As he conceded that unemployment will keep growing, President Barack Obama on Tuesday says new jobs will require greater training and post-high school education to achieve a better skilled work force. Obama is proposing a multibillion-dollar investment in the nation’s community colleges, a $12 billion effort to help the two-year institutions reach, teach and train more people for “the jobs of the future.”
Under Obama’s college initiative, schools could qualify for “challenge grants” so they’ll have money to try new programs, or expand training and counseling. Dropout rates would be addressed by designing programs to help students who want to earn an associate’s degree or transfer to a four-year institution do so.
Money would be spent to renovate outdated facilities or build new ones, and to develop online courses and make them freely available to students and others who want to use them. The total federal cost is $12 billion over a decade. Of that, $9 billion would go toward challenge grants and addressing dropout rates. Half a billion, or $500 million, would go toward online education. The remaining $2.5 billion would be used to spark $10 billion in renovation and construction nationwide, says James Kvaal, an Obama economic policy adviser.
Joe May, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College system, which is made up of 50 institutions, says Obama’s plans show an understanding of the important role that community colleges play. “Community colleges and technical colleges are a solution to economic growth,” May says. “We’ve got to continue to grow and increase the level of skills in our workforce.”
