Jamie P. Merisotis, President, Lumina Foundation for Education
AAC&U Annual Meeting Opening Plenary, Washington, DC

Thank you and good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here today—and to share the dais with my distinguished colleagues. Like you, I am anxious to hear what they have to say, so I’ll do my best to keep my own remarks uncharacteristically brief.

Of course, all of us are here today for the same reason. We’re here to explore ways to improve higher education. We’re here to learn from each other how, even in these tough times, the system can serve more students and serve them better. In short, we’re here to find ways to multiply individual opportunity … not only because individual students deserve every opportunity we can give them, but because increasing individual opportunity brings a huge payoff for society as a whole.

Lumina Foundation for Education, is dedicated to that principle. I believe most of you are familiar with Lumina Foundation and our mission to enroll and graduate more students from college—especially low-income students, students of color, first-generation students and adult learners. As the largest national foundation aimed at increasing access and cuccess in higher education, we have focused all of our energies toward the achievement of one “Big Goal”: By the year 2025, we want 60 percent of Americans to hold high-quality degrees and credentials.

We know this goal is ambitious, but we’re convinced that it is vital—and that it is achievable. And we’re not alone in that conviction.

President Obama set a virtually identical target a year ago when he gave his first address to a joint session of Congress, calling for the U.S. to regain its long-held position as the global leader in degree attainment by 2020. Martha and her colleagues at the Department of Education are working every day to make progress toward that goal—as are policymakers from both major parties in virtually every state, and dedicated educators in institutions all over this nation, including the hundreds of colleges and universities represented here today.

Clearly, as the theme for this annual meeting points out, the time has come for all of us to apply our wit, our will and our wallets—or as I said to someone earlier this week, our brains, our backbones, and our bucks—to the vital task of increasing college-attainment rates.

And as we embrace that task, we need to be mindful of the whole goal. Look closely at the Big Goal statement. It calls specifically for high-quality degrees and credentials. That means we can’t simply fixate on increasing the number of degrees being granted. Those degrees must mean something. They must demonstrate that students have attained the knowledge and skills that position them for success—in the workplace and in life.

In short, quality is the key. We recognize that defining quality in higher education is no simple task; Lumina’s work—and the work of great organizations like AAC&U—illustrates the complexity of that effort. Still, one thing is clear: Any useful definition of quality must focus on specific learning outcomes—on what a student knows, understands and can do after completing a course of study.

The learning that a degree represents must be explicit and transparent to all concerned. Faculty must agree on—and students must clearly understand—what skills and knowledge a graduate in a particular discipline should possess. Policymakers must be able to allocate resources based on those required outcomes. And employers must be able to hire graduates with confidence, knowing what skills and knowledge are represented by a two-year degree in English or a bachelor’s in history or a master’s in electrical engineering.

This last requirement—that degrees be workplace-relevant—has never been more important than it is in today’s global economy. For decades in this country, comparatively low-skill jobs supported a middle-class lifestyle for tens of millions of Americans. We all know that those days are gone forever. The job market has changed dramatically—and the change is permanent. Global competition and technology have siphoned off or eliminated most low-skill jobs, and employers are increasingly vocal in their calls for better-trained, more highly skilled workers.

Just last month, the Business Roundtable’s Springboard Project issued a list of six recommendations for closing what it calls the widening gap between workers’ skills and employers’ needs. The list emphasized the use of innovative technology for delivering curriculum, and it encouraged lifelong learning for all workers. And at the very top of the Springboard Project list was a call for incentives to spur higher college-attainment rates.

Yesterday, to set the stage for this conference, AAC&U released the results of a survey showing just how intently employers are focused on upgrading the labor force. More than one-fourth of the 302 employers who responded to the “Raising the Bar” survey—28 percent—said they planned to put more emphasis this year on hiring people with four-year college degrees. Eleven percent said they would be seeking more workers with associate degrees.

Clearly, a college credential is seen as a prerequisite for today’s good jobs … and certainly for the jobs of tomorrow. And today’s version of workforce-relevant postsecondary education—the type that employers are calling for—is very much in sync with the time-honored goals of liberal learning that AAC&U has long championed.

