Senator quizzes colleges on jobs

Shane Broadway (left), interim director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, listens as Ed Franklin, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Two-year Colleges, speaks about Path to Accelerated Completion and Employment (PACE) during a joint interim committee meeting Monday at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.
Shane Broadway (left), interim director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, listens as Ed Franklin, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Two-year Colleges, speaks about Path to Accelerated Completion and Employment (PACE) during a joint interim committee meeting Monday at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville.

— State legislators sat quietly for 45 minutes Monday as education officials described a $14.7 million federal grant intended to help students quickly earn degrees and professional certificates that will prepare them for jobs in the state.

Then Sen. Kim Hendren, RGravette, spoke up.

Hendren, one of nearly 30 lawmakers meeting for a joint interim committee meeting at Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville, questioned what the state’s colleges and universities are doing to ensure their students find employment after graduation.

The meeting was made up of the Senate and House interim committees on education, the Senate Interim Committee on Children and Youth, and the House Interim Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs.

Hendren expressed dissatisfaction with students racking up thousands of dollars of student-loan debt and not being able to find jobs that will help them pay it off.

“I’d rather hear, how many students graduated from NWACC or Pulaski [Technical College] last year got a job,” Hendren told Shane Broadway, interim director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, and Ed Franklin, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Two-Year Colleges.

Franklin answered that that’s the aim of the three-year grant to implement the federal project, called the Path to Accelerated Completion and Employment. The grant is meant not only to increase degree and certificate completion at the colleges but also to ensure the students find work.

“That’s the end goal,” Franklin said. “What’s the worth of the degree, not just when they graduate, but over time.”

Speaking later in the meeting, Franklin said, “Can you guarantee every student a job? No, you cannot. But you can guide them” toward high-demand occupations.

The three-year grant, announced in September by U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, is targeted at unemployed people who lost jobs in fields such as manufacturing after employers shifted production overseas.

The grant is one of $500 million in career training grants that will be distributed throughout the country. All community colleges that were awarded grants agreed to partnerships with nearby businesses, adjusting curriculum to meet their training needs.

The grant will be used largely for personnel costs to rework degree plans so that students can work while they are enrolled, to help students complete remedial courses more quickly and to boost college advising programs.

Franklin said that the grant allows the 22 colleges to share their best practices, especially in terms of remedial education, also known as developmental education.

“Our hope is that three years from now, our developmental education will look completely different than it does now,” Franklin said.

Nearly 30 legislators attended the 75-minute meeting. They were to be given a private tour late Monday afternoon of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, scheduled to open in Bentonville on Nov. 11.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 10/25/2011

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