Bangor Daily News, Tuesday, June 4, 2002

Conference speaker touts role of technical colleges

By Ruth-Ellen Cohen, Of the NEWS Staff

AUGUSTA — Maine’s technical college system is destined to play an increasingly important role in educating the state’s work force, the president of Central Piedmont Community College in North Carolina said during the Governor’s Economic Development Conference at the Augusta Civic Center on Monday.

Within the next few years, 75 percent of the jobs in the United States will require one or two years of education beyond high school, said P. Anthony Zeiss. Only 20.5 percent of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree, while 4.5 percent of jobs will demand a high school degree, he said.

“Community colleges will become economic engines,” said Zeiss who equated Maine’s technical colleges with community colleges since they both offer associates degrees and certificates, easy movement into four-year colleges and work force development, among other things. Maine Technical College System President John Fitzsimmons has said that he plans to ask the Legislature next session to change the name to Maine Community College System.

Since technology is constantly changing, workers will enroll in community colleges so they can keep up with their skills, said Zeiss, who heads the largest community college in North Carolina with 70,000 students a year. CPCC recently was cited by the U.S. General Accounting Office and the Ford Foundation as a national leader in work force development.

But Maine’s public post-secondary tuition is too high and should be lowered, according to Zeiss. At $68 per credit hour, the state’s technical colleges charge more than twice as much as those in his state, said Zeiss, noting that the MTCS board of trustees recently voted to freeze tuition for the fourth year in a row. The technical colleges’ tuition is fourth highest in the nation and the University of Maine System tuition is 11th highest in the nation, he told the group.

Either the state should “figure out how it can better fund” its public colleges or the colleges should find a way to “help themselves,” Zeiss said. One option is to develop a separate corporation that’s connected to the college, he said.

For example, a videotape that a teacher at his college developed to teach English as a second language was sold to other schools through the corporation. The earnings then were divided between the teacher, her department and the corporation which then has the option of funding a new program or “spending it on the critical needs of the college,” Zeiss said.

If they don’t lower tuition, Maine public colleges should provide tax breaks to those who enroll or develop scholarships for students entering “high demand occupations,” Zeiss said.