More college grads and a stronger state

These aren't good days to be asking state government to raise taxes and spend more money. But neither are these good days for government to sit by and allow the number of college graduates in Minnesota's workforce to decline.

That's on the horizon unless Minnesota increases the share of its young people who successfully get through high school and college. If current college-going trends continue, the share of Minnesota 25- to-34-year-olds with a bachelor's degree or higher will drop from 36 percent to 25 percent by 2020. There won't be enough new grads entering the work force to replace retiring baby boomers, let alone fill newly created jobs.

That warning was sounded this week by the Minneapolis think tank Growth & Justice. It urges the Legislature and Gov. Tim Pawlenty to resolve in 2009 that Minnesota will not only reverse the slide in college grad numbers, but get them climbing again. A worthy goal, the group says: Produce 50 percent more one-, two- and four-year college grads per year by 2020.

Growth & Justice recommended a number of strategies, all with proven cost-effectiveness, that could help Minnesota bump up the educational attainment of its millennia generation. The research-driven proposals range from better access to prenatal care (Minnesota ranks 27th nationally in prenatal care affordability) to more need-based aid to college students. (To keep up with the nation's top grad-producing states, Minnesota would have to spend $115 million more per year on student aid.)

The total package of recommendations carries a large price tag — $1 billion per year in additional state spending. That big ticket is unrealistic in the face of a state budget deficit widely expected to top $3 billion in the coming biennium.

But inaction also carries a price tag. Growth & Justice researchers calculate that each year's "class" of about 10,000 Minnesota high school dropouts will deprive the state of $10.6 billion over their lifetimes, in lower tax revenues and higher outlays for things like food stamps, Medicaid, housing subsidies and criminal justice services.

Saying no to proven measures that would shrink that burden has the effect of imposing a hidden tax on future Minnesotans. And failing to keep Minnesota's workforce among the nation's best-educated will alter this state's industrial mix and sap its future prosperity.

Today's economic woes are very real — as illustrated by Thursday's report that 7,500 jobs were lost in Minnesota last month. But the coming shortage of well-educated workers identified by Growth & Justice (and, for many years before it, the Minnesota Private College Foundation) is also real.

Responsible stewards of this state cannot ignore either the short-term problem or the long-term threat. In the next legislative session, they ought to embrace an ambitious but realistic goal for increasing the share of young Minnesotans who obtain post-secondary education in the next decade.

To meet that goal, they should find ways to reallocate state spending to favor the proven strategies Growth & Justice identified. They should also call on Minnesota's private, not-for-profit and volunteer sectors to join the public sector in a coordinated brainpower surge. A state that once billed itself as "The Brainpower State" can do no less.