The first installment of the series featured Philip DiSalvio, dean of the College of Advancing & Professional Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, interviewing Carnegie Foundation President Anthony Bryk about the future of the credit hour; the second featured DiSalvio’s interview with Fastweb.com and FinAid.org Publisher Mark Kantrowitz about student debt.

In this installment of the series, DiSalvio talks with Jamie P. Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, about Lumina’s commitment to enrolling and graduating more students from college and the changes needed in higher education to help encourage that goal.

The context

The U.S. ranks ninth in the world in the proportion of young adults enrolled in college and has fallen to 16th in the world in its share of certificates and degrees awarded to adults ages 25 to 34—lagging behind Korea, Canada, Japan and other nations. In addition, while high school graduates from the wealthiest families are almost certain to continue on to higher education, just over half of U.S. high school graduates in the poorest quarter of families attend college.

A Schott Foundation report suggests that without a policy framework to create opportunity for all students, strengthen supports for the teaching profession and strike the right balance between support-based reforms and standards-driven reforms, the U.S. will become increasingly unequal and less competitive in the global economy

In February 2009, President Obama declared that “ … by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.” Around the same time, Lumina Foundation released its first strategic plan in 2009 with the goal that 60% of Americans obtain a high-quality postsecondary degree or credential by 2025—a goal Lumina now calls Goal 2025.

Expansion of undergraduate enrollments and the need to improve degree-completion rates—essential in both the Obama plan and Goal 2025—call for recasting the role of American colleges and universities and system-level change to improve student access and success in higher education.

Merisotis observes that there are significant obstacles that stand in the way of these attainment efforts. Expressing urgency for widespread systemic change, he provides useful insights on what reforms are necessary and offers recommendations on how higher education campus leaders and policymakers can help manage those changes.

The interview

DiSalvio: You have said that the current generation of college-age Americans are on the way to being less educated than their parents. Why is the educational attainment rate so important to America’s future?

Merisotis: The drive for American success in the 21st century is going to be talent. Talent is the driver of our economic success, cultural success and social success. What we know from extensive research in this area is that the talent that is required now is different from what it was in the past. The talent that we need as a society is overwhelmingly that which is attained by having a high-quality education at the postsecondary level.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to enroll in a postsecondary educational institution, because what we know is that there are many different ways in which postsecondary learning is now taking place. But postsecondary institutions, i.e., higher education institutions, are going to continue to be extremely important for the foreseeable future.

I think what we’re facing as a nation is this rapidly increasing demand for talent and the challenge of being able to actually meet that talent demand with our educational system. This challenge is growing more acute, and the gaps between those who have talent with a postsecondary education and those who do not, is increasing. You see it in terms of wages and employment rates and other economic indicators. You see it in terms of quality-of-life indicators, in terms of the way in which communities that have high aggregations of people with college education, postsecondary education, actually drive the cultural and the social well-being of communities. And you see it in the ways in which people who have postsecondary education literally have a higher quality of life. They live longer, their family structures are better, and their quality of life in general is much higher.

So for lots of reasons, increasing educational talent is extremely important to our country’s future. And the challenge before us is to figure out how we’re actually going to get there given the significant challenges that we face at a government level and at a personal level.

DiSalvio: Lumina Foundation’s most recent strategic plan released in 2013 identifies two broad areas of action that will help the nation increase the number of college graduates. You have characterized this as another step in the organization’s long-term shift away from simply awarding grants as the key strategy for fulfilling its mission. What are these two areas, and how successful has the effort been thus far in helping the nation increase its number of college graduates?

Merisotis: Lumina’s focus is essentially around two imperatives. We think these two imperatives are going to be critical in aligning the country’s efforts on getting to Goal 2025.

The first imperative is mobilizing all of the key actors that need to focus on increasing educational attainment to get to that 60% goal. That mobilization includes policymakers and employers. It includes regions and communities. And most importantly, it includes higher education institutions and their ability to focus on student success. It also includes the broader public, particularly students.

In our mobilization strategy, there are five strategies aimed at helping to support those actors to focus on increasing attainment and to give them tools that they can actually use to help increase high-quality postsecondary attainment.

The second imperative is to help design and build a 21st century higher education system. Here the idea is to help build greater system capacity so that we can actually support that mobilization. Focusing on designing and building that system is an acknowledgement that we won’t be able to supersize the current one. We are actually going to have to help create a better system that takes advantage of all the successes we’ve had but gives us a lot more capacity to increase high-quality attainment rapidly. That includes things like redesigning student finance and the systems that support student financing, helping to create new delivery models and a different business model for higher education and helping to support the advancement of a different system of credentials that are focused on high-quality learning that can actually be better articulated in our labor market and for society at large.

