INFORMATION #2 EDSR 08-14-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Re~iapP-i k ~~.i ~ 1 ., .a. U~ CENIAA MWM1FSO~A Pine Technical College in Pine City served close to 1,000 students from !004 to 2005. Pine Tech offers associate in applied science and associate in science degrees, as well as diplomas and certificates. Practical nursing and automotive are the largest programs at Pine Tech, while distinctive programs range from gunsmithing to public welfare financial worker to management of information systems to mechanical engineering. Serving about 6,000 students, Ridgewater College, a combined technical and community college with campuses in Willmar and Hutchinson, offers associate degrees in arts, associate degrees in applied science, and associate in science degrees, as well as diplomas and certificates. TI}e largest programs include liberal arts transfer programs, health services, business, agriculture, and veterinary technology. Ridgewater also has specialties in nondestructive testing ~chnology, geographic positioning systems (GPS) for agriculture, advanced collision services, calibration engineering technology, computer art and publishing, insurance claim representative, dairy management, and audio technology,..: SL Cloud Technical College (SCTC), located ih St Cloud, serves just under - 5,000 students. In addition to Meeting the Needs of Employers Through the third quarter of 2005, 26.5 percent of total employment in Central Minnesota was in the goods- producing domain, which includes agriculture, construction, and manufacturing; as compared to 19.8 percent in Minnesota. Fifteen percent of Central Minnesota jobs were in health care and social assistance, compared to 14 percent in the entire state. Many of the largest and fastest- growing occupations in these industries require technical training. (See Table 2.) To that end, it appears that workers /' in Central Minnesota are responding well to the needs of local industries, especially those that are becoming more technologically sophisticated. Community and technical colleges have become uniquely linked to their local economies, churning out workers with the types of skills that growing businesses in the region demand. "[F]our-year degree programs generally focus on academic skills. In contrast, the nation's community colleges focus on arming graduates with occupational skills-tools that many employers value highly in today's workplace," according to Jason Figure 2: Minnesota State Colleges & Universities Campus Locations in Central Minnesota 3 Minnesota Employment Review June 2006 Source: U.S. CensusBweau.