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A Message From Local 212 President Michael Rosen:

January 18, 2005
Welcome back to a new semester!

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and that you are as eager as I am to get back to what we do best, which is providing our students with an excellent technical education.

There are a number of challenges facing this college including:

The Bush administration’s cuts in Pell grant funding and changes in the eligibility requirements will make an MATC education less affordable for thousands of our students;

The legislature’s proposed property tax freeze that could cost MATC dearly. Charlie will provide you with the details;

Ill conceived and politically motivated attempts to redesign the AAS degree will make it harder for our students to acquire the skills they need to for their chosen profession;

Attempts to mandate state-wide curriculums in various programs that undermine local control and MATC’s responsiveness to the needs of business and industry;

But today I don’t want to dwell on these challenges. Instead I want to thank each and everyone of you for making this technical college the outstanding institution that it is. As I have said many times before, the work you do changes lives and provides many in our community with hope and opportunity. As Dr. Martin Luther King said: “There is nothing more dangerous than a society with a large number of people who feel they have no stake in it. People who have a stake in their society want to protect that society. If they don’t, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”

At MATC we provide people with the training and skills they need to contribute and prosper. We give them a stake. For example:

There are 89,000 adults in this community who do not have a high school degree. MATC’s Adult High School is their home!

There are tens of thousands of immigrants coming to Milwaukee, from Mexico Laos, Russia, Somalia, and elsewhere. MATC’s English as a Second Language and bilingual programs are their hope and opportunity!

Wisconsin manufacturing companies have created more manufacturing jobs than any other state has this year. But these companies are facing a severe skilled labor shortage. As a new report, Keeping America Competitive, states: “The baby boom generation of skilled workers will be retired within the next 15 to 20 years...The result is a projected need for 10 million new skilled workers by 2020.” MATC’s technical and industrial division and business divisions are the solution to the skilled labor shortage. We will train the next generation of machinists, tool and die makers, auto technicians, welders, chefs, bakers, heating and air conditioning technicians, masons, electricians, civil engineers, computer graphic technicians, web masters and printers.

Many of us are baby boomers and will be retiring over the next two decades. The demand for healthcare services will grow. MATC’s healthcare division will train the caring and compassionate professionals to meet this need.

According to the Federal Reserve, the most important investment a nation can make is in early childhood education. The return is greater inflated stock market returns of the 1990’s. Governor Doyle has identified early childhood education and quality childcare as critical if Wisconsin is too grown and prosper. Because of MATC’s four childcare centers and dynamic early childhood education program, MATC is in the forefront of this national effort.

Last, but certainly not least, MATC operates Milwaukee Public Television providing high quality programming to almost half the state’s residents while training Wisconsin’s television production technicians.

MATC is the engine that drives the Wisconsin economy.

Did you know that the WTCS is the largest graduate school in the state? That’s right we have more baccalaureate graduates attending technical colleges than UW has in its graduate programs!

Wisconsin ranks very high in its percentage of associate degree holders and relatively low in baccalaureate graduates because supply and demand are matched. Wisconsin has fewer four year graduates than Illinois and Minnesota because we are not a regional economic center with a high concentration of corporate headquarters and the ancillary services they attract.

In Wisconsin 20% of our jobs are in manufacturing and an equal number are related to it. Associate degrees reflect the appropriate level of education demanded by the marketplace and our students understand this. Increasing the numbers of baccalaureate four-year graduates won't change this although it could result in more baccalaureate grads leaving the state and drive down wages in certain sectors!

The reality is that the state should increase its investment in the WTCS rather than trying to generally increase the number of 4 year graduates.

MATC is only as good as we are. When the faculty, professional staff, other employees and administration work together, we create the magic that is MATC. The NCA recognized this when it wrote that shared governance was critical to the success of the institution. Frankly, this mean that the colleges employees, from the janitors, to the public safety officers, from the faculty to the student service and educational specialists, from the counselors to the childcare and food service employees all must have a role in shaping institutional policy. The best organizations understand that knowledge flows from the bottom up as well as the top down. Together we can lift this college and its students up. But if the faculty and professional staff are not treated as full partners the college, our students and the businesses and industries we are committed to serve will suffer.

In this regard, I want to encourage all faculty to be proactive by participating in advising our over 13,000 program students. Many are the first in their families to attend college. Our advising efforts play a central role in connecting students to MATC and in helping them persist and achieve their educational goals. So please participate in advising activities and training.

Finally, remember that the work you do is our community’s most important work. We provide our students with opportunity to escape a life of low wages, hard work and poverty. And it is our students who make Milwaukee work! So let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work. We have a lot to do.

Archived Messages...

Michael Rosen's Speech to the MATC Board - September 29, 2004

Welcome back, August 2004

"Jobs report paints bleak picture for the nation",
Michael Rosen's editorial in the August 21, 2004 Journal Sentinel