Southern Association of Community, Junior, and Technical Colleges
March 1999, Volume 33, Number 1 |
Allen Edwards, Editor |
March 1999
Dear Community College Presidents:
Thank you for your attendance at and support of the annual luncheon meeting of the Southern Association of Community, Junior, and Technical Colleges (SACJTC) in Atlanta in December 1998. The Honorable William F. Winter, former governor of Mississippi, presented a challenging picture of the South's present and future and identified clearly his view of the importance of the South's community colleges in confronting the workforce issues affecting the South's future economic development and security.
Your SACJTC Board has evaluated the issue and determined a continuing potential value in exploring why males are a declining portion of higher education participants and in identifying and publicizing possible strategies for addressing this concern. George Autry of MDC, Inc., was indeed prophetic in his early attention to what in recent months has become an often noted matter for national concern in the print and non-print media. The Association intends to continue the dialogue with George Autry and MDC on our common agenda.
Helping to lead our Association are new Board members elected at the annual meeting: Dr. David Cole, president of Itawamba Community College (Mississippi), and Dr. John Pickelman, chancellor of North Harris Montgomery Community College District (Texas).
Your SACJTC Board encourages your continued involvement with the Association and your active engagement in the issues surrounding the low persistence level of males in education. We also request that you encourage ALL two-year community, junior, and technical colleges to join our ranks as part of the Southern Association of Community, Junior, and Technical Colleges.
Sincerely,
Dorothy L. Lord
Association President
SACJTC Luncheon
December 7, 1998
Today as we deliberate for the good of our Southern Region, we ask your
blessings on our hopes, plans and future deeds. Let us be instruments for
progress, growth, enlightenment and the realization of human potential for
all of our Southerners, whether foreign born or native, male or female,
black, white, brown or yellow, urban, suburban or rural. Also, we ask that
you bless the food we are about to receive, and we thank you for blessings
already given in God's name. Amen.
The SACJTC gratefully acknowledges the sponsorship of the following businesses for our luncheon on December 7, 1998, in Atlanta:
Fall Board Meeting
Atlanta, Georgia
December 5, 1998
The fall meeting of the Board of Directors of the Southern Association of Junior, Community, and Technical Colleges was held during the annual meeting of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 5, 1998. Present were Jim Hudgins, Dorothy Lord, Allen Edwards, Ed Hughes, Tommy Davis, Julius Brown, Cuyler Dunbar, Bob McSpadden, and Marshall Smith. George Autry was present as a guest of the Board.
Jim Hudgins called the Board to order at 5:00 p.m. in the Inman Room of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta.
After reflection, Allen Edwards moved, Dorothy Lord seconded, and the Board voted unanimously to approve the minutes of the spring meeting on April 25, 1998, in Miami Beach.
Marshall Smith presented the membership report through a handout reflecting membership by state. A total of 249 members have current dues status, one fewer than projected in the current revenue budget. Several Board members asked for specific breakdowns by state. Marshall Smith agreed to mail the state membership lists with the minutes from the current meeting.
Marshall Smith offered the financial report. He first distributed a handout displaying a preliminary report of income and expenditures, noting that the end-of-year final report would be different because of transactions associated with the annual meeting and luncheon of the Association. He then distributed an investment report sheet that displayed the current values of four Certificates of Deposit held by the Crestar Bank of Richmond, Virginia. The Association continues in good financial condition at the present time.
Jim Hudgins called for the report of the audit committee and received the comments of Ed Hughes and Bob McSpadden. They noted that their inspection of the records and operations account of the Association revealed no difficulties.
Allen Edwards reported on his work as Editor, indicating that three newsletters and two occasional papers had been published over the course of the year. He noted that obtaining authors for occasional papers continued to be problematical and sought the help of the other Board members for recruiting occasional paper authors.
Tommy Davis provided the Nominating Committee report on behalf of its chairman, Jack Sasser. The Nominating Committee recommended the following slate of officers: President, Dorothy Lord; Vice President / President-Elect, Julius Brown; Editor, Allen Edwards; Secretary / Treasurer, Marshall Smith; and Past President, Jim Hudgins. The Committee then recommended two individuals for the Class of 2001: David Cole, President of Itawamba Community College in Mississippi; and John Pickleman, Chancellor of the North Harris Community College District in Texas. Following a motion by Ed Hughes, and a second by Allen Edwards, the Board unanimously approved the slate of officers and Board members.
