Higher Education Is Essential to Louisiana Workforce Development, Says LCTCS President
Industry is booming in Louisiana, but employers are struggling to find the skilled workers they need to fill the millions of positions being created across the state, Monty Sullivan, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, told attendees at the Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s monthly lunch yesterday.Although LCTCS is one of the nation’s fastest growing higher education systems, the demand for the workers it educates is constantly increasing, leaving it struggling to turn out enough skilled graduates, Sullivan said. So as the number of jobs continues to climb, he’s leading the LCTCS charge to change the way Louisiana thinks about investing in education.
Louisiana Employers Need an Expanded Workforce
A year ago, Louisiana employers were asked what they needed from community colleges and the answer was unanimous: Workforce, Sullivan said. Of the 4.6 million people in Louisiana, roughly 2.3 million are working age adults and 600,000 of them have no high school diploma or post-secondary credentials.Next year, 84 percent of jobs will require some college experience, Sullivan said. This leaves Louisiana with a lot of people, but without the workforce it needs to fill the jobs it has standing empty. This is known as “the great skills gap.”
Our Louisiana 2020
With about 110,000 students, community and technical college systems make up the largest portion of Louisiana’s higher education sector, Sullivan said. But that only accounts for those who are enrolled — the traditional measurement of a community or technical college’s success. But today there’s a shift occurring in the way these schools view success. Increasingly they’re judging themselves on the number of students that graduate and what those students give back to the state’s economy. With this shift, students are costing less and earning more every year, which means higher education is providing a higher ROI than ever before.Our Louisiana 2020 is LCTCS’s plan to improve Louisiana’s higher education system so it can produce more skilled workers for the state’s employers, Sullivan said. The plan includes six goals designed to increase business partnerships, graduate numbers and graduate earnings in the workforce. These goals are being achieved by creating specialized education programs that funnel graduates into the high-demand jobs, such as welding, finance and computer science. These programs are then compressed into a shorter amount of time to optimize the learning experience and speed graduates’ entry into Louisiana’s workforce.As LCTCS is educating people to enter Louisiana’s workforce, Success Labs is helping turn them into the next generation of business leaders. Learn how.
Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.
