Universal Skills All Learners Should Know How to Do
This morning I was thinking about the things that all young people should know how to do regardless of income, geographical location, life goals, etc. I started a list – see below. Some have “always” been true – some are unique to this century of learning. Let me know of any other universal skills you believe young people should know how to do.
How to be a self-directed learner – finding and using resources (both face-to-face and online) to learn and improve personal interests
...for most institutions, the best strategy is to answer two questions. The first is: What is our academic program? To this end, are there points of differentiation that define excellence within it?
The second is: How does the comprehensive learning experience support academics? In doing so, what do we offer that is unique?
Colleges and Universities: Getting the Message Right
It seems increasingly likely that one of the "make or break" points in American higher education will be how well individual institutions craft their message.
It's a complex issue. There are many constituencies, all of whom carry an expectation about what makes a college or university special. These expectations are often at odds with one another.
Further, these tie to deep emotional impressions that are grounded typically by viewpoints formed through the kinds of friends, interests and academic experiences that shaped their environment, whether forged and maintained by faculty, staff, students, alumni or donors.
That's why it is so important to link college and university efforts to define a message to an institution's strategic plan. A president often faces a debilitating series of skirmishes about "vision" if there is no clear consensus on a framework for discussing the future of the university.
The vision, expressed by the strategic plan, will define the message. Ultimately, the future of the university will depend on how the message gets delivered. Provosts, deans and talented faculty contribute within the scope of their own responsibilities. But, constituents ultimately want to hear from the president. Surrogates need not apply. Ed McMahon could never be Johnny Carson because Ed didn't own the brand.
Similarly, you cannot simply turn to a higher education "image" shop to launch comprehensive fundraising campaigns, and let these image masters define your vision. The college or university brand is organic and evolving. The best brand makers demonstrate that you are whom you say and say what you mean.
How, then, do you get the message right?
It begins by establishing clear lines of authority. The president is the chief spokesperson for the university.
Presidents cannot delegate the "vision thing" to others. They must keep the message simple, doable, realistic and aspirational. Presidents must be prepared for criticism from the "status quo" crowd -- often mid-level staff -- about how they are making promises that they cannot keep. The strategic plan has actionable items where presidents can look for early wins.
Their critics will complain about process while accepting the new buildings, reduced course loads, program enhancements and improving academic and student quality. When they can't fight the outcome, the naysayers will dispute the process. There cannot realistically be anything like "too much change" if an organization is thinking ambitiously.
Presidents should anticipate a few mistakes or miscalculations along the way. It's best to own these mistakes, including some made by the inherited senior team. That said it's important to make and remake a team without trustee interference and with full trustee support.
The board of trustees has a critical role to play. It must accept the vision, pass the strategic plan, fund it, guide fundraising goals, and weigh in on the defining points that govern the university's "sense of self." But trustees cannot confuse the message based upon narrow self-interest by picking "winners and losers" or self-defined priorities within the plan. They must stay on message.
Hopefully, the president already has the required support, likely earned by the consensus building that produced the institution's strategic plan. The plan should reflect the interests of multiple constituencies. Its goals reflect good research and careful financial analysis. Fundraising must not drive strategy nor should the whims of major donors.
Good presidents must protect the integrity of the strategic plan and thereby the messaging that shapes the public outlook of it.
There is a point, however, when presidents must ask and answer the question: "Who are we?" It's not enough to raise the question when the broader world is watching. The institution might end up defined by its competition.
And that's part of the problem facing colleges and universities today. To put it in the words of one successful, strategy-oriented friend active in commercial real estate, "You must make a decision about your goal: Are you gumbo or chicken broth?"
Colleges and universities, especially by category, look and sound the same. Prospective applicants can judge by location, price, reputation, and financial aid package, for example, but many choose a college ultimately because of the financial deal offered or simply because they know it when they feel it.
It's a bad way to run an institution, especially a tuition -dependent one. Good academic programs that could differentiate a college and university within its peer group get lost in the inbred and senseless exercise of letting all boats rise in the marketing and communications plan, regardless of quality.
Some great research universities, like Penn State or the University of North Carolina, have reputations built in part on their athletic programs. Others, best represented by the for profit colleges, argue for convenience, accessibility, and affordability. They thrive or suffer because of it.
But for most institutions, the best strategy is to answer two questions. The first is: What is our academic program? To this end, are there points of differentiation that define excellence within it?
The second is: How does the comprehensive learning experience support academics? In doing so, what do we offer that is unique?
