Absence makes the heart grow fonder
The downtown of Bath, on the Maine Coast and home of the big Bath Irons Works shipyard.
“All I know is that history repeats itself and people are going to want to experience the world. But I know then they are going to have a better appreciation for what is here in Maine.’’
— John Baldacci (born 1955), governor of the Pine Tree State in 2003-2011
John O. Harney: 'Emergency remote'; a WPA for humanists?; defense workers kept on job
From The New England Journal of Higher Education (NEJHE), a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org):
A few items from the quarantine …
Wisdom from Zoom. COVID-19 has been a boon for Zoom and Slack (for people panicked by too many and too-slow emails). Last week, I zoomed into the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Leadership Series conversation with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) President Paul LeBlanc and HGSE Dean Bridget Long. LeBlanc notes that the online programs adopted by colleges and universities everywhere in the age of COVID-19 are very different from SNHU’s renowned online platform. Unlike SNHU, most institutions have launched “emergency remote” work to help students stay on track. Despite worries in some quarters about academic quality, LeBlanc says the quick transition online is not about relaxing standards, but ratcheting up care and compassion for suddenly dislocated students. The visionary president notes that just as telemedicine is boosting access to healthcare during the pandemic, online learning could boost access to education.
Among other observations, LeBlanc explains that “time” is the enemy for traditional students who have to pause classes when, for example, their child gets sick. If they are students in a well-designed online program, they can avoid delays in their education despite personal disruptions. He also believes students will want to come rushing back to campuses after COVID-19 dissipates, but with the recession, he wonders if they’ll be able to afford it. Oh and, by the way, LeBlanc ventures that it’s unlikely campuses will open in the fall without a lot more coronavirus testing.
Summer learning loss becomes COVID learning loss. That’s the concern of people like Chris Minnich, CEO of the nonprofit assessment and research organization NWEA, founded in Oregon as the Northwest Evaluation Association. The group predicts that when students finally head back to school next fall (presumably), they are likely to retain about 70% of this year’s gains in reading, compared with a typical school year, and less than 50% in math. The concern over achievement milestones reminds me of the fretting over SATs and ACTs as well as high-stakes high school tests, being postponed. Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, notes that the pause “provides all of us with an opportunity to rethink the testing requirements.”
Another WPA for Humanists? Modern Language Association Executive Director Paula M. Krebs recently reminded readers that during the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration, though commonly associated with building roads and bridges, also employed writers, researchers, historians, artists, musicians, actors and other cultural figures. Given COVID-19, “this moment calls for a new WPA that employs those with humanities expertise in partnership with scientists, health-care practitioners, social scientists, and business, to help shape the public understanding of the changes our collective culture is undergoing,” writes Krebs.
Research could help right now. News of the University of New Hampshire garnering $6 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to build and test an instrument to monitor space weather reminded me of when research prowess was recognized as a salient feature of New England’s higher education leadership. That was mostly before jabs like the “wastebook” from then-U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) ridiculed any spending on research that didn’t translate directly to commercial use. But R&D work can go from suspect to practical very quickly. For example, consider research at the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute trying to see if an extract from lobsters might work to treat COVID-19. Or consider that 15 years ago, the Summer 2004 edition of Connection (now NEJHE) ran a short piece on an unpopular research lab being built by Boston University and the federal government in Boston’s densely settled South End to study dangerous germs like Ebola. The region was also a pioneer in community relations, and the neighborhood was tense about the dangers in its midst to say the least. But today, that lab’s role in the search for a coronavirus vaccine is much less controversial.
Advice for grads in a difficult year. This journal is inviting economists and other experts on “employability” to weigh in on how COVID-19 will affect 2020’s college grads in New England. What does it mean for the college-educated labor market that has been another New England economic advantage historically?
Bath Iron Works will keep its employees at work.
Defense rests? One New England industry that is not shutting down due to COVID-19 is the defense industry. In Maine, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works ordered face masks for employees and expanded its sick time policy, but union leaders say the company isn’t doing enough to address coronavirus. More than 70 Maine lawmakers recently asked the company to consider closing temporarily to protect workers from the spread of the virus. But the Defense Department would have to instruct the shipyard to close, and Pentagon officials say it is a “Critical Infrastructure Industry.” About 17,000 people who work at the General Dynamics Electric Boat’s shipyards in Quonset Point, R.I., and Groton, Conn., are in the same boat, so to speak. They too have been told to keep reporting to work. In New London, a letter in The Day pleaded with Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont to shut down Electric Boat. Critical Infrastructure Industry. If only attack subs on schedule could help beat an “invisible enemy.”
John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education.
Below, “Wong’s Pot with Old Flowers,” by Montserrat College Prof. Timothy Harney.
John O. Harney: New England vs. demographics
BOSTON
“The Great Recession and not-so-great recovery applies to all of us.”
That was University of Southern Maine professor Charlie Colgan’s remark at at the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) conference Oct. 13 as he noted that Maine was just two-thirds of the way back to pre-recession employment levels.
The New England forecasts at the Fall Economic Outlook conference were generally cautiously optimistic, sprinkled with the expressed and implied NEEP mantra: “Having said that, I could be wrong.”
It may be the dismal science, but it’s an experiment you're part of every time you go to work or buy anything.
“What is relatively unique in New England is the region’s demographics—with a rapidly aging population and steep declines in young adult population threatening the region’s workforce skills and education advantage,” said New England Forecast Manager Ross Gittell, chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire.
