March i996
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 15
South
Continued from page 1
two years of training in a skill with a
specific application to the economy
“The only relevance a hi^ school
degree has today is as a ticket to
more education,” says Geoi^ Autiy,
president of MDC and one of the
report’s authors. “We need more peo
ple with associate degrees, more peo
ple with bachelor’s degrees.”
In the 1980s, the study shows,
average real earnings grew 1.6 per
cent for workers in the Southeast
with only a hi^ school diploma, com
pared to 4.7 percent for those with
some college education grew and 16.6
percent for those with a bachelor’s
degree or hi^er.
The study estimates that in 1993
the average annual earnings of a per
son with only a high school degree
was $21,381, compared to nearly
$40,000 for someone with a bache
lor’s degree or more.
“Education appears to he the anti
dote to poverty,” Autry says.
“What is clear to us is that the
level of critical thinking that is
required for the average starting job
keeps going up.”
For too long, Autry says, college
education has been viewed as a privi
lege, and society needs to realize that
the fast-changing structime of the
economy means 12 years of schooling
is no longer sufficient to guarantee
admittance to America’s middle
class. “Education beyond high school
is an obUgation that society and the
individual owe each other. The chal
lenge is to construct a social contract
that recognizes that.”
Autry says he hopes the report is
taken up by business, civic and non
profit leaders so that the universal
post-secondary education is put on
the public’s agenda immediately The
data are so clear, he says, that busi
ness, civic and nonprofit leaders
should begin pressing political lead
ers for immediate change.
“It’s been 50 years since we added
12th grade to the minimum education
continuum,” he says. “A lot of new
information has been created and a
lot of it is integral to functioning as
both citizens and workers. We’ve got
an old model and it needs to be
retooled.”
Autry suggests that all graduates
of hi^ school be guaranteed a vouch
er equivalent to two years of tuition at
a conununity college. Paying for such
a program, he says, should cause no
greater strain on the state’s coffers
than when universal kindergarten
and 12th grade were added to the cur
riculum.
Promoting universal education
beyond hi^ school already has sup
porters in North Carolina and other
places in the South:
• In Johnston County, the Life-
Long Learning program started a
pilot project in 1992 aimed at provid
ing college scholarship incentives for
students to stay in school, get good
grades, complete community service,
remain drug-free and promote
parental involvement in the school
place. Fbr each successful year in the
program, students were rewarded
with a promise of $1,500 in scholar
ship money. Enrollment in the experi
mental program has been closed
because it was too successful and the
program could not meet the scholar
ship fundraising necessary to meet
student demand.
“We just know that a hi^ school
degree is no longer good enou^,”
says Susan Lassiter, director of devel
opment for the Johnston County
school system.
• In Charlotte, the Cities In
Schools program has started a pro
gram similar to the Johnston County
project. Students who otherwise
might not finish hi^ school and go to
college are enrolled in an incentive
program that if successfully complet
ed will earn the student tuition for
two years at Central Piedmont
Community College. The program’s
founders started the project because
they no longer believe high school is
George Autry
sufficient educa-|
tion to get a good]
job.
• In Georgia,!
the state-
financed HOPE
scholarship pro
gram, begun in
1993, has paid for
post-secondary
schooling of
high school stu
dents using pro
ceeds from the state lottery The state
launched the program because it
realized that its hi^ school students
needed specialized schooling before
entering the workplace.
SHORTAGE LOOMING
A key prediction by MDC is that
the South will experience a serious
shortage of young workers and a
huge increase of older workers dur
ing the next 15 years.
By 2010, the region is expected to
have 813,000 fewer workers ages 20
to 45, and 7.93 million more workers
age 45 to 64. Autry says such a dra
matic shift will have several imphca-
tions for education.
'The decrease in younger workers
means that those entering the work
force will need higher skill levels to
meet the increased needs of the work
place. 'The bulge in older workers
means that colleges and universities
need to consider better ways to
accommodate older, accomplished
workers who need new skills.
Given the rapidly changing skill
requirements of the southern econo
my - expected to be dominated by
high-skilled, white collar jobs - young
workers will need better training to
assume the responsibilities of entry-
level jobs, and universities and col
leges will need to serve older workers
returning to the
campus for
retraining.
Colleges and
universities
need to consider
a more flexible
enrollment
model similar to
many communi
ty colleges,
Autry says.
Older workers,
increasingly will need to return to the
campus to gain expertise in a specific
skill area. The colleges and universi
ties need to create open entry and
open exit plans that allow the worker-
students to come to the campus to get
only the training they need. “We are
going to have to provide incentives for
our colleges and regional universities
to respond to the needs of students
who need instruction, who need train
ing on their schedule, whether it’s at
ni^t or on the weekend,” Antry says.
STRONG SUPPORT
Early responses to the MDC
report have been positive. William
Friday, president emeritus of the
University of North Carolina system
and executive director of the WilUam
R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust, says
the report is a landmark study that
should grab the attention of North
Carolina’s leaders.
“I hope this report gets read far
and wide,” he says. ‘We ignore these
issues at our peril. It’s just absolutely
necessary that we focus our thinking
this way.”
Friday says the study points up
the beneficial effect that government
spending on education has had on the
economy of North Carolina and the
South. North Carolina’s leaders, he
says, should recognize that the
state’s continued well-being will
depend on the strength of the state’s
colleges and universities and that
continued erosion of state support for
higher education ultimately will hurt
the state, the economy and its citi
zens.
“I believe that hi^er education is
more critical to the future of this state
now than ever before,” he says.
