Today’s hearing marks the formal beginning of this subcommittee’s consideration of the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act. For reasons detailed below, the Perkins Act is exceedingly important to Greenville Tech and community colleges across the country. We look forward to working with the subcommittee through reauthorization to strengthen the Perkins Act’s support for career and technical education.

Greenville Tech is the largest public comprehensive community college in South Carolina. As of April 2004, the college has grown to include five campuses (Barton, Brashier, Donaldson, Greer, Northwest), encompass nearly 600 acres of land, 40 buildings, and 1.6 million square feet of facilities under roof. The college employs more than 1,200 full- and part-time faculty and staff, operates with an annual budget of more than $62 million, and provide services to at least 20,000 credit and 45,000 continuing education students annually. Presently the institution receives approximately 39% of its revenue from the state of South Carolina based on its Fall semester full time equivalency (FTE) enrollment and training hours it provides through its continuing education division during the fiscal year. Tuition and fee revenue paid by students is retained locally and comprises nearly 42% of the college’s revenue. Other sources of revenue include local government support at 10% and auxiliary services at 9%.

Perkins Act funding is vitally important to our institution and students. Our allocation this coming funding year will be approximately $580,000. At Greenville Tech, Perkins funds support program improvement by funding faculty professional development and allowing the purchase of new equipment. We also use Perkins funds to serve the needs of special student populations and help them complete their programs. Perkins funds help us purchase special needs adaptive equipment, fund travel and child care for single mothers, and operate English as a second language programs. Finally, we use Perkins funds to help internationalize our programs, a vital need in an increasingly global economy.

The South Carolina Technical Education System is the principal tool for the economic and industrial development that helps move our state into the 21^st century. South Carolina’s technical colleges have been instrumental in training the state’s workers with the skills they need to meet the needs of the tremendous influx of new businesses in our state. This influx of new businesses, in turn, would not have occurred without the educational and training infrastructure provided by our colleges. Importantly, the State governance system allows local control of each college, giving us an added degree of responsiveness to the needs of local businesses and connectedness to our local communities, each of which I will discuss in more detail below.

The system allows for students to either strengthen their Basic Skills in math, reading, or communication, or gain training in these skills to further their educational goals. The college serves approximately 2,700 students per semester in Basic Skills instruction. The college strives to meet the needs of its students and make this education as accessible as possible by offering this instruction at convenient times and in different formats, including online and video courses, evening and weekend courses, and modular offerings which allow for multiple entry points to fit a particular student’s background and abilities. This mission to meet the needs of the students is reflected in the very terminology we use, as we refer to students as our "customers."

Partnerships are crucial to serving the mission of Greenville Tech. Our college is the focus of a number of different community-based linkages that help the entire educational system equip our citizens with the tools they need to succeed. Linkages with other educational systems, particularly local high schools, are important to creating a cohesive system that moves students from the schools into our college, and beyond to four-year institutions. We also work very closely with our local businesses, communicating with them about their needs and constantly revising our offerings or creating new ones to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change.

Greenville Tech is involved in some important and unique partnerships with the local school systems. We have a Charter High School/Middle College on the college campus that maximizes the use of equipment and faculty for instruction and hands on training. Charter schools offer choice, competition, and accountability. This Dual Track system offers both technical and college prep/academic programs, preparing students for the highly technical jobs of the new knowledge-based economy. Middle colleges such as the one at Greenville Tech receive modest, though significant, support from the Tech Prep demonstration program. I strongly urge the committee to continue this program in a reauthorized Perkins Act.

Dual enrollment for high school students allows them to enroll in college classes and provides them with faculty, textbooks, and advisement. Middle colleges, dual enrollment, and similar partnerships between community colleges and high schools help improve the high drop-out rates that plague many areas by giving students an early exposure to college and a glimpse of the opportunities that further education opens for them.

Partnerships with other higher education institutions are also important. The University Center, located just a short distance from our main campus, is a consortium of seven state universities offering the junior and senior level college curriculum where students may complete a Bachelor’s, Masters/or Doctoral degree. The easy access to these programs that this center affords makes it possible for many of our students to continue their education beyond the associate degree level. Articulation and transfer agreements with other four-year institutions make it possible to gain an Associate’s degree as part of work toward a Bachelor’s degree.

