The importance of higher education has been magnified by the incredible changes happening in the economy. The United States used to be the unquestioned leader in all aspects of the world economy. Our own successes – the airplane, the computer, the internet – now make it easier for others to compete with us. We’ve made the world a smaller place, and in so doing have created global competitors we never before had to worry about.

We, of course, welcome these competitors into the global economy. Through a broad commitment to free trade among nations, we have opened opportunity to billions of people and spurred tremendous growth in the world economy. The simultaneous advances in technology have made a truly integrated global economy possible.

To offer just one example of this, last week I read a story about the creation of Boeing’s newest design and manufacturing marvel, the 787 Dreamliner. The plane components are manufactured separately in Kansas, South Carolina, Japan, and Italy and then brought by sea, air, and land to their plant in Seattle for assembly. They have perfected the process to where assembly of the plane takes only 3 days. Only some extremely advanced logistics enabled by technology and dependable trade make this possible.

This globally integrated supply chain, along with innovations in material science and aerodynamics, have allowed Boeing to leap-frog their competitors from across the pond and book hundreds of new orders for the plane. This, of course, creates thousands of highly skilled and highly paid jobs in Kansas, South Carolina, and Washington.

What Boeing and others have discovered is that United States companies, whether they are manufacturers or service providers, can compete and succeed in the global economy by focusing on innovation. Routinized, low skill jobs may be done anywhere in the world, but only a free and open society with educated and skilled individuals can drive innovation, constantly creating new high wage, high skill jobs.

The projections for the U.S. economy confirm this fact. 90 percent of the fastest growing jobs and 63 percent of all new jobs will require a post secondary education. A closer look at the numbers reveals that three-quarters of those fastest growing jobs require not just post-secondary education, but a college degree. And two-thirds of the high-wage, high-growth jobs will require a full Bachelor’s Degree.

It does not require looking at projections though to understand the importance of education in today’s economy. Figures from last year show that individuals with a 4-year college degree have half the unemployment rate and earn nearly double the wages of workers with only a high school education.

This is, of course, a dramatic shift from the 20th century. Both manufacturing and service industries used to offer Americans with a high school diploma strong, secure jobs with wages enough to raise a family, own a home, and save for retirement. That is simply no longer the case.

The need for higher education alone places our colleges and universities at the forefront of the economy. Today’s youth look to you to equip them with the education and skills to compete and succeed in the innovation economy. That has always been the mission of higher education and your world-class performance is responsible for our leadership in the world economy today.

But to maintain that leadership is going to require all of us to do more. One of the consequences of free trade and a global economy is that many adults that depended on lower skill jobs for a living have seen those jobs, and indeed entire industries, disappear. They must now learn new skills if they are going to succeed in this new economy.

Training adults has traditionally been the mission of my agency, the Employment & Training Administration. But that mission has become clouded by a system that now exists to perpetuate itself.

This system was created back in 1933 as one of the many New Deal programs, and, in too many areas, it still reflects its roots as a social services program. For example, the process of helping an individual is still more important than the results of our services.

This situation leads rather naturally to a system where employers are regarded merely as the end of the process rather than as customers or even partners. This mentality must be overcome if the public’s investment in talent development has any chance of showing a positive return.

The Administration has moved to reform the system by creating a series of initiatives designed to engage both employers and education institutions. The first is the High Growth Job Training Initiative. By partnering with employers and engaging educational institutions, the High Growth Initiative hopes to demonstrate to our system how to put employers back in charge of talent development.

Through the High Growth Initiative we recognized that many of the job opportunities available in the 21st century economy are begun with an associate’s degree and the President created a similar but new initiative called Community-Based Job Training Grants.

These grants, which we call the Community College Initiative, are designed to improve the training available at community colleges by connecting employers with the schools to provide more and better teachers, state of the art equipment, and a greater capacity to teach more students. In short, they will improve the ability of our Community Colleges to develop talent.

While Community Colleges play an important role in educating our adult population, they are not alone. This association represents the commitment of our nation’s four year institutions to the continuing education of adults. As your admission figures no doubt reflect, a growing percentage of college and university students are not traditional 18-to-24 year olds. They are adults, sometimes seeking a degree but other times only a class or two to upgrade their skills. This percentage is going to continue to increase as lifelong learning and the importance of continuous skill development grow.

Designing courses and curricula to reach this audience is critical, both to your bottom lines in an ever-tightening budget environment and to the state’s and region’s economy, which depend on a skilled workforce for growth. Indeed, talent development has never been as important to economic development as it is right now.

For most of its existence, economic development has been synonymous with infrastructure development like buildings and roads and incentives like tax rebates and credits. But globalization has changed the economic development equation.