LANSING – The 18 Michigan Technical Education Centers operated by most of the state’s community colleges have been effective in identifying and delivering occupational training for high-skilled, high-demand jobs, but the schools could do a better job using those programs and the state could improve its monitoring of those centers, an audit released Friday concludes.

The centers, referred to as M-TECs, were created in 1998 to increase the number of skilled workers for high-wage occupations. Oversight of the centers has been traded around since the start, but currently falls under the purview of the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth.

The report by Auditor General Thomas McTavish covered the period of October 1, 2003 through June 30, 2007 and found that community colleges were effective in identifying the needs of M-TECs and developing training programs to meet those needs.

But the audit could not determine how the programs provide “viable and sustainable employment,” as there are not sufficient controls in place for management to assess the effectiveness of the occupational training programs. The audit recommended improving that evaluation system, which five schools agreed with, one school partially agreed with and one school disagreed with.

In that same vein the audit concluded DELEG was moderately effective in overseeing the M-TECs, but it should enhance its reporting and validation processes. The audit noted the reporting standards for the schools are not uniform and the annual reports submitted to the state did not always contain sufficient information to ensure schools are complying with the grant requirements.

The department said it would take steps to improve its reporting standards, but it would have to first determine what legal authority it has to increase the scope of reporting.

The audit also recommended the department implement a comprehensive system for evaluating M-TECs, as it does not currently compare the school’s actual activities to the ones it proposed doing in its grant application.

“Goals should be quantifiable, be ranked in priority, and address the internal and external issues facing the program. Although (the department) established a planned focus for M-TECs to provide occupational training for high-wage, high-skill, and high-demand occupations, it had not developed or established quantifiable goals related to expectations of M-TECs. Quantifiable performance goals might describe the expected rate of a specific occupational skill increase, the expected rate of unemployment decrease, or the expected rate of M-TECs enrollment increase,” the audit stated.

The department agreed new mechanisms, goals and measurements should be put into place that reflect the current market conditions and it plans to work with the attorney general, community colleges, Michigan Economic Development Corporation and Michigan Community College Association to develop the legal scope of its authority to do this and then work on implementing realistic goals.

The department also noted that comparing the grant application proposals to the current activities were not always relevant by the time oversight of M-TECs fell under the department’s authority. But the department is working on performance metrics in this area.

While the audit found the colleges were moderately effective in providing the proposed activities and fulfilling M-TEC grant requirements, it recommended implementing measures that would further maximize use of the M-TEC programs. The audit found that in some cases M-TEC space was not always used for occupational training, but instead used in some instances for other classes, an intermediate school district office, day care center and office for central college staff.

The audit also noted schools do not evaluate the use of M-TECs the same way, and in a few cases, there was no evaluation. All of the community colleges agreed to address this issue.

The audit also found the state had not executed a grant agreement with Lansing Community College for its M-TEC, so the state was unable to monitor the activities of that site. The department said it found out about the lack of a grant agreement when the M-TEC oversight was transferred to DELEG and it is working on entering into that agreement with LCC.

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