H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
"From Tractor Tires to Benzene
Rings:
Re-inventing the Wheel of North Carolina’s Economy"
Koury Convention Center
Greensboro, North Carolina
7:00 p.m. Sunday, October 10
(Corrected version, October 13)
Thank you. I am delighted to be here.
Thank you, Dr. Cameron and your colleagues at Guilford Tech, for once again providing so much assistance in making this conference a success.
I would like to offer my particular thanks to conference co-chairs Delores Parker, System Vice President for Academic and Student Services, and Linda Phillips, president of the North Carolina Association of Community College Instructional Administrators; to the Steering Committee that has put all the details together with the able guidance of Elizabeth Isler; to the staff of the Division of Academic and Student Services at the System Office; and to the Presidents all of the associations who have agreed to incorporate their meetings into this one. We all benefit from the synergy that results from having time together in formal sessions and perhaps even more over meals, in the corridors and at social events. A system as big and sprawling as ours needs the opportunity to gather as ONE family, and I very much appreciate the work and thought that has made that happen to this extent.
Let me begin this evening by explaining the title of my remarks. "Tractor Tires to Benzene Rings" is my nod to the overall theme of this year’s conference – the wheel of learning so dramatically presented in your conference program. It’s another way of capturing what I’ve been talking about recently, as I've been called upon to offer my thoughts on the role of community colleges in our changing economic times.
I’ve been defining the role we've played through the more than four decades of our system’s history as an effort to help North Carolina move from FARM to FACTORY to PHARMA – that is, from agriculture through basic manufacturing to the knowledge-based economy driven by biotechnology, computers and other exciting innovations.
No matter how I phrase it, I think you’ll agree with me that North Carolina’s community colleges are now, always have been and always will be about jobs – helping our state attract, grow and keep good jobs; preparing North Carolinians to get those jobs; and providing the skills they need to keep them.
During the next few moments, I want to touch on five basic questions about the challenges of re-inventing the wheel of North Carolina’s economy as we provide the training and education North Carolinians need to be full participants in a prosperous future.
- First, -- who are the North Carolinians of today and tomorrow?
- Second – what jobs can North Carolinians hope to get.
- Third – what do North Carolinians need in order to get those jobs?
- Fourth – what is the role of North Carolina's community colleges in matching people to jobs in a healthy economy?
- And fifth – what do North Carolina's community colleges need in order to carry out that role?
I have found intriguing answers to those questions in the most recent edition of The State Of The South, 2004, a comprehensive report prepared periodically by MDC of Chapel Hill. MDC is an independent organization specializing in workforce development. MDC’s reports are excellent compendia of current information and keen analysis.
The new one casts much of its analysis in the light of the 50th anniversary of the landmark desegregation case, Brown V. The Board of Education. Thus, it has a heavy emphasis on public schools. However, it has a great deal to say about the increasing importance of community colleges in our region’s transformation, and its analysis of economic and demographic trends is tremendously valuable to all of us. Most of the data I refer to tonight comes from that report.
Let’s start with the question of who North Carolinians are and who they will be. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m most interested in children, young adults and workers in the midst of their careers – in other words, younger than I! Here’s what MDC says about population trends across the south – it’s a good assumption that North Carolina’s statistics follow the same pattern.
The South’s young adult population (ages 20-44) increased by 3-point-5 million in the 1990s. Over half of the increase came from Latinos. More than a quarter were African Americans. Similarly Latinos represented nearly half of the increase in the South’s children between 1990 and 2000. Remember that North Carolina had the fastest- growing Latino population in the entire country in the 1990s, and you will recognize the importance of these statements to your institutions.
According to MDC, "the upshot is that in the coming decade, more of the South’s young adults and children will be black and Latino. As millions of baby boomers retire from jobs as managers, product developers, teachers and foremen, employers will depend more on blacks and Latinos to take their places." We are just beginning to understand what that shift means in the education and training that community colleges provide. Language is the obvious challenge, but it is far from the only one accompanying a dramatic cultural shift.
