Remarks by Jamie P. Merisotis, President/CEO, Lumina Foundation
Clinton School Speaker Series, Little Rock

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. It’s an honor to be here with you today. I want to say a special thanks to Derrick Rainey. It’s more than a little humbling to ponder the record that Derrick has already established in public service. 4,000 volunteer hours … impressive. That is a remarkable gift to the community. Of course, everyone here knows that the Clinton School is in the business of developing remarkable public servants, so I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised to find Derrick here.

In any case, I’m very pleased to find myself here today, and I want to thank Dean Rutherford for this opportunity to speak with you. I definitely feel I am among kindred spirits here at the Clinton School, because my remarks will very much be centered on public service and community engagement. In my case, public service and engagement are directed specifically toward one topic—certainly one in which you all have a direct interest: that is, college attainment.

As you may have gathered from Derrick’s introduction, it’s been my life’s work to advocate for the enormous benefits of postsecondary education … to make college more accessible for all Americans and to help ensure that many more students stay in school and earn their degrees. And after two decades in this work, I’m more convinced than ever in the power of higher education. In fact, college attainment has never been more important; indeed, it is vital ― to individual success, and to the future of our nation as a whole.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen unprecedented attention to the issues of college affordability and rising student debt. As a result, we’ve also heard a lot about the value of a college education, especially in these economically turbulent times, as well as the quality of the credentials that we are awarding at our colleges and universities. In my brief time today, I hope to underscore why a postsecondary degree or credential really is more important now than it ever has been before, and how you can play a part in the critical national imperative of achieving much higher levels of high-quality educational attainment for the vast majority of Americans.

To give you some sense of where I’m coming from, it might be helpful to tell you a bit more about me, and the Foundation. I grew up in a family of limited means, and am proud to call myself a first generation college graduate. I was fortunate to have parents who pushed me and my siblings to achieve more educationally, even though they never had those opportunities. I also benefited greatly from the support of the federal government, my local community, my church, my alma mater Bates College, and many others. I’ve called myself a walking advertisement for virtually every form of financial aid that was available when I attended college, from Pell Grants to student loans to a whole lot of work.

My experience is not unusual or atypical. There are many Americans like me. But more importantly, there are many millions more who need the opportunities that I was fortunate enough to have. And that’s where an organization like Lumina Foundation comes in.

Lumina Foundation is a national foundation that plays an unusual role as one of the nation’s largest private foundations. We are committed to one cause: enrolling and graduating more students from college—especially low-income students, students of color, first-generation students and adult learners. In fact, we are the largest private foundation in America that focuses exclusively on that mission. And we pursue our mission in a very targeted way. All of our energy and resources are focused not on individual achievement through scholarships or other support, but on system-level change that can lead to large scale impact. Lumina’s work is entirely focused on achieving one ambitious but specific goal for college attainment, what we call “Goal 2025” or simply, the Big Goal.

Our Big Goal is this: By the year 2025, we want 60 percent of Americans to hold high-quality college degrees and credentials.

Now most of you in this room are aware that today, and really for much of the last four decades, the national degree-attainment rate hovers just below 40 percent. That level of college attainment hasn’t really hampered us until recently. In fact, a decade or so ago, we led the world in this race. No longer. College-attainment rates are soaring among young adults in many other nations, while our rate remains essentially flat. Figures released over a year ago put us in eighth place. And now, according to the latest figures, we’ve slipped to 15^th in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds who have obtained a two- or four-year degree. Clearly, in an age where economies and labor markets are increasingly global, this downward trend is more than troubling.

Today, and certainly in years to come, workers without college-level learning simply won’t have the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. In fact, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce has estimated that by 2018, 63 percent of all of the nation’s jobs will require some form of postsecondary education or training. That’s a huge increase since the mid-’70s, when less than 30 percent of jobs required any education beyond high school.

Let’s put it in the context of your home state here at the Clinton School. In Arkansas, 52 percent of jobs will require postsecondary education by 2018. That means, in the next six years, Arkansas will need to fill more than 400,000 vacancies resulting from job creation, worker retirements and other factors. Of these expected vacancies, then, more than half—nearly 218,000 Arkansas jobs—will require postsecondary credentials.

Now I know what some of you may be thinking right about now. What is this guy talking about? Hasn’t he been reading the newspaper? Jobs for recent graduates are in short supply, and opportunities are more limited than they have been for many years.

