Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
276-638-8801
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Friday, July 4, 2008
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
Patrick Henry Community College (PHCC) and its sister colleges statewide need to do more to help adults who did not graduate from high school earn equivalency certificates, according to a state official.
Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, said he sees “a tremendous need” for such efforts in Henry County and Martinsville.
It is a matter of persuading state officials to give community colleges funds for that purpose, DuBois said during a visit to PHCC on Thursday.
And getting those funds anytime soon will be hard, he indicated.
“Funds just don’t come down from the heavens,” DuBois said, especially considering that needs statewide have “outstripped” available funds.
That is why community colleges need financial support from the public and businesses — after all, businesses hire the people that the colleges train, he said.
The “policy wonks” in Richmond, he said, consider the Virginia Department of Education to be responsible for secondary education, which is “not an assigned mission” of community colleges.
Skills training is the main mission of community colleges, he pointed out.
Community colleges need to help people earn GEDs as well as receive skills training because the two go hand-in-hand, DuBois said. Having a high school diploma or GED is no longer enough to land a decent-paying job, he said — some type of post-secondary education also has become necessary.
Post-secondary education could be a four-year college degree, a two-year degree from a community college or even a certificate of completion for a shorter field of study at a community college, DuBois said. He cited welding and truck driving as examples of the latter. Community college tuition has risen in recent years as costs of providing an education have increased, said DuBois, adding that “we don’t like” to raise tuition. Yet as costs of attending a four-year college rise even more, he said, more people are choosing community colleges, including bachelor’s degree students who want to take their first two years of classes there and then transfer to four-year colleges.
As chancellor of the community college system, DuBois said he is trying to find ways to make college more affordable to people with financial needs or who otherwise would have a hard time attending college.
DuBois visited PHCC on Thursday as part of a bicycle tour he is taking across Virginia to tout Great Expectations, a program designed to help foster care youths aged 13 to 17 complete high school and attend college.
Goals of the program include helping young people in foster care obtain community college educations, increasing the number of those young people who find employment in desirable jobs and establishing an endowment fund that will permanently sustain the program.
More than 8,100 children are in the state’s foster care system, and so far this decade, Virginia has led the United States yearly with the highest percentage of foster care youths who “age out” of the system, according to DuBois.
Being in foster care is “not a happy experience for lots of young people,” he said, emphasizing that “they don’t choose to be there.”
Statistics show that fewer than six out of 10 children who have been in Virginia’s foster care system graduated from high school, and less than 3 percent obtained a college degree.
Attending a community college will help young people who have been in foster care “gain a skill to help them live an independent life,” DuBois said.
Great Expectations initially will be funded mostly through private donations and grants. DuBois hopes to raise $10 million by the end of 2009 to sustain and expand the program, which currently is a pilot program that first will be implemented at only five community colleges, including the one in Danville.
About $1.7 million has been raised so far, DuBois said.
PHCC President Max Wingett pledged that the college will contribute $1 per mile that DuBois travels across Virginia. That will be about $700.
Great Expectations eventually will be offered at PHCC when funding for it becomes available, DuBois said. |
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