Neumont zeros in on job skills

A proposal to bring a for-profit university specializing in computer science and information technology to Rhode Island is sparking debate about the state’s ability to close the skills gap that’s leaving high-tech jobs vacant due to a shortage of adequately trained candidates.
The fate of Utah’s Neumont University’s request to establish a second campus in Providence will likely depend to a great degree on what state officials decide about how severe the skills gap is in Rhode Island and how well-equipped existing higher education institutions are to deal with it, now and in the very near future.
Daniel P. Egan, leader of a Providence-based association of independent private colleges and universities in Rhode Island, maintains existing academic institutions are more than capable of resolving the skills gap and have already started to do so.
“We have the infrastructure in place to provide what’s needed,” said Egan, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Rhode Island, an association that represents the nonprofit, degree-granting institutions in the state, and which doesn’t see a need for Neumont here.
On the other hand, Neumont University’s president insisted that Rhode Island schools are not meeting the need for workers trained in computer science and IT. “No educator can accurately claim [Rhode Island colleges and universities] are filling the demand,” said Edward H. “Ned” Levine, Neumont president.
His perspective is echoed by Raymond B. Sepe, president of Electro Standards Laboratories in Cranston, an IT research and development firm with 75 employees.
The presence of a for-profit university in Providence specializing in computer science would be “not a problem at all,” he said.
“Maybe they’ll be motivated to do things and stay in touch with us,” he said of Neumont. “It sounds like I could certainly use them.”
Levine on his end is seeking approval from the General Assembly and the state Board of Governors of Higher Education to open a Neumont campus in what he said would be leased space in Providence, with no location targeted yet. The approval process takes about six months, officials said.
“Anything we can bring to Rhode Island to expand the economy would be good news for all Rhode Islanders,” the Rhode Island School of Design graduate and former strategy officer at Johnson & Wales University in Providence told Providence Business News last week. Levine proposes an initial investment of $2.8 million in the Providence school and projects an overall investment of $24.8 million by 2016. The for-profit school would be responsible for approximately $638,000 in property taxes to the city (paid on equipment as well as vehicles) and about $219,000 in income taxes to the state by the year 2021, according to information Levine provided. Some 263 people would work there by 2016.
If all goes as Levine plans, the school would open in the fall of 2013 with an enrollment of 80 students, rising to 523 by 2016. A bachelor’s degree could be earned in 2.5 years with year-round study, Levine said. Classes would be held during the day and be geared to the traditional college-age, rather than adult, population.
At the 330-student school in South Jordan, Utah (just outside Salt Lake City), tuition is $21,600 for an academic year comprising three quarters, according to its website (www.neumont.edu).
Established in 2003, the Utah university offers bachelor’s degrees in computer science, software and game development, business-technology operation management and Web design, as well as a master’s degree in computer science.
Tuition and courses would be similar in Providence, Levine said, although whether master’s degrees would be offered is still under review.
A key Neumont claim involves how well its graduates do in the work world.
Levine said 95 percent of the university’s graduates with computer science bachelor’s degrees are employed in their chosen field immediately upon graduation. They are “in huge demand, year after year,” he said, and often face multiple job offers, with average compensation starting at $63,000 a year.
Levine and Egan offered different views of the skills gap.
According to figures Levine said he obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, an educational data collection and survey system that is part of the U.S. Department of Education, 214 bachelor’s degrees in computer science and related fields were awarded by private higher education institutions in Rhode Island in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available.
That’s a number “nowhere near adequate to fill the demand,” Levine said. For just one week, the week starting Jan. 16, he said, job-search websites showed at least 100 openings in computer science and software development in Rhode Island and environs. In addition to the 214 computer-science degrees Levine cited, Egan added another 60, representing 60 graphic-design degrees from RISD, for a total of 274 degrees granted by private colleges and universities in the state in 2010.
When doctoral, master’s and associate degrees are added, 598 degrees in computer science and related fields were awarded in Rhode Island private schools in 2010, according to Egan. “The resources are here,” he said. (Public colleges and universities accounted for another 25 bachelor’s degrees, 14 doctorates and three master’s degrees in computer sciences and related fields the same year, according to Egan’s figures.)
Steven H. Kitchin, vice president for corporate education and training for New England Institute of Techhnology, said IPEDS does not include some degrees that NEIT considers part of the computer science field.
When those degrees are considered, the school based in East Greenwich granted nearly 1,000 associate and bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences and IT in the last three calendar years, he said.
Regardless of what happens with Neumont, Egan said he is pleased to see the debate taking place over filling the skills gap. “I’m excited about it,” he told PBN. “This is a conversation we desperately wanted to have with the business community.” Members of AICU are Brown, Bryant, Johnson & Wales, Roger Williams and Salve Regina universities, New England Institute of Technology, Providence College and RISD.
House Majority Leader Nicholas A. Mattiello, D-Cranston, introduced enabling legislation this month that would allow Neumont to bypass the state’s ban on for-profit, degree-granting schools (there are more than a dozen for-profit, non-degree institutions in the state). The bill was scheduled for public hearings last week before legislative committees. If the bill is passed into law, the next step would see Neumont’s petition go to the R.I. Board of Governors for Higher Education, which has six months to review it and issue a decision.
The last for-profit, degree-granting school in the state, according to Egan, was Katharine Gibbs College, a secretarial and business school that closed in 2009. •

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