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The Chronicle of Higher Education
November 14, 2003
Empty Promises?
Community colleges in North Carolina struggle to provide retraining
to displaced blue-collar workers
Just past noon on a dreary fall day, Walter Waller sits in an oak-paneled,
fluorescent-lit room that once served as a break area for workers at a now-defunct
textile factory.
The former employee of the Pillowtex Corporation, laid off in July along with
some 4,500 others just before the manufacturer of bed linens shut its doors,
sits with his back straight up against a blue plastic chair and stares blankly
into the face of Becky Hammill. A counselor at nearby Rowan-Cabarrus Community
College, Ms. Hammill is leading a workshop called "Taking the Fear Out
of the GED." She asks Mr. Waller if he knows "what the G-E-D stands
for?"
Without waiting for a response, Ms. Hammill explains in her soothing drawl
that the general-equivalency diploma is made up of five parts -- reading, writing,
science, social studies, and math. Mr. Waller, clutching tight to a lime-yellow
handout, looks a little disheartened as Ms. Hammill points out that the amount
of time it will take to earn the certification will depend on each student's
skill level.
"I just want to get my GED and go on back home," says Mr. Waller,
frustrated.
After more than three decades of service at the factory that anchored this
town some 30 miles north of Charlotte for the better part of the last century,
Mr. Waller is faced with a decision he never saw coming at age 62. With his
limited skills, he can take his chances finding another high-wage job in a segment
of the economy that is quickly disappearing. Or he can try his luck in an education
system that eluded him long ago.
State officials are hoping that Mr. Waller and many of his former co-workers
will choose to go back to school. North Carolina has doled out $2.5-million
-- from more than $20-million in emergency federal grants secured in the wake
of the Pillowtex layoffs, the largest in state history -- to Rowan-Cabarrus
and two other community colleges to help retrain the former mill workers.
The colleges have their work cut out for them. Nearly half of those who were
laid off lacked a high-school diploma. Rowan-Cabarrus, which serves the area
where most of the former Pillowtex people live, has enrolled 1,300 of the laid-off
workers since the shutdown was announced last summer. About 200 of them chose
programs that will retrain them for other industries, like automotive and industrial-machine
repair, or to work in health care. The rest, some 1,100 people, are taking basic-skills
courses, such as preparation for the GED and English as a second language. Though
statewide figures are not available, officials say that by the time many workers
finish those prerequisites for community-college enrollment, some will be running
low on the roughly two years they are allotted for federal unemployment benefits,
leaving them unable to complete a training program for another job.
Although the 59-college system here was founded to educate the state's work
force, some labor experts say that the two-year colleges have failed to provide
enough short-term training programs, do not know which jobs to train dislocated
workers for, and are allotted funds from the state in a way that makes it difficult
for them to do more. Furthermore, few workers are equipped to deal with the
mound of paperwork they must fill out before they can even enroll in a community
college.
"There are just too many kinks in the system," says Graham E. Watt,
a senior policy associate at the state's Commission on Workforce Development,
which is part of the North Carolina Department of Commerce. "If we don't
get them ironed out, we will leave a whole generation of workers behind."
North Carolina's is not the only community-college system struggling to live
up to the retraining part of its mission. Throughout the South and Midwest,
in particular, many white- and blue-collar jobs are vanishing. Community colleges
in Georgia, Florida, Ohio, and Michigan are struggling to retrain displaced
workers. While white-collar workers tend to have broader educational backgrounds,
and can often readjust their skills, many blue-collar workers are left without
many job options. Community colleges, with their history of success with adult
students, are expected to retrain them for emerging industries.
But community colleges are finding the task daunting: How do you tell third-generation
factory workers without a highschool diploma that college is worth their time
and effort?
"Mill towns really have their own subculture, and it's extremely hard
for higher-education to infiltrate it," says George B. Vaughan, a professor
of adult and community-college education at North Carolina State University,
whose father worked in a textile mill all his life. "Had he been laid off,
my father would have died or gone on to some other blue-collar work before he
considered going back to school."
