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America's 1132 community colleges have a major role to play in educating the workforce to meet local employment demands and to compete with workers in other countries. How are they doing? A recent study paints a mixed picture.
According to the International Business Education Index, conceived and compiled by researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) and Lansing Community College, the number of colleges offering international business courses said international courses and programs of any kind increased after the first survey was completed in 2008.
IBEX scored the colleges based on the percentage of all programs including business that were international. The number was 4.5% in 2009 and 8.4% in 2014. Researchers suggested a target goal of 20% by 2024 in order to maintain the competitiveness of U.S. workforce. Scoring was based on whether programs were growing, stagnant, or declining.
Iowa leads the pack
According to the 2015 results, Iowa had the most growth in international programs among states, with the Northeast besting all regions. It is unclear why Iowa received the top marks. However, agriculture is global and farmers and industries that serve them better have a good handle on what's going on in the wider world. Likewise, the Northeast has a diverse economy, which emphasizes high tech and exports.
When rating international business knowledge there was an increase between 2008 and 2009, but a big drop in 2014 among students to a level below 2008. Faculty and administrators’ international business knowledge scores were both down, while people in the community were slightly ahead of the 2008 baseline.
Authors of the study are proposing a score of 7 by 2024. Given that the aggregate score dropped by 3% over 5 years, colleges must get cracking in order to help the workforce maintain competitiveness.
In 2014, 71% colleges offered a course in international business down from 85% in 2012. One-third of colleges require a course for the Associate of Arts degree in business, while two-thirds offer it as an elective, which may (or may not) be transferable to a four-year institution.
Global Business Today is the top textbook in community colleges with a 13% market share; but there is only one chapter on export and import. If you want to know how to find a buyer or how to create an export plan for your small business, or how to get a job related to outbound shipping you probably won’t learn it from this particular text.
You will learn a good bit about trade theory, investment flows and currency markets. But since only 38% of the business students go on to four- year colleges, it's reasonable to ask whether we're properly equipping them for success by not focusing, for example, on how to build an e-commerce website with app-enabled fulfillment capabilities to the rest of the world.
Don't refuse, infuse
Business faculty can, of course, infuse the practical and its local context with the theoretical. But many faculty members do not seem to be interested or have the wherewithal. Helping them, as Michigan State does with a biennial workshop on international business, is terrific but inadequate to meet the need, which is acute and requires more urgency than we seem capable of treating it.
What role does trade play in our community? Who's exporting and how do they do it? How do you create an e-commerce store for cross-border selling? How do you write a plan for such businesses and what kinds of resources are available to help? What jobs and skills are involved in facilitating trade? What are the standards for world-class customer service?
College teachers at a recent MSU institute agreed that basic export literacy should be a goal of international or any business course and that the above list is an excellent starting point. As one teacher put it, with others nodding in agreement: "Many of our students don't even know what import and export are." We must ask ourselves, are we failing to provide students with the tools to compete?
| Product Model | Inside Diameter | Outside Diameter | Thickness |
| NUKR90X/3AS NTN | 30 | 90 | 37 |
| NUKR80X/3AS NTN | 30 | 80 | 37 |