Opinion: Higher ed needs to make changes now
By Byron P. White
Somewhere between our group’s discussion of three-year bachelor’s degrees and its deliberation over the value of general-education courses, the sensation swept over me: I’ve seen this before—or at least something close to it. Déjà vu.
The people engaged in the conversation were different this time. They were members of Cleveland State University’s senior leadership team. We had gathered for President Ronald Berkman’s annual two-day fall retreat, which began with an overview of the forces that are driving the need for urgent change in higher education.
Noting our industry’s notorious reputation for being stuck in its ways, President Berkman baited his vice presidents and deans: “Do we really have an appetite for change?” he asked. Thus began a vigorous dialogue among my colleagues in which we delved into all manner of institutional innovation.
The scene reminded me of similar sessions at another time, in another place, concerning urgent change in another “mature” industry. That industry was the newspaper business. I began my professional career in 1984 as a newspaper reporter, and after about 10 years, I had ascended to the management ranks of the Chicago Tribune. I recall countless conversations around that time with senior staff and peers at national conferences where we would discuss the powerful forces threatening the industry and how we desperately needed to respond.
We never really did, at least not sufficiently enough to stem the onslaught of technological advancements, disruption of business models, and shifting consumer preferences that have since conspired to pretty much dismantle newspapers as we knew them. Tribune, parent company of my beloved Chicago paper, filed for bankruptcy a few years ago. In my current home, Cleveland, the Plain Dealer recently ceased home delivery on certain days in order to prolong its survival.
I moved to higher education more than a dozen years ago, just as newspapers were beginning their rapid descent. However, listening to my Cleveland State colleagues during the president’s retreat, I could not help but draw comparisons between our current predicament and the one newspapers faced a few years ago.
Byron P. White is vice president for university engagement and chief diversity officer at Cleveland State University.
Mr. White uses the question of “appetite for change” as a pivot to his story. . .but it is really about “getting out of your comfort zone”, which can just as well be a quest for ‘staying on the cutting edge’ unfortunately right along with that other human tendency, just plain ‘lazy’, in thought & action. . .
This would account for “seeing the writing on the wall” and yet immediately assume that it’ll all be O.K: “cause it always has before” or “that’ll never happen here”.
Rationalization is what Canadians know as “fooling yourself”, and my reason for responding to Mr. White’s earnestness (even if in hindsight) is that rationalizing is way more in vogue now than being reasonable ever was. . .especially politically.
LETS LOOK CLOSER – – – What is threatening higher education ? 1. Tuition is so expensive students may opt out and seek other careers. 2. The cash cow may be going away. The government’s student loan system is in need of a serious overhaul. More people are unable to repay their student loans. If this overhaul comes soon, the easy money may not be there in the near future. 3. College degrees are available from learn on line computer courses. 4. Debt has become a serious deterrent to higher education. Summation : People now have other practical choices.
tahoe pizza eater: You are correct, as we (society) push to fund less and less of higher education, that short fall is made up in higher tuition cost. But just to give you an idea, for profit colleges soak up huge federal $$ (66% of students at for profit schools have student loans) have the highest default rate by far 18.9% vs 4.7% for 4-year public school and 5.4% for non-profit private college. For profit schools not only have far more students on federal assistance, they have very low graduation rates and extremely high default rates. I argue we need to shift $$ out to the for profit arena as they are largely a waste, lower the cost of student assistance and make it more widespread to so that those colleges that have high graduation rates, and low default rates are rewarded.
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_24041125/profit-colleges-soaking-up-tax-dollars-despite-student
Rick
Ah, the good old days. SMCC free, UCLA 50 bucks a semester, USC 450 small ones a semester.
pizza you “slice” it well.
T.P.,
Please enlighten me as to the “other practical choices” mentioned in your summary that are attainable in today’s job market that don’t require some form of higher education. What jobs would be available without some type of training beyond a H.S. diploma that would be considered middle-class level employment?
I suppose selling some sort of useless products, snake-oil religious fables or get-rich-quick schemes to the rubes would get increasingly easy as the growth of the uneducated segment of society flourished.
Perhaps we should examine the policies of all the countries that are kicking our butts now in educational outcomes. They ALL provide easier, cheaper access to higher education than we do, by far.
We can do better than this once we can all admit the failure of our economic plan for the last 30+ yrs. It’s about time that LTCC is seen as the gold mine it is for the future of So. Lake Tahoe, in so many different positive ways.
I’M BACK – – – First Bill. You are hiding your head in the sand, as usual. There are occupations that train individuals rather than hire out of college. The advantage to training a person is that the company can focus the training specifically to the company’s needs. The training never really ends, the employee continues to learn more and more as they progress through their work duties. Genentech in South San Francisco is a pharmaceutical research company that does this. Their employees eventually become scientists that work in chemistry labs. I personally have spoken to a friend that prefers this entry level hiring. He works for genentech and has told me he prefers experience over a degree. TO RICK – – – Thanks for adding the much needed info. You’re on top of things. I want to add to what I said earlier. Eventually as the cost of college grows more and more expensive it is inevitable that opting out of college will become the better option. The reason is simple economics. Graduating college with $500,000 of debt is worse than starting a modest job without any debt. Working your way up will again become the popular choice. However, if the government does what Rick suggests, then college may remain a good choice.
T.P.,
Your response is a giant pantload of nonsense about some anecdotal fantasy jobs but thanks for playing.
If you want a job, you have to go where the jobs are.
There needs to be a serious evaluation and sizing adjustment of the Educational complex.
Many of the “softer” courses do not need teachers for these courses at every university. A smaller number of the best lecturers in these fields of study throughout the country should be paid well to create captivating online courses in subjects such as history, social studies, etc. etc. These can be distributed and taken for credit nationally, perhaps passing through an accreditation board of some sort first. The number of researchers in these types of fields should also be adjusted based on available funds and need.
A serious review of which types of courses truly need classroom instruction and hands-on labs/student interaction should result in recommendations on the types of courses that most need to remain as having classroom instructors.
I do not know what types of courses these are, but certainly experts out there can figure it out – and they should be related to providing viable careers for students. It may be that even some of the hard sciences and IT courses can be offered mainly online instead of in classroom interaction with instructors – but experts in these fields should be able to sort that out case by case.
The results will mean closings of many secondary and lesser quality institutions, with a remaining focus on community colleges as affordable starter and career training grounds, and fewer but well selected and higher quality four year colleges remaining – plus lots of online courses everywhere. It will be a painful shift for those with careers in the educational complex, but it has to change to be affordable to the students who are unfairly taking the hit now. Simply throwing more money in from the states or federal government is not the answer.
Administration has also gotten top heavy and overpaid. Paring back in this area will help lower costs to students and taxpayers as well, as these shifts occur.