RELEASE DATE: February 15, 2007
CONTACT: publicaffairs@nccommunitycolleges.edu
Message to Joint Education Governing Boards: “Education has to change.”
CARY - “Students are bored,” SAS founder Jim Goodnight (right) told the Joint Education Governing Boards meeting on his massive corporate campus today. The meeting was hosted by the State Board of Community Colleges. The education advocate challenged those present to “change the way things are done and engage the students.” He said liberal use of computers offers the best option. “Computers are not to teach technology,” he said. “They are a replacement for books, paper and pencil.”
He also told the education leaders that it was important that they give high school students a quality education. “Do it right the first time if we don’t want to have to teach remedial algebra at community colleges,” he said.
The Governing Boards met at SAS on Thursday to hear two national presentations on education. Marc Tucker, President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Center of Education and the Economy also talked about changes in education that are necessary if the American economy is to survive.
“For every job that is lost to outsourcing, there are ten lost to automation,” Tucker told his audience. He said the global economy continues to evolve, and employers have access to a worldwide workforce composed of people who do not have to move to participate in work teams and are paid less than Americans.
“Employers will be looking for the most competent, most creative and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will be willing to pay them top dollar for their services, Tucker said. He added that our education system, which was built for another era, has to change if our workforce is to compete.
Tucker (left, with Martin Lancaster) offered a multi-tiered plan of recommendations from the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce that are designed to: overhaul the education system; recruit better teachers and pay them more; provide improved services to students who need special assistance; and increase the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college without the need for remediation. More information is available at www.skillscommission.org and www.ncee.org .
The illness of the presenter from the Spellings Commission led to a change in the program.
Dr. Saundra Williams (right), Vice President for Administration at the North Carolina Community College System Office and Dr. Harold L. Martin (far right), Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of North Carolina, led the presentation on a new initiative with SAS that also involves the Department of Public Instruction. The Education Insight for Teaching and Nursing is a data management system that will give North Carolina’s K-20 educational institutions the ability to make informed decisions about programs and practices that prepare students in the 21st century.
The initiative will allow education agencies to add key data elements and optimize performance by leveraging federal reporting requirement. The initiative will allow education agencies to track students from their kindergarten days to receiving a PhD and to analyze the various influences on their education. UNC-GA will provide the leadership and SAS will handle the planning component. The project starts with nursing and education students since that segment of the workforce has greatest shortages.
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