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T H I S I S S U E The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education sponsored a regional policy workshop, "Transforming Higher Education: New Structures for Finance, Governance, Delivery, and Productivity" on August 22-24, 1996 in San Diego, California. The workshop convened policymakers and practitioners from 15 western states to examine the policy environments, institutional structures, capacity, and financing necessary to better align public priorities and higher education's performance. A heightened recognition emerged of the need for higher education to undergo a fundamental transformation in response to the imperatives of the 21st century. The workshop's plenary and concurrent sessions enabled participants to consider potential paths to transformation. This report summarizes the workshop's plenary discussions among 260 legislators, legislative aides, governors' aides, college presidents, trustees, faculty leaders, and state higher education executives. The workshop was a major component of WICHE's Western Policy Exchange, a multi-year initiative supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. WICHE created the Exchange to help policymakers understand issues facing higher education, analyze current trends and projections, and consider alternatives that may yield improved performance. WICHE thanks the many people and organizations that made the regional workshop possible. They include the American Council on Education; Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges; Council of State Governments-WEST; Education Commission of the States; Mexican American State Legislators Policy Institute; National Conference of State Legislatures; and the Western Governors' Association. |
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Where Does Higher Education Stand?Higher education is laboring though its "winter of discontent." There is overwhelming evidence that a college degree is critically important to both the individual and to society. Consequently, there is increasing demand for postsecondary education. At the same time, however, there is more criticism and growing concern about education quality and questions about the direction, the cost, and the availability of higher education. There is a general reservoir of public support for higher education, according to John Immerwahr, Villanova University assistant vice president and Public Agenda Foundation senior research fellow, who has done a number of studies on public perceptions of higher education. A currently benign view on the part of the public, however, is not shared by policy leaders. In that group, the perception is that higher education has not even begun to make the changes that are needed as the world enters a new century. The public is not at all benign on the subject of access to higher education. Rather, there is anxiety, even fear, that there will be inadequate openings for future students. "Parents are concerned that there be a place for their children and at an affordable cost," said Marsha King, higher education reporter for the Seattle Times. Criticism within the policy community goes far beyond the issue of access, added David Greenberg, a member of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. Political, business, and other leaders compare higher education with other institutions and find "inscrutable productivity measures and cost structures, enormous resistance to change, and astonishing work rules." There is lessening support for pouring public funding into such systems when it is not clear what the "outputs are because they are not being measured." Within such a skeptical climate, colleges and universities are challenged to "move themselves to a much more effective mode, not because they have been ineffective, but because the world is changing," said Frank Newman, president of the Education Commission of the States. "That is the exciting thing about the coming decade, the decade of higher education's transition." What Are the Challenges?Higher education is in the "people growing business," and the focus should be on doing things differently to improve that education, says Richard Jarvis, chancellor of the University and Community College System of Nevada. Imperatives now confronting higher education are:
There is high growth across much of the country, especially in the western states, with consequent pressures on higher education to accommodate a new majority of students in a manner that fits their learning needs effectively. The "new majority" of students are older, often enrolled part-time and already in the workforce. Many seek specific job skills or retraining rather than the traditional undergraduate program leading to a baccalaureate. With public trust declining, higher education confronts a variety of performance issues leading to micro-management, and "audit mania," according to Jarvis. Will it respond with more credible, open systems, changed behaviors, honest evaluation of past performance, and emphasis on "long-term satisfaction of students and employers rather than short-term gratification?" Areas of focus must include increasing cost effectiveness, streamlining credit creep, solving transfer problems, providing flexible course schedules and calendars, utilizing technology and promoting the joint use of facilities. The faculty is key to responding to such issues, but the faculty is under stress, says Jarvis. In recent years, the faculty has been subjected to budget cuts, reduced opportunities for mobility and advancement, and coping with new teaching methodologies. As they are asked to adapt, faculty need opportunities for retraining and transformation, or they will resist change. Higher education should examine the experience of the corporate sector and learn from its successes and failures in attempting to reinvent itself, said Barbara Wilson, a US WEST vice president in Idaho. She noted that change is best accomplished by providing incentives to achieve specific results. State Senator Lyle Hillyard of Utah admonished higher education to