Erskine Bowles visits Boone

By Frank Ruggiero

ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com

He came from the hill to the mountaintop.

Appalachian State University Chancellor Ken Peacock used such a phrase to describe a visit by Erskine Bowles.

Bowles, president of the University of North Carolina system, visited Boone Wednesday for the Walker College of Business CEO Executive Luncheon, where he delivered the keynote address.

Peacock introduced Bowles, telling how he’s visited Boone three times since he assumed the office of president in January. Bowles admitted he’d spent a lot of time traveling throughout North Carolina, but alluded to a trip through Asia, where he visited for tsunami relief.

While abroad, he realized North Carolina had received a wake-up call. If more people are not educated, the state will become a second-rate power in the nation, he said, adding this wouldn’t occur in 50 years, but in his lifetime.

He dismissed rationalization of the subject, where people would oftentimes say there’s no need to worry about the loss of low-skill jobs, as the state could still produce the “next new thing.”

“If we don’t get more of our people better educated, that next new thing isn’t going to be created here,” Bowles said, adding it would be created elsewhere, likely overseas, and the jobs would follow. “We face a crisis … here in America, in North Carolina, a crisis I believe we’d better wake up and start treating right away.”

The state, Bowles said, is taking in water, with the number of people younger than 25  slipping in college graduation rates, particularly in the rural portions of the state, where less than 22 percent of residents hold degrees.

In Singapore, 44 percent of eight-graders scored at the most advanced level in math and science, he said. At the same time, less than 7 percent of eight-graders in America performed at that aptitude.

Referring to low-skill jobs, Bowles said, “Those jobs are gone and they’re not coming back.” He said the UNC system is working hard to lower the cost of college education, so people can enroll and graduate “with a diploma that means everything.”

“I promise you  ... we get it, and we are at a dead run today,” Bowles said, guaranteeing the university system will produce graduates with “the skills and the abilities they’ll need to compete in a knowledge-based, global economy.”

In that sense, the university system can no longer be a supply-driven organization, but instead a demand-driven organization to meet the state’s needs, Bowles said. Many campuses have started business incubators, while others are more entrepreneurial in nature.

As an example, Bowles referred to ASU which recently established the Center for Entrepreneurship. “It’s small businesses that are creating all the jobs today,” he said, adding that such programs prove beneficial to communities.

Sometimes, he said, companies cannot figure out how to grow more efficient to compete with international business, which results in their demise. Bowles told how students from N.C. State University helped such a business save $800,000 a year and remain open.

The University of North Carolina system must solve “real problems in real time,” he said, and then referred to the state’s teacher shortage. A new college of education at Appalachian would address this matter, and Bowles said the system will get the funding to make it happen.

He also referred to ASU’s nursing program, which began offering courses this fall semester. There are now 60 nurses studying for master’s degrees, so they can teach in community college, Bowles said, adding that most community colleges have top-notch buildings and equipment, but no teachers.

“This is our job,” he said. “It’s on us. We’ve got to start this and we’ve got to start it today … The world has gotten smarter – a lot smarter; and we have got to get smarter with it.”