DiSalvio: In 2012, Lumina Foundation made more than 100 grants for a total commitment of roughly $45 million. How will these grants advance that focus on increasing Americans’ success in higher education and increasing the proportion of Americans who have high-quality, college-level learning?

Merisotis: ​The Lumina overall approach is that we see ourselves as a leadership organization. By that I mean that we have a large base of assets … the largest private foundation in the country focused on higher education. Therefore, we have both capacity and expertise. And so we’ve tried to apply that through our work—through our grantmaking, but also through a lot of the other activities we undertake, whether it’s our work in terms of communication in public will building, whether it’s our efforts around informing the public policy process, etc.

Grants are obviously a critical tool for that, and the grants that we’ve made are important in terms of our capacity. But we see ourselves as an organization that does more than simply make grants. Our hope is that we are providing leadership for system-level change. I think that is the key issue. Our efforts, in terms of our grants and the rest of our work, are really aimed at creating system-level change that will help increase educational attainment in the country. Goal 2025, the goal we’ve been operating under for the last five years, is the “north star” for our work. It’s a way of organizing all of those efforts in a very coherent and cohesive way.

The focus of what we’re trying to do is to create system-level change that will improve student access and success in higher education. Toward that end, we hope our efforts will work toward increasing the capacity of the higher education system to serve more students in a better way and to help ensure that there is high-quality learning associated with the degrees and other credentials. That will help the outcomes of higher education to be shared broadly, both from an individual perspective as well as from a societal perspective, particularly from the perspective of employers.

DiSalvio: Most agree that a preeminent higher education system is needed to meet the global economy’s growing need for talent. With that in mind, you have said that the American higher education system is in need of systematic change. What elements of change in higher education are necessary to further America’s preeminence?

Merisotis: I see three elements that undergird the need for change: student finance, new business and delivery models, and new systems of credentialing.

Keep in mind that for student finance, the current tuition and financial aid systems were developed decades ago for a student cohort that essentially doesn’t exist anymore. Only one out of five college students today attend a residential institution where they  go immediately to college after graduating the prior year from high school. The diversity of students is dramatically greater than in the past. And perhaps most importantly, our tuition structures simply are not supportable by a growing number of families. That is, affordability has become a serious challenge for families. So for lots of reasons, creating a different model of student finance is very important.

Similarly, it’s important to develop new and improved delivery models to better serve more students. We need to take advantage of technology and use what we’ve learned from a pedagogical perspective to advance ideas such as competency-based learning. In the area of credentials, I think the current system of credentials has served us well historically, but it clearly falls short now. We need to make sure that each credential has meaning—that is, that what students know and are able to do with their credential is clearly understood by the student, by the employer and by the people who are delivering the higher education. We must make sure that high-quality learning is represented in those credentials so that the learning is cumulative and that students can actually take that knowledge and apply and apply it in work and in life.

DiSalvio: You have expressed urgency in higher education reform and have suggested that business-higher education partnership is a natural extension of the investment that private business already makes on education and training. Are there specific forms of partnership you see as especially effective in increasing the nation’s number of college graduates? How can business leadership help colleges meet the needs of students and employers?

Merisotis: This is really important. We’ve spent two decades in a discussion with employers about what employers need and what higher education does. I think there has been some disconnect in that conversation. We’ve got to be clear with employers about how they can actually contribute to increasing educational attainment in this country.

There are three core ways that they can do that. The first is to literally support educational attainment in their companies or organizations. That is, by actually “walking the walk” on increasing educational attainment, by supporting tuition reimbursement, by helping their employees develop learning plans, and by actually supporting the advancing skills and knowledge of their own employees. That’s one way which I think employers need to be better engaged.

The second way is the idea that companies, organizations and employers have to see increasing postsecondary attainment as part of their corporate social responsibility efforts. That is, they have a social investment, a social obligation to support increasing attainment. Finding ways to support community-based efforts, to work in metropolitan areas to actually advance things on a community level is really important.

And the last way is that employers need to engage in public policy advocacy. We’ve seen employers have a measurable impact on the K-12 debate and efforts in increasing educational attainment at the K-12 level. They have to weigh in on a public policy level around the issues of financing higher education, about student learning outcomes, and about productivity of higher education. In all of these ways, they can actually add value and be more than just a bystander to this conversation. They can truly be advocates for systemic change that will lead to increasing educational attainment for a much larger number of Americans.

