H. Martin Lancaster
President, NC Community College System
North Carolina Hospital Association
July 21, 2000
Hilton Head, South Carolina
Thank you. I appreciate your offering me the chance to begin the day with you to share some news from your community college system. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine turning down a chance to begin a summer day at beautiful Hilton Head, no matter what the occasion. I am, however, grateful for the timeliness of your invitation, because we have important issues to discuss.
Your North Carolina Community College System consists of 59 institutions enrolling between 700-thousand and 800-thousand North Carolinians every year. Our main task is very clear, and has been since the system was organized more than 35 years ago. North Carolina’s community colleges are about jobs. We educate tomorrow's work force. Community colleges equip North Carolinians for real jobs with real futures. Community colleges provide North Carolina's industries with quality workers. Community colleges help the economy move forward by growing new jobs with the promise of great futures.
And in today’s North Carolina, where are those jobs? More and more, they are in your business, health care, or in a closely related business like insurance, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.
In fact, North Carolina is on the leading edge of the next great wave of change in the economy. A few weeks ago, I attended the meeting of the Southern Growth Policies Board. One of our speakers told us that what he called the bio-economy is the next step in the evolution of our economy. He expects it to supplant today’s information economy in about ten years.
Clearly, our state’s calendar for change is turning pages faster than that. The scale of operations and the quality of the work done in your hospitals, in research and in manufacturing in health-related businesses are quite frankly, stunning.
Last week’s US News and World Report ranking of the country’s best hospitals is just one more piece of evidence that our state is a major force in health care. I share your pride that Duke University Medical Center, UNC Hospitals, North Carolina Baptist Hospital and Carolinas Medical Center all earned high praise. Excellence in health care is great for the economy, great for peace of mind, and one of the most important things that makes our state such a great place to live and work.
The size and vigor of the health-care sector matters particularly in community colleges, because our top job is workforce training. Our commitment to training the health-related workforce is already huge…and growing fast. The partnership between the health-care industry and community colleges is vital to providing necessary health care resources for North Carolina’s citizens.
Allied health programs make up a large percentage of our enrollment. Just in our for-credit programs, or curriculum, we offer more than 45 disciplines. In the last academic year for which we have complete statistics, more than 13-thousand students enrolled in a healthcare related associate degree program at one of our colleges. We also have hundreds of continuing education courses enrolling many thousands of students.
Community colleges graduate about two-thirds of our state’s registered nurses every year and large percentages of the assistants and technicians who keep our health care system running…therapy assistants, dental hygienists and assistants, respiratory and radiology technicians and many more. We also have a huge role in training medical office personnel, bio-tech manufacturing technicians, customer service staff for insurance companies and, of course, the computer wizards so vital to all of us now.
As big as those numbers are, I am aware that in a number of critical areas in direct health care, they are not big enough. You need more nurses. The ones you employ in hospitals now are caring for sicker patients, and a lot of capable people, particularly women, are choosing other careers with more regular hours and less stress. You need more certified nursing assistants. That’s hard work, physically and emotionally. It’s very important work, as our burgeoning population of retirees begins to need long-term care and assistance. But it’s not high paying work, and in this booming economy, it’s tough to find trained people to do it.
You need more entry-level workers who can read and write English. You need personnel at every level who can speak and understand Spanish. International immigration may be a new phenomenon in our state, but it isn’t going to stop, at least in our lifetimes.
Perhaps equally important to these needed which we can identify today are the needs which we have not even thought of, but about which we need to starting thinking, and for which we need to start planning.
What can we do, at community colleges, to help you meet these needs?
First, we can give you what you need, when you need it. Our community colleges pride ourselves on working with you to find the answers to your workforce needs, right now. A few weeks ago, the Durham Herald-Sun ran a story about an excellent example of effective training on demand. UNC Hospitals had a critical shortage of trained surgical technicians. They knew what to do…they called Durham Technical Community College, which serves Orange as well as Durham County. Durham Tech worked with UNC Hospitals to create a new surgical tech program that guaranteed graduates will have the skills UNC needed. The second class has just graduated…and it continues to be a wonderful partnership. I am sure many of you have similar success stories to tell about community colleges in your hometown.
Second, we need to be working with you to figure out what you’re going to need, before you’re facing a shortage. We all know that one of the greatest challenges facing the healthcare industry and those of us who train your personnel is anticipating the workforce needs and preparing the personnel to meet those needs in advance of a personnel crisis. To this point, neither the health café industry nor the Community College System has done the job we should with that anticipation. Frankly, we have never had the resources to do more than respond to the demands for programs. As a result, we struggle with cyclical crises in almost every area of health care manpower from time to time. We are never able to do good planning which anticipates needs and takes actions in advance to address them.
We want to improve our ability to anticipate by establishing a statewide healthcare manpower advisory committee. Through the statewide North Carolina Community Colleges Foundation, we are raising funds from health-care-related corporations and foundations for endowment of at least $2 million, the income from which would be used to hire a professional specializing in healthcare human resources planning. That person would staff the advisory committee, research workforce needs and work with community colleges to manage their programs in meeting these needs. Using this research and their own knowledge of manpower needs, the Advisory Committee would identify on a regular basis anticipated manpower needs for the future (including career fields not even thought of today.) These needs would then be taken by this staff person to the Community College System for the development of training programs which would be implemented on community colleges campuses strategically located to best address the needs. Our full partner in this effort would be the Area Health Education Centers.