Look again at the “Raising the Bar” survey. Roughly 90 percent of the employers who responded said they need workers who have higher levels of learning and knowledge, workers who can take on varied responsibilities and use a broader set of skills to face the more complex challenges of the modern workplace. In addition to relevant content knowledge, employers say they need workers with better critical thinking and analytical skills, with highly tuned abilities in written and oral communication, with a heightened global perspective, with well-developed teamwork skills and a penchant for creativity and innovation. If that’s not a description of the outcomes of a successful liberal learning program, I’m not sure what is.

The fundamental point here—and one that applies to every sector of postsecondary education—is that employers aren’t just seeking workers with college degrees; rather, they need workers whose degrees and credentials are of high quality … that demonstrate real value.

The challenge is to clearly define quality by focusing on and measuring student learning outcomes. That is a challenge that you and your institutions have truly embraced—and you are to be commended for that. Student learning outcomes and quality assurance have long been core concerns of AAC&U and its member institutions. The LEAP initiative is one example of this work and the vital lessons it offers for all of higher education.

And there are other lessons to learn as well as we hone the definition of a high-quality college education.

First, as the Raising the Bar survey and the Springboard Project demonstrate, we must continue to actively engage employers and truly listen to what they are saying. The push for real quality in higher education cannot succeed if it is an inside job. In fact, this is a task that will require commitment and collaboration from every quarter—including all sectors of higher education, the business community, the K-12 arena, the policy community and the field of philanthropy.

Second, we need to learn from and build on what has taken place in other parts of the world, particularly in Europe as a result of the Bologna Process. And today’s meeting represents a prime opportunity for such learning. Several sessions are planned on Bologna and on outgrowths of Bologna that are being explored here in this country.

In one of the sessions immediately following this plenary, an international panel of experts will discuss the question: “What Are We Learning About Student-centered Higher Education from the Bologna Process?” Then, early this afternoon, I urge you to attend two more sessions that will focus on a particular aspect of Bologna known as “tuning”—an idea that we at Lumina have been actively supporting in a three-state pilot project. Tuning is a faculty-led process in which a range of stakeholders—including students, employers and recent graduates—jointly determine the specific learning outcomes required for a student to earn a degree in a certain discipline.

The goal of tuning is to establish clear learning expectations for students in each subject area, while balancing the need to retain the autonomy of individual programs. The idea isn’t to standardize programs across institutions, but to better establish the quality and relevance of degrees in various academic disciplines.

Finally, as we work to more clearly define learning outcomes within particular disciplines, we must also work to better define the learning that is represented by each degree level. Other countries are moving away from the idea of awarding a baccalaureate or master’s or doctoral degree based solely on the accumulation of time. Rather, many have established qualifications frameworks that better pinpoint the differences in actual learning at each level.

That is another area that can yield important lessons for us as we work together to ensure the high quality of the American college degree. And make no mistake: That quality-assurance effort—the effort to link learning tightly to degree attainment—is no idle pursuit.

The AAC&U board of directors just released “The Quality Imperative,” a powerful public statement whose concluding paragraphs include a true and very telling line. The line reads: “The quality of individuals’ actual learning is the most important resource we have as a society.” I couldn’t agree more.

Without an unrelenting focus on quality—on defining, measuring and ensuring the learning outcomes of students—any effort to increase college-completion rates would be a hollow effort indeed. As we strive to reach that Big Goal, we cannot allow quality and quantity to be a zero-sum game. “Either/or” won’t work. Not for your institutions. Not for your students. Not for American society as a whole. For all of those stakeholders, it must be both.

This nation needs many more college-educated citizens, individuals who are truly and fully equipped for success. You and your institutions are absolutely key in finding, supporting and nurturing those individuals. You’ve done it well for decades—and you deserve our praise and thanks for that. But the game has changed, and the job is far from over. Now is the time for all of us—in higher education, in the policy community, in the private sector and in the field of philanthropy—to redouble our efforts and work together toward that 60 percent high-quality degree attainment goal.

Thank you very much.