PBN: New online education program for union members kicks off in Rhode Island
Local union leaders say the Princeton Review selected Rhode Island as the starting point because some local unions already offer college-level courses.
“We’ve been doing it but essentially need to ramp it up,” said George Nee, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, an umbrella organization for local unions.
It also helped that Princeton Review’s president and CEO, Michael Perik, hails from Rhode Island.
“We decided to launch our efforts to help working families with their educational needs here in Rhode Island because we believe we can quickly demonstrate statewide success that can be a model for other state ALF-CIO partnerships,” Perik said.
The first classes under the new partnership arrived here this month, with more scheduled to begin in October. The AFL-CIO and Princeton Review say the initial classes will steer members toward employment as pharmacy technicians, child-development aides, home medical aides and medical-information managers. Classes on labor history and construction management are also on the docket.
Students graduating from the programs will leave with an associate’s degree from Penn Foster College – an online school owned by the Princeton Review – or a bachelor’s degree from the National Labor College. Nee expects the programs to prove popular among the state’s 80,000 union workers.
“It’s a job-security issue and I think people always want to make some progress in their life,” Nee said. “This is a hell of an opportunity for people.”
Before the partnership, union members taking classes occasionally received credit through the Community College of Rhode Island, but the new arrangement will deliver more classes and a streamlined process, said Robert Delaney, the executive director of the Institute for Labor Studies and Research. The partnership will also let many union members already count prior college credits and military experience toward a degree.
The ability to take courses online anytime should make a college education easier to fit around busy schedules and full-time jobs, he said. Plans call for the first classes to start as a hybrid model, with online course content but students convening in a physical computer lab with an instructor. The institute hopes that will help smooth the transition from learning in a physical classroom to learning via a computer.
The yearlong program costs about $8,000 and individual courses about $750. Delaney said he expects many employers will pay for their staff to take courses and some students to qualify for federal financial aid. Ideally, the institute hopes the cost will go down as students become accustomed to online education and no longer need in-person instructors or physical classrooms.
One of the program’s first students is Tim Byrne, a business agent at Local 51, the local chapter of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada.
“Everybody likes to better themselves,” Byrne said. “If you obtain a bachelor’s degree it certainly opens up more options than an associate’s degree would.”
His union has led the way in implementing college-level classes, starting two years ago with a partnership between CCRI, the Cranston institute and the National Labor College. That collaboration brought classes like psychology to the local union hall in East Providence. Byrne and other students no longer needed to frequently travel to the National Labor College’s campus in Silver Spring, Md.
Across all local unions, the 30-year-old Institute for Labor Studies and Research already trains between 4,500 and 5,000 people annually, Delaney said. The new online offerings could boost enrollment because of the convenience factor. And the institute is expecting some students to speed through the courses on their own ahead of their classmates. If they finish early, the professors will remain on hand to lead them through specific questions or advanced studies.
And union workers may not be the only ones signing up. The institute plans to open some classes to union member families and the general public.
“Members of organized labor are concerned about their education but they’re more concerned about the education of their children,” Delaney said. •