Well let’s talk about that. Here are some things we know. First, the unemployment rates for those with college degrees are considerably lower than for those without postsecondary credentials. This is true even for recent college graduates. According to data from late 2011, national unemployment rates for 18-24 year olds (not enrolled in school) are about 8.9% for BA recipients and 11.9% for AA holders, compared to a whopping 22.9% for those with only a high school credential.

We also know that wage differentials for people with college degrees compared to those with high school credentials are wide. That’s a fact that we’ve understand for many years—if you go to college, you make more money. What is less recognized is that the differential in wages is actually growing. Individuals with a bachelor’s degree make an average of 84% more over their lifetimes than those with just a high school diploma. This is an increase even since the late 1990s, when the differential was about 75%. This increasing wage premium shows that the labor market is hungry for college graduates. Even in this job market, employers are willing to pay an increasing premium for college graduates.

In the coming years, fewer and fewer jobs will be available to those who lack postsecondary education.

Let’s look at the picture in another way. Data from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce show just how important postsecondary education should be to job-seekers. On average, in industries that are growing the fastest—healthcare and various service industries—about seven in ten workers have at least some college. On the other side of the ledger—the industries that are declining in terms of their relative share of jobs, only four in ten workers have attended college. The message is clear: In the coming years and decades, fewer and fewer jobs will be available to those who lack postsecondary education.

So does this mean that every person who graduates from a college or university is going to get a good job and lead a middle class life? No. The point is, in this environment, a college degree is a prerequisite. There’s no guarantee that a student who obtains a college degree is going to get a good job and have a middle-class life. But in the future, you almost certainly will be poor without some kind of postsecondary credential.

Almost all jobs are becoming higher-skill jobs…

But even this doesn’t tell the whole story. The seismic shift that is under way is not a shift from low-skill occupations to high-skill occupations. It’s that almost all jobs are becoming higher-skill jobs.

Even in some so-called declining industries, the need for college-educated workers is becoming acute as jobs become more complex. Jobs in manufacturing, in mining—really, in nearly any practical field you can name, from auto repair to X-ray technology—now require some level of postsecondary education. What’s more, all jobs increasingly demand the “soft skills” that higher-level learning provides … the critical thinking and analytical skills that make workers more adaptable in an ever-changing workplace.

And here’s an even more compelling truth about the benefits of boosting college attainment: It’s not just a way to prevent job loss; it’s actually a proven means to stimulate job creation. Economists tell us that much of the nation’s economic growth over the last half-century is largely attributable to two things: technology and increased educational attainment. Why are these two so important? It’s because they increase productivity, and productivity growth is the engine that drives all advanced economies.

When employers are given a more highly educated workforce, they’ve actually been shown to organize the work in more efficient and productive ways. They have learned through experience that hiring better-educated workers increases productivity and enhances workplace creativity. This, in turn, helps fuel the innovation that leads to new products and services, new markets … and new jobs to serve those markets.

The key to the nation’s long-term economic success is a 21^st century labor force, one with adaptable workers who possess high-level skills and relevant knowledge. And those skills … that type of knowledge … can only be offered in well-designed and rigorous postsecondary programs. That’s why Goal 2025 is all about ensuring that many more students enroll in and complete such programs. It’s all about the learning.

Of course, the benefits of higher education aren’t limited to individuals, and they extend well beyond economics and labor markets. The broader societal benefits of a well-educated population are enormous: lower crime rates, less reliance on public assistance, better health, increased levels of civic involvement. And, as Americans, we all recognize equity of educational opportunity as a shared value. Every person, regardless of finances or family circumstances, deserves the chance to succeed and contribute to our collective well-being. Like nothing else, higher education offers that opportunity.

For all of these reasons, then, Lumina is committed to the Big Goal of 60 percent attainment. As I said earlier, everything we do as an organization is aimed at achieving Goal 2025. The grants we provide to support research and effective practice in higher education … our communications and convening efforts … and, increasingly, our work in public policy—all of this has a singular focus: to boost the proportion of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025.

It’s an ambitious goal. In fact, we know it can’t be reached without the concerted and cooperative effort of stakeholders from every arena, including K-12 and higher education, federal and state government, business and labor leaders. My own visit here to Arkansas provides an instructive example of how we approach this work from many fronts. In addition to this visit at the Clinton School, my agenda for today includes meetings with the presidents of the state’s two largest public universities, state agency officials, legislative leaders, and the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. I’m also spending time with the media to ensure that they get the message as well.

It’s a full day, to be sure, but it offers a great opportunity to reach out to potential partners among a wide range of local individuals and organizations. Again, that sort of broad-based approach among all stakeholders is critical to this type of work ― a lesson I’m sure you’ve learned as students of public policy and social change here at the Clinton School.