DiSalvio: As trustees and campus leaders, what specific steps can be taken to help mobilize those who must act to implement that change?

Merisotis: I think it’s vital for campus leaders and trustees and policymakers to be actively engaged. The engagement is important because changes in higher education are occurring rapidly, and we want higher education leading the charge, not playing defense. So I want to see higher education institutions and their leaders focus on such issues as increasing innovation to deliver more high-quality learning to larger numbers of students. I want to see campus leaders focus on mission reinvention and find ways to either focus more tightly on an existing mission or consider a new mission focus. I want to see campus leaders focus on improving equity and making sure that there is equity of opportunity for low-income students, for first-generation students, for students of color and for the large numbers of adults needing to be served by higher education. And the focus on equity should include both creating more opportunity and helping more of those students actually succeed in our higher education institutions. Those kinds of things, I think, are really important in terms of trustee and institutional leaders to better articulate the attainment agenda for the nation.

Lumina Foundation Strategy Director Holly Zanville recognized by Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The final report will inform the Business Roundtable’s future work on the creation of industry standards, in sectors where they do not exist, in order to address America’s workforce skills mismatch. Read the full commitment. »

Watch the full plenary session Together We Can: Driving a Future of Shared Responsibility and Shared Benefit »

WASHINGTON, DC, June 13, 2013—As the demand for skilled workers continues to grow, a new report released today by Lumina Foundation shows that the rate of college attainment is steadily improving across America. Unfortunately, the pace of progress is far too modest to meet future workforce needs. The report also finds massive and ongoing gaps in educational achievement—gaps tied to race, income and other socioeconomic factors—that must be addressed.

According to the report, A Stronger Nation through Higher Education, 38.7 percent of working-age Americans (ages 25-64) held a two- or four-year college degree in 2011—the most recent year for which data are available. That figure is up from 2010, when the rate was 38.3 percent and from 2009, when the rate was 38.1 percent. The Stronger Nation report measures progress toward Goal 2025 which is a national effort to increase the percentage of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by the year 2025.

Read the full report

A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education 2013

218 pgs. | 8.8M | PDF

“Research tells us that 65 percent of U.S. jobs will require some form of postsecondary education by 2020, yet fewer than 40 percent of Americans are educated beyond high school today,” said Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive officer of Lumina. “Our pace of attainment has been too slow and America is now facing a troubling talent gap. If we intend to address this problem, new strategies are required and a heightened sense of urgency is needed among policymakers, business leaders and higher education institutions across our nation.”

Achievement Gaps by Race Continue

Educational success has historically been uneven across America, particularly among, low-income, first-generation students, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and adults who are underrepresented among college students and graduates. The Stronger Nation report shows that degree attainment rates among adults (ages 25-64) in the U.S. continue to be woefully unbalanced, with 59.1 percent of Asians having a degree versus 43.3 percent of whites, 27.1 percent of blacks, 23.0 of Native Americans and 19.3 of Hispanics.

As worrisome as those differentials are, there is an even more troubling trend in the data regarding young adults (ages 25-29) who serve as a leading indicator of where the nation’s higher education attainment rates are headed overall. The highest attainment rate for 25- to 29-year old Americans is among Asians at 65.6 percent, followed by non-Hispanic whites at 44.9 percent. Then, the bottom drops out with an attainment rate for young African-Americans at 24.7 percent, for Hispanics at 17.9 percent and for Native Americans at 16.9 percent.

“This is an intolerable situation,” said Merisotis. “We certainly must close these gaps to meet the attainment levels that our nation needs. But the fact that these racial achievement differentials even exist must be rejected on both moral and economic grounds, given the increasingly severe consequences that come with not having a degree beyond high school. Our democracy and our economy are ill-served by a system that fails to effectively tap all of our available talent.”

New Strategies for Reaching Goal 2025

Earlier this year, Lumina released a new Strategic Plan that outlines how the Foundation will work over the next four years to help move the country closer to reaching Goal 2025. The plan includes strategies to: 1) design and build a higher education system for the 21^st century, and 2) mobilize employers, policymakers, institutions, state and metro leaders and others to better position America for success in the knowledge economy.

The strategies for designing and building a 21st century higher education system focus on: creating new models of student financial support; developing new higher education business and finance models, and creating new systems of quality credentials and credits defined by learning and competencies rather than time.

