“I’m worried there is no opportunity here for my children and they will move away” — we’ve all heard it or thought it. What you probably haven’t heard is, “We have good paying jobs and want to hire trained local workforce, but we can’t find them; we need help” — that’s the most common statement those of us in elected office hear from businesses that have already invested here. Solving both of those problems is what the leadership of our local higher education institutions and governments spend a great deal of time doing.
We have quality opportunities here largely because local industries take care of their people. They pay them well; they provide health insurance; they encourage them to volunteer and give back to the community; and they pay for their employees to further their education. Del Mar College launched our second bachelor’s degree program, Organizational Management and Leadership, this semester. It’s designed to allow any of our Associate of Applied Science graduates — over 50 different degrees — to take online classes to complete a bachelor’s degree and take on a management role in their field. We predicted 40 people would be in the first class, but with recruiting help from our industrial partners, the first class is 237 students! Local industries want their next generation of managers to be experienced employees from the Coastal Bend.
I call our local industries community partners because they are. They give frequently and heavily to general scholarship funds; they serve on curriculum advisory committees so our graduates are immediately employable; they create and fund apprenticeship programs so our students can earn a good living while they train for an even better job; and they assist us with acquiring top-of-the-line equipment so students train on the same cutting-edge technology they will use in the workplace. Whether our education advocates are at City Hall, in Austin or in Washington asking for more funding, our industry partners are right there with us, saying, “This is a critical investment you need to make.”
Most importantly, these investments spill over, allowing us to diversify and expand our economy. The Del Mar Process Technology Program, which began with investments from the college, local industries and the city, has been the strongest asset in economic development. Our local steel companies and Tesla have cited the process technology program as the reason they chose Corpus Christi over other communities. We are now positioned to compete for high-tech manufacturing jobs because we invested in specialized training.
As these investments have come online, demand for specialized workers has exploded. Because most of the entry-level jobs require a certificate or associate degree, pay has increased dramatically. In fact, according to the Census Bureau, Corpus Christi has a higher average income for people with some college or an associate degree than San Antonio, Houston, El Paso or Dallas. As a result, we now have a higher median household income and the lowest poverty rate than all those cities. In addition, the local home ownership rate is 6-15% higher than all those cities, except for El Paso.
So, when someone cites one of those places as a model for us to follow, just remember that means going backward, not forward. We live in one of the few places in the country where the middle class is getting larger, not smaller.
Every spring and fall, I have the honor of standing on stage at graduation and shaking the hands of students walking out of generational poverty and into the middle class. That results from leaders at all levels of government funding education, building infrastructure and working with partners from across the community to recruit new investment to our area. We are not such a large community that we can prosper despite ourselves. We must make smart, strategic investments that create new, high-paying jobs, and educate our people to do them. We must have leaders who respect each other, the institutions and people they lead and the community they serve.
We are no longer the poor community of my youth that lacked opportunity, but we are not yet what we aspire to be. We get there by diversifying and building on what we have, not ripping it all down — remember that when you vote!
David Loeb is a Del Mar College regent, owner of Landlord Resources and a former at-large Corpus Christi City Council member.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Opinion: Investments in education help expand Coastal Bend economy