One of the specific lessons we at Lumina have learned is that we must strive to help make the employer community an increasingly important partner in the effort to improve college attainment. Over the years, Lumina has enjoyed good relationships with the “supply side” of the higher-ed enterprise—that is, with institutions and systems, and with the policymakers who help create the environment in which those schools and systems operate. Clearly, we value those relationships, and we work hard to maintain and strengthen them because the changes we seek simply can’t occur without help from the supply side. We can talk more about those efforts as part of our Q&A discussion.

But I’d like to take a few moments talking about the need for much greater involvement from a less-discussed group, and that’s the “demand side.” This includes students, to be sure, but also employers, workforce-development officials and other members of the business community. It’s clear that, as a nation, we need to tighten the connection between college success and economic success … and that connection must be tightened from both sides. In short, both sides must change.

On one side, higher education institutions and government officials must do a better job of listening and responding to the needs of employers. They must show greater willingness to work in true partnership with the business and workforce development community … to give students what they truly need to succeed on the job, and in life. And they must eradicate the false distinctions between what many tend to revere as “education” and what they often deride as mere “training.” It’s well past time for a full realization that virtually all skills are workforce-relevant and that all are constantly evolving.

The work we’re doing at Lumina—and, really, all that I’ve learned in more than two decades of work in the higher education arena—convinces me that fundamental changes are needed on the supply side. Despite its many strengths—strengths that, admittedly, served this nation well for many decades—the current postsecondary system simply cannot get us where we need to be in the 21^st century.

Perhaps the best indicator of the limits of the current system is the very real problem we have with college affordability. We all know that the increasing cost of higher education has been placing a burden on families and individual students for many years. But now, the challenge is far greater than that. In fact, it’s clear that we’ve reached a critical crossroads when it comes to funding higher education in this country. What we’ve always done just isn’t working anymore.

For decades, the American higher education system has essentially relied on two major sources of funds: government appropriations, and the tuition and fees paid by students and families. When one source was in short supply, institutions looked to the other. Both of these sources have increased over the last two decades to meet rising college costs, though at differing rates. This is what I’ve called the “mood music” of the national conversations that I’ve had the privilege of being a part of for more than two decades.

But now ― after years of those costs rising faster than inflation, faster than family incomes, faster even than the cost of health care—the music has stopped. Both government and students are severely constrained in their ability to pay for these continuing cost increases. Yet the demand ― and the societal need—for increased college attainment is greater than ever before in our nation’s history. That’s what Goal 2025 is all about: meeting that rising need.

Now we recognize that the challenge is huge: We need to scale up the system so that it can produce the numbers of graduates that our economy needs, all while maintaining or improving the quality of its graduates … and without the likelihood of major new investments made by the federal government, states, parents and students.

In short, we need a more productive higher-ed system—one that enables institutions to meet each student where he or she is and provide the support each student needs to succeed. We need a system that ensures quality by fostering genuine learning, not mere program completion … a system that truly prepares students for work—and for life—in an increasingly global society.

Such a system should allow students to accumulate credits from different institutions over several years to earn a degree, minimizing waste and duplicative learning. That system should also acknowledge and credit prior learning—skills developed through work or military service and which often reflect a student’s abilities even better than earning classroom credit.

At Lumina, we believe strongly that higher education needs to be far more focused on the needs of students and less on the needs of higher education institutions. And it’s critically important that we focus on today’s students—the ever-growing number of low-income, first-generation, minority and adult students whom we are calling 21^st century students … the people who constitute the “real world” on campuses these days.

Ultimately, this means that higher education must be more student-centered. Or, to put it in terms that might resonate better with the employers and business leaders we seek as partners: it must be more customer-focused. By better serving its main customers—students—the postsecondary system will also meet the needs of employers, not to mention the ultimate customer base, which is American society itself.

Of course, as I said, the business community ― the demand side—also has a major role in making the Big Goal a reality. And my Lumina colleagues and I are doing more and more these days to encourage employers to seize that role. Put most simply and directly, we are urging them to get in the game.

Too often in the past—and even today, despite the urgent need for a new approach—employers, local chambers of commerce and workforce-development groups have stayed on the sidelines when it comes to higher education reform. In far too many cases, the business community has assumed one of only two roles. Sometimes it acts as a detached critic of the higher education system; at other times, it’s an unabashed supporter of particular institutions—often institutions that have personal meaning to those leading a business or organization.