The mobilization strategies focus on: building a social movement to support increased attainment in America; working with employers, metro areas and regions to encourage broader adoption of Goal 2025; advancing state and federal policy for increased attainment, and mobilizing higher education institutions and systems to increase the adoption of data- and evidence-based policies, partnerships and practices.

“The strength of our nation—or any nation—is its people, the sum total of talents, skills and abilities inherent in its citizenry,” said Merisotis. “America needs a bigger and more talented workforce to succeed, but we cannot expect our citizens to meet the demands of the 21^st century without a 21^st century education. That’s why we are working to mobilize more stakeholders to commit to achieving this 60 percent college-attainment goal. And it’s why we are working to design and build a new system of higher education that is grounded in quality and is flexible and affordable enough to properly serve the needs of students, employers and society at large.”

We cannot expect our citizens to meet the demands of the 21st century without a 21st century education

To measure progress toward Goal 2025 in the near term, Lumina has established 10 specific achievement targets for 2016 that will guide the Foundation’s work. They include:

• 55 percent of Americans will believe that increasing higher education attainment is necessary to the nation. (2012 baseline = 43 percent)
• 67.8 percent of students will pursue postsecondary education directly from high school. (2012 baseline = 62.5 percent)
• 1.3 percent of older adults will be first-time participants in higher education. (2012 baseline = 1.1 percent)
• 3.3 million Hispanic students will be enrolled in college. (2012 baseline = 2.5 million)
• 3.25 million African-American students will be enrolled in college. (2012 baseline = 2.7 million)
• 22 million students will be enrolled in college across America. (2012 baseline = 18.1 million)
• 800,000 fewer working-age adults (ages 25-64) will have some college and no degree (2012 baseline = 36.3 million; 2016 target = 35.5 million)
• 60 percent of first-time, full-time students will complete college within six years. (2012 baseline = 54 percent)
• 48 percent of adult learners (ages 25-64) will complete higher education. (2012 baseline = 45 percent)
• 3 million will be the number of associate and bachelor’s degrees awarded annually. (An increase of 500,000 per year based on 2012 baseline of 2.5 million)

Key Tables from A Stronger Nation through Higher Education Report:

Top 10 states by degree attainment in 2011:

• MA—50.8%
• CO—47.0%
• MN—46.6%
• CT—46.4%
• VT—46.2%
• NH—45.8%
• MD—45.4%
• NJ—45.1%
• VA—45.0%
• ND—44.7%

Top 10 MSAs by degree attainment in 2011 (among the 100 most-populated MSAs):

Facts about postsecondary attainment in America

Bottom 10 states by degree attainment in 2011: State

41. IN—33.8%

42. OK—33.0%

43. TN—32.1%

44. AL—31.9%

45. KY—30.8%

46. MS—30.3%

47. NV—30.0%

48. AR—28.2%

49. LA—27.9%

50. WV—27.8%

Bottom 10 MSAs by degree attainment in 2011 (among the 100 most-populated MSAs):

Lumina Foundation is an independent, private foundation committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025. Lumina’s outcomes-based approach focuses on helping to design and build an accessible, responsive and accountable higher education system while fostering a national sense of urgency for action to achieve Goal 2025.

Media contacts:

Lucia Anderson
Lumina Foundation
317.951.5316
landerson@luminafoundation.org

Michael Marker
VOX Global
317.902.2958
mmarker@voxglobal.com

Lumina Foundation will be releasing its report, A Stronger Nation through Higher Education, on Thursday, June 13 at 12:01 a.m.

Media are invited to a conference call announcing the latest data regarding higher education attainment rates at a national, state and local level with Lumina’s President & CEO Jamie Merisotis and VP of Strategy & Policy Dewayne Matthews on Thursday, June 13, at 10:30 a.m. ET.

Jamie and Dewayne will go over the data, provide insights into national (and state-based) progress toward Goal 2025, and discuss new strategies for producing the talent America needs to meet future workforce needs. Following their remarks, they will be available to take questions.

To join the conference call, please RSVP with Michael Marker of VOX Global at: mmarker@voxglobal.com or 317-454-8030.

The password for the call and a copy of the report will be available to those who register.

New personal tracking devices such as the Nike Fuel Band, along with new sophisticated data visualization platforms, have made it easy to track personal health and fitness. This phenomenon, known as “the quantified self” provides insight into individuals’ activities such as sleeping, eating, exercising, and overall wellness.  The Economist and Lumina Foundation envision this trend reaching into people’s work lives as well. 

