Virginia's Community Colleges

DuBois, Glenn

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 39 
12-14-2022 
Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2017) 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2017). Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia 
Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol25/iss2/39 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2017) 
 
These remarks were delivered at the Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, VA on December 8, 2017. 
 
 
adies and gentlemen: good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to welcome you back to the northern 
campus of Dabney S. Lancaster Community College – the Homestead Campus, John Rainone 
calls it. 
 
A few month ago, a woman stopped one of our chief workforce officers as he shopped in a grocery 
store. She recognized him from an orientation session at his college. 
 
“Look at this,” she said as she handed her smartphone over to him. The man studied the screen for 
a moment before looking back up at the lady. 
 
“Ma’am,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m looking at here.” 
 
“That’s my son’s pay stub,” she said. “He’s earned more than $104,000 dollars this year – thanks to 
you.” That’s a big number. The man was intrigued. 
 
“See, I’ve worried about my son for my entire life,” she said. “He hated school – hated every class 
he ever took from kindergarten on up. I used to cry myself to sleep three nights a week, worried 
about what he would do for a living. Then, we found out about your power line worker training 
program. 
 
“He’s made more money than he knows what to do with since graduating from your program.” 
 
If there is a single moment that makes clear why all of us get out of bed in the morning and come to 
work at Virginia’s Community Colleges; if there is a single moment that explains what our 
FastForward training programs are all about; if there is a single moment that demonstrates what can 
happen when we bring together business and industry, elected leaders, and the community to build 
solutions; it might just be the moment that Keith Harkins, from Southside Virginia Community 
College, had with that lady in a grocery store aisle, as his six-pack was getting warm and his ice 
cream was melting. 
 
My friends, we gather at a critical moment when it comes to workforce training in Virginia. You’ve 
heard my story – perhaps too many times – about the first time I attended the Hire Ed conference. 
Suffice to say that it was a small, intimate event. It catered to a select group of community college 
professionals who were operating in niche areas, working on boutique initiatives. 
 
“If only we have some resources,” was a common refrain. 
 
“If only people understood what we can do,” was another. 
 
Those days are over. Workforce training is no longer the proverbial man-behind-the-curtain; it’s 
now center stage. Your departments have gone from that tiny corner of the building – that no one 
knows about – to becoming the place everyone’s talking about. Your programs have become a 
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DuBois: Remarks at the Hire Ed Conference (2017)
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reason for people to reach out to the college. They’ve become a reason for businesses to reach out 
to the college. They’ve become a bigger and bigger reason for elected leaders to reach out to the 
college. And folks, we’re just getting warmed up. 
 
While this has been brewing for some time, we reached a pivotal moment a little more than two 
years ago. The General Assembly gave us a mission. They asked us to study the needs across 
Virginia for workforce training. And that’s a funny phrase, isn’t it? “Workforce training” is one of 
those catchall descriptors. I mean everyone from Pre-K to medical schools talks about how their 
work improves “workforce training.” 
 
But the General Assembly wanted to know what’s needed among Virginia businesses. Some industry 
leaders said they had jobs they couldn’t fill. Others were concerned about the percentage of our 
population who dropped-off the unemployment rolls out of frustration, simply giving up on their 
job search.  
 
Yet, others in the economic development community were sounding their own alarm. Having a 
skilled workforce to offer, or a way to create one quickly, was becoming increasingly important in 
the process that businesses used to decide to expand or relocate. Some say it’s becoming THE 
factor. We understood those concerns. We embraced the legislative challenge, and we tackled it 
together. 
 
With your connections, with your perseverance, with your help, we conducted 22 town hall meetings 
across Virginia. We engaged with more than 1,500 business and community leaders. We learned a 
lot. From those town hall meetings we first learned about, and then became teachers of the 1-2-7 
problem. You don’t need me to explain that in this room. Many of you still have those 1-2-7 tattoos 
on your upper arms. (I’m looking at you, Ted Raspiller.) 
 
However, we learned about those “sevens.” We learned about how crucial they were to the 
operations of practically every business; how hard they could be to find; and how there seemed to be 
no consistent, reliable approach to helping people get those skills. We heard it in Northern Virginia. 
We heard it in Abingdon. We heard on the Eastern Shore. We heard it in Winchester. And we heard 
it again, and again, and again. In response, we produced a report to the General Assembly that said 
the challenges Virginia faces in workforce development fall into four categories: the skills gap; the 
interest gap; the affordability gap; and the competitiveness gap. 
 
