St. Blanc: State will only succeed with education

Rotary Club of Franklin welcomed Vincent St. Blanc III, of the State Board for Vocational Education to speak Tuesday at their weekly luncheon at the Forest Restaurant.
St. Blanc has served on the board of supervisors of Louisiana’s Community and Technical Colleges since 2005, and was just re-appointed in July for another six-year term.
He notes that in his estimation, which he asserts is evidenced by local news reports, Louisiana has three problems that are holding her back from success: Poverty and health issues are the last two. The first and most egregious is education, or more to the point, the lack thereof.
“There must be something we can do,” St. Blanc said.
According to St. Blanc, there are 406 million people in the state of Louisiana, 2.3 million of which are of “working age.” Of those 2.3 million, 600,000 lack a high school diploma, while 500,000 have a high school diploma.
“Just think about that,” St. Blanc said. “The only way that Louisiana will ever succeed, is through education. And, the numbers that I just gave you…there must be something we can do to educate that 600,000.”
St. Blanc’s contention is that to achieve a more advantageously educated state, Louisiana must look to the incentives and job opportunities provided by a continued education.
St. Blanc says that Louisiana is the leader of the nation in community and technical college certificates earned. While such statistics prove Louisiana’s viability in the job market, St. Blanc wants to localize that in St. Mary Parish. He believes that a local push for more technical and community college access and participation from within the parish will help to revitalize what he says is a shrinking local population.
“What you gotta understand,” St. Blanc said, “is that 84 percent of jobs require more than a high school education. The majority of the workforce of the state of Louisiana is on the back of the community and technical college system. Sixty-eight percent of our graduates stay in their communities.”
Thusly, it follows that the more St. Mary Parish can focus on broadening its commitment to continuing vocational education, the better its chance of incorporating the capacity for community development, he said.
St. Blanc says that the LCTCS has been working within its own ranks, to build what he calls “bridges” from parish to parish, between several of the local community and technical colleges.
For instance, one particular school now offers classes at the location of a school in a neighboring parish, and so on. However, the LCTCS has also been working to build “bridges” between local community and technical colleges and local universities, as well. This diversification through consolidation seems to present opportunities for students, which would not have been available, previously.
Aside from integration of the LCTCS through interparish cooperation, and integration through state universities, St. Blanc continued the trumpet call for vocational education by touting the associates degree as superior to a bachelor’s degree. He supported this claim by declaring that many who earn the former degree attain better paying jobs, and attain them faster than those who attain the prior degree. He says that often, the students in the Associate’s programs at Louisiana community and technical schools do not make it past their first year of those two-year programs, due to being offered irrefusable salaries in their fields of study, before they can even attain their official certifications or degrees.
Though, for all the promise available through the LCTCS, St. Mary Parish has yet to see the same yield of success, as other parishes have seen. This could owe to several factors, such as population density differentials or skewed demographics.
But whatever the reason, St. Blanc announced Tuesday that one thing he and the LCTCS want to do to cajole collegiate success from the parish, is place technical and community satellites on the sites of Metal Shark’s and Gulf Craft’s boat construction yards. This would localize the LCTCS in St. Mary Parish, and provide immediate training facilities for two of the area’s biggest employers.
St. Blanc closed by saying, “Without education, nothing is solved. You cannot solve anything…nothing. Without education, we are just hamsters running in cages. That’s it, until you get an education.”