“We’re faced with a very serious
problem...We’ve got work to do and
this report says that in very clear,
precise language.”
Vic Hackley, president of the
Tom Lambeth
William Friday
North Carolina
Community
College System,
says the MDC
report demon
strates why
state officials
need to recog
nize the crucial
role the commu
nity college sys
tem is already
playing on the
state’s economy
Ei^ty percent to 90 percent of the
new jobs being created in North
Carolina require the type of training
now available at the state’s communi
ty Colleges, Hackley says. And the
return to campus that MDC predicts
for older workers seeking training to
remain competitive already is hap
pening at the state’s community coi-
leges. Many students have realized
that their four-year degree did not
leave them with the specific skills to
compete in the current job market.
Indeed, Hackley says, in 1994
more students who already had bach
elor’s and master’s degrees were
studying at community colleges in the
state than were students in the col
lege transfer program - those seeking
their two-year degrees so they could
finish at a fojir-year college or univer
sity.
‘"There still is a mindset that com
munity colleges are high schools with
ashtrays,” he says. “The programs at
these colleges are producing the peo
ple who are vital to the economic
development of the state. The public
in general and the poHcymakers and
the four-year colleges need to gain a
greater appreciation for the critical
linkage of what the community col
leges do.”
Hackley says
North Carolina
community col
leges are not
being granted
the resources
they need to
meet the chal
lenges posed by
the MDC report.
In addition,
he and others
say reform of the
state’s K-12 curriculum needs to con
tinue to emphasize producing stu
dents who are both strong cognitive
thinkers and equipped with skills that
can be apphed in the workplace for
the types of new jobs being created by
the North Carolina economy.
Tom Lambeth, executive director
of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation
in Winston-Salem, says he supports
the idea of exten^g universM edu
cation beyond high school.
“It’s important to xmderstand that
education is not an expense,” he
says. “It’s an asset.”
Foundations, nonprofits and the
private sector could play a similar
role as they did in the 1960s when
kindergarten was added to the
mandatory curriculum in North
Carolina, Lambeth says. Such a role
would include helping develop mod
els, forums and research that could
show the state how best to accom
plish such a change in the education
continuum.
“I think it’s a matter of very
strategically and very intelligently
deciding what our role is,” he says.
“Clearly we cannot be funders of that
massive effort.”
Tom Houlihan, senior education
adviser to Gov. Jim Hunt, generally
supports the report’s recommenda
tions.
“I would agree that 12 years of for
mal education is not going to be
enou^ for the worker to be competi
tive in the future,” he says.
How the state should respond, he
says, is another matter.
“That would be something that
the General Assembly, State Board of
Education and the governor would
have to look at very carefully”
RACE, GENDER
The MDC study also makes these
observations:
Vic Hackley
• Blacks made dramatic strides in
educational attainment levels
between 1970 and 1990. The percent
age of blacks with hi^ school diplo
mas nearly doubled in that period to
27.4 percent, up from 13.8 percent.
The percentage of blacks with
some college education rose to 19.1
percent from 3.5 percent. The per
centage of blacks with bachelor’s
degrees or higher rose to 9.6 percent
from 4 percent.
During that same period, educa
tion levels of the white population
also rose. The percentage of whites
with only a high school diploma rose
to 30.6 percent from 27.6 percent. The
percentage of whites with some col
lege rose to 23.5 percent up from 10.1
percent. Whites with bachelor’s
degrees or more rose to 19 percent,
up from 10 percent.
• While education clearly boosts
earning levels across race and gen
der, there continues to be a gap
between white and black salaries and
male and female salaries. The aver
age yearly salary of a southern white
mate with a bachelor’s degree or
higher was $46,398, 31.5 percent
higher than for blacks from the same
group. Those same white males
earned 31.8 percent more than did
white females from the same educa
tion group.
Tke income gap between races
grows with education. White males
with less than a hi^ school diploma
earn 6.4 percent more than their
black counterparts. The gap quickly
widens up the education ladder.
White males with a high school
degree earn 21 percent more than
their black counterparts; those white
males with some college earn 24 per
cent more than blacks of the same
educational background.
NORTH CAROLINA
A Question of
Community
Have you ever wondered how you could improve
something in your community.^
Have you ever thought that one person
couldn’t tackle it alone?
Consider Joining Hands
Thousands of individuals have been able to make a
difference by creating funds in their community foundations.
You too can maximize the impact of your charitable gift
with the leverage offered by the
North Carolina Community Foundation.
To LEARN MORE ABOUT COMMUNITY IMPACT CONTACT:
Elizabeth C. Fentress, North Carolina Community Foundation
333 Fayetteville Street Mall, Suite 1410, Raleigh, NC 27601
Phone 919-828-4387 - Fax 919-828-5495
Affiliates of the North Carolina Community Foundation are located in the follow
ing counties and on the Cherokee Reservation: Alleghany, Ashe, Caldwell, Cherokee,
Clay, Craven, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Edgecombe, Franklin,
Graham, Harnett, Haywood, Jackson, Johnston, Macon, Madison, Montgomery,
Moore, Pender, Pitt, Randolph, Rockingham, Swain, Wake, Watauga and Wilkes.
Com m u n i t y F o u n d a t i o n
WORKING WITH YOUR WOMEN DONORS
FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 1996
9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
THE MOREHEAD INN , ^
CHARLOTTE, HC
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, highly interactive workshop and learn to:
• Identify and cultivate your women prospects
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Presenters: Becky Smith, CERE
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Registration Info: (704) 364-1576
The Journars new fax is (919) 832-2369.