September 27, 2009

 

Akron Beacon Journal editorial

 

Northeast Ohio practically brims with organizations dedicated to revitalizing the regional economy. All speak hopefully about the future, yet often their efforts lack the necessary focus. Which explains why CEOs for Cities caught our eye last week, the national organization joining the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education (NOCHE) and other local groups to stage the Northeast Ohio Talent Dividend Summit. Carol Coletta, the chief executive of CEOs for Cities, brought a refreshingly precise view to the discussion.

 

Coletta has been traveling the country since March, visiting, among other cities, Memphis, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, challenging communities to do the possible: Raise the college graduation rate in their areas by 1 percentage point.

 

On Wednesday, Coletta explained the difference such a seemingly modest step could make in Northeast Ohio. Today, 25.2 percent of the region’s population age 25 and older has a four-year college degree. Increase the mark to 26.2 percent, and Northeast Ohio would reap a talent dividend of $2.8 billion a year, or roughly the payroll of the Cleveland Clinic.

 

That 25.2 percent translates into 645,000 people. How many additional degreeholders are needed to add 1 percentage point? Try a mere 25,637. Surely, those graduates can be found in the 675,000 people with some college credits or an associate degree.

 

Eric Fingerhut, the chancellor of the state Board of Regents, knows all of this, and has begun to mobilize Ohio colleges and universities to advance on this front. Listen to Carol Coletta, and you can’t help but recognize the local obligation to rally around the cause. Why? Economic analyses invariably show that talent drives economic development. And the measure of talent? The amount of higher education.

 

The thinking isn’t that everyone must have a college degree. Rather, by placing emphasis on a college education, a region elevates the amount of schooling overall, more people with high school degrees, more people with some post-secondary training, all of it enhancing the quality of the work force, a critical contributor to innovation, growth and jobs.

 

More, once a community succeeds in increasing its college graduation rate by 1 percentage point, it should be well positioned to add another point, and then another, and so on.

Northeast Ohioans should know that the region has much room to improve, such cities as Detroit, Columbus, Cincinnati and Milwaukee having higher levels of educational attainment. Even Buffalo ranks better. Minneapolis, Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, N.C., approach 40 percent, with Boston, San Francisco, San Jose and Washington, D.C., above that threshold.

 

Northeast Ohioans also should know that as encouraging as it is to see college enrollment rates rising in the region, college graduation rates are disappointing here and elsewhere across the country.

Many complain about the Akron Public Schools graduating 75 percent of its students. Kent State University has a graduation rate around 50 percent, the University of Akron, below 40 percent, and Cleveland State University, in the low 30s. Part of the explanation involves the cost of college. Most telling, perhaps, is that colleges do a much better job getting students to enroll than guiding them to graduation.

 

What Northeast Ohio should seize is the opportunity to make a profound difference. Here is an invitation to focus, deploying resources to reach a goal that isn’t as overwhelming as telling ourselves we must transform a regional economy. Yet it promises no less. Just 1 percentage point at a time.