Our state stands at a crossroads; our choices over the next few years will either lead our economy to a brighter future or to the darkness of another depression. Unfortunately, many of our state and federal leaders are attempting to use 19th and 20th century thinking to fix our 21st century problems.

Unlike the last depression, our country is no longer the leader in manufacturing, and we cannot build our way out. Bailing out manufacturing jobs is at best a short-term solution. Building research and development programs in the U.S., teamed with manufacturing jobs overseas, is one potential longer-term solution too.

But to make real improvements, we need to make drastic changes to our economic engines. Research and technology are where our country leads the global economies. Just as manufacturing changed our country in the last depression from an economy dominated by agriculture, the U.S. is being forced to shed its manufacturing economy for a more prosperous alternative.

The challenge for higher education, therefore, becomes one of embracing the global changes and finding ways for our students to learn how to effectively participate and remain effective partners. While these changes will take time to accomplish, we cannot afford to debate the future but rather must begin now to make changes in our system of learning. We can do this by living what we teach.

We need to develop a method of measuring ourselves on an international basis. As other countries ramp up their spending on higher education and strive for increased quality in their institutions, we can no longer afford to pretend that our institutions sit at the pinnacle without fear of competition. As our economy has learned, just about everything is now in competition on a global basis and so should our institutions of higher education.

The second step needs to be the continuance and improvement of financial support for higher education. Unfortunately, our state's work force is not ready for research-based jobs because we have allowed a 25 percent to 30 percent high school dropout rate to exist and college student funding to slip below all other states and many other countries. Our economy will continue to flounder as we slide further behind other countries in the number of students graduating from college and incur the loss and/or migration of manufacturing jobs. This vicious cycle of a poor economy resulting in less funding for education resulting in more jobs being lost will continue unless we make a change.

Finally, we need to re-engineer our concept of higher education as the ivory tower behind ivy covered walls accessible only to those deemed worthy enough by barriers that we have imposed to create the exclusivity of our institutions. America's success has been based upon the opportunities we have offered to anyone to become a success.

As higher education becomes much more important as the ticket to such success, we need to assure that anyone can gain access to such opportunity and become a success. The change has to occur from inside our ivy walls through the tearing down of our towers and creating instead a stronger link (a supply line if you will) between the elementary and secondary schools of our nation and our higher education institutions.

We can no longer afford to sit in our towers and look down on these other systems of learning and tell them to bring us better students. We have a shared responsibility to improve the quality of students and create the opportunities for all students to access higher education. Programs such as Early College High Schools, career training from high school through community college, basic skills training provided for middle school and high school students by community colleges, and improved re-entry programs coordinated with employers for older adults are a few of the improvements we should be looking to make. Community colleges are a vital link between the K-12 students and universities; maintaining their viability assures an increased flow of students to the universities.

In this harsh reality of a potential depression and limited opportunities to work our way out of one, we need to continue funding higher education in general and community colleges in particular. Use 21st century thinking, and write the governor, urging him to refuse cutting community college funding in order to help our state's economy flourish.

William McGinnis has been a trustee of Butte-Glenn Community College since 1992. He is a past president of the League of California Community Colleges and a retired administrator from California State University, Chico.