Florida State College at Jacksonville is one of the latest colleges to take on Florida Governor Rick Scott’s $10,000 degree challenge.
And it could mean good things beyond just the education opportunity.
The degree will be in Logistics, which applies to efficiency of movement of materials and goods and overall management with transportation and services. Specifically, it could mean a group of trained employees for Jacksonville’s ports and roadways.
“There’s a tremendous demand in the Jacksonville area for a Logistics degree,” says FSCJ Interim President Willis Holcombe.
Aside from the benefit of an affordable degree, Holcombe says this plan could mean some new hiring opportunities.
“We plan to use a lot of expertise that exists in our manufacturing and our transportation employers in the immediate area,” Holcombe says.
Holcombe says the college will be making the degree more affordable by offering more online coursework and looking to the private sector for adjunct faculty. He says this could mean the degree will not just be more affordable, but more practical because it is led by real-industry leaders.
Right now, Holcombe says they are nearly done with planning the degree itself, and are moving now to getting it approved. They hope to submit the program to the State Board of Education by the summer and enroll students as early as January 2014.
And while only the one degree is planned at this time, Holcombe told me its success could mean a lot moving forward.
“Well look at other programs and see if we can, in fact, build in some efficiencies perhaps across the curriculum,” he says.
But while they consider more of these low cost opportunities, Holcombe says students can still look in to other options, like dual enrollment, in order to keep their costs down.
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