Two high-profile representatives of the Obama administration will hit the road today on a three-day, five-state bus tour to draw attention to successful partnerships between community colleges and businesses.
Amid rising concern over unemployment, the administration prominently called on community colleges and businesses to collaborate more during the White House Summit on Community Colleges back in 2010. Its newest proposal is the Community College to Career Fund, which would provide $8-billion to two-year colleges and states to work with companies to train an estimated two million workers in high-growth industries.
This week, Jill Biden, a longtime community-college instructor and wife of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis will visit several community colleges and employers that are collaborating to prepare students for the work force.
The first stop on their tour is the election-year battleground state of Ohio, where the two women will visit the Columbus State Community College Center for Workforce Development. Begun in 2006, the center provides education and training to both current employees and dislocated workers through partnerships with various industry sectors, including information technology, insurance, and logistics. Roughly 20,000 people have taken courses, most of them several weeks long, over the past six years.
Ms. Biden and Secretary Solis will take part in what the center's director, Cheryl Hay, calls an "unscripted and genuine" conversation about its work. Former students in the program and industry partners will also participate in the dialogue, in front of an expected crowd of 300 invited guests.
The community college is excited to show off how local businesses are using education "to solve their work-force problems," Ms. Hay said. "We feel that we really have a model here for the rest of the country."
After the Columbus visit, the road trip will continue to two other Ohio locations. In Centerville, Ms. Biden and Secretary Solis will tour a production line at a biomedical company, along with officials of Sinclair Community College and its development partner, BioOhio. Later, they will visit Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.
On Thursday, Ms. Biden and Secretary Solis will visit Bluegrass Community and Technical College, in Lexington, Ky.; Roane State Community College, in Harriman, Tenn.; and Wytheville Community College, in Wytheville, Va.
The tour winds up on Friday at Davidson County Community College, in Thomasville, N.C.
The timing of the tour, and the notion that it may be part of a Democratic re-election strategy, didn't bother Ms. Hay, of the Columbus center. The attention, she said, would allow the center to broaden its outreach to businesses and workers.
