BrocktonPost City Hall & Public Affairs: Patrick Highlights Massasoit In Community College $ Appeal

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BrocktonPost 
BROCKTON--FROM GOV. DEVAL PATRICK: 
 
We have 240,000 people looking for work and
nearly 120,000 open jobs today in Massachusetts.   
 How can we have so much opportunity available
and so many people still looking for a chance? 

 
Business leaders tell me over and over again
that it is because the people looking for jobs don’t have the skills
required.    
Many of these openings are for
“middle skills” jobs that require more than a high school diploma but not
necessarily a four-year degree: jobs in medical device manufacturing or lab
technicians or solar installers, for example. 
And a lot of those forced by the economic downturn to make a change in
their careers, people in their thirties or forties or fifties, don’t have the proper
training for those jobs.    
We have a
“skills gap.”  
We
can do something about that.  We can help
people get back to work.  And our
community colleges should be at the center of it.
 
For
the work they do, community colleges rarely receive proper recognition, let
alone adequate funding.    
I have visited many
of our community colleges and seen their good work.  They are an important resource, and we must
ask more of them.
 
At Massasoit Community College right now,
students in the one-year Medical Assistant program learn hands on skills
through an 8-week clinical internship at a local facility.  
This is good - - but
we need more of it and we need it everywhere. 

 
We need that kind of sharper mission across
the Commonwealth, so that community colleges become a fully integrated part of
the state’s workforce development plan.    
Our
colleges must be aligned with employers, voc-tech schools and the Workforce
Investment Boards in the regions where they operate; aligned with each other in
core course offerings; and aligned with the Commonwealth’s job growth
strategy.    
We can’t do that if 15
different campuses have 15 different strategies.  We need to do this together.  We need a unified community college system
in Massachusetts.    
Our competitors –
states like Virginia, North Carolina and Washington – have instituted unified
systems and are using them to their competitive advantage.  
 
I have proposed a $10 million increase in
state funding for community colleges to help them meet this mission – and I
have challenged the business community to come up with a match to help make
this a reality.    
It is not unreasonable
for community colleges to ask for more resources to support their mission; and
it is not unreasonable to ask for them to be more accountable to our workforce
development strategy in exchange. 
 
Given how important community colleges are to
their local cities and towns, some are concerned that this proposal would mean
Beacon Hill is telling their campus what to do. 
I don’t want that any more than you do.  
The goal of this proposal is to ensure that
community colleges have the tools they need to be as responsive as possible to
the job openings in their region.  Creating a more unified system is not about
losing local control; it is about connecting every city and town to the full
range of economic possibilities in the Commonwealth.  It’s about making sure a large employer in
Boston knows that there is a skilled workforce in Brockton and reason to expand
there.    
It’s about making sure the small
business in Canton has a convenient, locally focused, fully supported resource
to help its workers build careers in Norfolk County and grow the economy
there.  
 
The problem we are trying to fix is the
skills gap; the problem is not the community colleges.  The community colleges are the solution.  
The
challenge facing people looking for work, people in doubt about the future of
their American Dream and their place in the workforce belongs to all of us. We
can meet that challenge if we work together. 
  
For the good of the Commonwealth and the sake of our future, we must.
 
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BrocktonPost City Hall & Public Affairs

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Patrick Highlights Massasoit In Community College $ Appeal

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