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A report was recently released by the Lumina Foundation state wise on needs of higher education in America in order to succeed in the twenty first century. According to this report, the state of New Jersey alone will have to enhance college graduates numbers by 5,600 per year till 2025 to achieve President Obama’s national competitiveness goal of college degrees for sixty percent Americans.

This essentially means that over the next fifteen years, New Jersey alone will have to produce at least 770,000 college graduates. Till today, New Jersey has been a leader in college attainment. At least fifty percent of its citizens hold college degrees. However, this in itself is not enough as the rest of the developed world is fast overtaking us.

A heavy lift will be ensured if New Jersey can meet this goal and this is quite challenging keeping in mind the huge public college disinvestment during the past decade. A series of reports have been released by the Garden State during the last 35 years on future higher education needs.

According to most of these reports, the state has suffered a tremendous eventual loss of thousands of high school graduates bound for college. All of them, according to the report move on to higher education institutions in other states. It is imperative for New Jersey to work on retaining its capable, aspiring graduates.

Certain reports have fuelled dynamic action by certain higher education advocates and brought about a sea of change in this field. Recently, the dwindling state coffers stand barrier to any financial or structural changes.

Last spring, Governor Christie created the higher education Governor’s Task Force that will shortly offer a “blue ribbon” report. Former Governor Tom Kean chairs this task force the recommendations of which must be carefully followed and acted upon by New Jersey.

New Jersey State is hitherto on a struggle to compete in the global environment due to its dire financial situation. The State may yet find effective answers in the report that will help it tide the waves by aligning future economic prosperity with its citizen’s educational needs. This report may actually be the State’s best and last hope for the next decade. 

Colleges in this state continue to do the needful for keeping costs down fuelled by rising enrolment and limited resources. Successful citizens who care about college opportunities have contributed huge donations and the path to workforce in the state has been streamlined.

Campus space is effectively being leveraged by institutions to bring in green energy income. Round the clock use of resources generate fresh income through continuing education and adult education programs. Utilization of technology and restructuring of programs have helped contain costs to a great extent.

Though there have been significant changes, the State cannot afford just incremental changes in higher education productivity and support. Without devising a comprehensive strategy that can tie long term prosperity to higher education, New Jersey cannot aim to be a high quality place to live in and an effective economic competitor.