Oregon AAWCC blog

http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

Free courses are now available to Oregon public, academic, tribal, and school libraries as part of the Statewide Database Licensing Program through LearningExpress Library.  http://www.oregon.gov/OSL/LD/technology/sdlp/LearningExpress/ . 

Courses include:

• Citizenship Tests and Study Materials
• College Tests such as CLEP, MCAT, LCAT, AP, GRE
• Computer Courses including:
  o Adobe Flash Courses
  o Adobe Illustrator Courses
  o Adobe Photoshop Courses
  o Corel WordPerfect Courses
  o Microsoft Access Courses
  o Microsoft Excel Courses
  o Microsoft Outlook Courses
  o Microsoft PowerPoint Courses
  o Microsoft Project Courses
  o Microsoft Publisher Courses
  o Microsoft SharePoint Designer Courses
  o Microsoft Visio Courses
  o Microsoft Word Courses
  o Windows and Mac Operating Systems Courses
• Employment Tests for automotive technicians, firemen, EMT, CDL, Nursing and Allied Health
• GED Preparation Courses, including a set in Spanish.
• General Skills such as Math, Writing, Grammar and Vocabulary
• Résumés and Job Search Skills

Learning has never been more accessible!

The end of October is approaching – which means next month ushers in the annual AAWCC Fall Conference! Set for Thursday and Friday, November 18 and 19, the conference – “Obstacles and Opportunities: Thriving in Changing Times” – will take place at its new location, the Embassy Suites Hotel in Tigard.

  This year’s conference promises an exciting slate of panels and workshops, as well as engaging keynote presentations – click on the link for an article loaded with detail.

 And an opportunity for you: What questions would you like to ask our panel of community college presidents, slated to speak on Thursday, Nov. 18, from 1:30-2:30 p.m.? Now is the time to ponder – and we want to hear your ideas! Post your questions in the comments section; we’ll pool the submissions and choose a handful to lob to the following panelists:

• Linda Gerber/Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus
• Cheryl Roberts/Chemeketa Community College
• Mary Spilde/Lane Community College
• Joanne Truesdell/Clackamas Community College

 If you haven’t yet registered for the conference, do so before November 1 to get the discounted member rate. Visit our Web site to get more information and/or to register: http://www.aawccoregon.org/fall-conference/

 We’ll see you there!

At today’s Whitehouse summit on Community Colleges, Melinda Gates announced the launch of Completion by Design, a program to help community colleges increase graduation rates.

Oregon’s not on the list of states that may apply.  According to the Gates Foundation website: “The Request for Applications (RFA) announced today seek submissions from groups of community colleges in nine target states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Washington. Up to five multi-campus groups of community colleges will be selected in early 2011 through a competitive evaluation process.”

Successful grant applications will include recommendations for innovations in advising, financial aid counseling, class schedules and technology.  Innovations found to be successful will be able to replicated in other locations with help from the foundtion.

Track the progress of these initiatives at CompletionByDesign.org.

Structural versus Cyclical Unemployment

 Structural: Workers without jobs whose skills don’t match the types of jobs available.

Cyclical: The worker is available and willing to work but currently without work due to lack of demand in the economy.

Is our current situation structural unemployment? “The long-term unemployed—those who have been out of work for more than 26 weeks—now account for almost half of the jobless. A worry is that this cohort may become unemployable as their skills atrophy and they become increasingly detached from the informal networks that would lead them to new jobs.” http://www.economist.com/node/16889105

Christina D. Romer, Council of Economic Advisers believes unemployment is not structural but cyclical: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/Back-to-a-Better-Normal

When will it get better?

“In the ten-year window following severe financial crises, unemployment rates are significantly higher than in the decade that preceded the crisis… In ten of the fifteen post-crisis episodes, unemployment has never fallen back to its pre-crisis level, not in the decade that followed nor through end-2009.”  http://www.aei.org/docLib/Reinhart-After-the-Fall-August-17.pdf

“Between December 2007 – the official first month of the recession – and December 2009, the U.S. economy lost more than eight million jobs. Even if the economy creates jobs from now on at a pace equal to the fastest four years of the early 2000s expansion, we will not return to the December 2007 level of employment until March 2014. And, by the time we return to the number of jobs we had in December 2007, population growth will have increased the potential labor force by about 6.5 million jobs. If job growth matched the fastest four years in the most recent economic expansion, the economy would not catch up to the expanded labor force until April 2021. Even if job creation rates were as high as the fastest four years of the 1990s recovery, we would not return to pre-recession employment levels until September 2012, and we would not cover the increase in the potential labor force until September 2014.”  http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/urgent-need-2010-07.pdf

Should the Fed do more? 