This Challenge requests that Solvers propose the potential objective inputs or data and potential methods of collecting and reporting that information that organizations could use to build a personalized “skills tracker” for individual employees.  This system, which could be an app, an emerging technology, software program, etc., could then be combined with subjective assessments of employees by their colleagues to provide a deeper view into development needs for both the employee and talent development professionals.  We are particularly interested in inputs that provide insight into the ongoing educational needs of employees.

This is an Ideation Challenge with a guaranteed award for at least one submitted solution.

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM (US Eastern Time) on 15-July-2013.  Late submissions will not be considered.

Potential solvers may apply at Innocentive.com]]> https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933374/feed/ 0 http://talentdividendnetwork.com/features/QAJimApplegate.aspx http://talentdividendnetwork.com/features/QAJimApplegate.aspx#comments Mon, 03 Jun 2013 20:20:36 +0000 matthew http://www.luminafoundation.org/?p=19328 More »]]> Jim Applegate, Vice President of Strategic Impact for the Lumina Foundation, is driving change toward Goal 2025 — the strategic initiative to achieve a 60 percent higher education attainment in the U.S. by the year 2025. (You can learn more about Lumina’s strategic framework here).

You may have heard him speak at the 2013 National Talent Dividend Meeting in Philadelphia, where he delivered a rousing keynote about the imperative to not only increase levels of educational attainment but to do so equitably and with a slavish devotion to data.

We followed up with him via email about some of the ideas that stuck with us. 

Talent Dividend Network: Lumina’s Goal 2025 (to attain 60% college completion rate in the U.S.. by 2025) is pretty audacious. Are we making progress toward that number? How do you see us ultimately reaching that goal?

Jim Applegate: We have seen consistent but modest growth in attainment levels, especially among our younger workforce, which is encouraging. However, the pace of change is far too slow. We need to mobilize our cities, states, and higher education systems to act with greater urgency. We have included in our latest strategic plan one among many scenarios that could be envisioned that lead us to the 60 percent goal by leveraging improvements in high school graduation, college going, and college completion that, while challenging, do not even require the national averages to exceed what our best states and systems are doing now. We are also paying strong attention to college opportunity for returning adults and the role of workforce-relevant certificates to give people the leg up they need in this economy.

In short, we believe Goal 2025 can be accomplished, but it will take all of us acting together with a great sense of urgency and a willingness to change the approaches that have not worked for us in the past.

TDN: Can you talk about the equity gap in college attainment? How can we be more honest about that inequity, and what can cities do to improve it?

JA: The biggest challenge is to address the lack of fairness in the current system that slams the college door on so many low-income and students of color and to design pathways to college success that are accessible to the tens of millions of adults already in the workforce who need to come back. These are the talent pools that we must access if our country is to succeed. Since we already provide a four-year college degree to almost four out of five of the wealthiest 24-year-olds, we have pretty much tapped out that group.

I would suggest that the steps to accessing this talent that we desperately need to succeed as a country include good use of disaggregated data to identify the scope and nature of the challenge. After that, we must be willing to have courageous conversations about the ways which the system is unfair (e.g.., unfair allocation of resources of all types) and address those barriers. I do think as we have these conversations we must be willing to admit that in some cases we have been comfortable with these gaps because deep down some believe gaps exist because of who suffer from them are. As an American Studies major, it looks to me like the old Horatio Alger myth reborn: If “they” only worked hard enough, they could pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We must get beyond that myth and be willing to engage the voices of those being left out, understand the challenges from their perspective, look comprehensively at the systemic factors contributing to a lack of fairness, and work together to develop a shared agenda and plan of action for remodeling our system around a principle of opportunity. The consequences of not doing so are dire for our economy and our democracy. Even the child of the wealthiest family cannot escape the consequences of a society in which a sense of hope and opportunity have been lost by so many. A path to college success can provide that hope and that opportunity for a decent life.

Cities are the true laboratories for innovation where we will address these issues. At the end of the day, cities must work. They must have a workforce up to the talent demands of their employers. They must be safe and green and healthy. They depend on a vibrant civic infrastructure. These are all things an educated population helps make possible. I believe cities embrace the American tradition of pragmatism in a way that other levels of government seem to have abandoned to narrow ideological fighting. That problem-solving approach is what can lead to true collaboration for true impact is what Lumina is trying to support in our work with metropolitan regions.

TDN: Why tie college completion to a metropolitan strategy?