The skills gap is easy to understand. Virginia businesses cannot find enough qualified candidates in 
their community to fill the vacancies they have today in good-paying, middle class careers. The 
number of man-hours, wages, and tax collections lost to this was staggering. The interest gap is big 
part of the reason for the skills gap. Typically, people don’t know what it is that they don’t know. In 
a society that has long embraced a bachelor’s-or-bust mindset, these career opportunities were often 
invisible. 
 
Many of those who might know about those opportunities couldn’t afford to pursue them because 
of the affordability gap. While we have financial aid for practically every undergraduate and graduate 
program of study, we don’t have it for these programs. People who wanted to pursue training were 
asked to write a big check up-front. Too often that was beyond their means. And the 
competitiveness gap has to do with losing ground to the other 19 American states that already 
funded this level of training. (Our friend, Stephen Morey, the president and CEO of the Virginia 
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Economic Development Partnership, will offer some thoughts on this, here at this conference, on 
Friday morning.) 
 
My friends, we got it right. Sometimes, life offers us the chance to experience a rare achievement, 
like hitting a hole-in-one, like bowling a perfect 300 game, or celebrating a friend’s 100th birthday. 
You know, experiences that are not impossible but yet so infrequent that they are worthy of 
celebration. I would add to that list the achievement of getting the Virginia General Assembly to 
agree to create and fund a new program. Leaders there take a critical eye to anything that can 
become an on-going funding commitment. That level of scrutiny makes sense, right? As taxpayers, 
we’re grateful for it. 
 
But in 2016, through overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both chambers, the General Assembly 
created the New Economy Workforce Credentials Grant program. What we call WCGs was one of 
only two new programs the legislature created that year. Go Virginia! was the other. WCGs are an 
unprecedented investment in workforce training. And it’s a unique pay-for-performance program 
that ensure taxpayer dollars are spent on results. That literally means that taxpayers are investing 
directly in high-demand credentials. 
 
The grants aimed directly at the skills gap and the affordability gap. Never did we believe that the 
$12.5 million investment would entirely fill those gaps. But it would let us begin – and that was the 
most important thing. 
 
Let me take just a brief moment to talk about some of the work we’ve done to address the interest 
gap. Smart marketing efforts always begin with research. We don’t always have the resources and 
time needed to do that. 
But this was important, 
and we had to get it 
right. 
 
What we found was 
that there is one group 
in particular who is 
ripe for the 
opportunities these 
training programs 
present: and that was 
Virginians between the 
ages of 25 and 39, who 
lacked a postsecondary 
credential. Many of 
these folks had 
pursued college at 
some point, maybe 
with us, maybe at a university. So, they had accumulated some college debt. Paying that back, of 
course, is no easy task without the degree or credential to get a good-paying job. 
 
You may know these people. They may be in your family or among your friends. You probably 
encounter them on a regular basis. They check you out at Target. They make your drink at 
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DuBois: Remarks at the Hire Ed Conference (2017)
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Starbucks. They serve your table at nice restaurant. These people are hungry for an opportunity. 
Having failed college once, they feel locked-out. They feel like they’re on the outside looking in. 
Social media doesn’t help by connecting them to the people they went to high school with who went 
on to graduate college and find success. We have to talk about these opportunities in a way that 
makes sense to them, intrigues them, and inspires them to act. 
 
I assure you: something called the New Virginia Economy Workforce Credentials Grant program 
ain’t going to do it. So we have branded our eligible training programs as FastForward training 
programs. The tagline is, “Credentials for a Career that Matters.” Not only is the FastForward 
moniker more descriptive for and appealing to our students, but it also opens the door to co-
branding throughout our colleges. Saying, “FastForward at Germanna Community College,” actually 
makes sense. 
 
We have a terrific website we built to advance this brand. It’s written in plain language and simply 
explains where these training programs can lead you. It’s FastForwardVA.org. It’s most exciting 
feature is that it is a lead-generator, connecting interested people directly with FastForward Career 
Coaches now working at every community college. All we need is your name, your zip code, and an 
email address, and you will be connected directly with someone who can help you explore your 
options and enroll. And we have a paid marketing program that’s loaded up and ready to go. We ran 
into a tiny snag, however, as we were about to launch it. 
 