UO professor Tim Duy says:  “In sum, what Bernanke actually said is that yes, there is more that we can do, but really none of it is effective and we do not intend to go there unless things get really, really bad.  How bad?  Your guess is as good as his:

  ‘At this juncture, the Committee has not agreed on specific criteria or triggers for further action…’ 

They haven’t even agreed on current action… Paul Krugman sees the current situation as a monumental failure of Bernanke to follow his own research…

 Seriously, millions of people looking for work, for years, according to the Fed’s own forecasts, and Bernanke is concerned about permanent damage to the federal funds market?”  (emphasis mine)   http://economistsview.typepad.com/timduy/2010/08/no-clothes.html

Richard Florida’s team crunches the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show job growth across the states.  Oregon comes in within the mid-range.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/08/where-the-jobs-will-be/61459/

For those of us lucky enough to attend the AAWCC summer conference, we got the chance to learn from some great speakers: ”Enter the World of Google Apps”, Amethyst O’Brien, Google; “Tools for Educators”, Niki Taylo, Sunset High School; “Google in the College Setting”, Professor Grace Windsheimer, Columbia Gorge Community College.  Resources here: http://www.aawccoregon.org/summer-conference/resources.html.

Oregon’s educational embrace of Google apps is mentioned on Google’s blog   http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/alis-volat-propriis-oregons-bringing.html and at Mashable: http://mashable.com/2010/04/28/schools-google-apps/.

Americans now have a bigger debt burden for student loans than for credit cards.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/08/09/student-loan-debt-surpasses-credit-cards/

This just in…from Oregon Employment Forecast, Amy Vander Vliet, Regional Economist, State of Oregon.

“…with no foreseeable ‘magic bullet’ in the near future, OEA [Office of Economic Anaylsis]

expects a slow start to the recovery.

6 major industries are expected to contract this year

3 will expand & 1 will be flat

Construction will suffer the steepest decline by far (-15.0%) in anticipation of continued weakness in the housing market  and tough times for commercial real estate brought on by tight credit, rising vacancy rates, and low demand.

 Manufacturing will decline in step with the nation, although at a slower pace than OEA forecasted earlier in the year.

 The outlook for high tech has brightened; chip sales are up and expected to go higher.

 Financial activities will lose more jobs this year before starting to rebound in 2011.

 The government sector will cut positions as state and local governments struggle to balance their budgets.

 Education & health services weathered the recession better than every other sector. It will be the fastest growing sector this year (+1.9%) due almost entirely to the expanding health care component.

 Professional & business services will show signs of life after suffering sharp losses in 2009.

 Leisure & hospitality should benefit from the consumer slowly relaxing their grip on their wallet.

 The information sector, which includes software, is expected to end this year flat compared to 2009” [emphasis mine.]

While Congress debates federal deficit spending, the situation for American Workers is troubling.

Unemployment for men is worse than for women and the outlook is not good.

For older workers, the risk that to the federal budget is that more of them will be funded permanently on disability rather than temporarily on unemployment insurance.  Cutting Off Unemployment Benefits Could Worsen Deficit.  It also means that we will permanently loose expertise that could be useful once the economy bounces back.

For young workers, the lack of opportunity to gain skills can have a lasting, even permanent effect on their future prospects.  Something’s Not Working. 

In “Outliers,” Malcom Gladwell gives evidence for his claim regarding the “10,000 hour rule.”  The assertion is that mastery of a skill or task is achieved after 10,000 hours of practice.

If young workers don’t get started on their skill development, how will this impact their potential?

If late career workers cannot find work, does it make sense for them to start over on a new skill very late in their working life?

Job creation now is an investment in our future.  Unemployment is costsly.  Disinvestment now is “penny wise and pound foolish.”