MIAMI—Long Beach City College (LBCC) could be the poster child for how two-year colleges help spur jobs in their communities, especially in the current economic climate.

 

The California college is an example of how community colleges' business development intiatives are helping communities rebuild economically after enduring downsizings and business closings. They are offering custom-training programs for emerging businesses and providing support to small-business owners. 

  

“Small business is the backbone of our economy,” particularly in Long Beach, which has lost its aerospace and shipbuilding industries in recent years, said LBCC President Eloy Oakley. LBCC’s small business center network has helped create or retain 3,670 jobs and establish 290 business start-ups.

Oakley spoke last week at the American Association of Community Colleges' Workforce Development Institute (WDI). 

 

New jobs “need to be real jobs, jobs that matter, that allow you to raise a family,” said Oakley, noting that LBCC is part of AACC’s Virtual Incubation Network, funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Goldman Sachs Foundation’s 10,000 Small Businesses initiative.

 

Developing community colleges’ role in business creation “won’t happen overnight,” he  said, adding it’s difficult for educational institutions to adopt that mindset. 

 

“We’re trying to become entrepreneurial in an environment focused on bureaucratic and administrative barriers. This is a challenge," Oakley said.

 

He added: “We also have to educate our educators about the vital role we play linking what happens in the classroom with what happens out in the community,” 

 

College trustees must also embrace their roal in reaching the goal. “Remind them that job creation is the best line you can have as a politician,” Oakley said.

 

Steve Gunderson, a former congressman from Wisconsin, believes it’s essential to the nation’s continued prosperity to revive the middle class. Gunderson, who recently left his position as head of the Council on Foundations to be president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (which represents for-profit institutions), told WDI attendees that by 2010, the income disparity between someone with a high school diploma and a bachelor’s degree has reached 74 percent.

 

Gunderson’s prescription for recreating the middle class calls for both political parties to commit to investing in the tax code and education with the goal of creating 23 million new jobs by 2020. He proposed creating a “lifelong learning system” that includes a commitment to a universal education system from pre-K through postsecondary education.

 

When it comes to higher education, “there is simply no other option,” Gunderson said. He called for an additional 20 million postsecondary-educated workers by 2025, a new public-private adult education and training system, and new public-private mechanisms to support education access.
 
“We’re not going to get a huge influx of public funding to achieve this goal,” Gunderson said, noting that Congress is not likely to increase funding for federal job training programs or Pell Grants any time soon.

 

As an alternative, he recommended stepped-up efforts to increase philanthropy to education and the creation of “lifelong learning accounts,” similar to the voluntary savings bonds that helped finance World War II.