What’s needed now is for employers and business advocates to get off the sidelines, to actively and eagerly participate in a broad-based effort to increase college attainment. The numbers don’t lie: Achievement of Goal 2025 will demand steady increases in the number of Americans earning degrees and certificates each year for more than a dozen years. Clearly, for that to happen, the higher education system will have to operate with much greater efficiency than ever before.

New processes and procedures will be required; innovative approaches will have to be taken—all in an effort to boost productivity and to maximize higher-ed’s return on investment. Obviously, these are lessons that any successful businessperson has learned and applied many times over. And they are lessons that can and must be taught in the postsecondary arena. True, colleges and universities generate people, not products, so the lessons won’t translate precisely and will have to be adapted. Still, if the approach is mutually respectful and truly collaborative, there’s no doubt that much progress can be made if business takes a teaching role in the productivity effort.

It’s also important that higher education focus much more of its efforts specifically on increasing attainment among adult students. The idea in targeting adults for postsecondary success is not simply to ensure that employers have a ready supply of trained workers for their own businesses. The view that’s required is much broader than that. Really, it’s about empowering the individual … because that’s the power that ultimately drives ALL businesses.

Finally, employers can’t limit their working partnerships to those that include members of the higher-ed community. They must also reach out to a third vital partner: the policy community. In short, employers must become active and committed advocates for policy change—the kind of systemic, civic-minded policy change whose aim is to improve the overall economy and society as a whole.

In other words, it’s vital that business leaders think and work expansively as they join the reform effort. Public-private partnerships are critical to our success as we work to achieve the Big Goal, but they must be inclusive partnerships—cooperative, mutually beneficial ones that involve business, higher education and the policy community.

In practical terms, we’re asking the business community to view its role in the Goal 2025 effort from three perspectives or through three lenses: company, community and country.

From the company perspective, each employer can take direct and meaningful steps to aid college attainment among its own workers. Some examples:

• More and better programs that provide tuition reimbursement.
• Flexible work scheduling to allow workers to attend college classes.
• Assistance and counseling to help create individualized learning plans for workers.
• Use of company communications to promote employees’ educational efforts.
• Programs that offer tangible rewards to employees who earn degrees and credentials.
• Partnerships with higher-ed institutions to offer classes at work sites.
• Finally, employers can also show their commitment by upgrading their hiring standards; in other words, making credentials a requirement for employment.

Next, from the community perspective, employers should make education a central plank in their platform of community engagement and community service. In fact, boosting higher-ed attainment should be at the top of the list when it comes to corporate responsibility efforts. What better way to demonstrate good corporate citizenship than to foster an “education-friendly” workplace? Such a move not only opens a wealth of partnership opportunities with other local organizations, it also can produce huge, long-term benefits to the community. After all, a well-educated populace doesn’t merely improve and deepen the local labor pool, it improves the overall quality of life in any community.

Finally, and most broadly, employers need to view this effort through the larger lens of country. In other words, business leaders—and really, all of us as Americans—need to be advocates for increasing college attainment because that’s what the entire country needs. Reaching that Big Goal—60 percent attainment of high-quality college credentials—will benefit all of us. A better workforce leads to more robust job creation, sustained growth, and greater economic security in this global age. A better-educated citizenry also means increased civic involvement and greater social stability.

In other words—and in closing—Goal 2025 isn’t something for Lumina to achieve. It’s not an initiative owned by the field of philanthropy … or employers … or state and federal policymakers … or the higher education community. It is—and must be—a broad-based, all-inclusive, national effort. Increasing postsecondary attainment is in everyone’s interest … and that makes it everyone’s business.

Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today.

And college isn’t just a personal necessity. A well-educated populace is vital to the economic progress and social stability of any city or region — indeed, to the nation as a whole. For that reason, one could argue that the single most important task of any city leader who seeks to ensure progress and prosperity over the long term is to boost college success among the citizens he or she serves.

And that means all citizens.  This nation needs to ensure that millions more people — people of all ages, all backgrounds, all income levels — enroll and succeed in college.

Labor experts project that, by the end of the decade, nearly two-thirds of all jobs will require some form of postsecondary education or training. Right now, less than 40 percent of the working-age population has at least an associate degree. This degree gap exists in virtually every city, and it poses a serious threat to our future. What’s more, this degree gap reflects a persistent and pernicious equity gap. Nationally, according to 2010 Census figures, the degree-attainment rate among white, working-age Americans is 43 percent. Among African-Americans, it’s 27 percent. Among Latinos, it’s only 19 percent.

