The Meridian Community College Foundation, which funds the college’s tuition guarantee program, paying tuition for all Lauderdale County residents who graduate high school (or homeschooled graduates), is kicking off its fund-raising year. MCC President Dr. Scott Elliott, MCC Director of Institutional Advancement Kathy Brookshire, and MCC Foundation President Jerry Purvis participated in an editorial board recently to discuss the program.



The Meridian Star: Explain the tuition guarantee program to our readers.



Kathy Brookshire: A common misconception in the community is that we (MCC) have free tuition. We don’t. These people (The MCC Foundation) raise the money.



Scott Elliott: If you can possibly find a downside to the program, it’s this connotation that it’s free. It’s just a misnomer because somebody always has to pay for it. And in the case of this program it comes out of the pockets of businesspeople and citizens who choose to support higher education in this community. We’re not aware of another program like this one. Other tuition assistance programs across America … those are products of government. This program is a product of the private sector.



The Star: With these businesses, is there a contract, or is it every year that you are out fund-raising?



Elliott: This is not an endowment … It’s people like Jerry (Purvis), who gives up his time every year to start from scratch, and knock on those doors, solicit the support for the program. And it’s a lot of hard work. What really encourages me is, there have been some years where the economy hasn’t been great … but during times when the economy was ebbing, people gave more than ever to support The MCC Foundation. That tells me that there are people in our community who believe in what we are doing and can see the results.



Jerry Purvis: You get very little rejection when you explain to people that it’s a form of workforce development.



The Star: Talking about economic development, do you think people overlook the impact sometimes of a community college on economic development?



Elliott: I have to say that community colleges are undervalued. If you look at how the education tax dollar is invested in Mississippi, roughly seventy-something cents goes to support K-12, and twenty-something cents goes to support the university system, and seven cents supports the community college system out of that dollar. That tells me that we’re not the most highly funded agency to begin with, and there’s not very much correlation with that and our import in economic development. The way America has changed has been the balance between skilled and unskilled labor … We lost those (unskilled labor) jobs to foreign nations, and I would make the argument that they’re not likely to come back, so in the wake of things, you’ve had a transformation occur where 65 percent of the jobs in America now demand what we might call advanced skills … At MCC we now feature 44 different occupational program options. All of them could be classified as delivering an advanced skill.



The Star: As far as from the state funding portion, with so much focus on economic development, why is more funding not allotted to community colleges?



Elliott: A lot of it is there’s strength in numbers. But I want to be fair in my comments and tell you that things are actually getting better. When I said that we got seven cents out of the tax dollar, during my time here it’s been as low as four cents.



The Star: Tell us about some of the things you’d like to do to provide workforce development training and increase economic development as a community college.



Elliott: We want to develop an advanced skills training center down there (at the old Wal-Mart building). We want to have robotic arms, programmable logic controllers, advanced machining equipment … things that have a strong nexus with automotive suppliers and automotive manufacturers, and other industries as well. But our vision is to have something that you can show a prospective industry that’s visiting this community, and get out of the mode of saying, “here’s what we’re planning on doing.”



The Star: How important are these business owners who give to this program? What if tomorrow they all say, “you know what, this year I’m just not going to do it.” What would be the impact of that?



Elliott: I think it would be very harmful to the entire community. Because if you look at educational attainment levels in Lauderdale County from 1990 to 2000 … the sector represented by people who had some college credit up to an associate degree rose from about 11 percent to almost 40 percent. I can’t tell you that that had to do exclusively with tuition guarantee, but it makes a lot of sense to me that the advent of that program during those years created a new culture in Lauderdale County that told all students that financial considerations no longer need to factor into your thought process in terms of the availability of higher education. I think you probably had a culture before that was just like, “well, college just isn’t for me … we’ve never had that kind of money.” We’ve eliminated that barrier in this community through tuition guarantee, so to take a step back from that I think would be very harmful to the breadth of the whole community. Not just MCC, but the businesses that hire our graduates.

MCC is just part of the equation. You’ve got to deliver the education. You’ve got to have business owner’s who can hire people and give them an opportunity. And you’ve got to be in a mode of continuing to grow your economy. Unless you have that pipeline coming out of education, you’re not going to be able to accomplish that. I think tuition guarantee has strengthened that pipeline measurably.



Brookshire: Business owners who invest in tuition guarantee are investing in a guaranteed return because they’re investing in their own workforce.



Elliott: And one thing that’s important to remember about tuition guarantee is that all you’re guaranteed is to get into the program. You’re not guaranteed to stay in it. You have to maintain at least a C average to stay in the program.