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A Chilling Announcement from Baton Rouge...

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The Baton Rouge Business Report says that Baton Rouge-based IEM will soon become North Carolina-based IEM.

 

IEM is a disaster management consulting firm with about 200 employees in Baton Rouge. According to the company, only about 50 of those are involved in headquarters operations, and the other 150 could remain in Baton Rouge but may opt to go to North Carolina. If they stay, it would soften the blow considerably, except for the other part of the announcement which says that IEM plans to hire 430 workers in North Carolina.

 

The announcement comes after what Baton Rouge Area Chamber President Adam Knapp calls the offer of "an unprecedented retention package" with financial incentives and plans to address workforce concerns. Let me repeat that: workforce concerns.

 

The story gets worse. Madhu Beriwal, CEO of IEM, issued a statement saying the firm is moving to the Research Triangle Park region because of its "highly educated workforce, history of innovation, and culture of public and private collaboration." The Baton Rouge area can mount a convincing case that they are number one in Louisiana in all three of these areas (workforce, innovation, collaboration), yet Louisiana still lost out to North Carolina.

 

IEM's Vice President for Technology, Ted Lemcke, says that IEM needs a large number of workers with graduate degrees. He says that by being near three large universities, the pool of available workers is increased.

 

I don't view Baton Rouge as a competitor to Cenla. Adam Knapp is a personal friend and valued colleague. I lived in Baton Rouge for 27 years. Still, within about five minutes, my concerns in reading this story moved from Baton Rouge to Cenla.

 

First, of course, I'm concerned that we rank behind the Baton Rouge-region in all three of the factors that IEM cites as motivating their move to North Carolina. Baton Rouge has two major universities, one with important research capacity. It has a community college to anchor its substantial workforce training capacity. Its transformation over the past decade has been in no small measure due to its ability to construct and manage public-private collaborations.

 

It's probably true that Louisiana has too many four-year campuses. We probably have too much duplication. Yes, the five-board management system that emerged from the Constitutional Convention of 1973 is cumbersome. Yes, some money could be saved in the course of the upcoming legislative session.

 

But it was the presence of three major universities in the Research Triangle region that had IEM looking eastward. During my ten years in North Carolina, I never heard anyone say that the state spent too much on education. And as I look at performance measure after measure, as I look at the educational levels of our adult workforce, as I evaluate Louisiana's knowledge resources, I find no evidence that we have too much of what we need most: knowledge.

 

All that is to say, that as the legislature and Governor turn their full attention to balancing the budget, I urge them to see education as something more important than a target for cost-cutting. And as they meet in Baton Rouge, I hope at least some of their attention will be directed to the educational needs of places like Central Louisiana. I hope that they will see that LSU-A must retain its four-year status and that Cenla must become home to a comprehensive community college in the very near future. Anything less would consign Cenla and its children to a choice between second-rate opportunities and relocating to a more opportunity- and knowledge-rich environment.

 

Well, IEM will be hiring in Research Triangle Park...