We are very fortunate to have Ken Otis volunteering his time to head up the funding for the Health Care Initiative for us. You know Ken from his good work as CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina. Before his retirement, Ken made sure that Blue Cross and Blue Shield set the pace with a very generous pledge. He continues to be a highly valued member of the Foundation Board, and thanks largely to his hard work, we are making excellent progress. We now have major commitments from three of our larger hospitals and significant proposals under consideration at others across the state. Many of you have attended the health care luncheons we held in the Triangle, the Triad and the Charlotte are, and I can’t begin to tell you how helpful your strong expressions of support and your pledges are to our efforts.
Let me emphasize how important the statewide Foundation is to the continued strength of the North Carolina Community College System. The Foundation was established in 1986. It got off to a good start then lay dormant for several years. When I came to work in 1997, the State Board charged me with reviving the Foundation. In 1998, Gregory Poole Jr. of Raleigh agreed to chair a new board of directors. He served ably for a year and a half and has been succeeded by the equally energetic Steve Zelnak, CEO of Martin Marietta Materials in Raleigh.
We are working to build an endowment to support statewide efforts to benefit the system and state as a whole. We are not…repeat, NOT…trying to supplant the local community college foundations which are so important around the state. In fact, we tell potential donors straightforwardly that if it’s an either/or question, they should keep giving their money to the local folks.
That same message certainly applies to you; I know many of you are extremely generous to the community colleges in your hometown.
Fortunately, what we expected to happen has happened. We have identified many large sources that had not been giving at all to community colleges, because they wanted something that reflected the regional or statewide nature of their own operations. And in several cases, our call for the statewide foundation has generated both a statewide gift and a new or greatly increased gift to the local college. The success of the Foundation will mean that we can do a better job promoting our programs, rewarding our faculties and staffs, and helping you recruit capable people into careers in your industry.
Those are some things we can do to help you. Now you know I’m going to talk about what you can do to help us. I’ve already described the Foundation’s special initiative, and your participation in that is crucial.
We also need your support….your advocacy with the General Assembly.. in our continued efforts to attract and keep the very best faculty in our allied health programs. Quality programs demand quality instructors…and we struggle to keep good people in these healthy economic times just as you do. There’s been a lot of coverage the last few years about just how low North Carolina’s faculty salaries are. We’ve made a great deal of progress the last two years, and I’m proud of that. But we’re still in the bottom five in the country and rock bottom in the southeast. Allied health programs cost a lot to run. The classes are small, the equipment is expensive, and qualified instructors have to be rewarded. Help us make our case to the General Assembly.
Another part of meeting your needs is having the capacity to house the students to train. Yes, I’m talking about the higher education bonds, and how important they are to the future of your industry, because they are important to the community colleges that train your nurses, technicians, office workers and computer staffs, and to the universities that train your doctors, dentists, therapists and administrators.
The proposed $3.1-billion bond issue for the University of North Carolina and community colleges reflects a bipartisan recommendation that was unanimously passed by both houses of the 2000 General Assembly. It would provide $600 million for the community colleges and $2.5 billion for the University.
The bond funds will be used solely to construct new buildings and to renovate and modernize existing buildings at community colleges and UNC campuses.
The community college system anticipates an enrollment growth over the next ten years equivalent to about 57,000 full-time students. The University’s projections are for about 50,000 students on their campuses.
Faced with this kind of growth, University campuses will be unable to admit many qualified students unless we quickly address their capital needs. Some campuses already have had to limit admissions due to lack of space. Similarly, without a substantial infusion of capital funding, community colleges will be forced to turn away people who need to gain technical skills, prepare for further higher education, or earn high school credentials. This is already happening on several of our community colleges. Pitt Community College in Greenville reports canceling 20 classes in the spring due to lack of space, and applications are up 28 percent for the fall. Central Carolina Community College in Sanford last year turned away two-thirds of its nursing applicants, many simply because there was no place to put them. Space constraints cause Cape Fear Community College to turn away 200 students a semester now; the president there says soon it will be 800 a semester. The law says community colleges are supposed to have an open door for all who want to learn. It’s a great philosophy, but what happens when we run out of doors?
The University's reputation for excellence in teaching and research and the community colleges’ great record in technical training gives North Carolina a competitive economic advantage. Unless we repair and build classrooms, laboratories, and other buildings, that competitive edge will be lost. University campuses now have hundreds of buildings--particularly science buildings--which are no longer suited for their original purposes or badly in need of repair and renovation. Community colleges share the problem of small or out-of-date labs, overwhelmed by growing enrollments in health and science disciplines. At Central Carolina, the science labs at the Sanford campus were constructed in 1968 when the student population was 259. The same labs now serve a student population almost ten times that size.
This bond referendum also represents an unusual opportunity for local governments. Community college buildings belong to the counties that sponsor them, and historically, the counties have been responsible for their construction and maintenance. This bond proposal represents a large infusion of state funds at low or no cost to local governments. The $600 million designated for community colleges will require less than $113 million in local matching funds from non-state sources. Many counties will have no matching requirement, since adjustments have been made based on local ability to contribute and previous local investments.
Can North Carolina do this without a tax increase? Well, taxes can go up for lots of reasons, but State Treasurer Boyles, nobody’s idea of a wild spendthrift, has reiterated his belief that the state could support $3.1 billion in higher education construction bonds without a tax increase.
Would this give our state a staggering debt burden? North Carolina's current debt is one of the lowest in the nation. Even after all currently authorized debt is issued-including the University and community college bonds-the state's level of debt would still be relatively low.
Can I guarantee that this bond issue will solve all the challenges of growth? Of course I can’t. But I can assure you that it will put your community colleges and your University in a much better position to help you answer the challenges of this exciting new century. Earlier, I mentioned the recent Southern Growth Policies Board meeting. I would like to close this morning with a thought shared by one of the speakers there. He quoted Paul Valery, a French poet of the last century, who wrote memorably: "The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."
I look forward to working with all of you to create the future as it will be. Thank you.
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