H. Martin Lancaster, President
North Carolina Community College System
UNC-Chapel Hill
September 16, 2000
Thank you. I appreciate very much the chance to be with you today. When I accepted the invitation almost a year ago, I knew I would enjoy exploring with you the continued importance of the humanities in community college education. I did not know, however, that your timing would be quite so good.
Many of you probably know that just two days ago, the National Endowment for the Humanities convened a Chairman's Advisory Committee on the Humanities in Community Colleges. We are in good company!
This morning, I want to share with you some information about what North Carolina's community colleges are, who our students are, what we do for them, and why in my judgment study of the humanities is and will remain an essential part of the community college experience.
The North Carolina Community College System includes 58 comprehensive community colleges and one specialized technology center. The system serves between 750-thousand and 800-thousand adults every year. That represents about one in every eight adults in North Carolina.
Slightly more than half of our students are women. More than half of our students work full-time. Another 16 percent work part-time.
Overall, the average age is about 35. Students taking academic and technical courses for credit -- what we call curriculum courses -- are younger, just under 30 years old. In years to come, I predict we will attract more students directly from high school than we do now. In part, that’s due to the sheer numbers now moving through school, as you have heard in Dr. Barnes’ presentation. And in part it is due to the great improvements in the transfer agreements between the Community College System, the University System and many of our private institutions.
People who come to us for worker training and retraining, literacy, and other extension courses are older, almost 38 years old, on average.
Statewide, the student body represents North Carolina's diverse population. About 70 percent of our students are white, between 20 and 25 percent are African American, slightly more than one percent are American Indian, slightly more than that are Asian and Asian-American, and at last count, more than four percent are Hispanic.
Our mission is to open the doors of opportunity for every North Carolina willing and able to learn. This mission was stated eloquently about forty years ago by Dallas Herring, as our system was taking shape. Dr. Herring was a long-time chair of the State Board of Education and is widely regarded as the founding father of our system. He wrote:
"The only valid philosophy for North Carolina is the philosophy of total education. That is why the doors to the institutions of North Carolina's system of community colleges must never be closed to anyone of suitable age who can learn what they teach. We must take people where they are and carry them as far as they can go. If they cannot read, then we will teach them to read and make them proud of their achievement. If they did not finish high school, but have a mind to do it, then we will offer them a high school education. If their talent is technical or vocational, then we will provide them with knowledge and skill they can sell in the marketplaces of our state. If their needs are in the great tradition of liberal education, then we will provide them instruction which will enable them to go on to the university or to senior college and on into life in numbers unheard of in North Carolina. If their needs are for cultural achievement, intellectual growth or civic understanding, then we will make available to them the wisdom of the ages and the enlightenment of our times and help them to maturity."
Our system’s focus on the whole person is and always has been a great strength. It is particularly so now, with the tremendous need for job training and re-training occurring at a time when the study of the arts and humanities is often ignored in our pursuit of the dollar. However, there has always been a continuing, creative tension between what we are -- and what we should be. How easy it would have been to decide 40 years ago that this was an either-or question...either we were technical institutes providing only skills training, or we were junior colleges devoted solely to academics.
How fortunate that the founders of our community college system instead championed the Jeffersonian idea that the most important role of education in a democracy is the creation of citizens who are productive and responsible--capable of earning a living, making informed decisions, and stepping into leadership.
Our community college students do indeed acquire the skills they need to land good jobs in today’s high-tech working world. However, they also acquire the fundamental education that underlies good decision-making, flexibility and the desire to keep learning - the surest path to a life that combines a richness of spirit with prosperity and material wealth.
If that philosophy made sense 40 years ago, surely it has the ring of truth today, when all our assumptions about work, security and success have shifted so dramatically.
Let's consider just two of the most important shifts in our economy....and thus, in the education we must offer to prepare our citizens to be part of it.
The first is the staggering pace of change, especially in technology. Today's innovation is on tomorrow's scrap heap. The entire concept of "completing" one's education is obsolete, when our skills are out of date before we've left the classroom. Of course, it's vital for our graduates to have the skills to get the job they want . It's even more important, however, that they develop the habit of...and the genuine desire for...lifelong learning. They must know how to ask the right questions and to seek out the answers on their own.