gain a better understanding of the demands pressing upon the political sector and then to build grassroots support to make higher education stronger competitors for increasingly limited public resources. If the variety of challenges are to be met, there must be sustained, long-term approaches that incorporate commitment and support from the private and public sectors outside higher education, said Robert (Tad) Perry, executive director of the South Dakota Board of Regents. Only in that way will there be sufficient impetus to stimulate and guarantee the change that is necessary "inside the academy." How Do We Transform Higher Education?The imperatives for change confront higher education at an "ever-accelerating, unrelenting rate," according to Joseph W. Cox, chancellor of the Oregon State System of Higher Education. They are driven by population changes, market forces, dynamic growth, the exploding information age, and shifting societal priorities. Higher education is now called on to transform itself in a period of static or declining resources and shaky public support, noted Molly Corbett Broad, executive vice chancellor of the California State University system. No institution is exempt. She added that institutions which are preoccupied with tradition and trapped in discipline-bound structures risk losing their marketplace to new, nontraditional competitors. Institutions must become more responsive to consumers, use technology to enhance learning productivity and access, expand multicultural understanding, and become more accountable. In such a pressurized environment, the temptation is to go for quick fixes and to implement cosmetic rather than fundamental change — the "hocus pocus of kissing a frog and expecting it to turn into a prince," said Barbara Uehling, executive director of the Business-Higher Education Forum. Nevertheless, comprehensive, "global" change is possible and many efforts, although frequently "on the margin," are underway, especially in graduate and professional schools. Modeling of good practices, providing incentives for innovation, inclusive involvement of stakeholders, sharing of information, building relationships between faculty (especially liberal arts faculty) and business leaders around workforce needs, and evaluation of past practices are among the ingredients for effective change. Vital to this effort are persistence and cooperation, said Uehling. Technology certainly will play a significant role in this transformation, through broadening the access to education, altering the method by which information is conveyed, and changing the learning/teaching equation. Examples are the electronic Western Governors University (WGU) and other technology-based learning methods. These innovations set the stage for motivating higher education to analyze past performance and adapt to new methods, said Cecelia H. Foxley, Utah's commissioner of higher education. Will Growth Overwhelm Access?The imperatives of being more cost-effective and accountable can clash with the need for a more responsive, client-centered system, especially when colleges and universities are grappling with explosive growth. Several western states are confronting such growth now and into the next decade. California's massive growth threatens to overwhelm the system both in numbers and in the diversity of students, said Charles Ratliff, deputy director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission. By 2005, about 455,000 more students will seek access to California's colleges and universities than were served in 1990, and the racial/ethnic composition of the state's high school graduates will continue to change dramatically. Alternatives being considered in California (and elsewhere) include: encouraging enrollments in private institutions; strengthening high school preparation to reduce or eliminate remediation and basic skills learning in college; incorporating learning technologies more effectively; making greater use of private vocational-technical institutions; and striving to recognize and certify learning competencies in order to reduce the individuals' "time to degree." The State Higher Education Executive Officers in three other high growth states — Colorado (Dwayne Nuzum); Nevada (Richard Jarvis), and Washington (Marcus Gaspard) described additional approaches, including: reduced program offerings on some campuses and increased course availability elsewhere; expanded concurrent enrollment by high school students in college level courses; improved secondary to postsecondary credit transfers and from community colleges to four-year institutions; more use of classrooms and laboratories in non-peak times; indexed test scores as measures of projected student success; joint operation of multi-use facilities that incorporate high school and postsecondary-level instruction; and expanded use of telecommunications networks. Some of these approaches can cross state borders, such as educational telecommunications and facilitating the interstate flow of students from overcrowded institutions to those where capacity exists, noted Richard W. Jonsen, executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. What Are Some Next Steps?Higher education is in the early stages of transforming itself. A next step is to identify workable models of successful change, according to Clifford Trow, an Oregon state senator and faculty member at Oregon State University. "What is it we want to build on and keep but alter, modify, or change gradually; and what is new and innovative that we absolutely must be involved in?" he asked. As the search for models spreads, legislators see a compelling need for building broader public support of dynamically reformed colleges, universities, and statewide systems of higher education. According to Diane Vines, vice president of the California State University Institute and vice-chair of WICHE, the Western Policy Exchange project of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) provides a springboard in the direction of such an objective. |
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