The primary missions of the California Community Colleges are to offer academic and vocational education at the lower division level for both younger and older students, including those persons returning to school. Another primary mission is to advance California's economic growth and global competitiveness through education, training, and services that contribute to continuous work force improvement. Essential and important functions of the Colleges include developmental instruction for those in need.

The economic development is a new aspect of Community Colleges mission and works in conjunction with workforce development. In many instances workforce development is implemented through vocational education programs offered at Community Colleges. Merced College has a history of providing excellent, much needed, vocational education programs. With this newest mission and the need to provide new, as well revamp current vocational programs maintaining program currency the faculty at Merced College have suggested several new vocational programs. As these programs were being suggested, input was also included relative to programs the University of California, Merced would be offering, local requests from hospitals, and the request from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory requesting that we consider the development of programs in support of their workforce needs. The bottom line, MCTI is training the workforce of today by providing high skills with commensurate pay.