Jim Hudgins then led the Board through a discussion of operational plans for the Annual Luncheon. It was agreed that all unsold tickets would be pooled and would be available for sale at a table set up outside the banquet room. Allen Edwards and Ed Hughes volunteered to man the table. Julius Brown agreed to station himself at the original site of the luncheon to direct individuals to the relocated site, Centennial IV. It was noted that the new site was immediately adjacent to the location for the open meeting of the College Delegate Assembly.
All Board members were reminded to bring door prizes at noon and place them on a table immediately behind the head table. Marshall Smith distributed envelopes for Board member use in submitting monies obtained for tickets sold. A number of questions were asked and answered concerning detailed plans for the luncheon. It was noted that the representative of Wallace Bookstores would be present and that no other representative of corporate sponsorships were known to be attending. Finally, all Board members were encouraged to be at the site of the luncheon thirty minutes early for administrative purposes.
Jim Hudgins then asked George Autry to lead a discussion of the Association theme. He noted that the report of MDC, The State of the South, would be distributed free of charge to SACJTC member institutions after the first of the year. George made a fifteen-minute presentation on highlights of the report and then conducted a discussion of workforce development activities specifically related to males on a state-by-state basis.
Jim Hudgins commented on the positive contribution made to the business affairs of the Association by Ms. Joanne Horton, Marshall Smith's Administrative Assistant. He gained the unanimous support of the Board in giving her an honorarium of $400 ($100 more than last year) for her work.
Dorothy Lord commented briefly on her upcoming tenure as President of the Association and reminded Board members that the spring meeting would be held in conjunction with the AACC meeting in Nashville on April 7-10, 1999. She noted that she would make arrangements for an appropriate room for the meeting.
Jim Hudgins adjourned the meeting at 6:50 p.m.
SACJTC |
FINANCIAL STATEMENT
For the Period Ending December 31, 1998
ASSETS AS OF DECEMBER 31, 1997
Reserves $21,768.37
Operating $14,955.68
TOTAL ASSETS
$36,724.05
1998 INCOME
Dues $12,500.00
Interest $1,192.59 (credited to reserves, not operating)
Luncheon $8,225.00
Other $4,500.00 (corporate sponsorship/luncheon)
TOTAL INCOME
$26,417.59
1998 EXPENDITURES
Convention/Luncheon $13,895.50
Honoraria $2,277.50
Miscellaneous $82.33
Postage $151.64
Supplies $297.00
Newsletter $3,284.89
Travel $262.44
Operating $489.56
Printing $141.97
TOTAL EXPENDITURES AND TRANSFERS
$20,882.83
ASSETS AS OF DECEMBER 31, 1998
Reserves $22,960.96
Operating $20,490.44
TOTAL ASSETS
$43,451.40
Marshall W. Smith
Secretary/Treasurer
An Address by William Winter, Former Governor of Mississippi
Chair, MDC Board of Directors
Atlanta, Georgia
December 7, 1998
My message today is about the unprecedented changes that are taking place here in the South and the incredible opportunities that they present to you who are involved in the leadership of our community, junior, and technical colleges. It has been my good fortune to be associated with so many of you here in this room in working to overcome some of the difficulties of our past. Now, thanks to you and to your institutions, I believe that we are entering our Golden Age. But we have been promised New Souths and Golden Ages before-by folks like Henry Grady here in Atlanta over a century ago. Somehow they never quite materialized, but now maybe at last we can realistically look forward to a brighter day.
I am using as my text today the 1998 MDC report, The State of the South, that George Autry and his colleagues have put together in such an impressive way. That report points out that the South today has never been better off in terms of its economic situation. We continue to close the per capita income gap. In 1969, we earned 81 percent of the national average. Today we are over 90 percent, and we are still converging. We have dramatically increased the jobs we've created, and the poverty rate is the lowest in history. We are thus obliged to ask the question: How have we done it so far?
We have done it first of all by eliminating Jim Crow, thus liberating the economy to new investment even as we liberated African-Americans to the opportunities to participate more fully in the economy. And MDC's research shows that we also did it because of the investments we made in education-in elementary and secondary education and higher education, but especially in community and technical colleges. We can look around the South today, and we are struck with the dramatic fact that the states that are doing the best today are those that integrated their schools with the least trauma and invested in education the most strategically. Of particular significance in this strategy was the commitment to investment in community and technical colleges.
