Emily Stover DeRocco Speech
AACC Legislative Summit
Washington, DC
February 7, 2006
Thank you Jeanne-Marie. It is a pleasure to be back with so many representatives from our nation’s community colleges. You are vital to the future success of the American workforce and the American economy and it is a pleasure to join you today.
Last week, President Bush presented his vision for the role of America in the global economy. It is a vision where the best and brightest come to learn and contribute; where Americans strive to be engineers and scientists and entrepreneurs; and where research leads to innovation which leads to economic opportunity and growth for all Americans. It is called the American Competitiveness Agenda and in short, it is a vision of global economic leadership.
The United States, of course, is already the unquestioned leader of the world economy. From the automobile and the airplane at the turn of the last century, to the personal computer and the internet at the turn of this century, we have been at the forefront of the innovations that have shaped our world. The fruits of those innovations are reflected today in unmatched productivity, growth, and job creation.
In fact, just this past Friday, we heard that 193,000 jobs were added to the economy last month. That is now over two years of consistent job creation totaling nearly 5,000,000 new jobs.
But to borrow a phrase that is now defining this era, our success has led to the flattening of the world. The advances we have made in communications and technology allow for instant access to information from all parts of the globe. And those advances have allowed billions of people to enter into competition with the United States.
Low-skill production jobs that used to provide careers for millions of Americans can be accomplished overseas at a fraction of the cost. And now, higher skill programming, accounting, and medical tasks can be performed anywhere those skills can be found.
If the United States is to maintain its leadership as the global economy matures, we must meet two great challenges. The first is to individual citizens. If our role is to be the global innovator, then we must possess a talent base capable of meeting that task. And that requires greater levels of education than most Americans possess.
For most of the last century, no more than a high school education was required in our economy. Almost anyone could find a job that would allow them to support a family, own a home, and build a career. Today, high school serves only as the prerequisite to further education.
A recent report from the Labor Department showed that 90% of the fastest growing jobs in our economy require education beyond high school. And nearly two thirds of all high growth, high wage jobs require a bachelors degree. Yet today, only one-third of our citizens possess a degree. To make up that deficit requires a renewed commitment across all levels of our education system.
It begins of course, in our nation’s grade schools. President Bush’s No Child Left Behind program established a commitment to providing students with the fundamentals of math and reading. It continues into high school, where the foundation of skills development must be laid through rigorous study of math and science. Part of the President’s Competitiveness Agenda seeks to do just that through the encouragement of math and science professionals to become adjunct teachers and the promotion of Advanced Placement courses to challenge students from all backgrounds.
But it no longer stops there. Whether it is an 18-year-old student entering a four-year university or a 50 year-old worker displaced from the manufacturing sector entering a community college to learn new skills, our citizens need access to the education and skills development that our role in the global economy demands.
While the university-bound 18 year-old has been able to rely on a variety of resources ranging from Pell Grants to Stafford Loans to university scholarships, the options for adults have been quite limited. To fill this gap and complement resources such as Pell, the President’s Competitiveness Agenda proposes the creation of Career Advancement Accounts. These self-directed resources would be available to a wide range of individuals including unemployed adults, incumbent workers seeking to upgrade their skills, and out-of-school youth looking to restart their education.
The goal of these accounts is to bridge the education deficit that currently exists in our economy and allow individuals the opportunity to update their skills and remain competitive in the global economy. To reach that goal however, we must be confident that the education that individuals receive does in fact, provide the skills that today’s employers demand.
That is why President Bush and the Labor Department have been at the forefront of an effort to put employers back in charge of talent development. Through the President’s High Growth Job Training Initiative, we have invested over $250 million in 130 projects nationwide to partner regional high growth employers with local education programs. This helps to ensure that the skills individuals receive are in demand and the dollars that taxpayers invest in job training are effectively used.
It was through the High Growth Initiative that our relationship with community colleges was born. Traditionally ignored by our workforce investment system, community colleges provide some of the best opportunities for workers to gain new skills and employers to find new talent.
