A Stronger Workforce for North Carolina
Today, December 17, 2024, Governor Roy Cooper celebrated the progress made during his time in office building and strengthening North Carolina’s workforce.
The Governor spoke at Durham Technical Community College and was joined by Durham Tech Community College President J.B. Buxton, Piedmont Triad Regional Workforce Development Board Executive Director Wendy Walker-Fox and Durham Tech student and Finish Line Grant recipient Laura Harris.
Remarks as prepared:
Good morning. Thank you President Buxton and your team for hosting us today and for all the work you do to educate our people. Thank you Wendy Walker-Fox and our workforce boards for connecting people with good jobs. And thank you to Laura for sharing your story. It’s amazing to see how a Finish Line Grant helped you finish your degree. And as a proud Tar Heel and fellow Psychology major, congratulations on your acceptance to Carolina.
When I took office eight years ago, I had mission statement for our state — I wanted a North Carolina where people are better educated and healthier with more money in their pockets and opportunities for purpose and abundance.
Our community college system is central to that mission. A network of 58 institutions, where no one in North Carolina is more than a half hour away. We’re used to it, but most states don’t have the coordinated network of community colleges we do. Ours is the best, and they continue to collaborate and innovate to power our economy. So I knew when I took office that our community college system deserved investment.
When I became Governor, I pushed to make our community colleges available at no cost, but the legislature wouldn’t go for that. However, they did bite on our other ideas, so as we kept visiting these remarkable community college campuses, we knew we needed to keep finding ways to support them and their students. And we did.
I started hearing stories like Laura’s from across the state. And I first got the idea for Finish Line Grants when I was talking to Western Carolina professors who had a great student getting ready for her last semester. She was doing a project for one of the professors and called to say she couldn’t afford the last semester because of a major car repair bill. She said she could either pay her tuition or have her car fixed and she had to choose the car because she needed it to go to work. The professors got together, took up donations and paid for her car repair. She graduated on time.
I began to hear from more educators that relatively small, unexpected financial emergencies — a medical bill, a car repair or a child care expense — were causing people to drop out even when they were close to graduation. They were concerned that hardworking students were missing good opportunities for better jobs and employers were losing out on a pipeline of qualified workers.
If you’re putting in the time and money to improve your skills, a car repair shouldn’t ruin your future. So, my policy team came up with a solution: Finish Line Grants. It was a little complicated to get there but persistence worked. It was a little complicated to get there but persistence worked. We used some federal funds to provide up to $1,000 to pay for financial emergencies for students with good grades who were on track to get their credential or degree. Through the innovation and collaboration of our local workforce development boards, the grants became available in the fall of 2018, and we’ve seen remarkable success since.
When students qualify, their grant gets paid directly to the need — the car mechanic or the doctor’s office or other service provider, allowing students to stay in school and finish their credential instead of dropping out to work the extra hours to pay the bill.
I remember meeting a nursing student at Central Piedmont Community College. When she got a surprise medical bill, she debated whether to drop out to earn the extra money to pay it. She was awarded a Finish Line Grant and was able to continue her schooling.
And at Alamance Community College, a young woman was constantly in pain and in desperate need of dental surgery that she couldn’t afford, causing her to face the choice between school and dental care. Instead, she received a Finish Line Grant to get the surgery and continue her education.
When David at Central Piedmont Community College had unexpected car repair bills, he got a Finish Line Grant to help him stay in school at Central Piedmont and then go on to attend UNC Charlotte. Success after success.
And it’s not just students who are helped by Finish Line Grants. It’s employers, too. At Alamance Community College, I heard from Robert, who owns a company that does high-tech machining. He has hired Finish Line Grant recipients once they graduate, and he shared that he hires a lot of students from the community college because they’ve earned the right credentials to do the work his company needs. For companies like Robert’s, the Finish Line Grants program helps them build a stronger workforce.
The program has been so successful that eventually, the legislature made it a continuing part of the state budget.
In total, 16,000 Finish Line Grants have been awarded totaling more than $7.5 million. They provide real bang for the buck, as we’ve seen time and again. A relatively small amount of money can change someone’s life forever.
When I talk with CEOs who are considering moving to our state, they don’t ask me about the corporate tax rate. They ask me — will you have the educated workers we need to fill the jobs we create? And when they learn about our community colleges and how they can partner on tailor-made training programs, that almost always helps to seal the deal.
And it’s not just Finish Line Grants that are helping.
We’ve worked hard overall to help students finish their education debt-free. I launched the Longleaf Commitment Grants program at our community colleges and the legislature adopted it, to ensure graduating high school students from low- and middle-income families receive at least $2,800 in federal and state grants to cover tuition and fees at any of the state’s community colleges.
To date, more than 27,400 students have received a Longleaf Commitment Grant totaling more than $25.5 million. And more than 75% of the Longleaf Commitment grants have gone to students with family incomes less than $60,000 a year.
Our skilled, diverse and dedicated workforce is North Carolina’s most important asset. And our community colleges help make it that way. And one of the main reasons for that is our amazing community college faculty. Getting help for students helps the faculty, but we need to continue to fight for higher community college faculty salaries.
Just look at all that we’ve accomplished together here in North Carolina. We’ve added more than 640,000 good-paying jobs across our state since 2017. We’re the third-fastest growing state in the country. We are the best state for business. And we’ve restored our reputation as a place where people can be innovative, grow their business and thrive. And the people in this room deserve a lot of credit for it.
It’s great to see how our community colleges are preparing students for the jobs of today and tomorrow, and it’s critical that we continue to invest in them.
When we invest in our people, we invest in success. When our community colleges are strong, our workforce is strong. When our workforce is strong, our economy is strong. And when our economy is strong, so is our state, which helps put more money in the pockets of North Carolina families.
Thank you all for your partnership these last 8 years, and I look forward to continuing to help our great state succeed.