The second important question is – what jobs will these North Carolinians have a chance to get?
You can tell from the title of my talk that I’m counting on the predictions that we’ll have lots of jobs in biotechnology and related fields that build on benzene rings and complex molecules and other bioscience processes. We already have lots of jobs like that – as of last count, North Carolina ranked third nationally in the bioscience cluster and first in the southeast, with more than 34-thousand jobs.. The whole state is gambling that it will grow, and grow fast – perhaps quadrupling within 20 years.
With the Community College BioNetwork and many strong efforts at individual colleges, we’ve made a great start toward ensuring the future of that industry. However, we can’t guarantee that any one answer will be the right answer. And we shouldn’t want it to be. If we’ve learned anything from the sudden collapse of our basic industries, I hope we’ve learned not to depend too much on one or two sectors. Here’s what MDC says about that:
"Predicting the future has never been easy. A generation ago, today’s fast-growing occupations in computer-related fields barely existed. The South was busy marketing its cheap land, low wages and low taxes to woo assembly plants from the North and Midwest, never dreaming that in two or three decades those factories would leave the South for Mexico or China. A generation ago, who would have predicted that then mid-sized Southern cities would become national and international centers for banking, communications, technology or entertainment?" – or, I would add, biotechnology?
There’s no question that our region and our state have seen a rise in "glamorous" jobs in high-paying fields. There’s no question that the people who have these jobs are driving a parallel increase in service and support jobs. People with money to spend go out to eat, shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, visit resorts, go to concerts. It takes lots of people to deliver those services.
Unfortunately, however, what we’ve wound up with is a split economy – not the old pattern of the "third million or the third shift" of our traditional industrial towns, but a new division between a prosperous upper middle, research and professional class, and a service class where most of the jobs are – but with few or no benefits, little security and great exposure to shifts in the marketplace. Certainly there are OTHER kinds of "good jobs" out there – nurses, for example, are in desperately short supply, and demand for other health-related technicians is growing as the population ages. Also, North Carolina can’t come close to keeping up with demand for classroom teachers.
However, it is unquestionably true that the blue collar job that pays well is beginning to be the exception across the South. Southerners have to understand that we need to prepare differently for a secure future.
That leads me to my third question: What do North Carolinians need in order to compete for good jobs and careers that will put them in the middle class and offer a chance to move up, too?
You know what a real estate agent says when she’s asked to list the three most important things about selling a house – location, location, location.
The three most important answers to "What do North Carolinians need to compete for good jobs" are education, education, education. As MDC says: "The region’s economy and changing demographics make clear demands; every young person must be prepared for education beyond high school and for social and civic participation."
No matter how you run the numbers, better education translates into better jobs and more money. By 2010, a high school graduate with on-the-job training can expect to earn an average of about $26,000 a year. An associate degree holder can expect $35,700, a bachelor’s degree $56,500.
MDC puts it…
"To retain high-wage jobs and capture new opportunities for economic development, the South needs to continue elevating the skills levels of its workforce. An ever-increasing number of jobs require education beyond high school. And jobs that pay a living wage, event if they do not require a post-secondary degree or certificate, require skills similar to those needed for success in college – strong reading comprehension, oral and written communication skills, problem solving ability, knowing how to learn."
Education is what our citizens need. Are they getting it?
Listen to this analysis of our region’s history from MDC:
"Historically low educational attainment in the South was both a cause and a result of the region’s low-skilled economy. Education was not highly valued n an economy based on sharecropping, mining and cotton mills. States and communities invested minimally in public education to keep taxes down and to keep workers in their place."
That’s a painful statement, isn’t it? But I think we are all honest enough to recognize truth in it. How often have we as community colleges people been warned not to "get above our raisin’" by somebody who thinks "those people" don’t need to study, to advance, to dream? That kind of thinking created the WRONG kind of wheel in North Carolina’s economy – a vicious cycle based on low expectations and stunted opportunity.
