Jamie P. Merisotis, President, Lumina Foundation for Education
MSI Convening, Indianapolis, IN

Thank you, and welcome to Indianapolis. We at Lumina are very pleased to be able to play host to all of you for this important conversation. And for me, personally, it’s especially gratifying to have you here for these two days. Looking out into the room, I see so many familiar faces—wonderfully dedicated people who have been my friends and colleagues for many years.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Jamie Merisotis. I’ve been here at Lumina since January 2008, and before that I was president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington. In that role, I spent much of the last decade working with the various MSI communities through the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, as well as through various other forums.

Of course, I am very proud of my long and fruitful relationship with HBCUs, HSIs and Tribal Colleges. In fact, my Lumina colleagues have already heard my impassioned speeches about the essential role that MSIs play in American higher education.

Well, I won’t be giving that speech today—not because I am any less passionate about it, but simply because I know that all of you are fully aware of MSIs’ essential role.

What I want to do in my brief remarks this morning is to set the stage for our discussion—to explain Lumina’s purpose in holding this convening and to let you know what we hope to gain from it. And then I promise I will get out of the way and—along with all of my Lumina colleagues—really listen to what you have to say.

We did not invite you here because we have the answers. Quite the contrary. We are here today to learn from you—and so you can learn from each other. Still, we certainly do have goals and expectations for the next day and a half. As my colleague Marybeth Gasman laid out in the paper that was sent to you prior to your arrival here, Lumina has several specific outcomes in mind:

• First, we want to listen and learn, to understand how we can more effectively support and become partners with you as you seek to better serve your students—because serving your students is absolutely critical to Lumina Foundation’s mission.
• Second, we want to use what we learn here to elevate the presence and relevance of MSIs in today’s higher-education landscape.
• Third, we hope to find ways to amplify the collective voice of MSIs. We hope that, by working together, we can change the way this nation views MSIs and the way it approaches the vital task of educating students of color.
• Finally—but really first on our agenda today—we want to acknowledge and celebrate the successes of MSIs.

This final goal isn’t just an ego-boosting exercise—though we certainly hope we can all feel good about the successes we share today. I would argue that we must look closely at your successes if we hope to reach any of the other outcomes I’ve mentioned. That’s because, by starting with the successes, we will fundamentally change the conversation that typically occurs when MSIs are being discussed—even sometimes when we are talking to each other.

Almost invariably, Minority-Serving Institutions are defined in the media and policy discussions by deficits, fixed in a tight frame of barriers and challenges. In other words, they are almost always described in terms of the obstacles they face: severe and chronic disparities in funding, growing populations of at-risk students, difficulties in finding and retaining inspired leaders.

Even though MSIs often overcome these obstacles—and are even hailed as heroic in doing so—this type of “deficit model” can be corrosive in the long run. It tends to pigeonhole MSIs as “underdogs” … the “little colleges that could.” That’s fine as far as it goes, but it’s also limiting. It fails to acknowledge an increasingly important truth about Minority-Serving Institutions: that, in some vital ways, MSIs can actually lead the way for ALL institutions of higher learning.

I’m reminded of a recent comment by former Spelman College and Bennett College President Johnetta Cole. She said: “I’m tired of hearing about MSIs doing more with less. I want to start hearing about us doing more with more!”

Well, I agree with her. As I have said many times in many venues, MSIs have a great deal to teach mainstream institutions. HSIs, Tribal Colleges and HBCUs do more than any other combination of institutions to invest in students who might not otherwise go to college. MSIs have always held themselves accountable to those students, with a holistic, comprehensive approach to student success that is worth emulating broadly. Finally, you have decades of hands-on experience in fostering impressive achievement levels among low-income, first-generation and other traditionally underrepresented students.

In short, your experience and your perspective are absolutely vital to the future success of our nation’s higher education system—and it is well past time that this message was shared more broadly.

The demographics are inescapable. We know that, in the coming decades, a growing proportion of college students will be those who typically face the highest barriers to college success: low-income students, first-generation students, students of color. These are the students you have been serving—and, in many cases, serving very well—for many, many years.

And so we want to begin this conversation from a point of strength, not from a position of weakness. We want to hear more about how you help your students succeed. We want to learn about your innovative programs and approaches and find ways to share what you’ve learned—with each other and with the broader higher-education community. In many ways, your record of success is astonishing, and too few are fully aware of it.

Now, in the interest of full and fair disclosure, I will tell you very plainly that Lumina’s prime motivation in this enterprise is not to improve the public relations position of Minority-Serving Institutions. Of course, we’ll be very happy if MSIs get a bit of long-overdue credit for their fine work, but that’s icing on the cake as far as Lumina is concerned. Here at Lumina, we’ve been very straightforward in defining the cake. We call it our “Big Goal.” And we try to make sure that everything we do—every grant we make, every communication effort we undertake, and yes, every meeting like this one—helps us reach that goal.

Our Big Goal is this: By the year 2025, we want 60 percent of the American population to hold high-quality, two- or four-year college degrees. That represents a sizable increase over the current degree-attainment rate of 39 percent—a rate that has held steady for nearly 30 years.

Clearly, 60 percent is an ambitious goal. In fact, to get there, this nation will have to produce 16 million more degree holders than it is expected to generate at the current rate. Still, we feel very strongly that this is a goal we MUST achieve. As ambitious as it seems, we believe it is the minimum required to meet three compelling national needs:

• The first need is to reach international benchmarks for college attainment, and thereby return the United States to a world-class level of global competitiveness.
• The second is to meet the ever-growing demand for a well-prepared and adaptable workforce.
• The third compelling need is one you’re all familiar with, because you’ve been working to meet it for decades. It is to close achievement gaps for underrepresented students.

The math is clear: If we hope to reach our goal of 60 percent degree attainment, achievement rates among the nation’s underserved students will have to rise dramatically. We know we have to close the achievement gap—and that necessity puts MSIs front and center in our efforts to reach the big goal. The strides you have made in student support and success are the footprints we must follow. The record of success you have earned in this arena is the foundation on which we must build.

And I can assure you that Lumina intends to continue building. The discussions we will have today and tomorrow are just the first step that we will be taking with the nation’s Minority-Serving Institutions. We are not at all interested in a one-off conversation. We’re committed to investing in your success, because we know that your success is key to meeting the goals we have set for our own work in the space of access and success in higher education.

More important, we know that your success is key to the success of the students who represent this nation’s future—and to whom we all must dedicate our very best effort.

Again, welcome to all of you. I am thrilled to have you with us today, I thank you for your engaged involvement, and I look forward to our conversation.