Did you know North Carolina faced major shortages even before the pandemic began? Not in hospital beds, masks or ventilators, but in human capital.
According to a 2018 report from the Associated General Contractors of America and Autodesk, 98 percent of North Carolina contractors reported facing difficulty in finding high-skilled trade workers for their companies. For virtually every trade, contractors found hiring more difficult in 2018 than in the previous year: 78 percent reported that mechanics were more difficult to hire, 67 percent reported that plumbers were more difficult to hire and 62 percent found concrete workers more difficult to hire.
Such shortages in skilled workers can have devastating consequences on our state. When there are too few laborers, roads don’t get built. When there are too few welders, our bridges crumble. When there are too few plumbers, the mechanisms that ensure our streets do not overflow with sewage fall into disrepair.
To help remedy this dire crisis, we should follow in the footsteps of other states — such as Tennessee, Kentucky and Rhode Island — and guarantee two years of tuition-free community college or vocational education to every North Carolinian.
During this election cycle, ambitious plans have been made to guarantee a four-year education to every American, ranging from Bernie Sanders’ College for All or Elizabeth Warren’s Affordable Higher Education for All policies. Many Americans balked at the high price tags of such policies, both of which went into the trillions of dollars.
However, the costs of implementing a free community college program would be significantly lower, even when taking into account that it would be backed by the state rather than the federal government. In his proposed 2020-21 budget, Gov. Roy Cooper allocated $30 million for NC GROW, a program that would help cover tuition and selected fees for community college students pursuing training in high-demand fields. For the sake of comparison, that makes up less than one percent of his proposed $15 billion education budget.
The way this program would work is simple: first, a prospective student would need to graduate from high school with a GPA of 2.0 or higher. Then, upon acceptance to a community college and assessment of financial aid, the program would cover any remaining costs.
As alluded to earlier, this isn’t a novel idea — nor is it exclusive to the stomping grounds of bleeding heart liberals. In 2015, ruby red Tennessee implemented its Tennessee Promise program, giving out scholarships to help make community college tuition-free for residents of the Volunteer State. The program ended up helping boost community college enrollment by 40 percent.
In North Carolina, we seem to be almost halfway there. The current NC Promise has helped North Carolinians attend college since the McCrory administration by lowering tuition at Western Carolina University, UNC-Pembroke and Elizabeth State University to $500 per semester, compared to the $3,500 price tag for a semester as a full-time in-state student at UNC-Chapel Hill. North Carolina's Career and College Promise allows high schoolers to enroll in community college courses tuition-free while in high school in order to get a leg up when they eventually move on to a two-year or four-year institution.