Those institutions that remain "chicken broth" in outlook and attitude will face mergers, acquisitions and closure but also something even more dramatic. They risk becoming irrelevant in the 21st century long before they close.
Applied Baccalaureate – Degree program emphasizing applied coursework and applied learning
at the upper division or throughout the entire collegiate pathway, which often
begins with an applied associate degree. Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS),
Bachelor of Applied Technology (BAT), Bachelor of Technology (BT).
Lumina Foundation's definition – The applied baccalaureate degree is a
bachelor’s degree designed to incorporate applied associate courses and degrees
once considered as “terminal” or non-baccalaureate level while providing students
with the higher-order thinking skills and advanced technical knowledge and
skills so desired in today’s job market.
Twenty-two states have now authorized their community college systems to offer applied or technical baccalaureate degrees. The discussion in Illinois is beginning to move that direction as well.
Some see it as "mission creep". Others see it as an inevitable entry into a space that has been left to for-profit entities that charge exponentially more in tuition with dubious outcomes.
In states that already allow the baccalaureate degree, rationale has centered around changing demographics, economic factors, information technology, and globalization. More recently, the argument that the point of entry into certain professions such and nursing, dental hygiene, surgical technology, respiratory and radiological technologist programs are begin driven inevitably toward a bachelors degree.
It would seem that consideration of such an effort would be in concert with the Illinois Board of Higher Education's Illinois Public Agenda for College and
Career Success as the blueprint. Specifically:
·Increase
educational attainment
·Improve
college affordability
·Strengthen
workforce development
·Link
research and innovation to economic growth
Additional benefits have been cited in other states rationale and include the provision of affordable
education; reductions in student debt; increased access
to education; increased baccalaureate completion
rates; control of tuition through competition; and enhanced economic development by preparing
educated/trained people for fields that have jobs.
Thoughts?
California weighs community college baccalaureates to close degree gap
Last Modified: Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2014 - 10:21 pm
Driven by shifts in technology and educational expectations across industries, California’s higher education leaders know they face an unexpected economic challenge just six years after the recession ravaged the state’s workforce: a potential shortage by 2025 of 1 million bachelor’s degrees.
As California’s overburdened public universities consider ways to boost middling graduation rates,community colleges see an opportunity to step in and help close the gap.
Traditionally the domain of transfer and career technical education, community colleges are looking to offer bachelor’s degrees in vocational fields, a step that could be the biggest adjustment to the mission of the state’s three-segment system of public higher education since it was laid out more than 50 years ago in the California Master Plan for Higher Education.
“There’s no way the state universities can absorb the … demand or growth,” said Constance Carroll, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, adding, “In California, the time is right” to follow 21 other states that already offer baccalaureates at the community collegelevel.
Hans Johnson, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California who first calculated the often-cited million-degree figure in 2009, said a confluence of factors has driven educational expectations higher and higher, including a shift toward more technically advanced industries in California and a growing sense that college-educated employees are more effective.
Research suggests “there’s something about college itself that leads to these gains,” he said.
Johnson estimates that 40 percent of jobs will require a bachelor’s degree within a decade, up from about a third now. Yet, unless the public universities that educate most Californians improve outcomes or accept more students, the state won’t be able to meet that potential.
“We have the same eligibility as we did in 1960,” when the Master Plan was approved by the Legislature and only about 11 percent of people had bachelor’s degrees, Johnson said, “but our economy is completely different.”
Sacramento’s Sutter Health, for example, is moving toward a staffing plan for its hospitals in which 80 percent of nurses will require bachelor’s degrees, in line with recent changes to industry recommendations.
“The patients in the hospitals are much more acute and much more complex than they’ve ever been before,” said Anette Smith-Dohring, Sutter’s workforce development manager. “The better educated staff you have, the better opportunity you have” to provide good care.
The problem is finding enough potential hires, especially as much of the system’s aging staff prepares to retire. In California, more than half of new nurses graduate with a two-year associate degree.
“It’s not that they aren’t qualified, but there’s a lot they can’t learn in just four short semesters,” Smith-Dohring said, experience that must be made up on the job.
And with medical centers across Northern California, Sutter has tremendous holes. “The rural communities really struggle with finding quality staff,” Smith-Dohring added.
Carroll, one of the state’s major advocates for community college baccalaureates, said she started noticing the problem in the last few years as more than half of the nursing students in her district were not finding jobs. Unable to transfer to overenrolled California State University programs, those who wanted to continue their education had to enroll in more expensive private schools or look outside the state.
