“You look at what’s happening in the school system and you look at what the needs in the workforce are, and you see an immediate disconnect,” said Stewart Edelstein, the executive director of what would ultimately become something of a solution: The Universities at Shady Grove (USG). Created in 2000, USG essentially lets Montgomery County residents earn bachelor’s and even master’s degrees from nine of the 12 schools that make up the state’s university system all at one stand-alone campus 20 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., in Montgomery County. Most students go to local community colleges and then apply to a school (Towson University or the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, for instance) for the final half of a bachelor’s degree or for a graduate degree, specifying that they want to enroll at the USG campus. The individual universities hire their own faculty, and students’ diplomas don’t bear any mark of USG. Graduates are, for all intents and purposes, earning a degree from Towson or a degree from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. But they don’t have to move to do it. And local businesses, from Marriott to Lockheed Martin, know they’ve got college graduates nearby who are already committed to staying in the area.

“We have local talent and what we’re trying to do is build a local workforce that supports the growth of the local economy,” Edelstein said during an interview at his office on campus as students took final exams in the classrooms nearby. Right now, people of color and Maryland natives are less likely than their white peers and residents who were born in other states to have a college degree. More jobs than ever require a degree, but the state frequently imports educated workers instead of educating the ones it has. “It’s not a talent gap, it’s an opportunity gap,” Edelstein said. “There is talent that is not being nurtured and we’re trying to identify that talent as early as we can and find the things we can do to intervene.” On average, USG’s undergraduate students are in their late 20s, and they are more racially diverse (36 percent are white, 20 percent are black, 14 percent are Asian, and 17 percent are Hispanic) than most colleges. Half are the first in their families to go to college, and most come from families with incomes much lower than the county’s $99,000 median household income.

The idea works, he said, because everyone involved—from local high schools to community colleges to USG administrators to corporate hiring managers—talks to each other to make sure the transitions are smooth for the most at-risk students who, without counseling and guidance, often drop out. The four-year universities each generally offer a few majors at USG that are directly tied to the needs of local employers, so students don’t have as many degree options as if they enrolled at a main campus. But the students also benefit from smaller class sizes and an administration that is acutely aware that many of them arrive with challenges—financial obligations, parental responsibilities—that can make earning a diploma difficult. That awareness has spawned a network of offerings aimed at these students: night classes for people who work, paid internship opportunities that let students simultaneously earn money and gain experience in their chosen field, summer bridge programs, and mentors.