Kaine hears community college concerns
The nation is not educating its children for the career and technical fields that need employees, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine said during a roundtable discussion with Mountain Empire Community College and business leaders Wednesday.
MECC, meanwhile, tries to remain “nimble and flexible” in educating people for jobs at a time when funding is harder to come by.
Kaine visited MECC as part of a three-day swing through far Southwest Virginia. His Wednesday began at Lincoln Memorial University’s DeBusk Veterinary Teaching Center in Ewing. After his MECC dialogue and tour of the college’s workforce training facilities, Kaine was to tour the construction site of the Ridgeview High School in Dickenson County.
Citing his economic development credentials as Richmond mayor and later governor of Virginia, Kaine, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, said he has organized a career and technical education caucus. “There wasn’t really a career and technical education champion,” in the Senate, Kaine said.
Kaine is also gathering information ahead of the re-authorization vote on the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which funds for vocational and technical programs through the states.
MECC President Scott Hamilton told Kaine that the college’s Perkins money has fallen from $350,000 to about $69,000 annually in the last three years as more funds remain at the Virginia Community College System’s state level.
Also, Hamilton said, VCCS directs funds to colleges that are showing growth in the percentage of students who receive financial aid. However, 98 percent of MECC students already receive financial aid: “we can’t grow beyond 98 percent,” Hamilton said.
MECC is also hurt in the funding numbers game because the employment rate of its students doesn’t include those who find work in nearby Tennessee and Kentucky, Vickie Ratliff said. Ratliff, the vice president of academics and student services, told Kaine that from 88-92 percent of MECC students find employment, but the college can only show numbers from the Virginia Employment Commission. Showing employment numbers across state borders “shouldn’t be that difficult to do,” she said.
Another sore spot, said Tommy Clements, the dean of health, science and industrial technology, is that while the college receives appropriations for new equipment — such as a virtual welder — it doesn’t always get the annual funding it needs to maintain that equipment and buy supplies.
“This is going to be helpful as we start talking about Perkins re-authorization,” Kaine said, adding that he could pass on the college’s concerns about how the state appropriates funds to Virginia’s Secretary of Education — his wife, Anne Holton.
Meanwhile, Kaine said in stressing the importance of technical and career training, “we are not educating our kids for some of these fields where there’s a significant need.” For example, he said, the nation has to bring in thousands of welders on special visas because “we don’t train enough welders.”
A business leader echoed that concern after the discussion broke off for a tour. Allen Daugherty of Gate City, senior human resources manager for Joy Manufacturing, noted that MECC has always worked well with his company to provide employee training. However, he said, there are still jobs that go unfilled because there aren’t enough trained machinists.
Community colleges, Kaine said, are “so much more flexible and agile in adapting to local workforce needs. Where there are are skills to be developed, community colleges generally do the best job.”
“The cost of education is one of the biggest challenges we have,” Kaine said. “For all the challenges, you guys are very nimble and agile” at finding program funding.
Kaine also noted that individual community colleges and their boards take differing approaches based on the needs of their local communities. As Sue Ella Boatright-Wells, dean of workforce development, put it, “the expectation is that all community colleges are the same, but it just doesn’t work that way.”
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