Sturdevant: “2+2=Green”
By Mitch Berg
It’s a good thing Lori Sturdevant is a columnist, and doesn’t work in a field where she needs to be insightful or accurate.
Sturdevant – the most reliable operator in a regional media that serves as the DFL’s PR agency – finds this blazing insight while writing about the economy:
All it took for the “too-few-workers” lament to return were a solid recovery from recession,
That’s right; Lori Sturdevant has realized that when companies aren’t laying off workers, they need workers.
She gets paid for this.
Sure enough, “workforce” is back on top as the No. 1 “drag on economic growth” in Minnesota. That’s according to the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s latest findings from a year of interviewing 797 business owners around the state. Worker issues beat out lousy transportation and — amazingly — high taxes, which have fallen to Gripe No. 3…Availability and quality of trained workers are “the No. 1 issue for our members. How do we ensure that we’ll have a workforce that can do the job?”
Welcome back to the right question, bizfolk. Hope you stay with it this time.
Lori. Bubbie. Why do you suppose taxes have fallen to number three?
Because we’ve had four years of holding the line on taxes. Which played a disproportionate role in solving the recession. Which has led to skilled workers (unaccountably including myself) being in demand again.
Did I mention Lori Sturdevant gets paid for this?
Educators, economists and crystal-ball gazers long have been saying that the most serious long-term threat to this state’s prosperity isn’t uncompetitively high taxes. Minnesota has had a higher-than-average tax burden for decades, and thrived with it.
No, Lori. History is replete with examples of cities, states and nations that were sunk by high taxes. Minnesota has thrived in spite of high taxes, as we’ve noted in the past; we’ve had certain advantages that have helped us survive the profligacy of a couple of generations’ worth of tax and spend DFL governments.
The greater competitive risk is that this still-small, climatologically challenged state won’t be able to raise, attract and educate enough of the brainpower workers that 21st-century businesses need.
Minnesota’s Private College Research Foundation has been clanging that alarm for years. It predicted in 2004 that by 2010, Minnesota won’t produce enough college grads to replace retirees and meet employers’ expansion needs. By 2017, new college grads won’t be numerous enough to replace the retirees, let alone keep up with business growth.
That forecast appears to be on target. Already last year, the state Chamber of Commerce said, nearly two out of five outstate employers and a fourth of metro ones had trouble finding specialty skilled workers.
So what would be the sensible course to take? Would it be…:
- Crediting business for their training efforts – which make sense in any case, if they’d like to stay in business in the first place?
- Using the school system we already have to try to inculcate in students the sense that they need to develop the kind of mental agility and planning ability it takes to pick a career path from the many that are opening (and begging for workers) that best fit their talents?
No. In Lori Sturdevant’s world, like always, it comes back to government:
“Other states are taking action on this problem, creating special training at local colleges and universities for larger employers, and/or bringing basic technical skills to high school students. … Minnesota could lose these companies and these jobs if it cannot find a solution,” warns the Chamber’s just-released “Grow Minnesota!” annual report.
Such matters appear to be moving up on the legislative agendas being set in executive suites and boardrooms. Last week, the state Chamber of Commerce decided that at the 2007 Legislature, it will support increased funding for the University of Minnesota and the MnSCU systems…Other CEOs are lining up smartly in favor of more student aid and incentives for college-prep work by at-risk high school kids, as urged by the private colleges.
In other words – business wants the state to help them out of the jam by sponsoring yet another big-dollar program which is both a handout to business and to the higher-education industry and unions. And since Minnesota does such a lousy job educating K-12 students, they will likely need to.
When higher ed was taking a beating at the Capitol in 2002 and 2003, the biz lobby seemed too busy fending off proposed tax increases to care. Competitiveness was their mantra then. It can be still. But its meaning needs to shift from “no new taxes” to “beef up education.”
Where “beef up education” equals “keep tossing money at the educational-industrial complex that already squanders so much of this state’s wealth”.
Sorry, Lori. This state spends more than enough to educate good workers. Most of it is wasted. More money won’t help. Better to give it directly to the businesses and let them teach the kids.
It’d be more honest.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:28 am
One of the problems is that schools aren’t teaching the right things for a skilled work force. Up the K-12 math and science requirements.We do well early on, but compared to other countries we fall down from about 8th grade on. There are plenty of course requirements that could be reduced to off-set this (primarily in the social science area).
I honestly think some of the problem is because the typical school board or teacher’s union member and those who go into education in general, have an inclination towards social science and undervalue math and the hard sciences.
If the state does look to more aid or tuition breaks lets (which I don’t believe are needed), let’s at least put the spending / incentives towards degree areas where there is a shortage (mathematics, engineering, computer science, programming, medicine and bio-tech, etc.). I don’t think I’ve ever heard an employer say, “You know what we could use is a really good Sociologist or a really good German Womens’ Literature major.”
Also, incorporating more skilled labor/vocational training options for high school age students would probably be beneficial.
One solution to improving math, science and other practical education would be to increase the pay scale for those in math and science (it’s difficult for some districts to attract qualified teachers). Another would be to allow subject matter experts into the classroom for part-time instruction. Unfortunately, the unions will never go for this. My father was a district department head and a teacher for over 30 years and nothing frustrated him more than the union’s lack of interest in students’ success. Granted the union’s first responsibility by definition is to the teachers, but they disingenously sell it as they are all about the kiddies.
I heard an interesting discussion with Buzz Aldrin. He said by far the biggest benefit to the space program was the large number of kids who became interested in math and science as a result.
By looking at the resolutions from the last couple of NEA conventions, it seems that most teachers are concerned with the global warming / alternative fuels / energy dependence issue, as am I (at least the last two, for sure). Well, if you want to tackle that issue, the solution isn’t going to come from turning out more activists, it’s going to come from turning out more engineers.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:17 pm
On the plus side, as a web geek with a BS in Physics and minors in Mathematics and Computer Science, my employment prospects are looking good.
As long as the energy dependence issues get resolved well enough to keep my computers running.