A recent news report described the problem Home Depot, one of Georgia’s great businesses, faces trying to fill skilled job openings in our state. Home Depot, unfortunately, is not alone in needing more skilled workers than are available in Georgia. It’s a problem many industries have faced in recent years.
In Georgia, 185,000 skilled professionals are needed yearly for our workforce. One of our best tools for meeting that need has traditionally been the HOPE Grant, a program that once provided full tuition to technical college attendees.
Following drastic cuts to the HOPE Grant in 2011, technical colleges lost about 45,000 students, roughly 25 percent of their enrollments. This represented a revenue loss of more than $136 million for a system charged with training a skilled workforce. Without students in the classrooms and support from the state, we can’t produce more skilled workers to fill jobs. And without tuition assistance, many students cannot afford to pay.
Since the 2011 cuts, my office has researched these issues. What is increasingly clear is that the loss of so many technical college students in less than two years is one of the main factors in our growing skills gap. We have not kept that information to ourselves.
It’s shocking and disappointing that Home Depot’s inability to fill its labor needs with Georgians came as a surprise to the state’s top economic development, education and workforce development officials. That Georgia faces a skills gap isn’t news to me, nor to our technical college leaders. And it’s not a surprise to Home Depot, NCR, Porsche and others struggling to fill open jobs.
Over the past two legislative sessions, I have sought to reduce the skills gap by helping to get more students into our technical colleges. In 2013, I worked with legislators to extend the HOPE Grant to students who maintain a GPA at or above 2.0. In this most recent session, I worked with Gov. Nathan Deal to create the Zell Miller HOPE Grant. It pays full tuition for technical college students who maintain a 3.5 or higher GPA.
While I am proud of what we were able to accomplish in a bipartisan fashion, we can and should go farther. My original 2014 legislation would have fully funded technical school tuition. I was happy to work with the governor to take incremental steps to fix the failed reforms of 2011 so that more families will have better-paying jobs, and businesses will have a more skilled workforce.
But the gasps from the state’s top officials sadly suggest they are just realizing what anyone paying attention should already know: We aren’t doing nearly enough as a state to close the skills gap. I hope we will work with greater urgency to close that gap. It’s a way to put more Georgians to work for higher wages and help Georgia businesses thrive.
State Rep. Stacey Evans is a Democrat from Smyrna.
