Like most great ideas, creating the Maine Community College System now seems like an obvious step, one the state should have taken decades ago to expand access to postsecondary education. The rate at which students are signing up for classes – from 5,066 in 1997 to 11,682 in 2007 – proves its need. A new initiative, designed to bring more rural students into the system, further nurtures this essential component of Maine’s educational hierarchy, and happily, it does so without public funds.

The community college option is a good fit for Maine, a state plagued with lower income than its New England neighbors. Researchers at the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center have noted “the clear and growing correlation between education and income in Maine,” an obvious but important observation made in a report on the community college system’s rural initiative. “It is simply no coincidence that the counties with the lowest percentage of adults holding a college degree are also those with the highest poverty rates,” the report states. Some 80 percent of those living in Somerset, Piscataquis, Washington and Aroostook counties do not hold any postsecondary degrees. Consequently, the report states, poverty in Washington, Somerset and Aroostook counties is about twice that of Sagadahoc and York counties.

More than 500,000 people, or 42 percent of the state’s population, live in rural areas, and those communities are the target of the new initiative. The report notes the “troubling economic gap” between urban and rural Maine, where employment has declined in the manufacturing and natural resource-based sectors. The days of finding well-paying jobs in the mills, or making good money being self-employed in the woods or on the water, are becoming a thing of the past.

In an effort to learn how to best extend the reach of the community colleges into rural areas, system officials hosted 14 meetings in rural communities around the state between July and last month. System President John Fitzsimmons met with 400 community and business leaders from all 16 counties and found three key themes emerging. Rural Mainers have a deep appreciation for their quality of life and sense of community, and were willing to work hard to erase barriers to prosperity in order to sustain those values. They understood the need for more skilled workers in their communities, particularly in health care, construction and niche manufacturing. And many said the community colleges – in Wells, South Portland, Auburn, Fairfield, Bangor, Calais and Presque Isle – are vital centers to their host communities, providing educational, economic and cultural lifeblood.

The $6.2 million rural initiative includes an endowment so the system can offer 250 to 300 scholarships to rural students each year, it expands distance learning and provides degree programs to targeted communities, it allows high school students to take college courses at no cost, and it assists students with child care.

The Maine Department of Labor reports the number of jobs requiring some form of postsecondary education or training is expected to rise by 16 percent between 2002 and 2012, both in rural and urban Maine. The state’s economy will miss opportunities for growth if the work force is not prepared. Reaching deeper into rural Maine with a menu of educational opportunities is essential in preparing the work force.