It’s no surprise that our FastForward training programs are a success. We expected to hit a home 
run. But we didn’t expect to hit the cover off the ball. And boy, did we ever. In the program’s first 
year, which was fiscal year 2016, the state had allocated $5 million dollars for workforce credential 
grants. That money almost lasted the entire year. We came up a bit short but worked it out. Every 
student who sought a grant was able to get one. 
 
This year’s been a different story. Planning for the program to ramp up, the state allocated $7.5 
million for this fiscal year’s grants. The current fiscal year goes through the end of June. Well, folks, 
we are victims of our own success here. Those grants sold out one week ago, on December first. 
 
We have some amazing stories to share, however. Since the program began July 1, 2016, nearly 7,000 
Virginians have used workforce credentials grants. The average age of a grant recipient is 36. The 
median income of those students – in other words, their annual salary before the training program 
was $20,000. Some of them were as low as $8,000. 
 
Rural Virginia is embracing FastForward in a big way. While rural Virginia accounts for about 25-
percent of the state’s population, they account for more than 40-percent of those who’ve earned 
FastForward credentials. One out of every five of these students received public assistance the year 
before they enrolled in a FastForward training program. Two out of every three of these students 
are new to our community colleges. It’s fair to believe that we would not otherwise be serving them 
in a traditional degree program. 
 
And I promise you that no one is more excited to see the job placement and wage data than we are. 
But we don’t have it yet. Those are lagging information sets that simply take time to develop. We 
hear anecdotes here and there. For instance, that power line training program I mentioned at the 
beginning of my remarks just graduated their 100th line worker last month. The program has a job 
placement rate of more than 90-percent. And we’re seeing indications that the starting wages of the 
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careers people are using these credentials to enter represent a 50-percent increase, or more, in their 
annual salary. We’ll be sharing more information as we obtain it. I believe its going to help us tell an 
even better story moving forward. 
 
So, what do we do now? What do we do about that grant funding? In the short-term, we are asking 
Governor McAuliffe to include an additional $2 million dollars in what’s called the caboose budget. 
You don’t hear much about the caboose budget. It’s not a particularly controversial measure. It just 
allows the administration and the General Assembly to do what’s necessary to balance out the 
current budget, which ends in June. 
 
Moving forward, we’re asking the Governor to increase the grant funding in the new two-year 
budget that he will propose to the legislature in just 12 days. We’re asking him to include up to $15 
million per year for each of the two years. Given the tens of thousands of skilled jobs that have yet 
to be filled, and the response we are getting from students across the state, I have no doubt that 
every region of Virginia would benefit from that level of funding. 
 
Now, no matter what the budget news holds for us, we have a lot of work to do in the legislature. 
Not only do we have a new governor and lieutenant governor next year, we have a House of 
Delegates that is almost evenly divided, and could well end up that way. There are a lot of new 
lawmakers to education about what we do, and these grants in particular. Come January, when the 
House of Delegates gavels into session 47 members – nearly half of the House – will have four years 
of government experience, or less. 
 
One of the most effective ways we can advocate for the grants that make FastForward programs 
accessible is to engage the business leaders in your community. We need to connect them with your 
delegates and senators and let them explain the benefits to their company to be able to find and hire 
these skilled, trained, credentialed employees. 
 
I often remind people that elected leaders don’t aspire to fund government programs. Instead, they 
seek to solve community challenges. When someone who earns their paycheck from the community 
college promotes this program, that can be helpful. When a business leader can explain what it’s 
meant to their company that will make a difference. 
 
In closing, let me just thank you for all that you do. The FastForward program is transformative 
internally. It’s giving us a new way to think about, describe, and articulate the benefits of what we do 
under the banner of “workforce development.” And externally, FastForward is positioning us to 
help individuals find opportunity they probably wouldn’t find in a traditional college program. And 
FastForward is helping us partner with businesses in ways, and at a scale, that just wasn’t possible 
before. 
 
A report published last week predicts that up to 800 million jobs that exist across the world today 
will be replaced by automation in just 13 years. That includes up to one-third of the jobs in the US. 
If Virginia is to hold onto and improve that recently announced ranking of America’s fifth best state 
for business, opportunities like FastForward will be essential. You can’t ask people who may be 
parents, who may pay a mortgage – or both! – to update their skills and refresh what they offer 
without affordable, accessible, and convenient ways to do it. They will need FastForward. 
 