Although this promises to be our Golden Age, The State of the South report also notes that we are confronted with huge new challenges. We're a long way from the old sharecropping, cotton-milling, coal-mining economy that still defined the South 30 years ago. Jobs in traditional industries have evaporated. When I was growing up on a cotton farm in Mississippi in the '30s, I heard an agricultural extension agent tell my father, "Diversify." Sixty years later, we've diversified everything-our crops but also our jobs, the economy, even the people.
"Although this promises
to be our Golden Age, The State of the South report
also notes that we are confronted with huge new challenges."
And we have reversed the "brain drain." For the first time, in the '90s there has been a net increase in African-Americans and whites moving to the South from all sections of the country. And the in-migrants of both races are on the average better educated than the blacks and whites already here.
That ought to be good news for all of us who have seen so many of our fellow Southerners move away in years gone by. They included many of our poor and also many of our best educated. Three-fourths of the blacks and about one-half of the whites with whom I grew up in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s moved out of the state for the promise of a better life.
But African-Americans and European-Americans are not the story of the '90s. The story of the '90s is everybody else. Hispanics in the workforce have risen from 5 percent of the total in 1976 to 10 percent today. Although fewer in actual numbers, Asians have shown a similar increase. On the other hand, white men, who made up 46 percent in 1976, are now only 38 percent.
Here's the percent change in population growth by race and ethnicity in North Carolina from 1990 to 1997: white 9 percent, black 13 percent, American Indian 18 percent, Asian 60 percent, Hispanic 72 percent. In Georgia the increase from 1990 to 1997 was 9.7 percent for whites, 22 percent for blacks, 72 percent for Asians, and 77 percent for Hispanics.
Of the counties in the United States with the fastest-growing Hispanic population, 17 of 30 are in the South. Of the counties with the fastest-growing Asian population, 22 of 30 are in the South. The old black/white, mostly Protestant, native-born region is no longer insulated from immigration by its poverty, ignorance, and discrimination.
That immigration has greatly enriched us, culturally and economically, but it has also brought new tensions. The South is not used to waves of new folks locating here. In rural Scott County, Mississippi, the law enforcement officers are taking a crash course in Spanish to be able to communicate with the hundreds of new residents from south of the border. Whether we like it or not, the whole region is becoming technicolor.
Net in-migration to the South has held steady at one million people a year from other states and abroad. But we must be concerned with the way the composition of this stream has seemed to change since 1993. We are still receiving German engineers and Chinese mathematicians, but a greater portion in the last four years are unskilled. And these undereducated newcomers-many from California and Texas-are competing with native black and white unskilled workers for a declining number of blue-collar jobs.
It is not news that the population is aging. From 1995 to 2015, there will be 8.5 million more adults 45-64 years of age, four million more over 64, one million more kids, 300,000 fewer younger workers. That's like the rest of the country, except the older boomers here are much less educated that those in the rest of the country, but our fewer young workers are about as well educated as their counterparts nationally. These are the people most vulnerable to labor market competition from in-migrants.
Now, who's not doing well? As you know, single-parent, female-headed households are thrice cursed. First, women still earn less than men, although they are catching up. Second, a large percentage of female-headed households in the South are seriously undereducated in an economy that discriminates against the uneducated. Third, by definition female-headed households comprise single-income families in a two-income economy. There are now more of these families than there used to be, and they are no better off than they were 30 years ago under Jim Crow.
On the other hand, educated women are doing well. There has been amazing progress by them in the labor market. Although they haven't caught up in earnings, educated women are moving quickly, breaking down the walls of occupational gender segregation and catching up in earnings. The good news is that controlling for education, black and Hispanic women are doing as well as white. They are doing about as well as white women at every educational level. The discrimination factor has virtually disappeared.
But white males with no more than a high school diploma earn less than they did 30 years ago. Younger white males have fewer bachelor's degrees per capita than those over 40-the only demographic group slipping rather than gaining.
Three of 100 black male Southerners living today are living behind bars. And it must be pointed out that even though undereducated white and black males are both lagging, whites still have the advantage. Black and Hispanic males are suffering discrimination in the labor market at every educational level. For males, the content of one's education is now economically more important than the color of one's skin, but race still matters.
The fact of the matter is that there are simply not enough jobs in the South for low-skill, blue-collar males, and not enough males are going to school beyond high school. Women passed men in college enrollment in the early '80s and are now 57 percent of the South's university and community college student body. And the gap is widening. In graduation rates, men have always lagged, and the gap is increasing. Meanwhile, from 1970 to 1995, the percentage of dropouts in the labor force declined from 90 percent to 72 percent; those with only a high school diploma or less from 96 percent to 86 percent.
