Volkshochschule courses are usually languages, painting, photography, cooking etc. The teachers are usually non-professionals. The course is usually about ten weeks of one or one and a half hours.

- Onboarding students directly out of secondary schools who don't yet have the academic requirements or financial ability for university, usually with intent to use this as a springboard to a cheaper university education; usually this terminates with a transfer to a university (and may or may not include an associate degree);

- Providing formal education for people interested in changing or advancing their career; usually this terminates with an associate degree;

- Providing formal but "casual" adult education, which includes the kind of courses you find at a Volkshochschule but also simply introductory tertiary courses (many of which would actually be final secondary courses outside the US) - the teachers are usually professionals but there's no expectation for the students to "use" the knowledge and auditing may be as common as taking the course for credit.

The main thing I want to point out is to avoid translating Volkshochschule as "junior college" which has an increasingly negative connotation in US English. Most decent junior colleges have expanded their programs and rebranded to full community colleges (or even universities) now and the term is mostly used for private, for-profit, vocational training.

(I should also add these terms vary a lot across English-speaking countries; I'm just referring to the US here.)