Gov. Patrick meets with Community College Board

BOSTON (WWLP) - Community Colleges may soon be more focused on helping students find jobs. 

Governor Deval Patrick convened the first meeting of the Commonwealth's community college Board Chairs at the State House.  In the governor's state of the state address in January, he stated his goal of unifying all 15 community colleges with one strategy.  College leaders said they aim to make it easier for student to transfer between schools and work with employers to fill technical skills jobs.

“There are certificate programs that we might be able to do to help the manufacturing area fill some of the positions that they have available now and have coming up in the future I think there's about 100,000 new positions that are expected to open up in the next few years,” said STCC Board of Trustees Chairman Hector Toledo.

Governor Patrick gave nearly $300 million dollars to community colleges this fall to fund research projects.

Another $4 million in grants went to aligning education with job vacancies.