Win-Win-Win for education

Posted on January 30, 2008
Filed Under Online Recruiting, Community Partnerships, Education, Solutions |

Over the holidays, I spent some time trying to better understand some of the challenges we have here in Nevada when it comes to education. A few of the stories I read in the Las Vegas Sun gave me some great insight. In particular the articles were about UNLV’s graduate assistants.

According to the articles published:

Nevada higher education wants to add more graduate programs, but
Has challenges attracting graduate students due to the lack of incentive money or pay (stipend)

The article titled “You Get What You Pay For,” really simplified the problem. The problem being that UNLV can only offer a stipend (part-time work) of $10-12 thousand per year while other states offer more than $20-25 thousand. Therefore graduate students go elsewhere for their master’s degree along with the revenues created from enrollment. And ultimately, after graduating from a graduate level program, they stay in the state where they received their education.

Many know that I spend a lot of my time seeking out ‘true solutions’ to the critical workforce shortages that exist here in Nevada. Many times, Recruiting Nevada will have nothing to do with the solution, outside of its’ early conception and provoking thought about a long-term solution. But nonetheless, I feel we have something to offer. Therefore, we do. With that being said, here are some facts:

Education is underfunded in Nevada
Nevada employers want a more educated workforce
Employers also want programs to ‘grow their own’
Our under-educated workforce deters companies from relocating to Nevada

Well, it would seem that:

If Higher Education would create more graduate programs, they would increase their enrollments, therefore bring in more tuition, and increase revenue for the colleges and universities.
These graduate programs would produce a smarter workforce that would more than likely stay in the area where they received their education and contribute to the overall economy.
Local businesses would further fuel enrollments by sending their existing workforce for continuing education.
The level of education of the overall workforce would increase; therefore attract more companies to relocate.

Now, if that seems logical - let’s move on to how the ‘lack of graduate assistant funding’ can be used to solve Nevada’s other education problem:

K-12 struggles each year to find 3,000 new teachers
Local colleges and universities graduate 400 new teachers each year
K-12 must recruit over 2,500 new teachers each year from other states
This shortage has a long term impact on our ability to educate our future workforce (300,000+ in Clark County alone)

The solution seems simple. This would be the approach:

What if K-12 recognized this opportunity and partnered with higher education.
Graduate assistants would be required to teach K-12 in the subject of their expertise – dominantly Math & Sciences
The graduate assistant would receive their stipend in the form of a reduced salary of a new teacher (new teachers earn $32,000. This would be subsidized by the existing $12K stipend, creating a $12K saving for K-12)

So the outcome would be this:

K-12 would have a steady supply of new teachers who are motivated
Higher Education would lead the nation in stipend money (now $32K)
K-12 would lower their expense for a new teacher $12K
K-12 students would get educated by a smarter teacher in a specialty area

What would the long-term impact be:

Higher Education would increase enrollments, therefore revenues
K-12 would save $12K per new teacher or over $30 million per year
Graduate level programs would expand
Local businesses would benefit
K-12 would have a deep pool of qualified teachers
More businesses would move here to take advantage of our highly educated workforce.
The economy would further diversify, adding more revenue to the state budgets.

Seems like a logical (and pretty easy) solution to me. I don’t see a downside. And considering the state of the economy in Nevada today and the Governor’s desire to correct the problem by further cutting education budgets – we can’t go wrong!