JA: When they asked the bank robber Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he famously replied, “Because that’s where the money is!” So when we ask why Lumina is focusing on mobilizing metropolitan regions around Goal 2025, the similar answer is, “When you are trying to generate 23 million additional college credentials, you must go where the people are.” In the U.S.., more than a third of our population lives in our top 20 metropolitan regions and two-thirds in our top 100 regions. The urbanization of America is continuing apace. If we do not come together across sectors, engage all of our people in understanding and addressing our education needs, and raise education levels in our urban centers, we are lost. The key term all. We are not ‘fixing” people or doing things “to” people. We must engage one another in ways we have not done before and together remodel our collective home so that it serves the needs of all of our citizens.

TDN: Is three one thing – a single tested tactic – that a city should try to move the needle on college attainment? Lots of city leaders tell me they are focusing on working adults with some college and no degree, for instance – the “low-hanging fruit.”

JA: Certainly returning adults should be a prime target for many cities. However, I think the key to success for any city is to do the hard work to identify what its one or two or three challenges are in moving the needle. That hard work includes the following:

A: Find credible champions to bring people together across multiple sectors (e.g., business and income groups in the city, local foundations)

B: Develop a sense of urgency (one mayor has called this a “survival strategy” for his city)

C: Commit to a data-driven solution and begin to develop that data system that can be used to identify problems and measure progress

D:Develop a shared agenda around three or four (not 20) key challenge areas that must be addressed initially;

E: identify where and how different partners are going to work to address the challenges;

F: Identify an organization that will drive the collaborative process on a daily basis – herd the cats, so to speak.

In this way each city can find the city can find the one, or two, or three things it must do to move the needle and will have gained commitment to the effort from its people along the way. Once that commitment is in place, the effective practices that have solved those challenges elsewhere can be identified and adapted.

Lumina, in fact, is committed to helping cities go through this process and provide the technical assistance to cities to implement these practices at scale. The exact nature of the adapted solutions will emerge over time through constant attention to data and what’s working in a particular city.

TDN: What other advice do you have for cities competing for the Talent Dividend Prize?

JA: I believe the criteria, measurements, and “report cards” for the effort have been transparently defined. It is exciting to see the energy and momentum in so many cities that the prize has motivated.

However, in the long term, the real prize for every city will be the improvements in the education attainment being made through their collective work. In the long term, the economic payoff will dwarf the prize. So my only advice would be to know that the only way the improvements occur that make you competitive for the prize and more importantly, positioned for a bright future, is through the hard work of collaboration for true impact: collaboration grounded in a willingness to change and iterate solutions based on an almost religious commitment to the smart use of data.]]> http://talentdividendnetwork.com/features/QAJimApplegate.aspx/feed/ 0 http://www.luminafoundation.org/about_us/luminas_policy_priorities_for_the_states.html http://www.luminafoundation.org/about_us/luminas_policy_priorities_for_the_states.html#comments Wed, 29 May 2013 16:41:37 +0000 matthew http://www.luminafoundation.org/?p=19276 More »]]> The economy of the United States is going through a dramatic transformation, and millions of Americans are struggling to find their place in the emerging knowledge economy. Most state policymakers and higher education leaders no longer doubt that the U.S. must dramatically increase the number of students who earn high-quality post-secondary degrees and credentials, because skills and knowledge are the essential building blocks with which economic growth and prosperity are created. But states are struggling with unprecedented financial challenges which are resulting in actual reductions in higher education funding. Colleges and universities are struggling with their own challenges, including record enrollments, demands for greater accountability (including elusive expectations for quality), and a financial model that seems incapable of responding to the challenges before it.

Given these enormous challenges, Lumina Foundation believes that reaching the levels of higher education attainment the nation needs—60% by 2025—requires fundamental changes in all aspects of higher education. Public policy can be the primary driver for creating the change in higher education that the nation needs, but higher education policy itself must be reinvented.

What do states need to do to increase higher education attainment to the levels they and the nation need? Given the overwhelming financial constraints on state budgets, simply scaling up the current system—even if that were possible—is not an option. Lumina proposes that Governors, legislators, and other key state policymakers, working in close collaboration with employers and higher education leaders, pursue three priority strategies to increase higher education attainment to the levels states must achieve:

1. Set a specific state goal for attainment, and develop interim measures of progress: The first step to increasing attainment is to set a specific state goal that can be used as a basis for all future decisions affecting higher education in the state. Tennessee, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, and Oregon have all set state goals for attainment, and these states are already seeing a dramatic shift in the way higher education decisions are framed and addressed.

