The goal of Breaking Through, a collaboration of JFF and the National Council for Workforce Education, is to demonstrate that community colleges can restructure themselves to create clear pathways for low-skilled adults into professional/technical certificate and degree programs. Colleges participating in the initiative have found that incompatible data and data systems represent a significant barrier to creating pathways into college for adult students.

Peter Ewell of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems has worked with the colleges to provide insight into solutions that would be useful to any college seeking to serve low-skilled adults.