Fortunately, that cycle has mostly been broken. Southerners are approaching the national average in the rate of high school and college graduation overall, and we are now above the national average in our college-going rate. High academic standards and rigorous reporting are boosting achievement, and North Carolina is leading the way in several areas. Sadly, we still have tremendous gaps between urban and rural students and among racial groups. We also have an increasing gender gap –significantly more women than men now go to college.
Remember those statistics about the importance of African Americans and Latinos in the future workforce? They will not be able to compete for the best jobs until we see dramatic change in educational attainment. Nearly half of the South’s Latinos and 30 percent of African American lack a high school diploma. College graduation rates are half those of white students.
Yes, some of this is about race and language. Most of it, however, is about economics. It’s about poverty and the incredible obstacles that poverty places in the way of education, no matter what the color of the student.
According to MDC, about a fifth of the South’s children live in poverty – the highest rate in the nation. That’s more than a third of black children, more than a fourth of Latinos and more than 10 percent of whites. Schools populated with students in poverty have fewer resources, less experienced teachers and less positive parental involvement than other schools. – yet these are the students who need the best we have to offer in order to succeed.
In a state that has prided itself for more than a century on its exceptional access to public education, these numbers are particularly troubling. So is MDC’s finding that many – not all, but many -- of our region’s high schools are failing to meet the challenge of preparing students for productive lives. The report describes two pathways out of high school – one to further education and a career, the other to "disconnection" – dropping out, poverty and in the worst cases, prison. MDC focuses a lot of attention on what it calls the "muddled middle" that is on neither pathway, hundreds of thousands of young people drifting through high school with no pattern to their studies and little concept of the future.
This leads me to my fourth question – what is the role of the community college in matching our citizens – the future workforce – with the education they need to compete for good jobs?
The simple answer is – our role is ALL of it…providing that education and training any way we can, as best we can. Or in the words of Dallas Herring, our spiritual godfather, "We must take people where they are and carry them as far as they can go within the assigned functions of the system."
You know how to do this. Some of you have been providing the state’s best education and training since the earliest days of our system The tasks that mattered then, matter now.
- Opening the door to opportunity with basic skills, GED and, increasingly, English as a Second Language.
- Providing hands-on technical and vocational training that teaches people to build things, make things, take care of the sick, handle emergencies and push the borders of science.
- For those who want and need baccalaureate degrees, providing the first two years close to home, at a reasonable price.
Beyond the basic mission, we have roles to play to which we are uniquely suited. For example, we provide opportunities for success for thousands of first-generation college students. This is particularly important in minority populations. The MDC report notes that "Many African American, Latino and other low-income students do not envision a future that includes college. They have few role models for academic achievement and postsecondary education in their families and communities."
It is a point of pride for this system that our student population and, increasingly, our own college staffing mirror our state’s population. We have a strong program at the state level and in many colleges to serve Spanish-speaking populations. An exceptional example of special efforts to attract and support minority students, particularly African-Americans, is the Minority Male Mentoring Program in which five of our colleges participate. It is imperative that we close the gap between the college-going rate of African-American men and women. This gap threatens the social fabric of the African-American community. I attended presentations from program participants this spring, and I can tell you that rarely have I heard such extraordinary stories. We do more than talk about breaking the cycle of poverty.
The best predictors of educational attainment for students are the educational level and income of the PARENTS, and community colleges give minority and poor parents a chance to succeed in school and get better jobs.
A rapidly growing role for community colleges in North Carolina relates to our direct work with high schools and, in some cases, middle schools. We have many years' experience, of course, with Huskins Bill courses and dual enrollment. Our programs, in addition to Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate sequences in public schools, are among the North Carolina programs singled out for praise by MDC as strong efforts in acceleration – important offerings to keep bright, motivated students fully engaged in high school, whether in urban or rural settings.
