Gerard Scimeca – Chairman, CASE
September 22, 2019
FEW CAN argue how the global economy is undergoing a tremendous shift, and that American workers need to prepare for this transition by developing new skills. Simultaneously, modern education is failing to adapt.
A POLITICO working group report, “Future of Prosperity: Ladders to Success,” brought together education leaders to discuss the challenges facing the higher education system, in which they concluded it was ripe for disruption with new models of learning.
The working group focused particularly on the figure of 40% of students failing to graduate, as well as the lack of help for mid-career workers who require new skills or retraining to secure better job opportunities.
The report was practically an advertisement for non-traditional paths in higher education; curricula with a focus on career training, specialized skills, flexible digitally based learning; and course credit for job experience. And this is a role where private, career-oriented colleges and universities such as ECPI, the University of Phoenix, Monroe College and dozens of other schools have been especially innovative and graduating tens of thousands of students each year.
Veterans, thousands of whom are based and settle in our area each year, have taken advantage of non-traditional institutions that focus on career training, using their GI Bill tuition assistance to study for a degree while on duty and after they come home. It’s a benefit they’ve earned through service to our nation, and central to their hopes to transition to new career opportunities.
It raises the question of why Democrats in Washington, led by House Education and Labor Chairman and Hampton Roads Congressman Bobby Scott, want to shut this down and drive many of these schools out of business by changing the 90-10 funding rule — a move deliberately aimed at private, career-oriented colleges and universities.
Seizing upon a handful of negative stories regarding private colleges as justification for their crippling agenda, Democrats ignore the overwhelming benefits private colleges offer adult learners including veterans, women, and minorities. They blithely disregard the many advantages these schools offer such as state-of-the-art online learning, smaller classrooms sizes and career-specific training that prepares graduates for good-paying jobs.
Instead Democrats push a narrative that students’ needs can only be served by traditional, public, state universities and endowed private schools. This is nonsense that not only turns a blind eye to the many glaring problems of public universities but aims to cripple the educational and career opportunities for hundreds of thousands of America’s veterans.
Changing how GI Bill tuition is granted would require schools to recruit more students that don’t rely on federal student loans, a near impossible task at a time when almost all students rely on some kind of aid to help pay their tuition. Schools would have to drastically raise tuition or take fewer students on federal aid, which translates to fewer veterans gaining admission. It would certainly cause numerous colleges to close their doors.
Shuttering colleges that don’t fit the government-run template for education might be considered progress for Democrats, but it will prove devastating to veterans seeking a degree and becoming part of America’s future workforce.
Schools such as Monroe College in the Bronx, a family-owned institution that places 100 percent of its mostly minority students in nursing jobs would have to drastically reduce enrollment or close its doors. The same fate could befall ECPI, one of the nation’s top colleges in technical training, which also happens to be based in Scott’s district.
At a time when our labor force is so severely lacking skilled workers in digital technology that we have to import workers from overseas, this makes no sense.
Career-oriented colleges and universities are innovators in providing flexible curriculum to meet the needs of today’s working and adult learners, including veterans studying on-duty or returning home for work-study opportunities. Adult learners with families often work while attending college and have other obligations that make attending a traditional four-year school impossible. These students will be cast aside by Democrats’ educational reform that will do nothing to help them secure new job training for their future.
At a time when higher-education is in desperate need of disruption, pushing to strengthen the status-quo is a losing proposition for America. We need more choice in higher education, not efforts by partisan politicians who work actively to force dozens of career-oriented colleges into oblivion.
