His plan is to partner with states and fund the first two years of community college for Americans “willing to work for it.” The White House will work to push this plan through Congress “in the next few weeks,” Obama promised.
But with a roughly $60 billion price tag over the next 10 years, the proposal may have little chance of getting through the wall of Republican deficit hawks that now control both houses of Congress.
Alexander and Sen. Bob Corker, both Republicans from Tennessee, joined Obama on Air Force One and at the community college during Obama’s speech, but neither want Obama’s plan to become federal law.
That’s despite the fact that Obama called his proposal bipartisan, noting that similar policies have been implemented by Tennessee’s Republican governor and Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Asked whether he would support Obama’s proposal, Corker said “Oh no, no, no, no, no,” instead urging other states to take the president’s initiative, and do something similar themselves rather than create “a whole new bureaucratic federal program.”
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“Companies want to employ people with strong academics, but they also want to employ people with strong workplace skills. A lot of the community colleges offer that and unfortunately a lot of the four year colleges don’t,” Wyman said. “This is an opportunity to move the community college system into the 21st century.”
Obama also hit on a note that is a focus of Wyman’s consulting firm, addressing the need to connect community colleges and employers who could benefit from the neatly-tailored skills of a community college graduate.
And even if Obama’s proposal flops in Washington, Wyman, who has travelled around the country, asserted that states are “hungry for reforms.”
“There’s a lot of states who would look at this and often as you know states don’t like being told what to do,” Wyman said, and maybe they’ll now take the initiative themselves.
