Currently Gov. Bill Haslam’s “Drive to 55” campaign is in full swing and if it does what is intended, it will help keep more people in Tennessee and will provide more jobs for those residing in Tennessee.
“We want Tennesseans working in Tennessee jobs,” Haslam said earlier this year.
“We want Tennesseans to have an opportunity to get a good job and for those in the workplace to be able to advance and get an even better job.”
Haslam added that only 32 percent of Tennesseans have completed a level of post-secondary education and that to keep up with the demand for jobs, that number will need to be up to at least 55 percent by 2025.
“It’s really focused on work force development,” said UTM Chancellor Tom Rakes.
“When plants and companies come to an area, they look at how solid of a work force you have and how well educated you are.”
There’s much more to this campaign than simply getting more people in school; it’s about creating more jobs.
“If you raise the education level, whether it’s a certificate or anything else, that increases the opportunities for the people in the state,” Rakes said.
“It brings in more money to the state and brings in more businesses and creates more jobs. … When I was in Louisiana, they were working on a lot of new oil platforms and they needed 100 welders. Two-thirds of them had to be recruited from out of state because they didn’t have them in-state.”
Granted, Rakes only noted 100 jobs that Louisiana lost, but that is only one example.
“If we had a degree or certificate for every high school graduate from now until 2025 we couldn’t make the 55 percent,” Rakes said.
“We’ve got to go back and expand beyond high school graduates. We’ve got thousands of people that started college and never finished, started programs and never finished, and it’s difficult to get them back because they’re working.”
According to tn.gov, 940,000 people are currently living in Tennessee who hold some college credit, but no degree. Currently, Tennessee is on track to reach 39 percent of the 55 percent goal by 2025, falling an estimated 494,000 people short.
In efforts to achieve the goal, Tennessee has spent $16.5 million of this year’s budget on equipment and technology related to work force development programs at Tennessee colleges of applied technology and community colleges. The state also created a new endowment of $47 million to provide nearly $2 million each year to scholarship programs such as tnAchieves.
