In a recent speech aboard Air Force One the president again managed to hit the proverbial nail on the head. While introducing America’s College Promise plan, a program modeled after the Tennessee Promise which offers high school students free community college tuition through the state’s lottery, the president outlined exactly why a program of this scale is critical by stating point blank, “It’s something we can accomplish and something that will train our work force so we can compete with anyone in the world.”
Offering students free community college tuition enables Congress the opportunity to prepare future generations of workers for high skilled jobs that will lead to economic growth.
{mosads}Many critics have already succumbed to a knee-jerk reaction claiming the policy is simply too expensive. If Congress were to approve the plan the federal government would cover roughly three-quarters of tuition for a student and states participating in the program would be responsible for the remaining 25 percent of costs. The president suggests an estimated $60 billion will have to be invested over the next 10 years to implement the program. This could result in a full-time student saving, on average, $3,800 in tuition per year according to the White House. The president’s proposal should not be dismissed purely on costs; the U.S. falling behind other developed countries represents a much greater cost than the investment required today for our nation to maintain a competitive workforce tomorrow.
These colleges offer specialized training in skilled positions in high-growth sectors of the economy, an area in which the United States has struggled to keep pace with other countries such as China. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that the US is comparatively weak-to-poor when compared to other countries in the areas of literacy, numeracy, ability to use numerical and mathematical concepts and problem solving. What this means for American workers are jobs moving abroad with the same skills but for less pay—as many American factory workers once experienced. This trend now looks likely to befall workers who intend to work in high skilled and higher paying jobs in technical fields. This, of course, can change if the U.S. begins to invest more money in programs that work for workers. So yes, we can compete with anyone in the world but we have not been doing a good job at it to date and this is an opportunity for things to change.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has highlighted the potential for relationships to exist between states facing a skills gap and how these colleges are helping create a higher skilled labor force at the local level. One example connected to the US domestic energy boom in natural gas is taking place in Ohio. In a state where roughly 65,000 wells already exist, there is already additional demand for the building of wells. The challenge for companies in Ohio—as is in many other states—is two-fold: workers are getting older and retiring, and finding replacements with the requisite skills is increasingly more challenging. Some Ohio based companies have partnered with community colleges to ameliorate these concerns. For example, one college in Ohio added 120 new students to its welding and machinists training program, as a result of investment and coordination with industry representatives. The success of these partnerships is a model worth expanding to other states because these students will complete the program and have jobs with the very firms who invested in their training. With the President’s proposal it is conceivable that companies and community colleges can design new programs or expand existing ones such as this one to establish pipeline programs placing even more higher skilled workers in jobs that spur economic activity.
There has been a history of outsourcing jobs increasing in skill level; the trend has existed in making shoes to making cars, to making computers. If our economy relies on high skill jobs, which is where the developed world is heading, then we need a population with a strong educational foundation. We cannot afford to lag behind other developed nations any longer. High school students currently face the choice of either starting their future with massive debt or letting the rest of world move past them. It seems what we cannot afford as a nation any longer is to ignore real opportunities to innovate our educational landscape and compete with the world on equal footing.
Rodriguez is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee emeritus of Brown University.