College degrees are the keys to unlocking Coast potential

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New data from the Census Bureau reported in today’s Sun Herald reveal that only one in five adult residents of South Mississippi’s largest cities have at least a bachelor’s degree.

Biloxi is tops with 21.8 percent of its residents having at least a bachelor’s degree, Gulfport is about average with 19.3 percent and Pascagoula is last with 15.7 percent.

Since the state average is 19 percent, this is one area where South Mississippi is unaccustomedly not in a position to boast.

Bragging rights go to the state’s university cities (USM pushes Hattiesburg up to 32.8 percent and MSU has Starkville sitting at 43.4 percent) and the Jackson metro area, where the suburb of Ridgeland leads the state at 51.7 percent. (The census covers residents age 25 and older in Mississippi cities that have a population of 20,000 or greater.)

Dr. Hank Bounds, state commissioner of higher education and former Pascagoula school superintendent, cites the Coast job market for our pitiful percentages. “On the Gulf Coast you have lots of jobs that are service oriented and skills oriented,” he said.

That’s a nice way of saying a lot of us serve drinks to and build ships for folks with PhDs.

But if more of us are going to snare some of the better jobs that appear to be headed our way, then we’d better heed Bounds’ more blunt advice: “One of Mississippi’s main problems is that we don’t have enough people with bachelor’s degrees. … I think we will need many more people with baccalaureate degrees because of the jobs that will be created on the Coast.”

It would be a shame if the dazzling prospects envisioned for the Coast did not provide ample job opportunities for our own residents. But it is up to us to be prepared.

The editorial above represents the views of the Sun Herald editorial board, which consists of President-Publisher Glen Nardi, Vice President and Executive Editor Stan Tiner, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Flora S. Point, Opinion Page Editor B. Marie Harris and Associate Editor Tony Biffle.