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DuBois: Remarks at the Hire Ed Conference (2017)
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I don’t think we began this work one day too early. I’m convinced, beyond any doubt, that years 
from now we are all going to stand witness to a more successful, more prosperous Virginia and we 
will see just exactly how FastForward helped make that possible. 
 
Thank you. Enjoy the conference. 
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English

Remarks at the VCCS Hire Ed Conference (2017)

Presentation at the SCHEV Council Meeting

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 26 Number 1 Article 1 
4-17-2023 
Front Cover (Spring 2023) 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Art and Design Commons, and the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
(2023). Front Cover (Spring 2023). Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 26 (1). 
Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/vol26/iss1/1 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
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Video: The Journey to Community College

Video: Dual Enrollment and High School Career Coaches

Remarks at the Nevada System of Higher Education Diversity Summit

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 29 
12-14-2022 
Remarks for the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education 
(2016) 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Remarks for the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education (2016). Inquiry: The 
Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/
vol25/iss2/29 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
Remarks for the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education (2016) 
 
These remarks were delivered at the General Assembly Building in Richmond, VA on February 2, 2016. 
 
 
adies and gentlemen: good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be with you today to discuss some of 
the community colleges priorities for the legislative session, and some of the projects being 
considered for a bond package.  
 
Virginia’s Community Colleges were created 50 years ago to do what no one else would: to address 
Virginia’s unmet needs in higher education and workforce training. The heart of that mission 
remains constant. The way we pursue it, however, the way we execute it must remain, and is, flexible 
and focused on the needs of the individuals, businesses and communities we serve. 
 
We are grateful for, and encouraged by, the partnership we enjoy with our legislative leaders and the 
administration in our work. And, specifically, by a number of items included in the budget to help us 
better serve Virginians. 
 
The budget includes several priority investments in key areas:  
 
• More than $10 million dollars to educate and graduate more URP students, individuals 
hailing from under-represented populations. We know that it is not enough to be Virginia’s 
leading provider of higher education to African-American, Latino and other first-generation 
students. We must do more to ensure that they leave our colleges with a credential in-hand; 
• A little more than $2 million dollars to enhance the services we can offer to military veterans 
at the seven community colleges that serve the majority of those students. Our veterans 
represent an under-developed pool of talent and promise. The more we can do to help them 
translate their service in uniform to postsecondary credentials and transition into private 
sector careers, the better off we all are; 
• $1.6 million dollars to expand our ability to offer cyber security training. Two of our colleges 
are now Cyber Security Centers of Excellence. Virginia’s interest are best served by having 
more of its community colleges earn that status; 
• And the budget includes $500,000 for our Rural Virginia Horseshoe Initiative. This would 
not only help the effort to ensure that all of Virginia is preparing for the opportunities of the 
new economy, but it also sends a powerful signal to the private and corporate partners who 
are investing in our rural horseshoe work that the state is invested too.    
 
Facilities 
I also want to stress how important the capital projects are that have been included in the 
introduced budget. The VCCS is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and we’re still operating in 
some original structures built with a 20-30 year life expectancy.  With your support, we have 
invested in new buildings on many of our campuses.   However, on most of our 40 campuses, our 
faculty and staff serve students in classrooms and labs that are between 35 and 50 years old. 
 
The capital projects in the introduced budget addresses the priority capital needs of our system. It 
includes construction authorization for seven projects currently under design and would provide 
planning funds to move forward with 11 new capital projects that are vital to the communities we 
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DuBois: Remarks for the Education Subcommittee (2016)
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serve. Your continued support will ensure we have modern, state of technology instructional space 
to educate and train our students for today’s workforce.     
 
Virginia’s credentials shortage 
I’d like to turn now to our biggest item in the budget and one that is vital to Virginia’s economic 
competitiveness. Virginia’s shortage of industry-recognized, postsecondary certifications, and the 
short-term training programs that lead to them, are the higher education issue of our time. 
 
The shortage of these credentials is costing all of 
us real money right now. The company Burning 
Glass produced a report indicating there were 
more than 175,000 job vacancies last year in 
Virginia in what’s called “middle skill” 
occupations.  
 
