City Colleges program can lead the way in lowering crime rate

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Updated: January 14, 2012 8:12AM

The worst thing about returning from a vacation is catching up on mayhem.

I can’t ignore that on any given day, someone is robbed of their valuables, often at gunpoint.

As the economy sank and the unemployment rate rose, the criminal element got bolder, until, as the late R&B singer Marvin Gaye wailed decades ago: “It makes me want to throw up both my hands.”

I understand there are no easy answers.

But simply locking up the muggers isn’t solving the problem. Eventually, these felons return to the street unable to find jobs and go back to hitting people in the head.

Hopefully an initiative that was unveiled by the mayor and the City Colleges of Chicago Monday will prove effective in keeping more people from ending up on this dead-end path.

The idea is for private industry to partner with community colleges to prepare students for specific jobs in the workforce.

“We can’t keep looking at 10 percent unemployment and 100,000 job openings,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a phone interview on Monday, hours before he was to speak to the Economic Club of Chicago where his speech would focus on education.

“We need our community colleges linked up to those growth sectors, and to do that, we need our industry leaders linked up to those schools,” said Emanuel in his prepared remarks.

Although this effort isn’t being billed as a crime-fighting tool, but as a measure to close a “skills gap” in the Chicago area, people with good jobs aren’t stalking the streets stealing other people’s cell phones and wallets.

Like the governor, Emanuel is working hard to keep industry in the Chicago area.

“What has happened is we have employers saying we can’t find people to fill these jobs,” he told me. “We can’t protect businesses from a recession, but employers that need to expand have to have workers.”

The emphasis will be on growth industries, including health care, transportation, aviation, information technology and hospitality.

Medical facilities such as Rush University Medical Center and Advocate Health Care have agreed to help develop curricula.

“You can teach allied health, but if it is not the allied health program that Rush or other facilities are using, all you have is a credential in allied health that is not relevant in the real world,” noted City Colleges Chancellor Cheryl Hyman.

“It is not just about bringing in any one company or tailoring programs around that company but tailoring those programs around those industries,” she said.

“We want to make sure that if you come here, every credential you get can increase your economic value,” she said. “That credential should transfer right into the workplace or transfer right into a four-year institution.”

For as long as I can remember, City Colleges has been a stepchild of the city’s university system, a situation that has never been acknowledged by public officials.

Emanuel dared broach this inequity before a room full of corporate executives.

He told the group that while he was riding the L six weeks ago, he met a young man who was commuting to Harold Washington College.

“So when he puts Harold Washington on his resume, that should mean something. The basic agreement is you take responsibility, and we’ll provide you opportunity. That young man is taking responsibility, but we are not living up to our side of the bargain,” he said.

Because Hyman grew up in public housing and attended Olive-Harvey College before earning a bachelor’s from Illinois Institute of Technology, she knows a solid educational opportunity can make a difference.

She wants students to look at schools like Kennedy-King College and be able to see that they can go there and make a better life for themselves.

“This opportunity gave me a chance to become chancellor. One day it should give them that very same chance,” she said.

If this program works, crime reduction could be an extra bonus.