These troubling gaps in educational attainment aren’t new; they’ve endured for decades, and we ignore them at our collective peril. Consider the nation’s Latino population. The median age for Hispanics in this country is 27; for everyone else, it’s nearly 40. That means our nation’s schools are already serving a disproportionately large population of Latino students. And, since Latinos represent the fastest-growing segment of the national population, these numbers are sure to increase in coming years.

The simple truth is, Latino students represent our future ― the future of nearly every city and of our nation as a whole. We must do all we can to ensure that they get the education they need to make that future bright. And America’s mayors must play a pivotal role in that effort, because the nation’s metropolitan areas are natural hubs for economic and social change.

Employers are invested — financially and otherwise ― in the cities they choose as locations for their businesses, and an educated labor force is a powerful draw. More educated cities tend to be healthier, greener, more economically and culturally vibrant. What’s more, statistics show that increasing numbers of Americans are living in metropolitan regions. All of this helps explain why the nation’s cities must be centers of action to increase college attainment.

And there’s another reason: Cities are fertile ground for vibrant collaborations that can really boost college success — partnerships that include all of the relevant stakeholders: that is, political, business, education, philanthropic, faith-based, and community leaders. In most metro regions, these stakeholders are already working together on other issues, and the mayor is typically at the center of those collaborations, acting as both a catalyst and a connector.

Also, as the city’s chief elected representative, the mayor has a very visible bully pulpit — and the responsibility for using it. After all, when broadly defined, a mayor’s job is to help ensure the welfare and prosperity of the city’s residents, to be accountable to them. What better way to demonstrate accountability than to push for increased levels of college success … the type of success that can improve the quality of life for all residents?

Lumina’s grant making reflects the Foundation’s commitment to three primary areas:

Preparation—Students are prepared academically, financially and socially for success in education beyond high school;

Success—Higher education completion rates are improved significantly; and,

Productivity—Higher education productivity is increased to expand capacity and serve more students.

Lumina recently issued the third edition of our signature report, A Stronger Nation through Higher Education, which breaks down higher education achievement rates by states and by county,” explained Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO of Lumina Foundation. “These numbers are important not simply because of the opportunities that advanced education provides, but because our changing workforce dictates we will need dramatically higher number of workers in the next decade. Our grants this quarter support the work being done to make greater progress toward the Big Goal of increasing the percentage of Americans with high quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025.

Success (2 Grants)

Productivity (2 Grants)

Lumina Foundation, an Indianapolis-based private foundation, is committed to enrolling and graduating more students from college—especially 21^st century students: low-income students, students of color, first-generation students and adult learners.  Lumina’s goal is to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025.  Lumina pursues this goal in three ways: by identifying and supporting effective practice, through public policy advocacy, and by using our communications and convening power to build public will for change.

Each month, government officials release a jobs report. The employment and unemployment figures send ripples or waves through political polls and financial markets. But the real economic Richter scale is (or should be) per-capita income.

It’s a key indicator of economic well being.

Currently, Indiana’s per capita picture is not pretty.

In 2010, Indiana ranked 41st among the 50 states in per capita personal income, down from 33rd in 2000. During the last decade, Hoosiers saw per capita income increase by less than one percent, giving Indiana smaller income growth than all but four states in the nation.

For Indiana to avoid another lost decade, we need a stronger education system – one that’s better aligned with employer’s needs and one better able to prepare Hoosier workers for global competition.

In fact, studies show that by 2025, nearly 60 percent of Indiana jobs will require some postsecondary education.

We have a long way to go.

Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation recently released a report showing that in 2010, only 33.2 percent of Hoosier adults held a two- or four-year college degree.

Lumina also found that at our current slow pace of improvement, slightly more than 40 percent of Indiana’s adults will have a college degree by 2025 – well short of the 60 percent needed.

If we’re to compete, if we’re to grow our per capita income, something has to change.

In 2010, as part of its Policy Choices project, the IU Public Policy Institute began developing options for workforce education improvement.

At the heart of these recommendations are three guiding principles:

• Every Indiana resident should possess the basic skills required to remain competitive in the workforce and allow a successful transition to higher education or further training.
  
• Our education system must value degrees and credentials other than a four-year bachelor’s degree.
• Employer engagement is vital to improving education and workforce development.

With these principles in mind, here are key recommendations:

1. Align college and career standards for graduation from high school and admission to college
2. Integrate the final year of high school with the initial year of postsecondary education for secondary school students who consistently demonstrate proficiency of college-and-career-readiness academic standards.
3. Increase dual-credit enrollment so that two-thirds of Indiana students will leave high school with at least six college credits.
   
