Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said community colleges are “brilliantly positioned” to fill the state’s skilled workers gap at a discussion at the State House on Tuesday that addressed his plan to unify community colleges.
The Commonwealth has 15 different community colleges with 15 different agendas that are regionally focused, which may pose difficulties in the plan.
“We think community colleges can play a critical role in this,” said Secretary of the Executive Office of Education Paul Reville, “so we designed a set of reforms that are in building a somewhat more balanced state-local partnership on community colleges that make it a more coherent, cohesive, integrated system.”
Patrick and members of the panel said this is not a critique of community colleges.
Instead, Patrick said the question is how they “amp up” the resources already available in the state’s 15 different community colleges and their respective agendas.
Patrick said there are 120,000 job openings and not enough skilled workers to fill them.
“We have a skills gap here in Massachusetts, not unlike the skills gap the whole nation is experiencing,” he said.
Joanne Goldstein, secretary of the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, said one of the goals in building this proposal is to provide learning experiences and aggregated training programs to colleges, so those who are in training programs and businesses that need skilled workers are able to use those programs.
“I’m hoping that the new funding and performance mechanisms under the proposal will help us shift the programming to be more relevant to dislocated workers and the employed, as well as . . . the wide needs of current employers,” Goldstein said.
Secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development Gregory Bialecki said Patrick’s proposal should not be seen “as a criticism of the way community colleges work today.”
“The far better way to look at it is as an aspirational approach [and] a model for the country,” Bialecki said.
Reville said much of the proposal is budget-related because it is necessary to act collectively to meet job and state priorities and also be economically competitive.
Daniel O’Connell, president and CEO of Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, said the group has gathered together to engage in civic activity to try to make Massachusetts a more competitive place for business and create jobs.
But he said the group sees this proposal as not only a workforce mission, but also a mission to allow students to transition to other degrees with support from their employers.
“We would hope that we can come up with a collaborate approach that will result in a much stronger and better funded community college system,” O’Connell said.
The economic goals of the proposal, such as how it would replace 15 budget line items, have brought criticism that this is all about jobs and disregards the academic mission of community colleges, Reville said.
The proposal is simply an emphasis on job-related functions during this critical economic time, Reville said.
Richard Freeland, commissioner of the Department of High Education, said the fundamental issue is how to keep Massachusetts competitive in this rapidly changing economy.
“I think we are on the cusp of developing something . . . tremendously important,” Freeland said.
Freeland said it is difficult to see how 15 community colleges can coherently fit into a statewide plan.
But the Commonwealth, he said, needs “a statewide conception” and students who can move more seamlessly around the current system.
“We could have a common course numbering system, so Economics 101 is Economics 101 in any other college,” Freeland said. “Not 15 versions of Economics 101.”
