This is a summary of Sessions 3 and 4 of the presentations at the Maine Compact for Higher Education's 4th annual Maine Symposium on Higher Education, "Money For College: The Critical Link to Business & Economic Growth," held August 7, 2008 at the University of Southern Maine. The summary was prepared by Sadie Fowler, consultant to the Compact, and edited by Henry Bourgeois.
Session 3: How are businesses and employers helping current and future workers afford higher education?
Sally Baughman, Vice President, Human Resources, Acadia Hospital
Alan Burton, Vice President, Cianbro Corporation
Michael Luciano, Manager of Human Resources, Verso Paper
Peter Geiger, Executive Vice President, Geiger Brothers
Baughman:
Acadia is a mental health and substance abuse hospital with 700 employees.
- Acadia philosophy: developing a sustainable, productive workplace requires retaining the best staff which is achieved in part through benefits and compensation (tuition assistance and loans), development opportunities (certifications, CEUs), promotion/advancement, and job enrichment opportunities. It's really a bond between your organization and the employee.
- Acadia strategies:
- College-Employer Partnership. Acadia has its own qualified staff member teach a class at a local college (staff member paid for by employer) in exchange for the free tuition of two or three employees/students. Other ways employers and colleges can partner: offer your worksite for a satellite location; welcome in any students from the school's program (including the public, who may become potential employees)
- Access. Acadia is offering continuing education opportunities on-site and during the workday; the easier we make continuing education for employees, the better.
- Tuition support
- Employees can borrow $10,000 in loans.
- Employee works off the loan as they work for Acadia (based on hours worked per year of the loan). If you leave before finishing the work-off, you pay back the money at local educational loan interest rates.
- Don't waste tuition assistance: When students drop out or leave early, don't take the money back from the school; we ask if they'll let us slip another student or two in their place.
- Manager commitment. Every manager is obligated to identify one person each year that should be going to college. Often these are employees who never thought about going to college. With respect to managers, this policy can kind of go in one ear and out the other without knowing why. Get buy-in by helping leaders assess and evaluate their department needs and show how supporting college/education can alleviate their concerns. Identify turnover costs vs. costs of education.
- Mentoring. Presenter mentors three employees; mentoring is very important to employee/student success.
- Make things easier: We give employees a clear plastic folder where they keep anything that might have to do with college so they can get in to talk with you about it; otherwise, they might not know what to do.
- Another approach: The Aroostook Medical Center's "Survivor Aroostook Healthcare Careers Exploration Camp" gets folks interested in future careers in health care. Hosted with a local college, this year's high school graduating senior class is the first generation to have gone to Survivor Camp; anecdotally, it seems like the camp might be helping with aspirations to go to college and obtain health care degrees.
- Observations/suggestions:
- 16: the number of months before an average mid-20s employee leaves their job.
- The Society of Human Resources Management can help with thinking of ways to assist employees to access higher education
Burton:
- Cianbro's internal programs:
- Cianbro Institute spends $12 million a year in training efforts.
- Certification, apprenticeship, and licensing are more important to us than college degrees. We need to figure out a way to give these programs something like an accreditation process.
- Internships.
- Student loan repayment plan (for every month they work for us, they get money towards loan repayment).
- Tuition reimbursement.
- Scholarships:
- Cianchette Brothers Scholarships--$25,000/year for scholarships for team members' children. We started with 10 scholarships, but there was a much bigger need. Last year we gave out 37 scholarships ($50,000). These students end up going into the workforce and adding to Maine's economy.
- Jobs for Maine Grads Scholarship--we've provided $500 scholarships to get students into the Community College system.
- Carl Cianchette Scholarship/Alton "Chuck" Cianchette Scholarship.
- Public/private education partnerships
- There needs to be multiple pathways to success; we can't just say that everyone needs to go to college, but they do need to be lifelong learners.
- We learned that, as an employer, we needed to get involved; if you don't you can't make a difference.
- One of the reasons people don't continue college is that they feel like they are learning something they don't need or care about. Make it relevant. If you're going to take a pipe welding course, you need college-level math.
- Construction Industry Alliances: we looked within our industry to see who was doing something educational and how could we join. We couldn't do it alone; we needed to band with other people. We engaged 17 of the 27 Regional Technical Centers.
- Get involved in the community and government organizations. You can't lead from behind. You need to check your assumptions at the door and get involved. This way we can understand what's going on in the state.
- A case study/success story:
- We had to more than double our workforce for pipe welder and fitters. These skills didn't exist so much in Maine; we usually had to go the Gulf Coast.
- Cianbro invested more than $5 million in training (paid people wages during training) and received grants of about $600,000 (6%).
- The partnerships we had developed with educational institutions, the industry, the community, and the government really paid off in meeting this challenge.
Luciano:
Verso is a Maine company with two Maine locations. The majority of its workforce is in Maine (about 1,800 employees; $160 million in payroll). Its workforce is aging; in 4 years, we will need to replace 40% of our workforce. There is a shortage of young talent, and we want to cultivate our next workforce. And we will be more automated, which requires a more educated workforce.