One-Stop Center
A musky odor hits you as soon as you walk in the door to what is still referred
to as Plant Four. The state's Emergency Services Commission set up a one-stop
center at the plant where former Pillowtex workers can apply for unemployment
and other benefits, get computer access, check out job referrals, and learn
about training programs.
Just to the left of the main entrance is the closet-size room where a handful
of Rowan-Cabarrus counselors sit behind a rectangular table. Most people idle
in the doorway for a few seconds, scanning the faces that smile back at them
and the handwritten posters on the wall that promise "a new life through
educational opportunities at RCCC" and that the institution will "take
the fear out of starting college."
John D. Spears, a 57-year-old wearing a black baseball cap, dusty black sneakers,
and an Army-fatigue shirt, lingers for a second with his hands in his pockets
and then asks, "What's this about taking the GED?"
Lori Lambert, a Rowan-Cabarrus counselor, explains that Mr. Spears could sign
up today to take a placement test in about a week. For those who pass the GED
test, the college offers many training programs. For Mr. Spears, she suggests
industrial-systems technology, in which the college has a certificate program
where students learn to repair industrial equipment.
"Whatever," he replies, grabbing a piece of candy from the table
before leaving with an appointment card that reminds him he is scheduled to
take the GED program's placement test in a week.
Mr. Spears was making good money at the plant, pulling in more than $15 an
hour -- or just under $30,000 a year, plus lots of overtime -- for fixing looms.
He dropped out of high school in 1964 just before completing his senior year
because "back then, you just went to work in the mill, that's all,"
he says. "I went to school on those machines I learned to operate."
He remains skeptical about the value and accessibility of an education. He
came to Plant Four to check on acquiring health-insurance benefits, but says
he was told that the $407 a week he was getting in unemployment made him ineligible
for much assistance.
"They won't help me out with something as basic as insurance, why would
they help me go to school?" he asks.
When informed that he could take general-equivalency classes -- and others
at the college -- free, he pauses and takes a drag on his Winston cigarette.
"I don't need no GED to change that tire right there," Mr. Spears
says, pointing at his Chevy pickup truck in the parking lot.
As he sees it, "there just aren't any jobs around here where I will make
the same kind of money I was making before."
He may be right. College officials say that even with retraining, it will take
a few years on the job before the former workers will earn as much as they were
making at the mill. And that's if they get a job. Unemployment in Rowan and
Cabarrus Counties was 12.2 percent and 10.9 percent, respectively, in August.
Mr. Spears's situation is typical. Some 45 percent of the Pillowtex workers
who were laid off did not finish high school. Most of them worked in the mills
all of their adult lives. They barely had to even fill out an application to
get the job, so the amount of red tape they now go through just to get unemployment
benefits is dizzying.
Few of these workers can deal with the thought of starting over. Many are consumed
with securing enough money and other benefits just to make it day to day. They
would rather get by on odd jobs or flip burgers, even at a fraction of their
former pay, than go to college. But even Burger King now requires its employees
to have a general-equivalency diploma, or at least be working on one.
While Mr. Spears admits that a retraining program at the college might get
him a job at close to his previous wage, "at my age, school just isn't
in the cards."
Bursting at the Seams
Rowan-Cabarrus is making some headway. Officials say that within a year, they
hope to enroll nearly half, or some 2,000, of the former Pillowtex employees
in either basic skills or occupational programs like machining and electronics.
The college had already completed most of registration for the fall semester
before the layoffs were announced, so state and college officials had little
time this fall to find ways to accommodate the workers in the class schedule.
The two-year college is already bursting at the seams. Enrollment has grown
some 14 percent since last year. After the layoffs, college officials had to
lease new facilities, hire new instructors, and purchase new instructional equipment
with some of the state aid it received to accommodate the 20- to 25-percent
growth the former workers accounted for in continuing-education programs.
"We just didn't have the time or the room to act as fast as we would have
liked to," says Jeanie Moore, vice president for continuing education at
Rowan-Cabarrus.
