This is the college that houses the UAW-Ford National Development and Training Center. In a study of the first 600 applications approved for payment under the Plan during the first few months of its existence, Center staff found:

"...they (the participants) strongly preferred two-year vocational education programs offered by local community colleges and technical institutes. These employees tended to select a full-time load of college courses, with the Plan paying for about 95 percent of tuition and compulsory fees."

Another example of such a national effort is the General Motors program to train automobile dealership technicians, a program that will draw upon more than 60 community colleges across the country as the training centers, when the program is fully developed.

This brings us to the point of this hearing.

The community colleges are very grateful to Senator Grassley for his authorship of S. 108, the bill he originally introduced in the last Congress. This bill aptly reflects the national interest in what community colleges are striving to do in order to address the specific skill needs of industry, to help rebuild the workforce the country must have to stay ahead of global competition, and to curb unemployment.

The need for state-of-the-art equipment has become a serious hardship to community colleges in their ability to respond most effectively to the skill gaps that are plaguing American productivity. Wherever you turn among the States, the community colleges universally identify state-of-the-art equipment for one or more technician courses as placed at the top of the critical-needs

list.

Very often, the courses most acutely handicapped by this need are those in the rapidly developing technologies, such as electronics, computer sciences, and robotics, where the American economy is hardest pressed to meet global competition.

Mr. Chairman, the speed of change is dizzying. According to a study sponsored by the Urban Institute, over a five-year period about 10 percent of the labor force underwent one or more changes in machine technology. Another 12 percent experienced a machine change as a result of a position change not caused by a change in technology. This study concluded that technological advances changed two to three percent of all jobs yearly, change that affects 1.5 to two million workers in the U.S. annually. Further, the time gap between technological invention and private-sector application is narrowing; once 15 years, it is now three or four years. The result of these quick adaptations of innovations is that production processes change rapidly, requiring new skills on the part of the workforce. In fact, this process is now continuous and will require that workers and those who expect to enter the workforce continuously upgrade their skills so that they can adapt to the new machines and the new

processes.

Change is not a quirk of this point in history; it will be a fact of our lives into the forseeable future. To keep up with this change, to provide opportunities to our workforce to learn new skills or to upgrade their present ones, and to do it on state-of-the-art equipment, we must have the help of business and industry and the Congress needs to provide incentives to the

private sector to give us the help.

Let me be more specific about my own State, Mr. Chairman. In Iowa our community college equipment shortages are plaguing such vital programs as Data

These revolutionary changes are taking place in the office and in the

factory as well.

Laser-beam technology in tool and die machinery, for example,

is no longer the future but clearly represents the present. And, of course, we all are aware of the impact of robotics on the marketplace.

Our corporations expect us to train their future employees in a way that will easily adapt them to this technology. Instead, we, for the most part, are still using the standard equipment of the past several decades equipment which is far removed from the state-of-the-art.

-

At Kirkwood Community College, for example, in our machinist program, we still have some machinery which pre-dates World War II. To replace this with just one or two laser-beam machines, would cost hundreds of thousands of dolsomething clearly beyond our financial ability and the State's as well.

lars

-

In nearly every area of training, the technological revolution is exploding before our eyes. Without proper equipment to train the workforce, Iowa's unique and responsive system will surely begin to seriously lag behind.

This past session, the Iowa Legislature did pass a new law that will provide a small property tax levy beginning next year to assist with equipment

needs.

-

but wholly inade

Senators, this is a commendabale effort on Iowa's part quate. The tax levy will generate $190,000 dollars for Kirkwood; yet, the

current need at Kirkwood runs into the millions of dollars just to become part of the high tech century. It will take 10's of thousands of additional dollars to maintain any type of continued renewing of that equipment.

With property taxpayers nearing the limit of their endurance, with States struggling to avoid massive insolvency, and with the Federal Treasury empty, the only direction left to turn is to the private sector yet, with the current state of the economy, they need some incentive to be able to respond as they and we desire.

S. 108 establishes such an incentive.

At the back of my written testimony you will find briefs and tables from various States which document the more serious equipment needs of their community colleges. Ironically, the full scope of the need cannot be documented nationally, because there are States that have told their colleges they should no longer report their equipment needs, simply because those States lack the budget capacity to meet those needs. The fact is that many States are having difficulty financing basic higher educational services. A recent study shows how several States have been severely affected by economic downturns in

the last ten years. The State Investment in Higher Education, 1983 reports that State appropriations for public higher education in 30 States increased by less than three percent or actually fell during the ten-year period. When appropriations were adjusted for inflation, funding for the institutions fell in eleven States, including: Indiana, Oregon, Vermont, Connecticut, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maine, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois. The five hardest-hit States were: Illinois (-14 percent), Michigan (-11 percent), New Jersey (-9 percent), and Maine, and Wisconsin (-8 percent). The five States that fared the best during this period were: Alaska (+187 percent), Wyoming

(+128 percent), Oklahoma (+110 percent), Texas (+89 percent), and Alabama (+71 Iowa, by the way, ranked 18th in the nation, showing a 31 percent

percent).

increase in appropriations in the ten-year period.

Given the pressing state of productivity and employment in our country, and the urgency of the challenge to the American economy and American technology, the reasons for allowing tax incentives to firms that make state-of-the-art equipment gifts to technician training programs in the community colleges, and other associate-degree granting institutions, are easily as strong and clearly as much in the national interest as providing such incentives for equipment given to university research. Both serve the same utimate need. Regardless of the volume of talent the country might pour into science and engineering, our eminence in these fields and our leadership in emerging technology will never be secure, unless it has the solid foundation of an adequate supply of advanced highly trained technicians.

Mr. Chairman, the two organizations that I am speaking for here, the Association of Community College Trustees and the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges, strongly endorse S. 108 and urge its adoption by the

Senate.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to share our concerns and ideas with you and your Committee. We would be pleased to respond to any questions you may have.