4. Identify those students unprepared for postsecondary education and training and use the final year of high school to provide appropriate remediation.
5. Increase the use of technology, nontraditional schools and accelerated pathways.
6. Redesign Indiana’s workforce training, economic development and postsecondary education strategies to ensure that workers remain competitive in the labor market
7. Expand accelerated degrees and intermediate credentialing programs so that many more Hoosiers are prepared for good-paying, high-demand jobs.
   
8. Create an Office of Economic and Workforce Development by integrating the Indiana Economic Development Corporation with the employment and training division of the Department of Workforce Development.
9. Align the state’s policy-setting initiatives for postsecondary education and training under the Commission for Higher Education, with specific emphasis on increasing system capacity and efficiency that will increase postsecondary attainment.
10. Incorporate the majority of the state’s career and technical education into the revamped Commission for Higher Education.
11. Increase promotion and use of the Benefit Bank to ensure that residents are receiving all eligible federal and state benefits.
12. Increase participation by employers in the design and delivery of the workforce development system
13. Provide tax incentives for businesses that hire new workers and train incumbent workers.
14. Create a statewide skills bank to connect employers with the skilled workers they require.

With recent state funding cuts and considerable budget constraints for the foreseeable future, Indiana’s education and workforce development systems will have to do more with less. The only way to achieve this is through a concerted effort on the part of legislators, educators, business leaders and citizens.

In these challenging times, how will Hoosiers respond? We hope and expect that they will respond as they always have: by rolling up their sleeves and getting to the important work of ensuring that Indiana’s tomorrow is brighter than its today.

Jamie Merisotis is president and CEO of Lumina Foundation and a member of the IU Public Policy Institute Advisory Board. Jeff Terp is vice president for engagement at Ivy Tech Community College. They co-chaired the Policy Choices Education and Workforce Development Commission, a project of the IU Public Policy Institute.

But I hear you asking: “Thrun’s first class – the one that got all the publicity – was equivalent to a Stanford course, and at that time he was a tenured full professor. Why would anyone sign up for a course from a new startup with a funny name, and why would employers believe the course was of high quality?”

Staven’s answer is in this statement: “At top universities, the rigor of the classes is guaranteed almost entirely by the faculty teaching them. Since Udacity has distinguished faculty who also teach at top universities or have impressive records in industry, we feel the classes are comparable. The rigor of classes at most universities is guaranteed by the faculty, not by some process within the university. As long as Udacity continues to attract outstanding teachers, we can be comparable to great universities.”

This is a stunning statement. Do we really know so little about what quality education is and how to recognize it in students? I suspect most people would find Staven’s statement logical and even obvious, but I find its implications disturbing. To offer high quality educational opportunities to all who need them, there must be a better way to assure the quality of learning.

“The foundation was doing very good work in the area of higher education, but with the levels of assets that we had, we have to aim even higher than just doing good work and making a small contribution,” he says.

Setting a goal and mapping out the strategy needed to achieve it became his assignment. Merisotis had majored in political science in college. He had spent much of his adult life in Washington, D.C., where he worked in the policy context, so he felt he had the tools and experience to make it happen.

“I wanted to figure out if we could exercise our leadership, that is, be responsible in our leadership by actually aiming at much bigger societal needs and goals,” he says.

Merisotis knew his best shot was to take several measures that were very much like those any for-profit company would take. It was about being clear with your goals and very clear with the strategies you are going to pursue to help achieve them.

The Lumina Foundation’s goal was a noble one — get more people to go to college or obtain certification beyond high school.

“Four years later now, after we begun our mission, we feel like we have had some influence on that,” Merisotis says. “President Obama has set a goal for the country, and many states are attempting to dramatically improve their higher education systems. A lot of the specific strategies that we are pursuing in our work such as helping colleges and universities to become more productive, helping adults getting college degrees because the significant issue of adult retraining and worker retraining are very apparent in the sort of economic crisis that we have been facing.

“So in those kinds of things, we feel like we have made some progress. It’s certainly not all successes, but we feel like we’re on the right path to set the table to build a new higher education system.”

Here’s how Merisotis went about analyzing and setting his goals and developing the strategies to achieve them for the foundation, whose only source of revenue is investments — that hopefully will top its $55 million to $60 million annual operating budget.

Ask two basic questions

For any organization, it does not have to be a difficult task to set goals. To simplify the process, it is a matter of looking at the mission and answering two questions.

