LCC's Reaction to Obama's Proposals

Creating "jobs of the future" was President Obama's focus on Tuesday.

In a speech in Warren on Tuesday he also spoke of ways to give a $12 million boost to community colleges.

In a state that's facing the nation's highest unemployment rate, getting workers back to school to retrain for relevant jobs is more important than ever.

Now, those community colleges doing the re-training are looking for some help of their own

President Obama proposed a way to help struggling community colleges to a packed house in Warren.

$9 billion would go to help form partnerships with businesses, $2.5 billion would go to finance bonds or school fundraising campaigns, and $500 million would be used to develop online curriculum programs.

Brent Knight, President at Lansing Community College says this federal help would be more than welcome.

"We're the people's college, we wanna be sure that we're affordable to everyone in the community and we're gonna continue to work to keep tutition low and federal dollars is very helpful in our quest to keep tuition low."

Knight says he would be happy to get some money to help keep the college on the cutting edge.

"It's important that we continue to upgrade our technology, so we are very interested in funding of new technology for our labrotories."

Part of the plan is also to boost the number of community college grads by 5 million by 2020.

Knight says LCC is already seeing an 11% increase in enrollment and federal funds would help keep costs low for those who need it most.

"The average age of community college students is 27 and there are thousands of returning adults that are unemployed and underemployed and its important that LCC continue to meet their needs."

While its good news to community colleges, keep in mind that all Tuesday's proposed spending is subject to approval by congress.