The jobs we’re talking about paid more than $28 
an hour, or more than $58,000 dollars a year – a 
figure that is just shy of Virginia’s median 
household income ($63,000). This is the kind of 
money that can support a family. Well, those jobs 
each sat vacant for nearly a month – several days 
longer than the national average. That means 
Virginia businesses lost more than 36 million 
hours of productivity. That means Virginia families 
lost more than $1 billion in wages. And Virginia, 
which depends on income tax withholdings more 
than any other state save one, lost more than $54 
million in tax revenue. 
 
Looking forward only highlights just how 
important this challenge is to our future. Over the 
next decade as many as two-thirds of the 1.5 
million jobs that must be filled in Virginia’s 
workforce will require more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree. They will 
demand community college associate’s degrees and industry-recognized credentials.  
 
If businesses can’t find those credentials to hire people in Virginia, they’ll go elsewhere. Today, 19 
other states are funding the community college training programs that lead to industry-recognized 
certifications. That includes many of our neighbors like Maryland, Kentucky and both Carolinas. In 
fact, North Carolina is investing more than $92 million a year on their non-credit programs. 
 
For the sake of comparison, Virginia’s has never had a funding formula for the short-term training 
programs we’re talking about. These resources just don’t exist today for our colleges. Changing that 
is a critical step in boosting Virginia’s competitiveness.  
 
The community college plan  
At the direction of the General Assembly, we spent most of 2015 studying this issue. We held 22 
town hall meetings across Virginia that engaged more than 1,500 business leaders. Accordingly, we 
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have created a workforce credentials plan to move Virginia forward and boost its competitiveness. 
Our plan is bipartisan, innovative and performance-based. 
 
We are proud to share with you that the plan has the backing of virtually every major business 
organization in the state including the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Virginia Business Council, 
Virginia Manufacturers Association and Northern Virginia Technology Council. 
 
From a budget perspective, the plan calls for an investment of $24.6 million, over the next two 
years, in our community colleges to deliver some 10,500 credentials to meet businesses demand 
across Virginia. In doing so, we will build the processes and infrastructure needed to meet our long-
term challenges in this area. 
 
While I understand that you have a number of budget challenges and issues to balance – keeping 
this level of funding in the budget is extremely important in order to create a viable statewide 
program that is both high-quality and financially affordable for our students. 
 
Legislatively, Senator Ruff – who has been a champion in this area for many years - is carrying the 
enabling legislation for the program. We are currently working with interested parties to fine-tune 
several aspects of the legislation, and we look forward to briefing you on this in the very near future. 
 
Community colleges: a workforce training legacy 
In summary, we are at one of those ‘moments in time’ requiring a new approach to meet our future 
workforce needs. While there will always be a need for degree and graduate programs, the business 
community is emphatically telling us that we don’t have enough people with the skills that align with 
their needs – and the needs are different by region. The exciting thing about this credentials program 
is we have an opportunity to bring solid, good-paying middle class jobs back to the Commonwealth 
in large numbers. It’s all about giving our students the skills – embodied in the credentials – to make 
it happen.  
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DuBois: Remarks for the Education Subcommittee (2016)
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Remarks for the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education (2016)

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 34 
12-14-2022 
Remarks at the Special Advisory Council of Presidents Working 
Lunch Session 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Remarks at the Special Advisory Council of Presidents Working Lunch Session. Inquiry: 
The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/
inquiry/vol25/iss2/34 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
	
Remarks at the Special Advisory Council of Presidents Working 
Lunch Session 
 
These remarks were delivered on VCCS enrollment challenges on February 21, 2017. 
 
 
e pulled everyone together today because this is a challenge that truly affects everyone. As 
you just saw in the Prezi, six straight years of enrollment decline has stripped $63 million 
dollars in tuition and fees from our campuses. It’s a humbling perspective as we begin planning for 
yet another uncomfortable state General Fund cut that almost a third of that number. 
 
Throughout my entire career, community colleges have pursued what I’ll call the “Field of Dreams” 
marketing plan. If you remember the movie, a disembodied voice inspired Kevin Costner’s 
character, claiming, “If you build it, they will come.” Well, we’ve spent more than 50 years building 
it in Virginia, but they’re no longer coming. 
 
