Higher education, and particularly community colleges, can play a key role in creating jobs and reversing the economic slump, several speakers said Thursday at a White House forum on jobs and the economy.
President Obama specifically called on educators to take a lead in his opening remarks at the jobs summit, saying he wanted to hear what “universities can do to better support and prepare our workers—not just for the jobs of today, but for the jobs five years from now and 10 years from now and 50 years from now.”
In breakout sessions, participants offered strategies for how community colleges can help staunch unemployment rates and retrain displaced workers.
Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation for Education, which has called for significantly increasing the proportion of Americans with a college degree or credential, urged the federal government to finance accelerated degree programs that “treat education like a 9-to-5 job.”
As a model, Mr. Merisotis pointed to a pilot project at Ivy Tech Community College, in Indiana, financed by a $2.3-million award from Lumina and a $270,000 grant from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. Students enrolled in the program will earn an associate degree in just 10 months, rather than two years, by attending daylong classes throughout the week.
Students will be paid a “living stipend” so they do not have to juggle jobs and course work, Mr. Merisotis said. He suggested that the federal government imitate that program at other colleges, especially for fields in which there are clear work-force needs.
Donna Klein, president and executive chair of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a nonprofit business group, said federal efforts to increase graduation rates should include incentives to encourage community colleges and businesses to work together. President Obama has called on the nation’s community and other colleges to produce five million more graduates by the year 2020 and has proposed spending $12-billion over 10 years to improve programs, courses, and facilities at two-year institutions.
Research shows that such efforts are more effective, Ms. Klein said, if colleges work with industry partners to craft curricula and training programs and to create internship and job opportunities for students.
But at least one participant cautioned that community colleges may not be the “panacea” to current economic woes. The Rev. Luis Cortés, president of Esperanza USA, a Hispanic faith-based organization, pointed out that two-year colleges struggle to retain and graduate students. Efforts need to be made, he said, to tackle problems, like literacy, that hamper student success.
Mr. Obama now will take his discussion of job creation on the road. He travels to Pennsylvania on Friday, where he will speak at a two-year institution, Lehigh Carbon Community College.