   State goals for attainment also lead to the need for interim measures that help to point the way toward the eventual achievement of a state goal. A clearer recognition of the data needed to measure progress and improve system performance is therefore essential. Quality data focuses attention where it belongs—on students and the learning outcomes they are achieving, and not institutional characteristics or resources. Several promising approaches have emerged in recent policy discussions that merit further investment. Among the specific approaches states can pursue are:

• Create unified student unit record systems that link K-12, higher education, and workforce data
• Collect, publicly report, and use at the campus and state levels common metrics that measure progress in attainment, completion, costs, and affordability

2. Focus scarce state resources on higher education productivity and completion: In this environment, states should target their resources overwhelmingly to produce more college graduates. As simple and logical as this step seems, most state funding is geared either to institutional characteristics or enrollment, with little or no support specifically targeted to helping students succeed. While this practice is educationally suspect even in the best of times, in this environment it cannot be justified. Among the specific approaches states can pursue are:

   • Reward institutions that focus on students completing quality programs
   • Reward students for completing courses and programs
   • Expand and strengthen lower-cost, non-traditional institution options
   • Invest in institutions that adopt good business practices
   • Create accelerated associate degree programs targeted to working adults and displaced workers, and when possible, expand them to all students

3. Align K-12 and higher education standards and assessment: States are rapidly coming to the realization that the most important outcome of K-12 education is that students be prepared for success in higher education. Surprisingly, public policy is not usually based on this assumption, but this is changing. The Common Core is a big step in the right direction, but states need to assure that the standard for high school graduation is that students are ready for college. It is not enough, though, to align standards. The assessments used in K-12 education, and especially in high school, need to tell students and their teachers and families whether or not they are ready to move directly into credit-bearing courses. The definition of college-ready that states should use is simple—that students do not need remediation in college. Among the specific approaches states can pursue are:

   • Align college placement exams with the new common core standards, and offer these exams in high school
   • Establish a state college outreach network that reaches all students by the 8th grade
   • Assure state and institutional financial aid is targeted to the success of low income students

While these three priorities outline the state policy agenda for all states, each state will need to develop and implement specific policy strategies that meet its particular needs and objectives for increasing degree attainment. Each state is unique in terms of its higher education governance structure, funding approach, range of institutions, student demographics, and economic needs. All of these variables—and several more—mean that the specific plan to increase attainment will be unique to each state.

Lumina Foundation will work through its projects, partner organizations, and, in some cases, directly to help states develop and implement plans and strategies to increase attainment and reach the Big Goal.

In accordance with section 4945 of the Internal Revenue Code and regulations of the Treasury Department, Lumina is prohibited from lobbying. All of the Foundation’s policy work must comply with the requirements outlined in section 4945 and the related regulations.

But while the ongoing debate over the impact of reform has largely surrounded emotional terms like “registered provisional immigrants” and “Dreamers,” the underlying reason immigration is important has been strangely missing. Bottom line: American needs the talent.

Our rapidly evolving, complex economy is causing a surge in the demand for skilled employees. Two-thirds of all jobs created in this decade will require some form of postsecondary education, according to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce. Today, only about 40 percent of adults in the U.S. have achieved that level of education. If there is any lingering doubt about the growing demand for postsecondary degrees, certificates and other credentials, consider that Americans with a high-school diploma or less accounted for four out every five jobs lost in the recent recession.

In order to fuel our nation’s economic growth, at least 60 percent of Americans need a postsecondary degree. This is not an impossible task if we pursue two concurrent paths. First, we must redesign our education system to produce the talent we need. Improving high-school graduation and college participation rates modestly, raising college completion rates and ensuring that larger numbers of adults — many of whom have been knocked out of middle-income wage jobs permanently — get a postsecondary education will help. Smart reforms already underway to rethink the higher education business and delivery model, overhaul student finance and retool the outdated system of degrees and credentials will accelerate progress toward that goal.

Second, we must redesign our immigration policy to increase our ability to develop and attract the talent we need.

The nation must produce roughly 62 million postsecondary credentials by 2025 if we are to hit the 60 percent target. At current rates, the U.S. will produce around 39 million two- and four-year college degrees — leaving a gap of 23 million. If we do not take this opportunity to reform our immigration policy, we undercut our ability to meet the nation’s growing talent needs and our ability to fuel an economy that benefits us all.

Producing that many additional degrees will require an “all hands on deck” effort by creating a path to citizenship for the millions of people who are currently in a legal no-man’s land. To pass on the opportunity that immigration reform presents to help us win this talent war would needlessly undercut our ability to meet the nation’s growing talent needs and our capacity to fuel an economy that benefits us all.

