Community colleges need to be upgraded. We got to have training for real jobs. We've got a lot of jobs that are going unfilled because we don't have the technology in the heads of graduating college students to deal with them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Community colleges are popular among political leaders of both parties. But because of the lack of funding and a lack of direction, they have lost their critical edge in preparing workers for a 21st-century economy.
Community colleges play an important role in helping people transition between careers by providing the retooling they need to take on a new career.
Community colleges provide higher education where people live, helping to build strong ladders of opportunity that allow people to secure a foothold in the middle class.
There's a reasonable amount of traction in college education, particularly engineering, because quite a lot of that is privatized, so there is an incentive to set up new colleges of reasonably high quality.
The most powerful recent innovation in government is when states aggressively use community colleges for retraining. In Michigan, where large numbers of workers were displaced from the manufacturing industry, we created a wildly successful program: No Worker Left Behind.
I might say that in retrospect, looking at where the community college system is today, I think we may have gone too far. The community college system is so big, so broad, so consuming of tax money.
Overhead costs are far too high, state support is dropping, and college tuition is far too expensive. Colleges are pricing themselves out of existence.
For decades, community colleges have been the backbone of American workforce training. Because they are nimble and closely attuned to local community needs, they are inherently positioned to be influential leaders of the movement for a sustainable economy.
With the changing economy, no one has lifetime employment. But community colleges provide lifetime employability.
Community colleges are one of America's great social inventions a gateway to the future for first time students looking for an affordable college education, and for mid-career students looking to get ahead in the workplace.