Throughout my career, I’ve seen us cycle between boom-years and bust-years. But I’ve never seen a 
drought like this. It’s true that enrollment is a national challenge for two-year colleges. It’s true that 
Virginia’s high schools are graduating classes that are shrinking, or holding steady at best. And it’s 
true that some of our 
university friends are 
adjusting their standards, 
welcoming a few students 
who previously may have 
begun their college careers 
with us. 
 
We must understand and 
respond to these reasons, 
but we cannot allow them 
to become excuses. 
 
We pursue a mission that is 
both noble and practical. 
We live in a labor market 
that gives our mission an 
unprecedented urgency. 
Lawmakers and 
policymakers and our State Board members expect more from us, and so should we. 750,000 
Virginians live in poverty – that includes 250,000 children. There is simply no way that we are 
running out of people to serve here.i  
 
Is it too much to wonder, as we operate today, if we are in some sort of business model death spiral? 
In having fewer customers, our colleges have fewer resources. Doing something different seems 
increasingly daunting because we don’t know who can do it or if we can afford it. The cycle 
continues; the challenge grows; the resources shrink. We’ve got to break the cycle. 
 
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I asked you here today because I need your help to break this cycle. And I want to know what help 
you need from the System Office. On average, over the last six years, we have lost 6,000 students 
per year.  
 
The question I have in my mind, and the challenge I extend to the entire VCCS team is this: what 
would it take to recover just one year of that loss? What would it take to increase our numbers by 
6,000 next year? 
 
We’re doing so many good things across your campuses. The Workforce Credentials Grants are off 
to an amazing beginning. Our focus on student success is slowly changing our campus cultures in 
ways that will payoff for years to come for both our colleges and the people we serve. But we have 
to get a handle on enrollment, to ensure that we, indeed, have people to serve. 
 
i https://www.dss.virginia.gov/geninfo/reports/agency_wide/poverty_short.pdf 
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Remarks at the Special Advisory Council of Presidents Working Lunch Session

Video: Virginia Education Wizard

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 7 
12-14-2022 
Community Colleges Provide Launching Pad for Virginia's 
Workforce 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Community Colleges Provide Launching Pad for Virginia's Workforce. Inquiry: The 
Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/
vol25/iss2/7 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
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Community Colleges Provide Launching Pad  
for Virginia’s Workforce 
 
This op-ed was published in early March 2009. 
 
 
queezing every penny out of personal budgets. Raising a family as a single parent. Working two 
jobs. Believe me, I understand every challenge that students at Virginia’s Community Colleges 
face today. Thirty years ago, I was in the same place.  
 
My mother raised my three younger siblings and me on her minimum-wage secretarial salary. Tuition 
for community college was $275, toward which I received only a $50 Pell Grant.  To make ends 
meet, I pumped gas three nights a week and all day Saturday and Sunday. While today’s tuition and 
income levels are higher, that tough balancing act hasn’t changed. 
 
Community college took a chance on me, and I became the first in 13 generations to go to college. 
When I walked into my first classroom, I didn’t have a career plan, but community college became 
my launching pad: I started teaching at those same schools and eventually earned my doctoral degree 
and advanced into administrative roles. I still see myself in every student I meet. 
 
After all, community college is a starting point for nearly 400,000 Virginians seeking the education 
and workforce training they need. As we navigate today’s uncertain economic climate, Virginia’s 
Community Colleges are playing an ever-more meaningful role in helping residents make smart 
choices about their future. While workforce development has always been at the heart of our 
mission, more Virginians now are looking to us for affordable training and education.  
 
In outlining steps to put our country on the road to recovery, President Barack Obama recently 
singled out the critical need for Americans to pursue higher education or career training. More 
specifically, he noted that three-fourths of the fastest-growing occupations, including dental 
hygienists, cardiovascular technologists and engineers, in our country require more than a high 
school diploma – a level only half of our citizens have achieved. He called on all Americans to 
commit to at least one year of continued education.  
 
Virginia’s Community Colleges are on the front lines of responding to our nation’s economic and 
educational challenges. Perhaps more than any other state, Virginia, having earned top grades for a 
skilled workforce and as an attractive place to do business, is poised to meet the demands of a more 
highly educated and skilled workforce. And yet, it will require that we continue to make strategic 
investments that drive our workforce forward and help Virginians align with tomorrow’s jobs and 
careers. 
 
