Cover Subject is Education Innovator

Take a look at the Indiana Chamber’s BizVoice magazine covers (71 of them over the past 12 years) and you won’t see a lot of people. We don’t have anything against people, particularly Hoosier leaders in their field. We interview them, we gather their insights and we focus on telling good stories.

The lack of photographs is due more to the absence of a full-time staff photographer and the presence of a very talented creative director who has been involved in all but the first two issues of those 71. Tony Spataro won’t want me to mention his name (yeah, right), but I digress.

Our March-April issue does feature a photo of someone making a difference in higher education. His name is Nasser Paydar and he is chancellor of the Indiana University East campus in Richmond. His neighbor, literally across the parking lot, is Ivy Tech Community College.

Paydar eliminated associate degrees and remedial classes (why duplicate what Ivy Tech is doing, he says) and turned his focus to partnerships. He’s giving up potential students in the short run but gaining a strong pipeline for his campus’ bachelor and advanced degree programs. And, most important, he’s operating with the top priority on the students. Sounds like a simple concept, but it’s not one that is always followed.

The in-depth story on higher education efficiency and effectiveness is titled Breaking Down Walls: Columbus, Richmond Show the Way. Give it a read and let us know what you think.

For-Profit Universities Working for Better Reputation

Fast Company magazine recently addressed the topic of for-profit, or "market driven," colleges. In the piece they reveal the journey of Michael Clifford, chair of Significant Federation, a private equity firm and principal investor in six higher-education companies, and the challenges and stigmas associated with these types of programs:

Today, for-profit colleges enroll 9% of all students, many of them in online programs. It’s safe to assume they’ll soon have many more. President Obama has called for America to have the world’s highest percentage of college graduates by 2020, and for-profits are the only sector significantly expanding enrollment — up 17% since the start of the recession in 2008. Emerging from its scandal-plagued "diploma mill" rep (see "Not Quite Ready for the Honor Roll," page 54), the industry consolidated in the past decade under a handful of publicly traded names, including Kaplan (part of The Washington Post Co.), DeVry, and the University of Phoenix, which with 420,000 students is the largest university in North America. These companies, which depend on tuition revenues backed by federal student grants and loans, have been strong performers for stockholders.

Clifford likes to take over the accreditation of a struggling bricks-and-mortar institution, sometimes just days before it runs out of cash. "We’re a SWAT team," he says. "We love fixing schools." Full-time professors with PhDs and seasoned administrators run the home campus as a "learning lab," developing and testing curricula and texts for the much larger online programs. As a bonus, the brand maintains all the trappings of a traditional university — sports, dance line, pep band, community service, and in Grand Canyon’s case, a Christian mission. Clifford, whose personal charitable efforts include a soup kitchen and housing for 600 ex-gang members in L.A., says that Grand Canyon online students who have never set foot on the Phoenix campus log on to the Web site and check the status of the basketball team, or watch the live stream of Sunday chapel.

While private colleges have taken huge hits to their endowments, and public universities weather historic cutbacks, for-profits like Clifford’s keep costs down with innovative use of technology, publish metrics like job placements, and are open to any high-school graduate. They target under-served markets like first-generation students and working adults with convenience and a customer-service ethic. Tuition and fees, which tend to be higher than public institutions’ for on-campus programs, are comparable for online — $687.50 per credit for undergrads on campus at Grand Canyon and $415 for online, for example, compared to $476 for the public University of Arizona.

But questions about quality linger. Despite the traditional campus trappings, Clifford’s schools tend to have a vocational focus, such as health-care administration (L.A. College); only Grand Canyon and Crichton College have any liberal-arts programs.

Since there are no generally accepted measurements of learning in traditional higher education, the proxy for the value of a diploma on the job market is prestige. Rankings like those of U.S. News & World Report depend on reputation; spending per student, including spending on research; and selectivity — a measure of inputs, not outputs. On all these measures, for-profits come up short.

So what do you think? A new, unique opportunity? Or a dreg upon the education sector?

Colleges and Costs: We’ve Got a Problem

While students at all levels strive for "A" grades, that letter comes into particular play in higher education with a big focus on concepts including access, achievement, accountability and affordability.

Several of those rise to the top for the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation for Education, which has a goal to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60% by 2025. Last week, Lumina announced additional grants for seven states, including Indiana, that are seeking to enhance college and university productivity.

