Study: Fewer 4-year degrees in area

Many opt for associate degrees instead

By Owen Boss

BOSTON — Only 21.7 percent of residents older than age 25 in the Fitchburg, Gardner and Leominster area have bachelor’s degrees, which is significantly lower than the national average, according to an economic development study a group of graduate student researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently performed in that area using 2006 census data. The study also revealed however that despite the considerable shortage of workers with bachelor’s degrees, the region’s work force maintains an abnormally high percentage of associate degrees. According to Nancy Jackson, director for the North Central Massachusetts Economic Development Council, which assisted MIT researchers with their study, the explanation can be answered when looking at the region culturally and economically. “We thought the source may be economic because people in the region kind of meld, if these people were able to get manufacturing jobs that pay higher than the average private sector job, were making a good living and were getting all sorts of job advancement training, they wouldn’t need a degree,” said Ms. Jackson. “It can also be cultural, for example if obtaining college degrees was something that didn’t necessarily run through a family, maybe there wasn’t an emphasis put onto getting to that level of education.” Although the research illustrated a significant gap between the region, state and national average for residents with bachelor’s degrees, the study found that 9.6 percent of the region’s work force have associate degrees — which is 2.2 percent higher than the national average and 1.1 percent higher than the state as a whole. After analyzing the final results of the study, Ms. Jackson said researchers recommended local institutions make efforts to streamline information sharing and offer more job training programs, which would make employees without four-year college degrees more likely to move into better paying positions within their respective occupations. “We agreed with the recommendations made by the MIT students,” said Ms. Jackson. “The analysis showed that we could improve in two areas: regionalization and intermuncipal cooperation. I really think we need industry businesses and groups of companies in the same industry to define their needs better. If we want to act on this, we need to see what we can do within a collaboration of members of the work force to bring in resources that will actually provide better information sharing between businesses and providers.” Whatever the solution may be, Ms. Jackson said that moving forward will require requesting either federal or state funding for employee education. “It doesn’t matter whether it is federal or state,” said Ms. Jackson. “There is a lot of money out there for programs like this, we just need to decided what we need and ask for it.” oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 1 on 6/24/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 149)