Do you remember when the Community College of Rhode Island was called Rhode Island Junior College – and some people referred to it as “Reject?”
Talk about getting no respect.
CCRI has come a long way since it first opened in 1964, though one could easily make the argument that the school still does not get the respect it truly deserves. Over the years, state legislators have too often been stingy in doling out dollars to our institutions of higher education. CCRI has been no exception.
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This year, school officials were forced to contend with $3 million in budget cuts. That has meant a shutdown of satellite campuses at Middletown High School, the Newport Navy base and Newport Hospital.
It’s too bad, really. You wonder what it is about investing in higher education that baffles so many of the powers that be here in Rhode Island. Both the University of Rhode Island (from which I graduated in 1989) and Rhode Island College have long been woefully under-appreciated by legislators.
URI must state its case year after year, despite having an international reputation in several fields of study, most notably oceanography. There is hardly a career path one could pursue in which our state university doesn’t offer a first-rate education. Whether you are looking for a business degree, or training in electrical or chemical engineering, pharmacy, journalism or landscape architecture, URI competes favorably with schools across the country.
The same holds true at Rhode Island College, in Providence. It is a school that remains remarkably affordable. It has a diverse selection of majors, including education, nursing and social sciences – and now a burgeoning arts curriculum. And it too has had to beg for funding for new dorms, or for repairs to decaying buildings.
But for now, let’s focus on CCRI, a school to which I have no connection, except for the fact that last week, the “CCRI 2001 Career Placement and Graduate Transfer Report” crossed my desk.
The Transfer Report is a 50-page document that tracks the progress of recent CCRI graduates. Read carefully, it tells quite a story.
Each December, in fact, CCRI surveys members of the previous year’s graduating class to find out what they are doing just six months after having completed their studies at CCRI. This year, 1,379 members of the class of 2001 were asked to provide information about their place of employment, job title, salary and status of continuing education. More than 80 percent of those individuals responded to the survey. I thought that rate of response was impressive enough, and then I read further.
Of the 1,379 survey respondents, 93.3 percent are either employed, continuing their education or doing a combination of both. The vast majority are employed full-time, with the second highest percentage of graduates continuing their education and working part-time.
The CCRI graduates who have gone on to pursue four-year degrees are studying here in Rhode Island and throughout the U.S. Some are at URI, RIC, Providence College and Bryant College. Others have left the Ocean State and are studying at schools such as Northeastern University, the University of Texas, and the University of Virginia.
And where are they working? Just name a major Rhode Island employer and it is likely that a CCRI graduate is on the payroll. Representatives of the school’s class of 2001 are currently employed at Amica Insurance, Citizens Bank, GTECH Corporation, IKON Office Solutions, Kent County Memorial Hospital and Texas Instruments, just to name a few.
So why the commercial for CCRI?
Because more people need to recognize that not only does Rhode Island offer first-rate four-year colleges, its community college system just might be a fit for your son, your daughter, or yourself.
CCRI makes fiscal sense. It represents an opportunity to stave off – at least temporarily — the cost of some of these larger schools, where the cost can run between $25,000 and $35,000 per year. And it just might make sense in terms of taking full advantage of a tight job market.
We have heard from many a business owner who has targeted CCRI students because the two-year technological training they have received is a perfect match for their place of business.
So give CCRI some thought. It deserves more respect than it gets.