“One: What does the market need?” Merisotis asks. “Two: What are your competitors doing?”

To find out what the market needs, the approach not surprisingly is to undertake traditional market investigation.

“Do the market research,” he says. “You’ll get a sense of what is happening in other parts of the world and a feeling for where is this demand going to come from for your product.”

Commission some people to do the work along with your own research and work as a leadership team together. Prepare to spend a lot of time on the analytics.

“We had a whole staff involvement on the input side,” Merisotis says. “We made decisions about how to define the plan, set the goal and then we developed the plan.

“In our case, the goal was to set a figure for the nation as to the portion of Americans who should have high-quality college degrees, or even some form of training, some certificate, etc.,” he says. “We set the goal at 60 percent by the year 2025. We are currently at about 40 percent right now. The research showed the market needs a lot more people with college degrees, because that’s where the jobs are.”

Once you have established what the market needs, it’s time to study who your competitors are and what they are doing. You should be able to identify them easily and quantify their production efforts.

“We concluded that our competitors are other countries and many of our competitors around the world are actually doing better than we are in the United States,” Merisotis says. “We are about 15th in the world in the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds who have college degrees. So we set the goal based on that, and then we started architecting what we needed to do to be able to reach that goal.”

Design your strategies

Clarity in your strategies to meet goals is essential to a successful outcome. It’s not an easy task, and it’s considerably more involved than setting a goal. You have to have vision and an understanding of your strengths in order to formulate effective strategies.

“If you’re a manufacturing firm, a financial services firm or you’re an entity that works in some other sphere, such as insurance or what have you, there are certain strategies that you have to select that you think are going to help you get to those goals,” Merisotis says.

“In other words, you can’t have a generic approach and say, ‘Well, we’ll throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and we’ll see what sticks.’ You have to architect your way through it with specific questions.”
The first question is, “What are we good at?” It’s sort of old-fashioned business advice — be very good at something so that you can excel, you can stand out in the field. But it forces you to think in a narrow manner.

“It’s extremely important that you not try to do everything, that you become very focused and specialized in terms of where your expertise is,” Merisotis says. “That’s not market niche; that’s about capacity, your ability to deliver and so on.”

The focus may be exceptional customer service, innovative products, an outstanding employee culture or flexibility in adapting to changing demands. Find your strength. Define it in the simplest manner.

The next question is, “Where can we get the highest return?”

To answer this question, you have to look at the numbers for the figures that stand out, but you also have to be willing to pass judgment on what is not really giving you the results you need.

“I think that the right return on the investment is really a question to ensure that you don’t keep investing in things that don’t have a payoff,” Merisotis says. “You may have a really good idea, and your really good idea may not pay off. You know throwing good money after bad is not a really good idea, and it’s hard to change directions; it’s hard to switch gears and move into something else.”

Some good ideas sound great on paper but turn out to be not marketable. And beware of legacy investments — just because you may have always done something a certain way doesn’t mean it can’t be changed or discontinued.

“Just because you have a good idea doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful,” he says. “It’s part of the reason why metrics are so important. You will have to be able to hold yourself to standards to say, are we doing what we said we wanted to do? And if we aren’t, we either have to do better at it, or we need to abandon it and try something else.”

The final question is, “Where can we add value?”

“Use the example of iPhones and iPads,” Merisotis says.

Apple figured out what it can be really good at in a specific market niche. The leaders reinvented this idea of personal communication devices by the fact that they developed an application-driven approach for the devices.

“It doesn’t mean that the iPhone is a great telephone. It doesn’t mean that the iPhone is necessarily good at certain subtasks, etc., but they figured out a specialization where they are really adding value. In the case of the iPhone, it’s adding value to the quality of life of the people who are using it. They are literally adding value from a personal perspective, from a business perspective, from a productivity perspective, etc.
“But it’s being clear about where you are going to add value,” he says. “Develop ways to measure progress: They can help you set your own direction on how much value you want to add. That’s another question — being realistic about how much value you think you really can add. If you are developing a new drug, what’s that drug going to solve in terms of the physical or other challenge that that person is facing? Being very specific about that I think is really important because you are adding value.”

To be clear about the values that you represent is just as important as the actual investment you make in marketing and communications.

“Part of communicating the message is the value that you project,” Merisotis says. “In other words, the image of the company can be as important as the marketing that you put into it. Go back to the Apple example. The image of Apple is really that ‘Think different’ philosophy of Steve Jobs. That image has helped to be as important of a communication tool as the cool TV ads.”