Greenville Tech and our sister institutions also work directly with the State government. The Center for Accelerated Technology Training, or CATT, is a state economic development partnership between the South Carolina State Technical College system and the South Carolina Department of Commerce offering training for new and existing industries.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of community colleges is our close working relationship with business. These relationships take many forms, even within the same college. Industry advisors communicate the skills that their businesses need, and we incorporate them into existing programs or create new ones to impart those skills to our students. At Greenville Tech, the Business & Industry Advisory Committee system advises the academic programs on the development, operation, and evaluation of the curriculum, faculty, facility and equipment. This is accomplished on a yearly basis. There are 56 program Advisory Committees with over 700 business and industry representatives volunteering to serve and be actively involved in keeping our academic programs current to industry needs and standards. We have also created a private foundation which offers businesses and industries opportunities to fund student scholarships, donate high-tech equipment, and sponsor student learning programs.

Community colleges often contract directly with businesses to offer anything ranging from customized training in a particular skill to entire degree programs at the worksite. Community colleges pride themselves on the entrepreneurial spirit we bring to serving businesses and how we rapidly evolve to meet their needs. Below are just a few of the examples of how Greenville Tech works with our local business partners.

One of the biggest stories in our area of South Carolina in recent years has been the growth of the automobile industry. Greenville Tech works closely with the automobile manufacturers and their suppliers, including these partnerships:

• Designing and delivering training as a Tier I school for Nissan North America.
• Training and job placement for 20 years with General Motors.
• Michelin North America has built a training center on the Barton Campus to train mechanical technicians for the Michelin plants. GTC also has access for training from this facility.
• Training technical engineers in CAD and Print Design for BMW.

Community colleges collectively train the majority of registered nurses and allied health professionals. Greenville Tech is heavily involved in this area, including a nursing training partnership with the two largest healthcare providers in Greenville County. They have provided a $600,000 grant to increase our nursing program capacity, purchase equipment, renovate facilities, and hire and train faculty.

Other examples of partnerships between Greenville Tech and local businesses include:

• Training airframe and power plant technicians for Lockheed Martin.
• Regional training of HVAC technicians for Johnson Control.
• Working with Greenville County to design, develop and house a DNA Laboratory/County Crime Lab including the Vehicle Forensics lab

The importance of the Perkins Act to community colleges cannot be underestimated. Perkins is the largest source of direct Federal support for our institutions, and is even more crucial in a time of declining state support for postsecondary education. Approximately 39% of the state funds go to postsecondary institutions, the majority of which are community colleges. Because funds are distributed by a formula, Perkins is especially important for smaller, rural institutions that often lack the resources to compete effectively in competitive grant programs.

At bottom, Perkins funds are about helping our colleges deliver a better product. The grants support an array of services, activities, and equipment that otherwise would not get funded. Community colleges often use Perkins funds for support services such as tutoring and counseling for special populations in need of a helping hand. These funds are also crucial to faculty development, allowing them to keep pace with the skills and knowledge that students need and businesses expect. For the same reason, the ability to purchase cutting edge equipment with the support of Perkins funds is extremely important.

AACC believes that community colleges are just as important to achieving the Act’s goals as the Act is to them Study after study and statistic after statistic indicate that America's workers must have some postsecondary education and/or training to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. The spread in wages between those with a college education and those with only a high school diploma continues to grow. Community colleges appreciate the recent attention that the Bush Administration and others have paid to their essential role in the training and retraining of America’s workforce, most recently in the President’s speech yesterday at the AACC Annual Convention. Just last month, in testimony before the full Education and the Workforce Committee, Alan Greenspan stated that lifelong education of the workforce is essential to continuing the nation’s economic competitiveness and maintaining the current standard of living. We could not agree more.

For this reason, many of AACC's specific policy recommendations fall under a general theme: a reauthorized Perkins Act should better reflect and support the role of postsecondary programs in the CTE system. By strengthening support for postsecondary programs, the Perkins Act would better serve the vocational education system as a whole. Much of the discussion about the Perkins Act reauthorization has centered on the need to reform our high schools. This sustained emphasis concerns community colleges. The Perkins Act cannot and must not be transformed into a program that attempts to address the substantial and deep-seeded problems facing our high schools. The law is simply not large enough to achieve that. Rather, the Perkins Act should stay focused on improving quality CTE programs at both secondary and postsecondary levels. AACC categorically rejects any proposal to divert Perkins Act funds to Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs, as the Administration proposed last year.