Coalition Provides Tool For Education

Sunday, September 23, 2012

A few minutes of Internet time could change a life, or many of them, if a new website proves successful.

Five Northwest Arkansas institutions of higher education, backed by five area chambers of commerce, several corporate sponsors and the Northwest Arkansas Council, are reaching out to people in the region through the website, which debuted last week.

The goal is to get potential candidates to seek the post-secondary education that may have eluded them.

Life interrupts and the push for a degree or a certificate must take a back seat to putting food on the table for a family or simply surviving in hard times.

Sometimes, the first try at higher education lacked focus and poor grades stopped progress.

None of those reasons has to be the fi nal answer for anyone who really wants to pursue more education.

There is help out there, both in the way of advice and scholarships and loans.

The website, www.

GraduateNWA.com, asks the question, “Why finish?” Then it answers the question with hard data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the relationship between education and earnings.

The latter rises with the level of education attained,but the website doesn’t stop there.

It explains what it takes to earn a postsecondary certifi cate, an associate degree or a bachelor’s degree from these participating institutions.

And it points the way toward jobs in Northwest Arkansas that require those degrees and illustrates what the jobs pay here.

Most potential returnees may understand the payback they would get from more education, but they may not quite know how to get over the hurdles to return to school.

This website is a portal into fi ve institutions: John Brown University, Northwest Technical Institute, NorthWest Arkansas Community College, the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. All are in the region or have a presence here. Someone at each is waiting to help potential students find their way into school and through to graduation. All it takes to get started is an online inquiry through www.

GraduateNWA.com.

There is information on the site about available loan and scholarship programs, but the respective campuses can each help with those questions as well. All a person needs to know is what field of study interests them to find which of the campuses might be right for them.

This really is a userfriendly website with tons of pertinent information for people thinking about returning to school. It can help a prospective student find night classes or online classes and advise them on ways to strike the balance between their obligations to family and job and their educational pursuit.

The fi ve institutions and the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, another partner, are all in the business of educating people, so their interest is obvious. But why are these chambers of commerce, the businesses and the Northwest Arkansas Council so interested?

Promoting higher education, specifi cally completion of degree or certifi cation programs, is their business, too. The numbers of college-going people and those who finish school at any level impact the region’s growth potential.

Business and industry take more interest in places were the workforce is trained to meet today’s market requirements.

The Northwest ArkansasCouncil, a nonprofi t made up of the region’s government and business leaders, has been around now for more than 20 years, exploring what it takes to recruit and hold jobs here.

Key to the council’s longterm planning is this focus of education, which also extends to the high school level and efforts to get dropouts back into school.

Just finishing high school will increase an individual’s lifetime earning capacity.

Completing a certifi cation or degree program will multiply the eff ect, not only raising the individuals’ quality of life but also improving the chances for Northwest Arkansas to grow and prosper.

In 2010, one in four, or 25.1 percent, of people age 25 and older in Northwest Arkansas held a bachelor’s degree or better. That’s below the national average by 2.7 percent and almost 7 percent below some metropolitan statistical areas that might be considered competitors to this region (Kansas City, Mo., Huntsville, Ala., and Omaha, Neb.).

One of the early considerations for a prospective business or industry is the availability of a qualified work force. If that’s not suftcient, even a region with as many pluses as Northwest Arkansas has might not get a second look. BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST.

Opinion, Pages 10 on 09/23/2012