Transcript

ALAN BERUBE: One notable recent development is that, in his address to Joint Session of Congress in February, the President publicly called on all Americans to gain at least a year of post-secondary education, and he committed the federal government to helping the United States regain international leadership and higher educational attainment. And the release of the detailed budget today by the President I think reflects the Administration’s view on what Washington should do to help the nation realize that goal, and I think that’s the subject that we’ll turn back to throughout the program today.

For us at Brookings, it was a welcome development, because to us it emphasizes the role of human capital in building a stronger economy in society, which is really a key focus of ours in this Blueprint Initiative. And more specifically, we believe that focusing those investments in our metropolitan areas maximizes the return on human capital investments by building deep and diverse pools of skilled workers that can respond to changing labor market conditions, and can build competitive regional advantages that propel our national economy, advantages like information technology in the Silicon Valley, aerospace in Phoenix, medical devices in the Twin Cities, accounting and consulting in Chicago, pharmaceuticals in Greater Philadelphia.

And, in fact, it is community colleges that really are the most metropolitan of our higher educational institutions. They draw their students from across their regions, and, in fact, help satisfy the metropolitan labor market needs into which they graduate many of their students. So today’s event will ask, and maybe even provide some answers to a few questions that I think are central to any coherent national higher education strategy for our metropolitan areas, and, in turn, the nation.

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