The college did manage to start special 14-week sessions in some occupational
programs like heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning repair, and industrial
machining. For other displaced workers who aren't sure they want to actually
enroll in a program, the college has offered workshops in financial management,
résumé building, and interviewing skills, which helps it establish
a much-needed rapport with the workers.
"Once they get in those workshops, we're finding that many of them just
want to vent," says Ms. Lambert. "We're finding if we lend them an
ear, give them some respect, they are much more likely to come back to inquire
about our other offerings."
Rowan-Cabarrus is already ahead of the pack compared with other community colleges
in the state in terms of enrolling laid-off workers. Typically, North Carolina
community colleges enroll roughly 20 percent of the workers in any given layoff,
according to the state's Department of Commerce. For the Pillowtex closing,
Rowan-Cabarrus has already enrolled 29 percent, and is aiming to serve about
50 percent of the former workers.
The $2.1-million federal emergency grant the college received has gone a long
way toward helping it reach that goal. But it is the first such grant for a
community college in a state that has lost some 50,000 jobs in manufacturing
alone since 1999.
"There's no doubt, when you're talking about an influx of 2,000 students,
we would not have been able to serve them without that federal money,"
says Jerry Chandler, senior vice president of the 23,000-student college. Roughly
18,000 of those students are enrolled in the college's continuing-education
programs, an indication of their heavy emphasis on worker training.
Other colleges in the state have been forced to absorb displaced workers without
immediate federal assistance. The state also reimburses two-year colleges for
students a year after they start taking classes, well after the colleges must
accommodate the former workers. In a recent study of displaced workers done
by Mr. Watt at the North Carolina Department of Commerce, state officials bemoaned
the fact that the colleges must wait so long to get their state appropriations.
"It limits them," says Mr. Watt, "at a time when their budgets
are already stretched." State appropriations to North Carolina's community
colleges have been cut by roughly 5 percent in the last few years. Nationwide,
community colleges have seen their state appropriations shrink by anywhere from
2 to 10 percent.
Mr. Watt's report goes on to note that the colleges receive fewer dollars for
continuing-education programs that help displaced workers than they do for credit
or transfer courses for more-traditional students. That limits their ability
to provide quick retraining courses in expensive emerging technology fields.
If community colleges are unable to retrain workers for such fields, it will
limit the state's ability to attract new industries to replace the dying textile,
manufacturing, and furniture sectors that have played a large role in the economy.
"That's a real problem across the country," says North Carolina State's
Mr. Vaughan, who himself worked overnight shifts at a Virginia textile mill
to help pay his way through college. It's also "a heavy burden for community
colleges to shoulder," he says. "Essentially, they need more state
and federal support in order to get the job done."
Work First
Federal assistance already plays a big role in retraining workers. The Workforce
Investment Act of 1998, which Congress is reviewing as part of the reauthorization
process, provides the bulk of the funds that enable displaced workers to go
to college after they find themselves unemployed.
One problem college leaders find with the law, known as WIA, is that it encourages
officials to first try to place workers in jobs. If that is unsuccessful, only
then are they referred to community-college training programs.
"There has not been an enforcement of sending the Pillowtex people back
to school," says Ms. Moore. "People are encouraged to wait and assess
their own personal situation." That doesn't leave college officials in
the best position to determine the workers' needs and come up with programs
that would best serve them.
Even then, funds for tuition are only approved if a worker comes up with a
plan that he or she can complete in two years. Often, what looks manageable
on paper does not always work out in reality. If students run into a roadblock
-- problems with their car or with day care for their children, for instance
-- they may not complete their courses according to their original plan.
Mr. Watt's study found that many dislocated workers quit their training programs
when their unemployment benefits dried up, which led him to conclude that the
colleges were not tailoring enough of the training programs to fit the workers'
time frame.
Stephanie Deese, director of work-force initiatives for the North Carolina
Community College System, disagrees with that finding, noting the programs that
Rowan-Cabarrus put together after the Pillowtex layoffs.
