Lori Sturdevant: Minnesota can't thrive by throwing up its hands

Time's running short for the state to avert a shortage of educated workers.

By LORI STURDEVANT, Star Tribune

Last update: August 31, 2009 - 12:53 PM

For a week now, I've been troubled by one thing Dave Laird said in our "exit chat" as he prepares to step down as president of the Minnesota Private College Council, Fund and Research Foundation.

He was describing the response he's heard from state lawmakers through the years as he's shared projections that the supply of Minnesota college grads will soon fall short of meeting employer demand.

"I've heard surprise, some anxiety and often, privately, a lament that while they think we are correct, there isn't a collection of interests that would allow them to proceed" with corrective action, Laird said. Senior legislative leaders have come to him more than once and said, "The timing isn't right," or "I think you're right, but the politics of this are too great to overcome."

That's a serious indictment. To hear such excuses one year, from one political party, for not addressing something as fundamental to this state's prospects as its educated workforce would be bad enough.

To hear the excuses repeatedly, from leaders of both parties, during these crucial granary-filling years before the baby boomers retire, is doubt-inspiring. Can a state with such immobilized leadership long sustain the prosperity it has inherited?

Clearly, David B. Laird Jr. has his doubts. They've made him something of a dark prophet at the Capitol in recent years, bringing inconvenient projections about a coming worker shortage to lawmakers who consider today's problems burden enough.

But Laird is also a man with a ready laugh; a fondness for skiing and Dixieland jazz, and belief in the power of education, public policy and enlightened Minnesotans to bend the trend lines in a better direction.

Those beliefs explain why, beginning 20 years ago, he beefed up the research arm of the Private College Council, then already 40 years old. He turned that collective of 17 private, four-year liberal arts colleges into a nationally recognized source of solid information on higher-education affordability, student outcomes and workforce trends.

That work has shown that higher education in Minnesota is as good as its promise. It changes lives for the better.

But the research also says that Minnesota's college-age population has begun a period of decline. The low-income and minority-race shares of that population are growing fast. Too many young people from those ranks are opting out of college. High cost is a major reason, but not the only reason, they aren't earning degrees. (To learn more, visit an aptly named website, www.learnmoremn.org.)

Meanwhile, employers' demand for college-educated workers was forecast to exceed the supply beginning in 2010. Laird said the recession is likely postponing that moment a little, as some boomers delay retirement. But it's coming -- and when it does, it stands to slow business investment in Minnesota.

Smart public policy has the power to change that forecast, Laird argues -- and he's not just talking about spending more money. He's also talking about "a radically different financing model" that creates incentives for colleges to produce more graduates and see them through to employment in high-demand fields.

One idea: Subsidies to institutions could be based on the share of students who complete each term successfully. Another: Student aid could require repayment to a graduate's alma mater, provided the recipient lands a decent-wage job soon after graduation.

Change is coming before long elsewhere in Minnesota's top collegiate echelons and in the governor's office. If new leaders arrive armed with Laird's solid research, fresh ideas and a mandate to keep this state ahead of the demand for college-educated workers, they might still have a chance to make it so. But time is no longer on their side.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.

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