An investment that yields results

An article in Saturday's Boston Globe shows the reciprocal relationship between the investments we make in public education, job training and public higher education and the businesses and jobs that make our economy thrive.

As the article points out, many high-tech businesses are refusing to relocate to states where wages are 20 to 30 percent lower because the Massachusetts workforce is better trained and more skilled:

“Among the reasons that we have continued to expand is we have access to high quality, educated employees, many with biotech and pharmaceutical backgrounds,’’ chief financial officer David Arkowitz. “Our intellectual capital resides here in Massachusetts, and it’s too precious to relocate.’’

This article also underscores the importance of investing in the state's educations system, k-graduate school.

Most of the students who graduate from private colleges and universities in Massachusetts leave the state. It's the students who graduate from our high schools and our public colleges and universities who are the workforce that attracts businesses to Massachusetts. Those businesses create the jobs and generate the revenue that is the engine of our state's economy.

This is why it's so important that we invest in our public education infrastructure. Community colleges in Massachusetts have seen sky-rocketing enrollments as out-of-work Massachusetts residents are re-training to prepare themselves for a more competitive job market.

Those Community Colleges are strapped for money, overly dependent on adjunct professors and increasing fees at a time when students have less capacity to pay. Massachusetts has one of the lowest per-capita levels of investment in its public higher education system in the nation.

It's time to turn that around. The future of our state depends on it.