Community Colleges and the Recession - An Unlikely Student Hits Capitol Hill

By Eric Hoover, The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Todd Sollar is a quiet man, so February 10 made his palms sweat.

He spent the day talking to strangers in a city he had never seen. Mr. Sollar, 32, came here from Centerville, Ohio, to tell his story, which begins with the recent closing of the General Motors plant where he had worked for 11 years. It continues with his decision to enroll at Sinclair Community College, in Dayton. How it ends, he is not sure.

Last week he was in the nation's capital, stuck in an uncertain present, describing his plans to earn an associate degree in engineering. A displaced worker in a crisp, black suit, he was a walking symbol of the large role that two-year colleges must play in the nation's economic recovery.

Mr. Sollar came to Washington with Steven Lee Johnson, Sinclair's president, and several representatives of the college to attend the annual legislative summit held by the Association of Community College Trustees. While in town, they visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Their message: Cutting higher-education money from the economic-stimulus bill was folly.

That morning, Mr. Sollar and two dozen community-college officials from Ohio packed a Senate hearing room to meet with Sen. Sherrod C. Brown, an Ohio Democrat. After a while, William Jawando, a legislative assistant in the senator's office, came to say that his boss had been called away and could not meet with them. The meeting continued, nonetheless.

Lawrence Porter, vice chairman of Sinclair's Board of Trustees, told Mr. Jawando that community colleges were different from other postsecondary institutions because they put people to work quickly.

"We are not here to ask — we are here to demand," he said. "We demand that we get our share of funds."

His words drew applause from several people, including the woman who wore a T-shirt touting Zane State College as the nation's ninth-best community college. Then it was Mr. Sollar's turn. Speaking softly, he described the hollow feeling of losing his job and knowing there were no others where he lives.

He said that being a student again was humbling. He explained how many of his former co-workers, particularly those with children, were in worse shape than he was.

"We're all discouraged," he said. Mr. Sollar's story stirred the crowd. "Every time there's a layoff, a new Todd appears," one official told Mr. Jawando. "We need to make Todd into the next Joe the Plumber!" proclaimed another.

After the meeting, Mr. Sollar shook hands with nearly a dozen people. Some patted him on the back. A photographer snapped pictures. Just before noon, Mr. Sollar looked at his watch. He had four more meetings to attend, four more chances to tell his story.

A House and a Two-Car Garage

At each stop, Mr. Sollar repeated the same details, describing Sinclair as his one-and-only way out of unemployment. As he explained over lunch, "I had this really great life, and now I'm just trying to figure out how to get back to it."

After graduating from high school in 1995, Mr. Sollar worked as a sorter and an airplane fueler at Airborne Express (which would later become DHL). Two years later, he took a job at the General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio. Working on the assembly line, Mr. Sollar assembled fenders. He put together door rings for Chevy TrailBlazers and GMC Envoys.

Each day he stood among the plant's many robots, towering million-dollar machines that whirred as they worked. He learned how to fix them when they malfunctioned. Several times the company took his suggestions for how to speed up production, which earned him $20,000 bonuses. Sometimes in the factory's body shop, flying sparks from the robotic welders burned his hands and arms. Still, he had few complaints about the job, which came with good benefits and eventually paid him $32.50 an hour. Often he worked extra shifts for more money, sometimes forgoing his days off for months at a time. Last year he earned about $65,000.

Those wages allowed Mr. Sollar to buy a three-bedroom condominium with a two-car garage. He also had enough money to indulge his passion for cars. A few years ago, he bought a Volkswagen Jetta, which he transformed into a show car. He turned the 170-horsepower engine into a 400-horsepower beast. He spent about $70,000 modifying the bright-blue machine, which won awards at auto shows and praise from car magazines.

Last summer, however, Mr. Sollar's fortunes changed. General Motors announced that it would close the factory in 2010. Worried, he enrolled part-time at Sinclair, figuring that he could start earning credits while he continued to work. But a few weeks later, he was laid off. He worked his last shift on September 26.

In the fall, Mr. Sollar faced a difficult choice: Accept the $140,000 buyout or collect two years' worth of unemployment. To get the buyout he would have to sign a statement saying that he had quit, thus cutting all his ties with the company and forfeiting his pension and health benefits. If he declined the offer, there was no guarantee that he would ever receive all the unemployment benefits to which he was entitled.

Mr. Sollar stopped watching television to avoid hearing more bad news about the economy. He started going to the grocery store late at night, when he was less likely to run into people who would ask him about his plans. Finally, in December, he accepted the buyout, which came to $90,000 after taxes.

Two weeks later, the factory closed for good. "I knew I would never find a job like that again," he said. Especially not without a degree.

The decision to enroll at the community college had been just as tough. Before signing up for courses, he walked around the campus, wondering how he would fit in. In the parking lot, he was encouraged to see so many adults, some older than him.

This quarter Mr. Sollar is enrolled full time, taking 16 credits. He will need 118 to earn an associate degree, which should prepare him for a job at a manufacturing plant. In his robotics course, he works with the same technology that powered the robots at the factory. He has learned to program machines to perform a variety of tasks. At home, he practices his lessons on a small, mobile gadget called a Boe-Bot, which scoots around the floor.

Sometimes, Mr. Sollar becomes frustrated. Never at ease with words, he finds his English course tedious. Tests make him anxious. Meanwhile, his internal clock has gone haywire. For years he had worked night shifts, but now he goes to class during the hours when he used to sleep. "Some days," he said, "I've come home and said 'I hate this — I quit.'"

Mr. Sollar also worries about money.

A grant from Sinclair pays for part of his tuition, and federal grants for displaced workers cover the rest. But he and his fiancée are carrying mortgages on two condos that they cannot sell. Then there's the $325 monthly payment on the truck he bought in July. These days, the Jetta that Mr. Sollar rebuilt sits in his garage. He has tried to sell it for $20,000, with no luck.

'They're Insulated From It'

Financial sums that Mr. Sollar could barely fathom dominated discussions in Washington last week. The morning he visited Capitol Hill, the Senate approved an $838-billion stimulus bill, leading to an eventual compromise with the House of Representatives on a $789-billion package.

In the afternoon, Mr. Sollar met Rep. Jean Schmidt, an Ohio Republican who encouraged him to "go for the gold," before passing around her Congressional pin for each of her guests to hold. He had his photograph taken with Stephen Austria, an Ohio Republican who gave him a brief pep talk.

He learned that the office of Rep. John A. Boehner, a Republican, smells like cigarettes, and that visitors to the office of Sen. George V. Voinovich, also a Republican, can eat all the Dum Dum lollipops they want. And he learned that many people who work on Capitol Hill are much younger than he is.

"I thought everybody here would have gray hair," he said after passing a group of well-dressed staff members who looked barely old enough to drink. Mr. Sollar hoped that, in some small way, he had helped legislators and their staffs better understand the needs of older students like him.

"Some of them may not know what life is like there because they have cars with drivers," he said. "They're insulated from it." After all, Washington has little in common with Rust Belt towns.

Mr. Sollar thought of this when he bought a mint-chocolate-chip shake at a Baskin-Robbins around the corner from his hotel. At home, the Baskin-Robbins he used to go to has closed down, like many other businesses.

By the time Mr. Sollar left Washington, he was exhausted. He was ready to take off his tie, as well as the T-shirt he wore underneath his dress shirt to soak up a day's worth of nervous perspiration.

The next morning, he woke up 500 miles away. He had class at 8.