Addressing local economic needs through community colleges

Aug. 26—It's becoming more and more common for colleges to offer workforce training certifications or aspects for students, especially at community institutions.

The most recently signed state budget allocated $20 million for the state's Higher Education Department to dole out to community colleges and regional universities to pay for student tuition, fees for workforce training courses and apprenticeship or internship subsidies.

Becky Rowley, president of New Mexico Independent Community Colleges, called it a huge policy that'll really help the state's students. She presented to the interim legislative Economic and Rural Development and Policy Committee on Wednesday and spoke about the economic benefits community colleges provide to New Mexico.

NMICC represents 11 schools in the state, including Central New Mexico Community College, Clovis Community College and San Juan College. The schools serve about 58,000 credit students.

The coalition of community colleges supports nearly 35,000 jobs, according to a 2024 report from the national data-gathering organization Lightcast. NMICC also has 17,705 students in workforce training and gave out more than 13,000 credentials, certificates or degrees with the wrap of the most recent school year.

Rowley said because colleges part of NMICC are so geographically diverse, economic development is a central part of the group's focus.

"Economic development looks different in all of those communities," she said.

Rowley highlighted educational programs designed to meet local needs, including trucking and diesel technology, emergency medical services training, energy and broadband. More recently added programs include alternative teacher licensure, criminal justice, water treatment and nursing, she said.

"Every time we add a program, we're adding it at the response of or at the request of some business, someone in our community that says there is a need," Rowley said.

Sen. Carrie Hamblen, D-Las Cruces, agreed that community colleges can quickly respond to communities' economic needs.

"I see the value in community colleges, especially in responding to the workforce needs that we have," she said.

Recruiting high-demand workers

Rowley said community colleges are trying to respond to far-ranging health care needs in local communities by adding more instructors, especially in nursing, which seems to be in a critical shortage.

She said colleges are offering short-term training classes that certify nurses and pharmacy technicians "and folks like that that do not require nearly as much time to get into the workforce."

"We're all still trying to recruit teachers," Rowley said.

Rep. Martin Zamora, R-Clovis, asked what the weakest point is in recruiting instructors and what community colleges are doing to make that better.

Rowley said that's a very difficult question, but a significant issue is pay, especially when more rural areas in New Mexico are competing against cities like Santa Fe that offer higher paying jobs.

"It's important to work on the pay structure," she said.

Zamora said Clovis Community College struggles with instructor recruitment, and his daughter is an instructor in the college's nursing program.

"But the reality of it is that someday she will leave Clovis Community College for higher pay," he said. He added that she could already find better pay elsewhere.

The Legislature needs to look at funding solutions for health care instructors, he said.

"It's going to hurt us down the road," Zamora said.

Rowley said there are things the community college in Clovis has done well, like hiring nurses with a bachelor's degree and helping them enroll in and pay for a master's program.

"In Santa Fe, we want to hire people who already have a master's degree, and that is really, really, really limiting and really difficult," she said. "So I'm working on broadening our perspective on how we approach that."

Rowley added that good nursing directors recruit straight from hospitals.

"In my opinion, us taking one or two really good nurses out of the field but being able to train another ... 20 or 30 nurses with those two faculty members is still going to be a net benefit to the hospital," she said.