It was the importance to workers and businesses alike that led President Bush to propose a new initiative dedicated solely to improving our community colleges. Through Community-Based Job Training Grants, community colleges would be able to improve and expand their faculty, equipment, and facilities needed to meet the training demands of our high growth employers. This is critical because for the majority of Americans, community colleges are the most affordable, accessible, and flexible education option available to them.
The first installment of these grants was announced last fall with $125 million going to 70 community colleges from around the country. The second round of competition for another $125 million is scheduled for later this year.
Each of these initiatives and the resources behind them are designed to confront the challenge that faces individual Americans--the need for greater education to build a successful career. But they also begin to address the second challenge to our global leadership--a challenge that must be addressed at the regional level.
Over the past 75 years, we have built an array of systems and structures that feed and support our economy. As a general rule, each of these creations has operated independently from one another. In a world where goods and services moved slowly and information even slower, the independence and isolation of these systems was economically irrelevant. But in today’s world, that is no longer the case. We must now integrate and leverage all available resources to meet to the challenge of global competition.
Though this global competition is often seen as a national challenge, it is actually at the regionally level where solutions must be developed and the challenge met. It is in regional economies where companies, workers, researchers, entrepreneurs and governments come together to create competitive advantage and where new ideas and new knowledge are transformed into advanced, high-quality products or services. In other words, it is in regions where innovation occurs.
To facilitate the growth of a regional economy requires attention to three critical elements. The first is infrastructure. This includes not only the traditional factors such as highways, bridges, and buildings, but also 21st century factors like access to broadband and wireless networks. The second critical element is investment including the availability of risk capital and the conditions that encourage the use of such capital.
And the third element, and in my opinion the most critical, is talent. A region may possess a strong infrastructure and the investment resources for success, but without the talented men and women to use those elements for economic growth, they are meaningless. And talent can also drive the other two elements because investment capital is smart money and it will follow the talent while infrastructure can be built to support a growing economy.
It was this recognition of the importance of talent that is key to President Bush’s Competitiveness Agenda and our new initiative designed to transform and revitalize regional economies through a focus on talent development. It is called Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development and it will provide the financial and expert assistance needed for regions to make the leap to an innovation economy.
Last week, we announced thirteen regions that would participate in the WIRED Initiative, with each receiving $15 million over a three period to transform and revitalize their economy and the systems and structures that support it. Though very different in size and circumstance, each of the selected regions has similarities including:
- a strong partnership consisting of civic, business, investor, entrepreneurial, philanthropic, and academic leaders
- sound strategies for achieving economic and systemic transformation; and
- a demonstrated need for undertaking such a transformation.
We are extremely excited about the opportunity to work with these regions and have assembled a top-flight team of experts to assist them in this endeavor.
There is, of course, one prominent area that is greatly in need of assistance to rebuild their regional economy, the Gulf Coast. The Department of Labor has marshaled a tremendous amount of resources in support of those areas including:
- $210.3 million in National Emergency Grant (NEG) funds to assist the workers displaced by these natural disasters in both impacted states and states with evacuees. These funds can be used to employ dislocated workers and evacuees to do clean up and rebuilding work.
- $63 million in Community-Based Job Training Grants to community colleges in seven states in the affected region.
- $12 million in High-Growth Job Training grants to support workforce training for high growth industries through the Gulf Coast’s community and technical colleges.
- $10 million to Louisiana and Mississippi community colleges for a Pathways to Construction Initiative that focuses on helping workers enter a career pathway in construction. This will provide individuals with substantial career opportunities while simultaneously assisting critical rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast Region.
In addition, we plan to partner with Historically Black Colleges and Universities in these states to also provide employment and training services to displaced individuals, hoping to utilize the special connections these historical institutions have within the local communities.
All of these programs, initiatives, grants, and recovery efforts have the goal of providing individuals with the skills they need for a successful career. Community Colleges are a vital part of each and every one and I am proud of the partnership that we have formed.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and I look forward to meeting and working with many of you in the weeks and month ahead. Thank you.
