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You like me...you really, really like me

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Monday, July 27, 2009

By Andy Lyons

WEAC WTCS Consultant

So said Sally Field in her 1985 Academy Award acceptance speech (she was actually misquoted, but that's another story). 

Technical college leaders should be feeling similarly.  After decades playing second fiddle to 4-year universities, community and technical colleges have been thrust into the limelight in recent months, with major news outlets, pundits and politicians extolling their virtues.

Time magazine, for example, ran a cover story on the role community and technical colleges will play in reviving the U.S. economy.  Read more.  And the highly respected Brookings Institute recently called for a significant federal investment in 2-year colleges.  Read more.

The increased attention on community and technical colleges culminated in mid-July with President Barack Obama's announcement of the American Graduation Initiative, a 10-year, $12 billion dollar investment in 2-year colleges.  Read more from Inside Higher Education.

While details remain sketchy, it is clear that President Obama has placed community and technical colleges at the center of his economic recovery agenda.  The Obama Administration has articulated a commitment to what Wisconsin's technical college faculty and staff have long known - occupational and technical education plays an critical role in workforce and economic development.  

The Obama community and technical college plan appears to be moving quickly, with a key Congressional committee already incorporating details into broader higher education legislation.  Read more on The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3221).

We will have more on the American Graduation Initiative as details become available.

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Comments  1

  • Xena Crystal Li-chin Huang 8/12/2009

    Think about the good will - $9 billion grants

    The following opinion was posted on my blog a few days ago.
    ---------------------------------------------------------

    Recently Federal Government announced that there would be a $9 billion block grant for improving 2-year colleges. With such an amount of grant, the high expectation is inevitable.

    To Achieve the Dream, U.S. House of Representatives laid out a series of benchmarks that colleges and states would have to meet to receive the grants. Though still under the floor action, suggested goals such as program completion, work-force preparation, and job placement and so on are familiar anticipations to the interested parties.

    I have an ambivalent perspective toward this grandiose event as an instructor at a two-year Tech college for six years. The aid can be an edu-political good will with turbulence run deep underneath this unique educational system. It can be a high time to diagnose the accumulated problems and controversies with systematic/systemic approach instead of the habitual piece-meal work.

    In terms of access vs. success, 2-year colleges are not exactly FOR the under-served, OF the less-prepared, and least BY the under-privileged. As the saying goes, it is much more a unique hybrid entity of socio-politics, industrial-business compound, and rhetoric than that of the concern of what teaching and learning actually happens to improve the “human capital”.

    I am still baffled by the long term “sacrosanct”(sacred cow) state imposed on the 2-year colleges. What I am looking for is a systematic and theoretical based of this multifunctional and controversial system to be tangibly understood by the majority of stakeholders, like that of the K-12, or at least the 15+ systems.
    This lost child (13-14) educational setting shall not be an edu-business-political hot potato as it used to be! I am embarking on piecing together for this missing link.

    Here is my tiny step- http://cvtcscholarship.wetpaint.com - a developing wikiblog invites your input.
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