"We offer 1,500 continuing-education programs, available at a moment's
notice," she says of the state's two-year colleges. "That was a fine
report for the time, but it was just a snapshot."
The bigger barrier, she says, is helping workers take the fear out of going
to college after having been out of the education system for so many decades.
"There are some intangibles," she says. "We try our best to reach
out to these people but sure, we won't be able to convince everyone."
A No-Show
Count Mr. Waller, from the workshop, among the convinced. He is currently taking
GED-preparation courses at the college. He says he hopes to pass the test before
the college's spring semester starts in January and then go on to a certificate
program that will enable him to work in social services.
"I want to help people," he says. "God only knows where I'd
be if it wasn't for the help I've gotten throughout this whole mess. I'd like
to give back."
As for Mr. Spears, repeated attempts to follow up with him were unsuccessful.
College officials say they have no record of him showing up to take the GED
placement examination for which he was scheduled.
The Gleaner
November 13, 2003
Early registration pushed at HCC
If you're one of those numerous Henderson Community College students who waited
in registration lines for five or six hours this semester, you might be comforted
to know that the faculty and staff felt your pain.
Patty Mitchell, dean of student affairs, said some delays had been anticipated
because of changes in registration software, and the delays were compounded
by the record number who enrolled for the fall semester. The 43-year-old school
has registered 1,923 students this semester, an all-time high.
"Everyone was extremely patient and cooperative during that entire open
registration period," Mitchell said, adding that the lengthy waits are
regretted and campus administration immediately began looking at ways to bring
about "a more effective and efficient registration process."
Surveys were distributed to various classes to obtain student input and a Registration
Review Committee comprised of representatives of key departments was formed
to look at ways to streamline registrations and eliminate long lines of individuals
waiting to have schedule cards processed.
As a result of the committee-student recommendations -- approved by the campus
Leadership Team in mid-October -- there is a strong push toward early applications
and registrations that hopefully will avoid a "bottleneck" of enrolling
students during open registration days for the spring semester.
"We started advance registration for our current students this week,"
Mitchell said, noting that the process continues through Friday and there will
be three additional early registration days in the near future.
"Students can save themselves a lot of time and effort by registering
early," the dean said, and early registration provides greater assurance
that they'll be able to get into their desired classes.
"It's a very simple process," Mitchell said. "(Current students)
contact their advisors, complete their schedule cards and bring them to one
of five campus locations for processing."
On Jan. 7, current students will have one final opportunity to register before
the Jan. 8 and 9 open registration dates.
New students are encouraged to complete the application process -- including
any required testing and orientation -- prior to Dec. 1 in order to be eligible
for a special early registration opportunity on Dec. 12. Those who complete
application requirements by Jan. 2 will be eligible to participate in open registration.
Mitchell said anyone who applies for acceptance after Jan. 2 will have to allow
for overnight application processing and complete testing and orientation requirements
prior to registration on or after Jan. 8.
Saturday registration, which has been done for a number of years, will be eliminated.
"We've had a fairly good response to Saturday registrations but registering
on a Saturday and starting classes on the following Monday didn't give us an
opportunity to take care of a lot of processes we needed to do to be really
prepared," Mitchell said. "This will be a better experience for everybody."
Evening registration will take place on Jan. 8 to allow those who work during
the day to enroll for the spring semester.
Mitchell said another time saver involves moving the class-scheduling from
the campus administration building to the Fine Arts Center, "where there's
more room and wireless technology allows us to increase the number of data entry
terminals so we can serve more students at one time."
Open registration for the spring semester takes place Thursday, Jan. 8 from
9 a.m. until 1 p.m. and from 4-6 p.m. It continues on Friday, Jan. 9 from 9
a.m. until 1 p.m. Classes start on Monday, Jan. 12 and the final date for registration
is Jan. 16.
Mitchell hopes people won't tarry until the 16th. They'll already be a week
behind, she noted, and course selections at that point are very limited.
"We're really pushing the early registration message."
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