- Verso programs:
- For current employees, we fund 100% of undergraduate tuition and 50% of graduate tuition, if the course of study is related to the industry.
- For new hires, in order to come into the mill, you need to have a 2-year degree in Pulp and Paper or be willing to get it within 4 years. We offer this degree on-site. We are working with Kennebec Valley Community College.
- For outside folks:
- Apprenticeship program: we went into high schools and said that we would award up to eight scholarships (tuition and books) for a KVCC degree. Students work at Verso during the summer and agree to work for two years after graduation. If they don't, they have to pay back the money. Students provide their own transportation to and from classes, earn a C or better GPA.
- Summer college student program: we encourage students to go back to college even though they're working at the mill in the summer. We send them a check once they get back to school, a dollar for every hour worked during the summer.
Geiger:
- Geiger associates:
- Receive flex-time scheduling.
- Receive 75% up-front reimbursement for tuition and books for work-related courses (associates must get a C or better).
- Scholarships:
- Promotional Products Education Foundation (awarded up to four years)
- Specialty Advertising Association of Greater New York Foundation
- Paid seminars and workshops
- On-site training programs, GOAL Center, Geiger Galleria, and Associate Weeks.
- MAS/CAS Certification. Some positions require certification. Training and testing fees are covered, and associates are eligible for a bonus of up to $1,500 upon completion of certification.
- Geiger/Montello Adopt-a-School Program
- The Montello School has 900 students; 77% of these receive free or reduced lunch.
- Aspects of this program include e-buddies, job shadowing, junior achievement, reading program, mentoring program, "Night of the Stars" (Oscar-style ceremony for approximately 80 of the best student writers), and the Gieger-Montello Scholarship (a $125,000 fund for Montello's class of 2014, a way to connect with parents annually).
- We don't know the exact result of all of this; there are intangible benefits.
- Other Geiger Involvement:
- We support the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education, an education-business coalition.
- We support the Aspirations Lab at Lewiston High School.
- Comment: We need some "meat" on the high school diploma; we must graduate students who are ready to do whatever they want.
Session 4: What's the role of philanthropy, higher education institutions, and state government in providing student financial aid?
Henry Schmelzer, President & CEO, Maine Community Foundation (Moderator)
Laura Fortman, Commissioner, Maine Department of Labor
Joyce Hedlund, President, Eastern Maine Community College
Fortman:
- DoL is responsible for creating opportunity (job counseling, job search assistance, training and education, Center for Workforce Research and Information) and protecting workers (enforcing labor laws, employee safety, unemployment insurance).
- Some state programs:
- Parents as Scholars. For many low-income women, who are often single mothers, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) served as unemployment insurance. These women were going in and out of the low-level labor market, and they lacked the training to go higher. Maine wanted education to be part of its welfare reform program, and the Parents as Scholars program was born. Now these people and their children are thriving and successful.
- Competitive Skills Scholarship. This program was just created by the Governor and Legislature. It provides over $3 million each year in a full range of financial support to workers going back to school.
- Prior Learning Assessment gives adults the opportunity to get credit for what they have learned in their lives.
- The packaging of resources can be overwhelming, and getting to a community college can be scary. What are the connection points? Adult Education is one. We have to package things in a way that is not too complicated.
Hedlund:
- Diverse colleges/diverse approaches. There is a very diverse group of excellent colleges in Maine. When we look at students, we need to use a wide-angle lens. It's not one-size-fits-all. We need to encourage more and more flexibility on our campuses.
- The Community College system was initiated in Maine in 2003. The fact that students save money by attending a community college before going on to four-year institutions is part of financial aid.
- We have to be actively out there raising scholarship money. We must rely on businesspeople and communities to help develop scholarships. We need creative thinking and partnerships and to be constantly on the lookout for opportunities.
- Community college initiatives:
- Early College for Me can help students save money. They can graduate from high school with 15 college credits.
- The Maine Quality Centers (MQC) program provides funds for training to help a business succeed; some businesses want to use the funds to create a full degree program. Cianbro received a Maine Quality Center program and its classes were full until midnight.
- Maine Community College Rural Initiative offers scholarships and childcare; brings programs from other areas into rural regions using video-conferencing, internet; helps make higher education more accessible to high school students; and expands MQC programs to small businesses.
Schmelzer:
- When we think of philanthropy, we think of scholarships. There are organizations like the Maine Community Foundation and the Mitchell Institute that administer or award scholarships, but there are also individual philanthropists around the state.
- Philanthropic organizations also play other important support roles, for example, MaineCF's support of the Compact
- A MaineCF scholarship story: We changed an existing scholarship to support for non-traditional students in Washington County (which is in line with Compact goals). One recipient was in her 50s, had several children, and had never gone to college. Eventually she enrolled at University of Maine in Civil Engineering and got straight A's, and this influenced her son and other family members to attend as well. This illustrates how, focusing on adult students, you're not just affecting one individual; you're affecting a whole family.
- Audience comment: We must be creative with our resources; Maine Commission for Community Service has a variety of volunteer options that may help pay for college, like AmeriCorps
Sessions 1 and 2 | Sessions 5 and 6 | Session 7
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