Wednesday, the latest (86-page) edition of The Fiscal Survey of States was released. Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina, offered the following insightful comment in regard to expenditures and higher education:

"The report released today by the National Association of State Budget Officers and National Governors Association underscores the urgent need for states to reexamine the cost structure of American higher education. We cannot continue to spend twice as much per student as other developed countries and meet the nation’s needs for additional college graduates while also reducing our public investment. States challenged by falling revenue must find ways to finance public colleges and universities that encourage these institutions to graduate more students at lower expense with the same or higher quality.

Lumina is investing in potential productivity-enhancing solutions in seven states that are stepping forward to commit to change even amid dire fiscal circumstances. Governors, state legislators and business and higher education leaders all have roles to play. They need to be engaged in making sure every dollar is spent as wisely as possible to meet the challenge of increasing college access and student academic success, especially for underserved groups such as minorities, students from low-income families, first-generation college-going students and working-age adults."

 

Indiana ‘Average’ in Government Spending

We’re not "extreme" in Indiana. Not exactly breaking news, is it? In this case, we’re referring to how our state and local governments spend their money. More specifically, it’s a new report from the Tax Foundation, which uses Census numbers to identify the top 10 states in spending in nine different categories.

Indiana is nowhere to be found in the top 10. Many of the Hoosier spending percentages are similar to U.S. averages. Is that good or bad? Not sure. I guess it means we have balance. But the numbers are interesting. Here are the categories with, in order, U.S. average, Indiana average and top spender:

  • K-12 education: 23.9% (U.S.); 24% (Indiana); New Jersey, 31.8%
  • Higher education: 9.1%; 11%; Utah 15.5%
  • Welfare: 16.8%; 16.8%; Maine 24.3%
  • Health and hospitals: 8.4%; 8.8%; South Carolina 15.9%
  • Transportation: 7.6%; 6.8%; South Dakota 15.8%
  • Public safety: 9.1%; 6.7%; Nevada 13.6%
  • Environment and housing: 7.7%; 6.2%; Louisiana 15.1%
  • Government administration: 5.3%; 4.6%; Delaware 8.6%
  • Debt interest: 4.1%; 4.1%; Massachussets 7.4%

Find all the numbers here.

Conexus: Indiana Chamber is Right, Privatize Lottery

Carol D’Amico of Conexus Indiana has a guest post on the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) blog today supporting our latest Letters to Our Leaders offering, which suggests privatizing the lottery to fund needed workforce development programs in the state.

D’Amico writes:

Such a new revenue source could provide the funds necessary to help move more young people into the higher education pipeline, building our future workforce, as well as addressing the critical need to retrain our incumbent workers.

Some worry that private management of the Lottery is tantamount to a further expansion of gambling. Under the legislation considered last session, at least, the private manager was specifically prohibited from expanding the menu of lottery games. It should also be noted that Hoosiers spend less on our lottery than the average American.  We rank 26th among the 41 states with lotteries in per capita spending ($118 per person).  All adjacent states rank higher in lottery spending, from $135 per person in Illinois to $195 in Michigan…new management would certainly be incentivized to market the lottery aggressively, but it’s unlikely to turn Hoosiers into a pack of gambling addicts.

Education Numbers You Need to Know

Let’s get right to it:

  • After years of working toward an accurate graduation rate (legislation resulted, in part, from this 2006 report), nearly all will agree that more than a quarter of Indiana’s students are leaving high school without a diploma. It’s not our state’s problem alone, but hopefully most will concede that these young people and our state suffer the long-term consequences of this fact
  • Approximately a million working Hoosiers lack the skills needed to compete in today’s economy. That’s part of the focus of an upcoming Letters to Our Leaders’ missive on the workforce, but it also belongs in this discussion
  • No public college or university in the state graduates as many as half its students within four years — and the statistics don’t improve dramatically for some given a six-year period. We’ve got to do better

A more coordinated K-12, higher education and workforce development system is called for in the Chamber’s latest letter to the general public and the candidates for governor. Greater administrative efficiency, adjustments in teacher compensation and qualifications, and more are included. Read the letter; view the one-minute video commentary below; share your thoughts in this space.

[letters-education]ZBHSzLBz-W8&hl=en&fs=1[/letters-education]

College Grad Numbers Need Boost

Forty-nine percent of students seeking a bachelor’s degree at Indiana University-Bloomington earn that diploma within four years. The number increases to a still lacking 72% within a six-year period. But the flagship IU campus is far ahead of the state’s other public higher education institutions in those statistics.

Timely graduation is just one focus of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education’s developing strategic plan. The title is Reaching Higher: Strategic Directions for Higher Education in Indiana. The other areas of emphasis are access, affordability, college preparation and contributions to Indiana’s economy.

The Indiana Chamber supports the initiatives being discussed. BizVoice® magazine provides an in-depth update.