In this portion of the course I want to spend some time examining an outreach
initiative that was implemented in the state of West Virginia through the
receipt of federal gear up funding, state access dollars, as well as investments
that institutions collectively made to ensure that that state was meeting its
public policy goals. As we have outlined thus far in lectural materials within
the course and as you'll see as you read through weeks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, the access
paradigm has been central to the historic mission of higher education.
Bogan Aper will talk about public policy initiatives that have been implemented
to support that access paradigm. Many of you work in institutions that were
created in the late 1960s for that sole goal to ensure that more Tennesseans
have the opportunity to enroll in post-secondary education, but the state
of West Virginia is a state to our north that across all statistics faces
challenges economically, educationally, and demographically and it's a state where I
had the honor to serve as System Chancellor for the better part of six
years. During my tenure as Chancellor, we were aggressive in our efforts to
secure outside support to support our access initiatives. Those efforts led to
the creation of something called the College Foundation for West Virginia. The
one-stop-shop for students to learn about, apply to, and pay for college.
This website, this portal, this foundation became the primary lens through which
that state attempted to move its 100:16 outcomes in terms of the educational
pipeline or the 119 for us here in the state of Tennessee. What you see on the
chart is the front page to the web, a number of years ago, this has been
updated but this is what the front page the web look like. Your portal, one place
for students grades 8 through college, to learn about, apply to, and pay for college.
As students created accounts and logged into this website, they had the
opportunity to learn more about post-secondary opportunities, they had
the opportunity to learn more about financial aid
opportunities, they had the opportunity to take ACT and SAT test preps,
but what that state did is it used the power of technology to drive students to
post-secondary education but then they recognize that traditional communication
methodologies i.e. mail are still powerful. So in order to drive more adults back to
post-secondary education they launched a direct mail campaign through CFWV in
which they sent postcards to students with some college but no degrees, similar
to what we're doing in the state with reconnect, driving those students to this
portal and ultimately hoping that they would enroll in post-secondary education.
They also undertook a massive PR campaign in terms of billboards. All
across the state of West Virginia as you drove from Bluefield on the southern
portion of the state, exited up towards Reeling, towards Pittsburgh, all along the
interstate you saw billboards advertising the College Foundation for
West Virginia, your one-stop-shop to learn about, apply to, and pay for
college.
So if you remember comments that I made in a prior presentation, I
referenced Pat Callen and a question that Pat and his colleagues at the
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education asked with frequency
in public rollouts of their measuring up reports. That question was how can
colleges meet the needs of the state rather than how can States meet the
needs of colleges. This campaign was a direct effort on behalf of that state's
system of post-secondary institutions to respond to that state's call of meeting the
needs. Rather than advertising West Virginia University, Marshall University,
Bluefield State College etc., those institutions marketed college with a
recognition that if more students entered the pipeline then all would
benefit collectively from increased enrollments. So through this one stop
shop that state began to see an increase in their application rates, increasing
their yield rates, and an increase in those students declaring an intent to go
to post-secondary education. Here are further examples of print pieces and
advertisements that went into newspapers all across the state to support their
outreach campaign
and then here you see an online marketing campaign with pop-ups from
Pandora etc. once again linking students in the state of West Virginia back to
this one-stop portal the college Foundation for West Virginia. That idea
was not a new idea to the state, that idea was was something that they
borrowed from the state of North Carolina, who had a long-standing
foundation in their state to support student access and outreach. I highlight
that effort, because it demonstrates the commitment that states are making to
completion agendas. The completion agenda is more than a funding formula, the
completion agenda is more than promise, the completion agenda is more than
embedded academic advisors, the completion agenda is more than student
support services. The completion agenda is a holistic effort on behalf of states
and their respective institutions to drive more students to post-secondary
education. So within the state of West Virginia, they were streamlined and
efficient in their use of a website, the College Foundation of West Virginia,
utilizing that website to then open students across the state to the
opportunities available at the respective institutions. Kind of the
culmination of Callan's charge of what institutions do for the state rather
than what can states do for institutions. So I'm going to bring this segment of
the lectures to a close and with this segment we'll then prepare to
transition into the readings, week two in the subsequent weeks of class. So in
closing as we look at the items that have been discussed throughout this
series of podcasts, throughout this series of lectures, here on this slide are from
my perspective the dominant challenges facing higher education in 2016 and in
the years to come.
Changing expectations about college readiness and tensions across systems
related to preparation coupled with change in advance for 21st century
skills and GenEd. Tennessee Transfer Pathways, Curriculum alignment, dual
enrollment all of those policy propositions are subsumed within this
bullet point.
Mission congruence with stata agendas, such as Complete college Tennessee, how
the institution's align their missions with the completion agenda, the
recognition that the cost of college will continue to escalate as well
student debt burdens unless we do something significant or disruptive to
change the delivery equation for the product that we provide, instruction, the
need to enhance market presence and to remain relevant and come increasingly
competitive economic and higher education environment and landscape. If
you're a small regional liberal arts institution, you have to define your
niche in the market place. If not there's a very real possibility that you could
follow the path of Virginia Intermont University, which was formerly located in
Bristol, Tennessee, which here in the past couple of years closed. All institutions,
be they community colleges, TCATs or universities, are looking very
deliberatively at their products, their services, and how they remain relevant in
a complex marketplace. You're seeing institutions launching new academic
programs to meet market demands, small private schools, such as Milligan college
here in Northeast Tennessee, starting programs in the area physicians
assistant or in the areas of engineering, An institution with the liberal arts
background offering a physician's assistant program and engineering
program may not align with their mission goals, but it does align with the need
for them to remain relevant in the marketplace. The diverse needs of
populations be they international, honors, and other segments that have been
traditionally underrepresented in populations that have enrolled in
post-secondary education.
How does that impact the academy? Athletics. We may talk about athletics
some given the focus and the minimal presence of athletics on community
colleges. There are some within our system who have athletic programs, it's
not a significant of an issue in the community college sector as it is in the
universities. But if you are a student of higher education, you recognize the role,
positive or negative, that athletics have on the academy. The need for
institutions to create linkages with state and local governments.
The need for all of us to look to external revenue sources to drive
philanthropy and community support to help bring additional resources to cover
the cost of our operations. And then finally, and I leave this as the question,
how do we stay true to our mission? Higher education, from a public
perspective, was created to meet the access needs of the nation, but as
institutions differentiate as institutions involved some content that
they be moving away from that access mission and are focused more on national
rankings etc. So I leave that as a hanging question, how do we stay true to
our mission?
How does that mission change? How does that mission evolved? But that is a
conversation that I hope we can have throughout the semester as we examine
the shifting sands of post-secondary education. So this slide I provided in a
lecture earlier in this series and it was the AASCU portrayal of the top
public policy challenges facing our education. Once again you'll read this in
week 2 of the course. You see the trends in the Great Recession, you see those trends
in 2016. Great stability from eight to sixteen. So with that, if we were together,
I would open it for question or discussion but I look forward to the
questions and discussions that will occur on our discussion boards as a
result of each of you having the opportunity to review these lectures.
I'll post some questions related to mission. Dr. Flora and I will post some
questions related to how do these demographics data points etc. align with
the things that you're seeing on your campus and what a what responsibility do
we have as leaders of an educational system to talk about this internally and
externally. I thank you for hanging with me, I thank you for moving through
this portion of the course materials and I look forward to being with you in the
week two segments of the course as we dive into specific readings.
Thank you very much and see you soon!