“Thirty years ago, someone could graduate from high school with a diploma, enter the workforce and be trained,” Carroll said. Now, “community colleges are the workforce preparation engines for the state.”
Facing those new realities, California soon could be offering bachelor’s degrees at its community colleges. A bill to create a pilot program, allowing up to 15 campuses over the next eight years to develop a baccalaureate that meets their regional need, currently sits on the governor’s desk.
After several previous efforts stalled in the Legislature, author Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, is optimistic that Gov. Jerry Brown will sign Senate Bill 850, given Brown’s interest in developing “effective and low-cost bachelor’s degrees options.” Brown’s focus so far has primarily been online education.
Nursing is off the table for now; the pilot program will prevent duplication of degrees offered by the University of California and CSU systems. But it can address other fields where advocates say there is demand for more education and no public bachelor’s programs in the state: dental hygiene, automotive technology, respiratory therapy and radiative technology, among others.
If SB 850 is signed, campuses will present applications to the California Community CollegesBoard of Governors, then the selected degree programs will have to be accredited, said Vince Stewart, the system’s vice chancellor of government relations, so it could be another year or two before any are established.
There has been no discussion so far of what programs the system might pursue, he said, but “there are some colleges that are in a position to move much more quickly than others.”
Foothill College in Los Altos Hills is eager to boost its associate degree in dental hygiene. The successful program has existed since 1964, but it’s become less competitive in recent years, according to Linda Thor, chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District.
“The employer is going to set the standard for what they want. And employers want bachelor’s degrees.”
The only dental hygiene baccalaureates in California are at private universities, Thor said: three in Southern California and the University of the Pacific in Stockton. Because of extensive prerequisites, however, Foothill would only need to add five courses to complete its own program.
“It’s very little more for these ... health students,” Thor said.
Doug Houston, chancellor of the Yuba Community College District, said offering bachelor’s degrees at community colleges also could be vital in rural areas of the state, where “there’s really pretty limited access to four-year degree programs.”
Automation in the agricultural fields that are fundamental to their economies has exploded, with robotics and GPS technology being used in farming operations such as planting, application of herbicides and pesticides, harvesting and processing.
Houston suggested that his district, which has two colleges serving eight counties, could develop an “agricultural mechanics” degree for students to learn how to design, manufacture, implement and maintain those tools, competencies they’d otherwise be piecing together.
“It’s no longer a simple farmer with his or her hand tools,” he said. But “the very education that will advance the economies of our rural areas is not accessible to them.”
California veterans groups have aligned behind SB 850 as well, arguing that it would allow veterans, most of whom enter community colleges after the military, to complete their degrees where they start them and finish sooner.
While the chancellor’s office of the California Community Colleges is on board, not everyone is convinced that it’s the right change for the system.
“Community colleges are already struggling with the mission, and now we’re talking about extending the mission,” said George Boggs, former president of the American Association ofCommunity Colleges, who was part of a baccalaureate study group last year.
“We’re doing it for the right reasons,” he added, but shifting resources to new programs could hurt the system’s many students who aren’t looking for applied degrees. Community colleges have mostly disappeared in states such as Florida and Utah, as almost all were transformed into four-year schools.
“A lot of it has to do with the status,” Boggs said. “I would hate to see our colleges reduce access to these students who otherwise don’t have a chance for higher education.”
Pushback has nevertheless been minimal, primarily concerns over funding and compensation raised by the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges.
While the bill’s supporters have identified a potential stream of additional revenue in charging higher fees for upper division courses, most of the financial details would have to be determined over the course of the pilot program.
“Once it starts and it grows very quickly, the drain of the resources will be quite large,” said Dean Murakami, president of the faculty association. “We just want to make sure it does not adversely affect our current programs.”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/08/27/6659868/california-weighs-community-college.html#storylink=cpy
I thought this was an interesting (and gutsy) headline.
I asked Financial Aid Director Tim Wendt for data on Parkland Students (as reported to the in the fed's College Scorecard 2013) in particular.
What is the typical amount borrowed for a Parkland student’s undergraduate study?
Families typically borrow $5,463 in Federal loans for a student’s undergraduate study. The Federal loan payment over 10 years for this amount is approximately $62.87 per month. Your borrowing may be different.
Are Parkland students able to repay their loans after they graduate?
23.1% of borrowers defaulted on their Federal student loans within three years of entering repayment.
What percentage of Parkland students graduate?
16.6% of full-time students graduated within 150% of the expected time for completion and 32.8% transferred to another institution. Graduation rate data are based on undergraduate students who enrolled full-time and have never enrolled in college before. This may not represent all undergraduates that attend this institution.
