Some wise fellow once said that when the price of the status quo exceeds the cost of change, then it’s high time to shift gears. That’s kind of the crossroads at which Mississippi finds itself relative to the community colleges’ “Dropout Recovery” program.

The program, which is designed to produce GED graduates with viable jobs skills, has been only partially funded the past two years by the Mississippi Legislature. Each of Mississippi’s 15 community colleges has been awarded $100,000 for the purpose of bolstering its number of GED graduates, and the colleges have done that.

Thanks to that additional support MCC received from the Legislature, our number of GED graduates last year hit an all-time record 296. To put that into perspective, our 296 GED graduates would suggest that MCC now produces, de facto, the second-largest high school equivalent senior class in Lauderdale County. And, truth be told, many of our constituents aren’t cognizant of adult basic education being a component of MCC’s mission.

While community colleges are appreciative of the aforementioned special appropriation, Dropout Recovery is a dream that won’t be realized until the program is fully funded to include fast-track job skills training and wrap-around student services, i.e., transportation, child care, and stronger tutorial assistance. To that end, the colleges are requesting $13,849,500 from the Legislature for FY11.

At a time when Mississippi’s tax collections haven’t met projections for 12 straight months and education is already reeling from a recent 5 percent cut in state appropriations, it’s a long shot that the Legislature will honor the community college’s request for additional funding. Nonetheless, it’s the duty of the college presidents to make the needs and priorities of our system known to the Legislature, and we’ll try to do Wednesday, Sept. 23 in Jackson at the Legislative Budget Office (LBO) hearings.

A GED is a worthy accomplishment, especially when one considers that Mississippi ranks 49th among all states in the percent of its population between 18-24 with a high school diploma. However, a GED unaccompanied by a job skill is tantamount to dressing someone up for a party and then having nowhere for them to go.

If Dropout Recovery were to be fully funded for FY11, community colleges would implement training programs like sheetrock hanging and floating, masonry, floor tiling, etc., that would provide graduates with an opportunity to compete for a job in an ever-tightening marketplace. It’s the difference between having some chance and no chance.

Recently, through HB488, a panel of leading educators and legislators convened to map strategies to improve Mississippi’s graduation rates. Our state ranks near the bottom on a percentage basis in nearly every category of educational attainment from high school diplomas to graduate and professional degrees. The only area in which Mississippi is competing fairly well is on its percentage of community college Associate Degrees awarded in the 25-64 age population, in which we rank 29th.

The problem is our state is like a dog chasing its tail. We apparently don’t have the money to fully invest in programs like Dropout Recovery, but until we do, the only way things are predictably going to change is for the worse. The fact is that, under the best of conditions, Mississippi can’t produce enough college degrees among its traditional age population to be able to keep existing industry healthy and attract new industry into the future. In order to compete in a global marketplace, we must better connect with adult learners, those people who, for whatever reasons, have educationally fallen through the cracks.

Adults without effective communication and computational skills as well as specific job training will forever be trapped in a darned near escape-proof socio-economic box. Laying it smack on the line, such folks tend to suck the life’s blood out of an economy, rather than contributing to its health. Dropout Recovery represents the best plan Mississippi has to break that vicious cycle – one that dumps about 14,000 new dropouts into our communities every year, some of whom end up incarcerated or otherwise beneficiaries of state and/or federal subsidies.

Dropout Recovery is a program predicated on a basic value – that is, Mississippi’s community colleges believe that those who fail to finish high school are not bad people, rather, good people who have made some bad choices. For their own benefit and for that of Mississippi, they must have a second chance. Dropout Recovery seeks to give them one.

Let’s all hope that, as the Mississippi Legislature goes about the formidable task of fashioning its FY11 budget, it sees Dropout Recovery as a real priority – otherwise, as the old saying goes, “if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to keep on getting what you’ve always got.”