I'd like to offer some comments on Gov. Deval Patrick's recent column regarding his proposal to centralize administration of the community college system in Massachusetts ("Closing the 'skills gap,'" Wednesday, Feb. 8):
With regard to diminishing the middle skills gap (jobs requiring post-high school education/training, but not bachelor degrees), we agree with Gov. Patrick's conclusion that "the problem is not the community colleges. The community colleges are the solution." We part company with him over the strategy he proposes to expand our role and fully align the commonwealth's workforce with the needs of the state's economy.
Patrick frames the issue with the assertion that "we have 240,000 people looking for work and nearly 120,000 open jobs today in Massachusetts." Let's start with those numbers.
A supply-to-demand ratio of 240,000 unemployed to 120,000 openings, about two to one, sounds serious. But in fact, we achieved the third best ratio in the United States, according to The Conference Board's Release No. 5557, the document from which the governor extracts that number.
The national average is 3.45 to one. North Carolina, a state Patrick often poses as a model, sports a ratio of 4.37 to one.
Do we really want to reorganize ourselves like states with skills gaps twice as large as ours?
We estimate that roughly half of the 120,000 positions require a bachelor's degree or higher. And of the 240,000 unemployed, about the same percentage lack a high-school diploma and do not qualify for admission to community colleges.
We cannot resolve the skills gap until we close the readiness gap in the secondary system. More than 60 percent of high-school graduates enrolling at NSCC do not test into college-level courses.
We are making great strides accelerating math and composition skill levels at NSCC. But should we have to? We are not the weak link in this chain. I believe, in fact, we are the strongest.
How does Massachusetts come to have one of the smallest skills gap in the United States?
During the past five years, despite slashed appropriations and exploding enrollments, Massachusetts community colleges increased production of enrollees and graduates by around 25 percent. We awarded 42,000 associate degrees and 12,600 credit certificates in technical and career programs; and offered 40,400 not-for-credit workforce development/job skills training courses taken by 427,000 people. We now enroll almost 200,000 credit and non-credit students, more than the enrollments of the state universities and UMass combined.
We accomplished this because Gov. Patrick led the effort to direct stimulus money to our colleges and because campus leaders and their faculty members had the flexibility to be entrepreneurial, creative and innovative with the resources made available to us.
Given that record of success during a time of adversity, we do not understand why the governor now proposes to give the Board of Higher Education (BHE) the authority to allocate appropriations, removing the very flexibility that saved the economy.
He proposes shifting the authority to search for and hire presidents from our local boards to the Board of Higher Education. He asks that he appoint the chairs of our boards of trustees, removing that authority from the boards themselves. In the outside section of his budget proposal he gives the BHE discretionary authority to remove a college president by a majority vote of all its members.
The governor has appointed me to his Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies representing all segments of the commonwealth's economic development team. I presume he named me to the panel because the major focus of the plan will advance education and workforce development for middle-skill jobs through the work of community colleges.
Over the past year I co-chaired a subcommittee on that topic, which worked diligently to develop a set of proposals and an implementation plan that would accomplish what Patrick asks without weakening the great strength of our current system: Our regional focus and concomitant authority to deploy resources accordingly. We hope that plan gets a fair chance before stronger medicine is applied.
Following his recent visit to NSCC's Lynn campus, Gov. Patrick received a letter from Michael Caruso, a 38-year-old student at Salem State University who had transferred from NSCC after earning an associate's degree in liberal arts.
He wrote, "I recently missed you by mere minutes when you visited the Lynn campus of North Shore Community College a few weeks ago. I was so disappointed that I lost the chance to shake your hand, and to show my deep appreciation for your support of life-changing educational programs, like those offered at North Shore."
Noting he was a laid-off sheet metal worker, he went on to note, "I have gained much more than an education at North Shore Community College. I have a renewed self-confidence and pride that has enhanced all facets of my life. Unlike many of my union brothers that have lost everything in this terrible recession, I have been able to turn these difficult times into an opportunity to retrain myself for a meaningful career in psychology, and a chance to give back to our wonderful state in return for all of the support that I have received in my own time of need."
Recognizing that the long-term interests of our students are not always coincident with the short-term interests of employers, Caruso emphasizes a very important point. Our policies should begin, not just with the major employers who quite rightly make their needs known, but with the people of the commonwealth who lack well-resourced advocates. We believe they deserve the same choices as all other students, whether that is a career track, liberal arts transfer, non-credit training, or a hybrid thereof.
Contrary to the assertions in the Boston Foundation report, "The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts," and in a recent Boston Globe editorial, we do not aspire to be all things to all people. We believe we should be all things to those who need our help reaching the American Dream, whether that is in a specific career or building the foundation for further education. We believe that can best be accomplished with regional community colleges under local control with guidance from Boston under strong accountability systems.
• • •
Wayne M. Burton is president of North Shore Community College, which has campuses in Lynn, Danvers and Beverly. He currently chairs the council of community college presidents in Massachusetts.
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