Attracting and retaining more highly educated immigrants will help us meet critical needs for entrepreneurs, scientists, technologists and other professionals who as a group will help create more jobs for all Americans, as these highly educated immigrants have done over multiple generations in the past. Immigrants who have the opportunity to achieve other credentials beyond high school will help us address skills gaps in many industries critical to our nation’s economic health.

We need workers to perform key economic tasks that require postsecondary skills and are essential to our economy. We need skilled workers to provide home healthcare for our aging population, to manage our large IT infrastructure, and to staff the farms that support our important agricultural industries. The vast majority of these jobs now require postsecondary skills, with a certificate or some other form of qualification beyond high school.

We recently served on a task force convened by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that put into sharp focus the impact immigration reform could have on our collective economic well-being. The task force included former governors and mayors, business and civic leaders, foundations, labor and others all committed to sensible immigration reform in the name of economic competitiveness

Our task force colleague John Rowe, chairman emeritus of Exelon Corp., made the point most plainly: “Even with today’s high unemployment, employers in many sectors — high-tech, agriculture, the seasonal economy — need immigrants to keep their businesses open and contributing to the economy. As the economy improves, this need will only grow — global talent will play an essential role in the nation’s economic recovery.”

And that recovery will bring the job growth we need to help all Americans find the opportunity for a decent life.

Loughrey is former president and COO of Cummins, Inc. Merisotis is president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation.

October 23-24, 2013
Hotel Teatro, Denver Colorado

The 2^nd Annual Academy for State Policy Leadership in Higher Education, developed by the State Higher Education Executive Officers and Lumina Foundation, is designed for individuals whose interests and professional experience are preparing them for senior leadership positions in state higher education policy. The curriculum of the Academy will focus on building essential relationships—with governors, legislators, trustees, business leaders, institutional presidents, K-12 leaders, and other higher education constituents—and developing and implementing effective strategies to advance progress toward the national goals of expanding participation and attainment and increasing the quality of student learning.

The Academy will be held in Denver, from at 10:00 a.m. on October 23rd and concluding at 1:30 p.m. on October 24th. Travel costs, hotel accommodations and meals will be covered for all Academy participants.

Admissions and Application Process

The Academy class, limited to 25 or fewer participants, will be selected through a competitive application process. Individuals who have an established record of relevant, advanced professional work in colleges and universities, statewide coordinating or governing boards, university or community college systems, the executive or legislative branches of government, governmental or educational associations, or research organizations focused on educational policy are invited to apply. While applicants will be given priority whose qualifications would merit serious consideration as a candidate for leadership at the CEO level now or in the near future, interest in near term career moves is neither presumed nor required. The application process will be confidential until selections are announced and accepted.

Complete applications should be submitted as soon as possible, but no later than June 3, 2013; the results of the selection process will be announced by July 1, 2013 or as soon as possible thereafter. Individuals interested in applying should submit the documents listed below, in pdf format to: academy@sheeo.org. Questions may also be submitted to this email address.

An application must include:

• A complete resume, including three references who may be contacted.
• A letter of application which:
  1. Describes the applicant’s professional experiences and capabilities relevant to the selection criteria below;
  2. Indicates what she or he would most like to gain from participating the in the Academy; and
  3. Suggests one to three issues or questions of personal interest for inclusion in the curriculum of the Academy.
• Two letters of recommendation (separately sent) from individuals able to assess the applicant’s potential for assuming a policy leadership role.

Selection Criteria

The following criteria will be considered in reviewing applications for admission to the Academy and should be addressed in letters of recommendation:

• Demonstrated leadership ability and significant contributions at a senior level which show clear promise of success at the highest level of policy leadership in a state.
• Depth of intellect and understanding of the complex challenges of reconciling legitimate, competing values and achieving a working consensus among different perspectives.
• Substantive knowledge of the policy issues, current debates, and promising approaches for achieving policy and educational objectives.
• Interpersonal skills inherent to effective leadership—writing, speaking, and listening well, interacting effectively with others, and establishing strong relationships among different kinds of people.
• Personal and professional goals, and their relevance to effective leadership.

Faculty and instructional process

Previous state executives/system heads and other national leaders with years of experience in a number of different states will lead the Academy. The Academy is designed to be highly interactive.

Background readings and short case situations for discussion will be provided in advance. The participants themselves will play an active role by sharing their own experiences and observations, by suggesting issues for group discussion in their application cover letter, and through their discussion of situations often faced by state policy leaders. View the agenda and other information for the 2012 Academy.