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Editorial: Community colleges play vital role in our future

Tue., July 14, 2009

Community college leaders across the country are keeping an eye on Michigan today. President Barack Obama will be speaking at Macomb Community College, near Detroit, and the theme will be two-year colleges and job creation.

Speculation, fueled by a column Obama wrote for the Washington Post, is that he’ll call for unprecedented federal spending on community colleges.

How could the leaders of two-year schools not salivate? Even as they struggle with budget slashing imposed by ailing legislatures, enrollment demand soars among cost-conscious high school students and displaced workers looking for new skills.

Here in Washington, community colleges have a central role in the state’s strategy to sustain its suddenly unpredictable aerospace industry. In Spokane and Snohomish counties, community colleges are expanding training programs for aircraft mechanics, though not just to entice Boeing.

Community Colleges of Spokane has had pilot and aircraft mechanic programs in place for years – one of the factors that made Spokane a good site for Cascade Aerospace, the Canadian aircraft maintenance business that has set up shop at Spokane International Airport, where the program could relocate next year.

But while the recession has put community colleges everywhere under enrollment pressure, they feel the constraints of any state entity in a time of plunging tax revenues.

At Community Colleges of Spokane, administrative, classified and exempt personnel took 4 1/2 days of furlough, and the faculty voted to take one unpaid day. And in July, after the budget was adopted, declining revenue numbers prompted Gov. Chris Gregoire to order still more cuts – including $600,000 for Spokane’s community colleges.

Still, the expectations necessarily go beyond preserving Washington’s edge in aerospace worker quality. Spokane’s community colleges have a vital role to play in training nurses and other workers for Spokane’s important health care industry, too.

And, harder to define but equally important, economic emphases that aren’t clear yet will call on the community colleges to equip the future work force with the required skills.

When and if federal spending on community colleges is deemed a sound investment, that money will be spread around the country. Here at home, however, such schooling is largely about giving Washington an advantage. The commitment to make that happen won’t come from the federal government, but from the educators, the political leaders and the people of Washington state.