Corporate leaders in Minnesota stay silent amid ICE raids. Why?
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Why did Marketplace open with a report on rising community college enrollment?
The popular kid on campus, community colleges. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. For the fourth fall in a row, enrollment in community colleges was up, this time up 3% from a year earlier. That's according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Why is interesting. Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes has that.
41-year-old Titus Dominick has always loved to cook. So this fall, he enrolled in a culinary program at Columbus State Community College in Ohio.
The ultimate goal would be at some point to be able to own my own restaurant.
Dominick worked as a cook on an aircraft carrier when he was in the Navy years ago. For the last decade, he's worked as a commercial truck driver. He hopes this program will launch his new career. At some point, I have to pull that thread and say it's time to go for it. More people are doing the same as Dominic, going to community college with the aim of getting a particular job. There's been an increase in people seeking associate's degrees. And Matthew Holtzapel, who leads the research team at the National Student Clearinghouse, says there's been an even bigger rise in short, job-focused certificate programs.
It speaks to students of all ages seeing the value of these short-term credentials. There's a wage payoff that students are seeing, and they see it as clear steps toward the career or the job that they want.
Another driver of growth? More high school students are now taking community college classes.
I think this kind of program helps students get into college sooner, but helps students learn they can do college work and they can succeed in college.
Holzapfel points out that community colleges aren't necessarily gaining at the expense of other schools.
How are nontraditional students and certificate programs driving community college growth?
There has also been an uptick in the number of students going to four-year colleges. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has quietly removed web pages that used to say mobile phones are not a health risk. The Wall Street Journal noticed the change. Robert Kennedy Jr. 's Department of Health and Human Services has ramped up a new study of the health effects, if any, of the radio waves emitted by phones. The FDA pages used to say, in part, the weight of scientific evidence has not linked exposure to radio frequency energy from cell phone use with any health problem.
The country and especially people in Minnesota remain on edge and upset after the killing of Rene Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen by an ICE agent in Minnesota. This with more ICE agents and other federal officers deployed to the area. Amid all this, a key set of regional voices has been noticeably quiet, executives for many of Minnesota's leading corporations. There are many. For more, I'm joined by Marketplace's Senior Economics Contributor Chris Farrell in St. Paul. Hey, Chris. Good morning, David. Minnesota has headquarters for some very high profile businesses. I'm thinking 3M, Target, Best Buy, General Mills, many more. Some of them have been right at the center of the immigration enforcement, immigration raids in their stores, employees detained in some cases.
There have been calls for firms to protect employees and customers. What have been the public statements from big companies, given everything we've seen in the past week or so?
Well, David, there have been very few public statements so far. Generally, companies have said, look, they can't stop immigration officials from entering public spaces, and that's right. But here's the thing. Prominent executives served on nonprofit boards. They weigh in on workforce issues, and they tap their corporate foundations and personal pockets to support community initiatives. So with that history, with that background, corporate Minnesota's silence about increased federal immigration enforcement –
Now, the administration's promise is that strict immigration policy will lead to more and better jobs for citizens. But, I mean, we've seen calculations, right, that this immigration enforcement has had negative effects, a negative impact on Minnesota's economy.
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