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Show A The bv SeiuitorOrrin I Liich Utah's community colleges The American economy is changing. That's not news. While many traditional industries are hurting, high-tech and other fields are growing rapidly. Production and sales are high in these new industries, and so is the demand for properly skilled skill-ed workers. And where are workers getting the proper skills? In Utah, the answer is often found in places like Price, Ephraim, St. George and Provo. Utah's community colleges, col-leges, including the College of Eastern Utah, Snow, Dixie, and the Utah Technical colleges in Provo and Salt Lake, are capable of providing the training needed in America's new industries. The National Council of state Directors Direc-tors of community and junior colleges met recently in Park City, and brought representatives from most of the 50 states. As they heard, it's important to note the contributions community colleges col-leges make to our society in today's changing economy. Community colleges have a unique ability to train people for work in rapidly expanding fields. In the early 1970s, for example, after public interest in-terest in Soviet and American space exploration resulted in more scientists and aero-space engineers than were able to find work, they turned to community com-munity colleges and two-year technical institutes to quickly re-focus their training on jobs in the then-expanding then-expanding fields of ecological and environmental en-vironmental science. Utah's smaller colleges can effectively effec-tively provide the same kind of timely time-ly training today. Snow College in Ephraim, for example, has an excellent ex-cellent electronics program, and programs pro-grams at other state community colleges col-leges are drawing more and more students to their campuses. Nationally, National-ly, one of every three college students are enrolled in a community college; 20 years ago, only one of nine attended attend-ed a community school. By their very nature, community colleges have great flexibility in structuring struc-turing their curriculum. Many courses are open-ended, and do not always run for a quarter or a semester but until a student acquires the skills he or she . enrolled to learn. Community colleges can often condense or individualize general or liberal education courses and hasten a student's entry into the job force. Larger Utah colleges like Utah State, Weber State and Southern Utah State College have also structured struc-tured some of their programs to provide pro-vide such flexibility. Of course, Utah's major colleges also fill a needed function in producing produc-ing graduates with baccalaureate and higher training in engineering or science or other high-demand fields. In the push for this training, however, we should keep in mind that every engineer or scientist needs three to five qualified support technicians, who usually can be trained on the community com-munity college level. Proposed changes in federal educational educa-tional funding will enable more community com-munity colleges to qualify for more federal funds. My staff is prepared to help Utah's community colleges qualify for these funds; in light of the purposes they serve in today's changing chang-ing economy, increased support for these schools is very worthwile. |