Happy New Year, GRC professionals, vendors, and consultants.

Before I dig (deeper this year, as you’ll soon see) into governance, risk management, compliance, and ethics trends and practices this year, I want to share some insights from Deloitte LLP CEO Barry Salzberg.

I connected with Salzberg over the year-end break to discuss a topic appropriate for the recent season of giving: the state of U.S. education, and what it means for the U.S. companies and U.S. competitiveness.

Salzberg offers a unique perspective on the issue. In addition to leading one of the world’s top professional services firms, the Brooklyn native is a first-generation college graduate.

Some bleak statistics motivated our conversation.

According to Deloitte’s 2009 Education Survey, our system is failing our low-income students, and too few are graduating from high school. (Here’s a brief audio interview with Salzberg on the survey results.)

The following results come from a cross-cut of the survey’s respondents in lower income areas:

• 9 percent of high school teachers think that preparing students for college is their primary mission.

• 10 percent of high school teachers identify “ensuring that students graduate” as their primary mission.

• However, nearly 50 percent of all parents and students believe that college preparation is their high school’s primary mission.

“Educators too often view high school as a destination rather than a launching pad for the future,” Salzberg asserts.

Given the coming demographic crunch (baby boomers leaving the U.S. workforce, not enough Gen Y-ers replacing them), the country’s educational system needs to produce more future professionals. Yet the system, in its current form, is not equipped to do so. “Data suggests that the quality of our education system is trending downward,” Salzberg says.

His motivation for reversing this trend is twofold: He wants to see the country’s overall competitive positioning in the world improve and, second, he knows – as the CEO of a services business – that talent is the lifeblood of his business’s success.

“We are concerned as an employer that, given the changing demographics within our country and the growing demand we expect following this economic cycle, we will encounter a diminishing supply of talent,” he notes. “And we have to do something about it.”

As a first-generation college graduate, Salzberg knows the value of higher education, as well as the value of timely guidance.

“I was encouraged by a couple of teachers to consider college and, more important, by my wife who I met right before I went to college. She convinced me that I should do it,” Salzberg recalls. “Going to college made a very big difference in terms of my outlook, my contributions to the world, my contributions to my own professional and personal growth, and ultimately to my net worth. I think all of these things matter, and a lot of young people don’t know that. Many young people don’t have the encouragement around them.”

Like other large services firms, Deloitte contributes resources to educational improvement efforts. “One of things we can do is to encourage qualified students who are not focused on going to college to go to college,” says Salzberg.

Doing so will increase the labor pool, help strengthen U.S. business competitiveness, and certainly produce a few more GRC leaders. ###