From the IBHE Survey (2013):
Students receiving some form of financial assistance: 5,142
Time To Stop The Sob Stories About Student Loan Debt
The media and advocates for income redistribution are creating a continual stream of stories about the student loan crisis. We are inundated with sob stories about people suffering under a crushing debt burden. The New York Times alone has had stories on how student loan debt is now a problem for senior citizens, how young people’s lives have been ruined, and how a whole generation will be unable to buy homes because of their student loan debt. Luckily, these stories are based simply on a few scattered cases. In reality, there is no student loan debt crisis and it is time for the media to report the facts, not the sob stories.
The New York Timesinformed its readers last week that there are now two million people over 60 years old that still have student loan debt, with an average loan balance of $21,000. To put this report in context, those two million seniors represent only three percent of all people in that age bracket and the average balance of $21,000 is only 78 percent of the size of the average car loan ($27,000). Assumedly many more than three percent of Americans over the age of 60 have car loans, yet nobody thinks that is a crisis.
Earlier this summer, The New York Times also implied that student loan debt is blocking younger Americans from buying homes. In reality, as the Times admits later in their article, the rate at which young people are buying homes is simply returning to its previous level because today’s young can see that the twenty-five year real estate bubble is over and there is no need to rush into home ownership.
Similarly, back in the spring, The New York Times told us a series of sob stories about recent graduates buried under crushing burdens of student loan debt. While the media seem endlessly able to find stories of students with six-figure student loan debts and little in the way of job prospects with which to pay off those debts, such cases are far from common.
Research by Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos at The Brookings Institution revealed much about the student loan debt reality. While the average student loan balance is $29,000, that is only for the minority of people with any student loans (36 percent of those between 20 and 40). In other words, most young people have no student loan debt. Also, the average balance is greatly inflated by the presence of a few people with large balances. In fact, only four percent of households headed by people between 20 and 40 years old have student loan debt of over $36,000 per person and two-thirds of those have a graduate degree to show for that debt.
Further, the median student loan balance (meaning half the people owe more and half owe less) is only $8,500, again only for those who have any student loans at all. That implies that about 82 percent of households headed by those between 20 and 40 owe less than $8,500 in student loans (including those who owe nothing). If we assume that those with graduate degrees can generally handle their student loan debt, then Akers and Chingos’ numbers imply there are likely only about 250,000 households with high loan balances who we should expect to have problems paying back their loans. Certainly such a number is not zero, but it is hardly a crisis.
According to TransUnion, the mortgage delinquency rate stands at 3.5 percent. This is higher than the rate of student loan borrowers who seem to have debt levels likely to cause problems. So why is the default rate on student loans so much higher (14.7 percent)? The answer seems to be not that student loan debt is so high as much as it is that borrowers simply choose not to prioritize payment of their student loans.
If one simply stops paying student loans, the federal government can seize your tax refund (if you are owed one) and might eventually take part of your paycheck (or government benefit check), but many borrowers apparently do not see such actions as likely. Thus, they would rather pay their mortgage, their car loan (delinquency rate of 0.95 percent), their credit cards (delinquency rate of 1.16 percent), or simply spend money on more enjoyable items than their student loans.
At first glance, this might seem a harsh assessment. Yet the numbers suggest that people are defaulting on student loans with balances considerably smaller than the average car loan in much higher numbers than borrowers default on those car loans. Logic suggests this is because cars can be repossessed much more easily than an education. Another reasonable explanation is that car loans are not made before a check of whether one is likely to repay the loan; student loans are made without any such consideration.
Hopefully, these numbers have convinced you there is no student loan crisis. While a few sob stories can be found, policy by anecdote is never a good idea. Instead of an overreaction to these carefully selected examples, a few simple adjustments can solve the few real problems.
First, the federal government should require education of students and their parents about student loan debt. Easy to understand, government-approved disclosure documents are required for other loans and should be for student loans as well. Second, borrowers should expect that nonpayment will be swiftly met with a combination of counseling about other payment plan options and collection actions so that people do not simply choose nonpayment when they actually have the ability to pay.
Finally, we should all realize that almost everybody is using student loans responsibly and not be fooled by these media campaigns. College degrees are usually well worth the investment and most students accrue only manageable debt along the way to their degree. A few people need education and encouragement to attend less expensive colleges and to work while doing so in order to minimize their student loan debt.
Small changes can solve the few actual problems with student loans. If we stay calm and borrow responsibly, everything will be fine.