And the second shift goes by the name of globalization.....frankly, it's a phenomenon that has caught much of North Carolina somewhat by surprise.
Chapel Hill's own think tank, MDC Inc. has just published its third "State of the South" report. Its overarching theme is the enormous task our region...and our state...face in taking our places in a truly global economy. Here's what MDC means by global:
- Boundaries are blurring, even disappearing, as people, goods, services, money and communications move across states, regions, countries and the world.
- Foreign companies are moving into our state, and our state’s businesses, large and small, are selling their products overseas.
- Our neighbors, our colleagues, our employees and our bosses are increasingly likely to be from somewhere else and to speak a language different from ours. North Carolina may have missed the great tide of immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but we’re definitely riding the crest this time around!
In the community college system, we are focusing tremendous energy on figuring out how to answer the challenge of globalization. This coming March, we will sponsor a major conference on global education, with the generous support of the Stanley Foundation, and I look forward to the fresh ideas that will come out of that.
We already know that one of the most important things our community colleges have to do is to make sure that all our colleges offer every student the opportunity to learn about his or her own culture and to experience other cultures.
Of course that’s important for the full development of every person’s potential. Education is more than just insurance against unemployment. We must never assume that workers who are technically trained to work in our businesses and industries do not also need a broad background in the arts and humanities.
However, it’s just as important in the cold, hard light of business. . At a recent meeting of the Southern Growth Policies Board, a speaker noted that US educators are focused …perhaps too focused…now on boosting math and science scores. He cautioned that we should realize that our great competitive advantages in the world marketplace are the unequaled creativity of our workforce and the worldwide admiration of our culture. He said it's easier to boost math scores than to nurture creativity and called for increased attention to the humanities. How can we expect to prosper in the global marketplace, if we have no appreciation for our government, culture, history and faith, and those of people different from ourselves?
We can’t. And community colleges must accept the challenge of providing the educational experiences our citizens need, when they need them
We’re addressing that on several fronts. First, I hope that every North Carolina resident in this room knows what we are doing with our University colleagues to make sure people have somewhere to go when they want to learn. On November 7, we will vote on a statewide bond referendum for $3.1 billion for higher education facilities. The community college share of that is $600 million. I cannot say enough about how important this vote is to every aspect of higher education in North Carolina. If you live here, please register by October 13, and VOTE.
Second, we are reaching out to our students with an array of distance learning technologies. Students interested in general academic courses, including the humanities, benefit particularly from distance learning, because many of the offerings have been concentrated in those areas. For years, broadcast telecourses have offered wonderful opportunities to study history, literature and language. Now, the World Wide Web has opened up tremendous new avenues for convenient, quality instruction for adults who truly want to learn. This summer, Sandhills Community College worked with the North Carolina Museum of Art to develop an art history course focused on the Rodin exhibit. It will be, I’m sure, the first of many such innovations.
And that leads me to my third point, my personal commitment to strengthening the role of the arts and humanities in our community colleges. I take pride in my role in creating and supporting the Visiting Artists program during my term as chairman of the North Carolina Arts Council and while I was in the General Assembly. I am committed to developing new efforts -- and new funding -- that will raise the visibility and appreciation of arts and humanities on all our campuses.
Frankly, I couldn’t do anything else. My own academic background is heavy on humanities, and my wife Alice is a veteran humanities instructor in the community colleges of North Carolina and Virginia. I share her pride in the course she developed at Wayne Community College a number of years ago that introduces the humanities to students enrolled in technical and vocational programs. I am pleased that other colleges have replicated this course and included it in their technical and vocational curricula.
Let me leave you today with a final challenge from Dallas Herring. The questions you ponder today are, as you know, not new; I imagine that our earliest ancestors struggled to know whether to value the hunters or the storytellers more!
Four decades ago, Dr. Herring reminded our college leaders always to remember "to instill that enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding in your students, to help them to search out the deep and abiding truths which mankind has discovered over the centuries, by example and by precept, to teach them to love the great books and to hunger for the majestic ideas that make people free."
Thank you for your attention. I wish you an inspiring and productive day.
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