The track record of Virginia’s Community Colleges demonstrates that we can be a critical part of the 
solution. For example, 90 percent of all first responders, including, EMTs, police officers and 
firefighters, earn their education from a community college.  About half of Virginia’s new nurses 
graduated from a community college. Two-thirds of the undergraduates in public schools in Virginia 
today are enrolled in one of our community colleges – paying only a third of the total costs of 
tuition and fees at four-year campuses and potentially benefiting from guaranteed transfer 
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agreements to complete their bachelor’s degrees. And Census Bureau reports show that community 
college education alone can boost Virginians’ median salary by almost 20 percent. 
 
Virginia’s Community Colleges got their start 43 years ago by being willing to do what other 
institutions would not or could not do: respond to Virginia’s unmet workforce and education needs.  
That has since become our core mission. A mission that is different from, and just as essential to 
Virginia’s success, as the 
mission of research institutions 
and liberal arts universities.  
From time to time those needs 
change and our colleges must 
be agile enough and quick 
enough to change with them. 
 
Innovation fuels our continued 
relevance. That’s why we 
developed the Virginia 
Education Wizard 
(www.vawizard.org), offering 
the right tool at the right time 
for students of all levels. This 
online tool delivers easy access 
to information that students and families want to know about career paths, educational offerings and 
college costs. The Wizard delivers real-time answers so Virginians can plan and, more importantly, 
control their future.  Users can go online to explore different careers, learn about what those jobs 
pay in the local market and map out the college courses that will get them where they want to go. 
The Wizard guides users in applying for financial aid and prompts action, such as meeting 
registration deadlines for the semester’s classes. 
 
When I meet informally with students, I often ask if they raised their goals while in community 
college: 90 percent say yes. It’s now time for us as a society to raise our goals as well, to build an 
education system that prepares each and every student for the challenges and workplace of 
tomorrow. The Wizard can help us do so. It is a resource to keep more students engaged in making 
smart choices, achieving goals and continuing to dream.  
 
With the Wizard as our new front door, we are supporting Virginians in learning and improving 
their lives, ultimately preparing motivated individuals who will put their experiences to work for 
Virginia. I invite you to come visit the Virginia Education Wizard and see how it can improve your 
life. 
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Community Colleges Provide Launching Pad for Virginia\u27s Workforce

Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges 
Volume 25 
Number 2 A Lasting Legacy Pt. 2 Article 13 
12-14-2022 
Remarks at the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education 
(2012) 
Glenn DuBois 
Virginia Community College System 
Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry 
 Part of the Higher Education Commons 
Recommended Citation 
DuBois, G. (2022). Remarks at the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education (2012). Inquiry: The 
Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges, 25 (2). Retrieved from https://commons.vccs.edu/inquiry/
vol25/iss2/13 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ VCCS. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ 
VCCS. For more information, please contact tcassidy@vccs.edu. 
Remarks at the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Education (2012) 
 
This speech was delivered in the General Assembly Building on January 24, 2012. 
 
 
r. Chairman; members of the committee; ladies and gentlemen: good afternoon. I frequently 
remind people that our community colleges have had no better partner in its 46-year history 
than the General Assembly.  
 
We are grateful for that as well as today’s opportunity to discuss how we can leverage that 
partnership and the introduced budget to meet a goal that we all share: helping more Virginians earn 
a college credential. 
 
You know, when Governor McDonnell signed the TJ21 bill into law last year, he said it was creating 
6,000 new slots for Virginia college students. And he said 4,000 of those were at Virginia’s 
Community Colleges. 
 
While that is a small anecdote, it is a telling one – emblematic of the role our community colleges 
must play if Virginia is to succeed. 
 
You can also see that what our community colleges accomplish: 
• In the four years leading up to last May, your community colleges were responsible for 
nearly one out of every three college degrees awarded by a Virginia public institution; 
• Last year, Virginia’s Community College graduates accounted more than one-third of all the 
science, technology, engineering and mathematics degrees earned at Virginia’s public higher 
ed institutions; and 
• Your community colleges leveraged the $3 million investment you made last year in 
Workforce Development instruction into job training for 75,000 Virginians and service for 
8,000 Virginia employers. 
 