Get the pulse with specific metrics

Metrics are indicators. They are markers to help you figure out whether or not the execution of your strategies is actually working. They are the next matter to figure out once strategies have been decided.

“You have to develop your standards and your specific metric to ask, ‘Are the strategies working?’” he says. “What are our sales goals? What are our goals in terms of quality improvement? Whatever the unit of analysis is, the point is using metrics to drive the development and execution of the strategies is very, very important.”

As the phrase “less is more” originally applied to minimalist art and design, the phrase “simpler is better” goes hand-in-hand with metrics.

“Simple is always better,” Merisotis says. “The reality of that is what you want to do is to use the metrics as indicators and not as a way of defining the universe. In other words, see them as markers on the pathway to success, not as literally the only thing you’re trying to achieve.

“That totality has got to be those goals as they are being executed to the strategies. So the metrics should be limited, they should be focused and they should be revisited often.

“They really need to be reconsidered as you learn,” he says. “It’s a learning process as you go along as you learn what you are doing well and what you’re not doing well. If you’re not achieving what you thought you were going to achieve, it may be time to change the strategies and determine some new metrics.

At that point, you have two pathways: either to continue and decide that you need to do better or decide that maybe it’s not worth it – maybe that strategy is not worth pursuing. “Maybe it’s, ‘Let’s abandon that and pursue a different strategy or pursue a smaller number of strategies,’” Merisotis says. “To me, that is really a question of you can’t do everything if you are a player in a market niche.”

How to reach: Lumina Foundation, (317) 951-5300, or www.luminafoundation.org

Jamie Merisotis

President and CEO
Lumina Foundation

The Merisotis file

Born: I was born in Manchester, Conn., which is just outside of Hartford, so I am a New England native. They call people from Connecticut ‘people from Connecticut.’ It’s a funny thing — coming to a place like Indiana, which I love living in, I sort of find the word ‘Hoosiers’ cute, but in a way that I value. It’s sort of a funny word but I get it. It’s not Indi-an-ers, it’s something better than that. I like it. It’s creative.

Education: I am a graduate of Bates College in Maine. I studied political science in college. I am a first generation college graduate; my family was of very limited means, a working-class family.

What was your first job?

I started delivering newspapers when I was 10 years old. I picked tobacco when I was 14. I was very industrious as a young kid. In high school I worked three jobs. After graduating from college, I moved to Washington, D.C., where I spent a lot of my adult life and worked in the policy context. I was essentially a researcher, an analyst of policy.

What was the best business advice that you ever received?

Make sure whatever you are doing ultimately contributes to something bigger than just that company or that enterprise. Don’t just work for the money, don’t just work for shareholder value, don’t just work for return for that entity — work for something bigger. If you work for something bigger, you will actually be motivated and you will do well by that company, but if it’s only about eternally driven motivation, you’re probably not going to be as successful. That was very good advice. It was from early in my career so it stuck with me for a long time.

Who in business do you most admire?

On a certain level, it is Warren Buffett, probably because he has cut his own path, and I admire the way that he’s done that, but I tend not to look at single people and say I wish I could be that person. I admire things about various people. To give you an example of somebody from our community, John Lechleiter, president and CEO of Eli Lilly and Co. is someone whom I really admire because he is a very successful scientist, someone who is a real expert in his field, and who became a great business leader. That’s really admirable. There are people like that who I admire for different reasons.

What is your definition of business success?

Achieving your goal. I think that’s it. Being very specific about what your goals are and then achieving them. That’s what every business should be about.

However, open courseware appears to have reached a breakout point with the publicity about the Stanford artificial intelligence course that enrolled 160,000 students, with 23,000 completing. The feature of the Stanford course that made it unique (and may have driven the enormous interest) was their announcement that they would award a certificate to students who completed the course.

More or less simultaneously, and perhaps in response, MIT launched MITx, which promises to award certificates to students completing courses and credentials for completing defined sequences of courses.

So now we have Coursera, which launched with $16 million in venture capital and has signed up five elite institutions to offer free courses. Their ambition is bold, as stated in their vision statement: “We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.” According to the business press, Coursera’s business model is based on charging either students or employers for validating the learning of students obtained through their courses. Udacity, co-founded by Sebastian Thrun, who taught the Stanford course, is another startup in this space.

Of course, MIT, Stanford and the rest are not dummies – they know the true market value of what they are selling lies in the degree, not the course content. It’s the recognition that one has actually completed those courses and mastered what they teach that matters in the marketplace. Which is why the new approaches of open courseware providers to grant some sort of certificate, credit, or credential is so interesting.