Get smart | Investing wisely in education must be a priority for Maine's existing economy, and its future
I recently participated in a midcoast town hall meeting on how to make the Maine economy stronger. At one point, we discussed how companies are demanding more educated employees. Boston Financial Data Systems, the company that recently located in Rockland thanks in part to the efforts of my agency, Maine & Co., is a great example. BFDS is growing faster than expected and is considering doing even more in Maine. This leading financial services firm has hired about 100 people in Rockland already and expects to double that in the near future. Company leaders are impressed with the number and quality of applicants. It is very good news indeed.
But there is trouble on the horizon. Our median age of 41.2 years is the highest in the United States, and Maine has the sixth-largest population per capita of people older than 65, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Maine also has a smaller population per capita of people under 18 years old than any other state in the country. That means we are the oldest and we’re getting older.
To companies thinking about relocating to or expanding in Maine, these figures mean that on a percentage basis, Maine’s workforce — and its pipeline of future talent — is smaller than almost every other place that company would consider. With this demographic reality, we need to develop and retain educated people in order to attract and retain quality companies and jobs. So are we doing that? Well, not really.
Education, by degrees
Of the freshmen who entered Maine high schools this September, 25% will drop out before graduation. Another 25% will have gone on to attain a post-high school degree by 2018, according to my calculations using recent data on degree attainment from the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education. That means, for the remaining 50% of today’s freshman class, high school will be their highest degree by the time they’re 24. Problem is — according to a recent speech by former Gov. John McKernan at a Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce event — 47% of all new jobs created in the United States over the next 10 years will require a post-high school degree.
Back at the town meeting, a resident asked me this: “Since we don’t have a lot of college graduates, why don’t we just recruit companies who can use the education levels we do have?” My answer is that at Maine & Co., where every day we talk to companies considering moving here, never have I had one ask for uneducated workers. Maine has no alternative: We need to get smarter.
Every year the Legislature fights over funding for the university system. It’s a system assembled in response to political and regional parochialism that produces the reflexive need to make sure every region and every political constituency is a “winner” in the distribution of the state’s higher education assets. As a result, the university system is far too disconnected from the existing and emerging Maine economy and far too disconnected from a unified strategic plan to meet the needs of citizens and businesses today and into the future.
So here is the goal: Let’s rebuild Maine’s higher education system, including every post-high school program, by focusing first on the type of education the Maine economy needs its graduates to have now and over the next 10 years.
We have model programs already in place: The Applied Science Engineering and Technology School at the University of Southern Maine has a job placement rate of 100%. At Central Maine Community College’s Electromechanical Technology program, the rate is 300%, meaning each graduate is offered three jobs, on average. And the Advanced Structures and Composites Lab at the University of Maine is doing research with more than 100 companies from around the world. In my vision for the future, those programs would be expanded. They would be funding priorities.
Maine could develop specific expertise — suppose we decided to focus our higher education on expanding Maine’s alternative energy and sustainable building capabilities. We could focus our resources to produce an educated population that would give companies the competitive advantage.
There is no alternative. We must get smarter. And we need to start now.
Matt Jacobson, president of Maine & Co. in Portland, can be reached at mjacobson@maineco.org.
Read Matt's past columns.
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