We maintain a public pledge to keep our tuition and fees at less than half of the same charges at 
Virginia’s public universities. We’re currently just over one-third. Given that, and the results I just 
mentioned, it’s easy to see how we are helping a lot of people get ahead while saving them – and 
taxpayers – a lot of money along the way. 
 
Similarly, Senator Hanger has introduced legislation that would make it easier for middle-income 
families to benefit from the state’s Two-Year College Transfer Grant program. We support that 
legislation and believe it could help hundreds of families every year. 
 
Introduced budget 
In general, we are supportive of the introduced budget and grateful for the priority it places on 
higher education in general and community colleges in particular. 
 
To date, the introduced budget has earned formal resolutions of support from the State Board for 
Community Colleges as well as the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education – two 
esteemed panels that include some of Virginia’s most respected community-focused business and 
industry leaders. 
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The introduced budget continues moving our partnership in the right direction following some dire 
years of public funding. In the four-year period that began in 2008, Virginia’s Community Colleges 
lost $95 million dollars in General Fund support. At the same time, we enrolled 50,000 additional 
students. 
 
To offer a broader perspective, Mr. Chairman, since the fall of 2007, Virginia’s Community Colleges 
have accounted for 69% of the undergraduate enrollment growth at Virginia’s public colleges and 
universities. We are proud of that record. 
 
Our colleges were created in a spirit of innovation to address Virginia’s unmet higher educational 
and workforce needs. When the chips are down, families use our community colleges as their 
personal economic recovery plan. Even in the most challenging times, we are there for them. 
 
Virginia’s Community Colleges are in the second year of an innovative reengineering initiative that is 
exploring everything we do and asking how can we do it better? That honest, open process is 
earning attention across the Commonwealth and across the country. And it is one more reminder of 
that innovative spirit that gave rise to our colleges. 
 
Moving Forward 
In that spirit, Mr. Chairman, I would like to offer just a few thoughts about priorities that support 
the goal of an additional 100,000 college graduates but are not in the introduced budget: Capital 
Outlay remains a challenge for our institutions and the four-year universities, especially as they 
ramp-up our offerings in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and healthcare. 
 
Across Virginia, we are serving students at our community colleges in buildings that are 40 to 45 
years old but were built with a life expectancy of only 25 to 30 years. Nor were those campuses built 
with 21st century community college students in mind.  
 
Increasingly, our student 
enrollments are younger and 
much more likely to attend 
full-time – remaining on 
campus from eight or nine 
in the morning until five in 
the evening. They are 
expecting things we just 
can’t offer right now, like 
someplace to study between 
classes other than the inside 
of their car. 
 
Virginia’s Community 
College struggle with 
finding the right balance of 
full-time and part-time 
faculty members. Over the past decade or so, while balancing funding challenges with the need to 
remain affordable, we have backed-into a place where the majority of our instructors are part-time 
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employees. I don’t question the quality of instruction those people bring to the table. We need more 
full-time faculty members, however. Our work to improve student retention and student success 
depends on people who spend their entire day on-campus. We cannot count on that from our 
adjunct instructors who owe most of their time and attention to their other, primary job. 
 
I must also mention our faculty and staff salaries, which, as you know, have remained stagnant for 
more than four years now. As I previously mentioned, we have added more than 50,000 students 
over the last four years while losing $95 million in General Fund support. The resources simply have 
not existed to ramp-up our faculty and staff in the same dramatic fashion that our enrollment has. 
 
Forgive the cliché, but in very tangible ways, our people have been doing a lot more with less. I 
would hope that the time is drawing near that we can honor that work with even just a modest cost 
of living salary adjustment. 
 
And finally, Mr. Chairman, I believe a state investment in the VCCS Career Coach program would 
payoff in our shared pursuit of more college graduates. Career Coaches are community college 
employees, who work in high schools with students, helping them carve out customized career and 
college plans – a task that even guidance counselors will tell you that they lack the time to do. With 
your help, we could continue expanding this proven and effective strategy to every high school, 
influencing more and more young people whose vocabulary doesn’t even include the word, 
“College.” 
 
Closing 
You know, the first year we opened for business, we served 7,500 students at two colleges. This 
year, when you add together our academic and workforce development efforts, we will be serving 
more than 400,000 Virginians. We could not have that kind of impact on Virginia without the 
partnership that we share with you. Thank you. We are grateful for that. 
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