In spelling out its concern about weaknesses in public high schools, the MDC report also has praise for a number of variations on what it calls "blended models" – schools that avoid the "cookie cutter" approach of big, generic schools to mix and match the best elements of vocational, technical and college approaches with high school curricula.
These "blended models" include Career Academies and the new Early College and Middle College Programs. The massive investment of the Gates Foundation in the New Schools Project and Governor Easley’s Learn and Earn initiative at 15 pilot sites guarantee that this kind of approach will be with us for the foreseeable future. All of these programs have community college partners, and the programs in most cases are on our campuses. For institutions charged as ours are with the education of adults, it represents a significant shift in our thinking – and an enormous opportunity to shape the educational landscape.
Yes, community colleges are strong partners in these experiments. The fact that organizers have turned to us – to YOU – is a clear indication that our state’s decision makers understand that community colleges are indeed our state’s most important resource in rebuilding our economic prosperity.
And so to my last question: What do community colleges NEED in order to carry out our role – in reinventing the wheel of North Carolina’s economy?
Of course we need money to pay for the people, buildings, equipment and ideas that serve the public. At this meeting four years ago, I urged you to HELP pass the Higher Education Bonds. You did – and we succeeded spectacularly. Many of you are now teaching and working in new and renovated spaces made possible by that historic investment of statewide resources, and more are coming every day.
At this meeting four years ago, I marveled at the patience of the faculty and staff who had selflessly backed our legislative requests for years, even as your own salaries slid to the very bottom of the scale in the south and almost to the bottom nationally. This year – at last! – the General Assembly did something about this deplorable situation by appropriating extra funds for community college raises and beginning a commitment to bring your salaries in line with national averages. Many of your presidents have squeezed additional dollars out of their budgets to make those salary increases even larger than the 4-and-a-half percent provided by the legislature.
Since our last conference, the need for capacity – including equipment – and talented staff has grown ever more urgent, because the economic shifts have fueled an enrollment explosion.
Many of these new students are "labor intensive" for your colleges. Laid off, unfamiliar with college, unsure of their abilities, low on funds, they need counseling, financial aid, and other vital student support services right at a time when student support staffs have been squeezed by the state budget crises of the past few years.
Later this week, the State Board of Community Colleges will put the finishing touches on our expansion budget request to the General Assembly for next year’s session. We’ll push hard for help with enrollment growth, salaries, equipment, student support, vital innovations such as distance learning and biotech training. Because of the great work that all of you do, I think we have a chance for another very successful session. Because of that great work, legislators have a higher opinion of community colleges than ever before.
There’s no question that the people who pass the budget – the legislators – now understand that community colleges are high on the list of valued resources in their districts. There’s no question that legislators want to be thought of as friends to community colleges. I can’t count how many political ads I’ve seen and heard this campaign season that feature community colleges and your success at putting people back to work.
However, on our "needs" list I have to put one more thing – the candidates who are talking about how valuable we are need to understand that value requires and DESERVES investment. It’s hard for me to listen to a campaign commercial that touts community colleges and promises to cut taxes and downsize government at the same time.
Is it a good thing that we in community colleges are so good at keeping the doors open to all comers, in all circumstances? Good for our students and customers, indeed – but it can’t be good for our long-term health to do without so often that we are expected to do without always.
I am here to pledge that I do NOT expect you to do without. Four years ago, I asked for your help with the bonds, and I got it. I pledged to you MY help with salaries, and finally – we are BEGINNING to get it. But we need your renewed commitment to get the operational resources in this session that we need to succeed. Identify and support candidates who give more than lip service to our needs.
I began this evening with the symbol of the wheel – and I close with it as well…this time, calling it a circle.
Do you all know the old gospel hymn, "Will the Circle be Unbroken?" I won’t sing it, but I ask you to remember the sound of the Carter family as they sang those words – and think about how powerful North Carolina’s community college family is, when we stand as an unbroken circle, joined in our mission to move our state forward. I thank you for your attention, and I wish you a productive and stimulating conference!
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