Consultants from the national Center for Higher Education Management Systems will deliver a report Friday that suggests the need for a new or slightly different approach to improving El Paso’s economy.
The report was commissioned by the Paso del Norte Group and will be delivered to community leaders and members of the group’s Higher Education Attainment Task Force, chaired by Woody Hunt and Gilbert Moreno.
The presentation is scheduled to run from 9 to 11 a.m. at the El Paso Club on the top floor of the Downtown Chase Bank Building.
For years, El Paso’s school districts have struggled to reduce dropouts and raise educational standards while UTEP and the community college worked on getting students in their doors and sending them out some years later as graduates.
Statistics show the results of those efforts haven’t been greatly successful. High school and college graduation rates have risen only slightly.
Hunt said part of the reason why may be that the lack of good jobs kills the incentive for young people to push ahead with their education.
Simply put, they don’t see how it’s worth the trouble and expense.
When young people do graduate from college, the statistics show strikingly, they look around for a job and leave town.
So, it’s all about the brain drain and how to stop it.
“We’re bringing in our outside consultants who put the report together so they can deliver the message, so you don’t have any internal bias from the community,” Hunt said.
Their message, supported by new twists on 2000 census figures, is not much different from what state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh and Hunt himself have been saying for years.
“There might not appear to be that much difference,” Hunt said. “But, I think there is a fundamental shift to say we need to understand that we can’t just focus on educational institutions and say ‘you need to create more high school and college graduates so we can be a better educated community' when, in fact, all we would be doing would be exporting more people.”
In other words, the faster El Pasoans graduate from high school or college, the faster they will leave –- unless something changes.
“We need to look at a fundamental shift in focus on the type of employers we want and also the kind of environment that those employers expect to live in,” he said. “And that’s the beginning of the dialogue.”
Is that code talk for higher taxes?
“That’s certainly a part of the debate,” he said.
The consultants may have some suggestions, Hunt said, “but I think, ultimately, the community leadership and the political leadership need to lead the way.”
David Crowder can be reached at dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or 915 351-0605
Anthony
April 17, 2008
This is why ASARCO makes absolutely no sense for El Paso. As it turns out, TCEQ's decision trades out hundreds, if not thousands, of high-end high-quality jobs for 300 smelter jobs. Educated El Pasoans aren't going to want to stay and raise a family in a polluted city.
Jorge Quesada
April 18, 2008
The key words are "the kind of environment those employers expect to live in."
The sooner we transform the City fo El Paso from a major Juarez flea market to a viable United States city, the sooner the brain drain will stop.
Mary Russell
April 18, 2008
Too much emphasis is placed on a college education when some people should not even be thinking about it. There should be more training for a job during the high school years.
Ken G
April 18, 2008
BRAC may change the equation. Soldiers see how much contractors are paid. More may stay after they retire or finish their enlistments. There will be more jobs available for local college graduates. The Medical School and Future Combat Systems will be hiring people with the right degrees.
bien
April 18, 2008
Higher taxes?
El Paso Taxes are already some of the highest in the nation!
That may be part of the reason why people are leaving!
Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
April 18, 2008
Other reasons why El Pasoans, espeically Hispanic El Pasoans, leave El Paso is that the city seems always to be cast by public mainstream media (including film) and mainstream writers (including western writers) as a dustyl and sleepy patch of desesrt dwellers who are mostly Mexicans with nothing better to do than laze around all day under shady trees, drinking tequila, or scarfing dope. Another reason is that the educated Mexican Americans who want to stay in or return to El Paso are not encouraged to stay because "better qualaified" folks from elsewhere are more welcomed.
Sergio Guerrero
April 18, 2008
The findings of this study are undoubtedly on the mark. The methods we go about making this community a better place to live includes such things as better jobs but also a better quality of life with more choices for more people. These were also the findings of such efforts as early as Unite El Paso up to the current Creative Cities Leadership Project.
We as a community have the unbelievable challenge of throwing off the historical yoke that our early political leaders and economic power brokers placed on El Paso at the early part of the 20th Century. That historical yoke is a dependence of cheap labor and the natural resource extraction industries. These were the three C's Cotton, Cattle and Copper. Almost all of these were financed by Eastern Capital which took what it could and left little in return.
All this industry is gone and can never return nor can the cheap labor manufacturers that provided work for thousands of undereducated citizens and recent immigrants in the garment and boot industries.
Overcoming this challenge is going to take the cooperation of all the various factions in this community. The military industrial complex will provide some work but it and the soldiers coming with BRAC are only a small part of what needs to a a multifaceted approach to improving the quality of life here on the border. A better vision for this City is going to take longer than most of us are prepared to accept.