialized and university grads found themselves lacking on the skill side. They had no professional knowledge, no skillset they could compete with and that's when colleges stepped in," says William Hanna, dean of media studies at Toronto's Humber College.

Over the last 15 years, Humber College has added a dozen post-graduate programs in the school of media studies and technology, and about 35 programs in other departments. Ontario colleges offer about 2,400 programs and in 2004, post-university applicants applied to 407 of them, according to OCAS statistics.

Nate Horowitz, dean of communication arts at Centennial College, says the colleges provide a necessary service to adults looking to gain a competitive edge.

"I don't consider colleges finishing schools," he says. "They are more like starting schools.

"While students learn critical thinking and problem-solving techniques in university, colleges are where they start to acquire the necessary, practical skills that can be used in the workforce," Horowitz says.

Berta Vigil Laden's son, Gabriel Laden, agrees. He originally studied English literature at university, but after graduation was unable to obtain full-time employment. "I found work temping at an accounting firm, but it was only contract work. It was then I decided to go back to school for computers."

At a California college, he acquired the basic skills to find a starting information technology position. While Laden later returned to university for a four-year degree in computer engineering, he says the practical skills he learned in college helped to open doors.

Berta Vigil Laden says she believes a bachelor's degree is no longer sufficient. "You need more applied experience. Students aren't getting that at university and once they get into the job market they find they can't get a position at the level they thought they would."

Community college students receive some of that applied experience through co-op work experience. "Most post-graduate programs have co-op placements," Hanna says.

The placements provide current, practical training that students can then take into their jobs. The colleges also have a high percentage of instructors who are still working in their chosen field, Horowitz says.

"Post-graduate programs are a growing specialty that colleges offer," Horowitz says. "Universities provide the basic theoretical component and then colleges step in and offer the more competitive applied component."

People with post-grad certificates have a placement ratio of more than 90 per cent, something that, Horowitz says, may eventually bring applied programs into universities.

(Romana King can be reached at king@businessedge.ca)