Community Colleges: Job builders too long on a shoestring
Published April 28, 2014
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, April 27, 2014.
With the economy rebounding, strong March employment figures and the governor declaring a “Carolina Comeback,” the General Assembly must start rebuilding North Carolina’s educational program.
A good place to start would be the community college system where leaders aren’t asking for the moon from the 2014 legislative session. They just want the same as last year, a little bit to help veterans and a raise for their teachers, system president Scott Ralls told the Journal editorial board last week.
It’s an eminently reasonable request that the legislature should grant.
As we opined recently, Gov. Pat McCrory wants legislators to allow the colleges to keep $16.8 million they saved by streamlining remedial programs. Ordinarily, those savings would be swept up in end-of-the-year department reversions to the General Fund.
McCrory and college presidents want to redirect that money to programs that prepare workers for the hottest employment fields. Forsyth Tech would get $800,000 of that money.
McCrory has also called for a $1.8 million appropriation so military veterans would pay in-state tuition in their first year after leaving the service.
Last year, the legislature appropriated $20.1 million on a one-year basis. Unless that budget line is renewed, the colleges will get that much less next year. The colleges need that money, however, to address local needs. In many cases, it would be used to raise salaries in fields where teachers are hard to find and keep.
In relatively recent times, public school teachers were paid at the national average. That has never been the case at the community colleges where the average annual salary of $47,300 ranks 41st in the country. A decade ago, we were almost dead last.
These teachers need raises too, and the colleges are having a hard time keeping instructors in high-tech fields where the private sector pays higher wages.
If legislators are serious about creating jobs, they must recognize how important it is to train skilled workers in our community colleges. Those colleges have long run on a shoestring. The legislature can’t fix the system’s chronic underfunding overnight, but legislators can stop cutting its funds.