"The fact of the matter
is that there are simply not enough jobs in the South for low-skill,
blue-collar males, and not enough males are going to school beyond high
school."
Where are these guys if they are not in jobs or looking for jobs? Many are in jail. The Economist in 1997 reported that the U.S. incarceration rate for males increased by 103 percent from 1985 to 1995, 130 percent for Hispanics, 143 percent for blacks. The figure is higher for the South, the region with the highest incarceration rate in the nation.
Where then do we look for the leadership to exploit the opportunities, overcome the barriers, and ease the trauma that these trends portend? Not to government-at least in the first instance. Machiavelli noted 500 years ago that creativity and innovation do not come easily to government. In addition, the "Reagan Revolution" has changed the landscape. There is not much money for economic and social research and demonstration left in the federal budget.
States are now doing better than the federal government at responsive leadership. State attorneys general, led by Mississippi, brought big tobacco to its knees while the executive and legislative branches of the national government were frozen in the headlights. Welfare reform didn't get reformed in Washington: the feds simply abolished welfare and left it to the states to reform it pretty much as they saw fit.
But the state-of-the-art in the science of electioneering is such that politicians find it hard to address the enduring, boring economic and demographic trends. That's not how you get elected these days. It is hard to sell programs for which there is not an immediate payoff. It is hard to legislate for the long term. To get elected today, our politicians have to listen to their focus groups and polls, and the people who pay for them, and they must speak in sound bites rather than on reflection.
It is harder now for politicians, especially at the national level, to set the agenda anymore. This is why to a greatly increased extent the long-range creative leadership is coming from civic and academic sources working in close cooperation with the private sector. The State of the South makes this important point:
The South's economic energy does not seem matched these days by equal energy in civic and public service. In the South, as in America at large, there is a pervasive cynicism about the political system and a turn from public to private pursuits. If democracy and the economy are to continue flourishing, the South needs a massive infusion of creative leadership in addressing the challenges, opportunities, and trends outlined in this report.
How do we build and expand that leadership? The answer is to build on, expand, and exploit three assets of ours: our higher education, our philanthropy, and our community leadership. This is where community colleges can and must play an increasingly important role. Higher education is the South's competitive advantage, and we're using it well to train future leaders in the press, the professions, and business. We only need to increase the numbers being trained, especially single moms and minority males.There needs to be the closest cooperation between the community colleges and the four-year institutions in devising the realistic strategies that will enable us to train and educate all of our people in the most effective way.
Higher education research and service has made us the most productive agricultural economy in world history. It has brought 21st century medical technology and techniques in the 20th century; it created the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Higher education has done less well in moving the values and knowledge of the humanities into the larger society. We once thought our colleges needed to be isolated to a great extent from the outside world. Now we need to break those walls down and intrude on the outside world, delivering information, wisdom, truth, and technology to and beyond our borders. Institutions of higher learning, and especially community colleges, must now be involved in the most important task before us-that of community building.
In that context, let me single out one problem that must command our best attention. That is the problem of race-our oldest, thorniest, trickiest, most difficult barrier to a truly united country.
All of us-black and white-will agree that we have made incredible strides in the last 30 years to eliminate most of the old blatant and odious features of discrimination here in the South. This is an immeasurably better South than it was before. In fact, I believe the South is in many ways ahead of some areas of the country in race relations now. But having said that, I must also say what I think all of you will agree with, and that is that as far as we have come, we still have a lot left to do to create the kind of good biracial society that is essential for our future well-being. This is a barrier on which we must work harder.
The truth is that there is still too much mistrust between the races. We don't talk to each other enough in ways that will overcome those old hangups. Having been involved for the last year on the President's Advisory Board on Race, I can tell you that it is not easy to get people to talk constructively across the racial fault line. Most white folk think that we have come further in race relations than most black people do.
But I must tell you that in this increasingly racially diverse country, with the South (as I have pointed out) a part of that pattern of diversity, we must work on this business of racial reconciliation. It cannot be left to blind chance or individual impulse. There must be a shared vision that recognizes our interdependence, and advancing that vision must be our highest priority. This is a mission worthy of your best efforts as you chart the course for community colleges.
I leave you with three thoughts:
The SACJTC Board will meet in conjunction with the AACC annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Our group is scheduled to convene on April 7, 1999, from 8 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. in the Richmond C Room at the Opryland Hotel.