In Maine, for example, Baby Boomers and their children simply had fewer babies, so all of Maine’s added population in the next 40 years will come from in-migration, but the big sources of that in-migration—Vermont and New Hampshire—are also shrinking, said Colgan. Will productivity increase enough to keep Maine and New England competitive?
Gittell and others joked that given the demography, the region should have focused on under-18 housing instead of over-65 housing.
Colgan noted that ship and boatbuilding have returned to Maine as a major industry (thanks to more destroyers being built at Bath Iron Works) and natural-resource industries have returned, in a sense, with Lincoln Logs coming back to Maine from China.
Colgan, by the way, is one of the professors let go recently by the University of Southern Maine—part of a higher-education disinvestment story that may say more about the future of the New England economy than any other layoff tracked by NEEP.
He warned that people in Maine see the loss of old-economy jobs such as the impending closure of the Verso paper mill in Bucksport as a tragedy, while they view the laying off of intellectuals at USM, who may be “from away” (though Colgan’s not) as a win for taxpayers.
Among tidbits from the other NEEP forecast managers:
Fairfield University professor emeritus Edward Deak noted that just 60 percent of Connecticut jobs lost during the recession have been regained in the Land of Steady Habits. No one knows whether they are as good as the jobs they’re replacing. What is clear in Connecticut, said Deak, is that “the well-to-do are doing very well.”
Connecticut has the sixth-oldest population in the U.S., though many people over age 65 are leaving the state after retiring. In retail, more purchases are being made via the Internet by working women with young children; fewer at the malls, Deak said, adding that when you look at Connecticut skylines, you don’t see any cranes. It’s all work on old buildings.
Bryant University assistant professor Edinaldo Tebaldi seemed relieved that Rhode Island is no longer first in unemployment; now it’s third. But this “gain” is associated with shrinking of the labor force, and the number of jobs is still below pre-recession levels.
New Hampshire has gone the other direction. Center for Public Policy Studies economist Dennis Delay said New Hampshire had been outperforming New England and U.S. job growth especially in early '80s, but is no longer the superstar. He showed 2012 migrants by higher educational attainments: lots of graduate or professional degrees among the foreign-born, but also many without a high school diploma. Delay noted that New Hampshire ranks high in indicators of home ownership, voter turnout and low welfare costs, but also high in student debt and low in growth of people ages 25-44—so-called wealth-building years.
Vermont economist Jeff Carr noted that about 90 percent of jobs there lost during the recession had been recovered—second in New England to Massachusetts, which has fully recovered jobs. Vermont is difficult to analyze because the job totals in each sector are small. But that small size adds to anxiety about the loss of a few-hundred highly paid jobs at the closing Vermont Yankee nuke; as well as perpetual concern about IBM because its decisions are made in Armonk, N.Y. Carr also cited the importance of Vermont’s food industry, including craft brewers. (The same day, the Vermont Foodbank reported that one-quarter of Vermont's citizens don't know where their next meal is coming from.)
Carr joked that he is in favor of financial-services bonuses in New York City and Boston because they boost Vermont's sizable second-home economy.
According to the New England regional forecast, prepared by Gittell, the regional economy will continue to see growth rates below the national average. The NEEP forecast is that total employment growth will average 1.3 percent a year—and all the New England states are projected to have employment growth below the national average over the forecast period out to 2018.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, opened the conference with a presentation on the U.S. Economic Outlook. In a year or so, growth in gross regional product could go from 3% to 4 percent fueled partly by more housing, including pent-up demand among millennials who have been renting. The economist, and increasingly visible TV pundit, contended that financial aspects of economy are in great shape, especially high-income households. Middle-incomes households are still encumbered by debt, he said, but the high end does most of the spending, “though I’m not arguing economy can flourish without everyone participating,” said Zandi.
Phew. He told of his son majoring in philosophy. (Reminded me of the founder of one of the nation’s leading career-oriented online providers confiding that his child was majoring in sociology on a traditional campus.)
Despite Zandi’s general optimism, the risks include interest rates and a mélange of global issues, Zandi noted, adding that even Ebola could undermine traveling and spending (may not be rational to be so concerned about it, but people are). In response to a question, Zandi said he doesn’t think income and wealth inequality is a big issue in a given year, compared with the lack of labor. No one’s going to be writing a book about income inequality soon, he said. Really?
In his keynote address, former Maine Gov. John E. Baldacci, now at the law firm of Pierce Atwood, cited the importance of energy and exports in the region’s economic future. He hailed natural gas as the foundation fuel, while the region works toward renewables, including solar, tidal and wood.
He tied exports to tourism, noting that the owner of New Balance sneakers was introduced to Maine via ski vacations, where he was treated well, then announced plans to open plants in the state.
In a concluding panel, William Guenther, chair and CEO of Mass Insight, boasted: “Massachusetts has benefited for years from the talent cluster that we have offered business.” He noted, however, that technology-focused jobs are growing in such areas as big data analytics, cybersecurity, and computer sciences, but the state is not producing enough college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) to keep up with demand from business. "Jobs will always come to where the talent is,” said Guenther.
Jobs also go where there’s energy work. The state and Canadian province with the most explosive job sectors are oil- and gas-rich North Dakota and Alberta.
John O. Harney is executive editor of The New England Journal of Higher Education, the online publication of the New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org), where this column originated.