This is my favorite time of year. In so many ways. Days are long (and so are bike rides), everything is in full bloom, and those of us fortunate enough to work in education are rolling up our sleeves and preparing with excited anticipation for the sun to rise on a new academic year. I have spent an entire life in and around higher education, experiencing this aspect of its annual biorhythm, and I have never been more excited, more filled with anticipation, optimism, and joy than I am today, for a confluence of reasons.
In a few weeks all of our universities will return full bore—and with eagerness and energy—to their on-campus operations. Like you, I have waited so long for this moment, through so many months of uncertainty. And now the moment is finally here.
I was at Slippery Rock last week for a meeting and watched out the window as members of the football team (already on campus) left the dining hall after lunch. This totally normal and typically unremarkable early-August university sighting had a tremendous impact on me for what it meant, for what it said about where we’ve been, how much we’ve missed, and where we’re headed—at long last. I hasten to add that I do not expect higher education (or our universities) to chart a course back to the exact place it stood in March, 2020. We will likely be negotiating the pandemic for some while longer, and we should expect it to have lingering effects on our operations, on the rules governing how we interact with one another, and also on the way we provide and support university education.
An important aside—all of us will continue to bear responsibility for our own health as well as for the health of those around us. Getting vaccinated (as I strongly urge you to do), wearing masks, and social distancing in some settings are all responsibilities we share. We are a family, and a family is more than a collection of people each pursuing their individual interests without giving a thought about how those pursuits impact others. Ours are university communities, not Hobbesian states of nature. I will also be fascinated to see over the next few years how and where we make permanent any new practices we were forced to adopt by pandemic necessity.
The opportunities in this new year are tremendously exciting and offer a sense of relief to have turned the page on the pandemic’s last chapter; even joy to see people in person and not on a zoom screen. Yes, of course, some trepidation exists because the course of this pandemic remains unpredictable and uncertain. But overwhelmingly there is a sense of renewal, renaissance—watching that sun rise.
In a few weeks, two groups of three universities each will begin the long process of integrating their tremendous and distinctive strengths to build educational powerhouses in two regions of our state—the northeast and the west, respectively. Their goals are simple yet in so many ways audacious: expand affordable educational opportunities for all Pennsylvanians, improve students’ outcomes, continue and grow economic, cultural, and other contributions to their host communities and regions. As these efforts move from planning to implementation, I’m infused with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm that is only growing amongst those whose sleeves are rolled up, whose hands are building a better future, whose minds are reviewing and, where necessary, refreshing our practices so they reflect and serve the needs of our students, their communities, future employers.
The opportunities associated with our integrations are tremendously exciting. Relief to be past the abstract and often unsettling planning stage. Joy to be building. Yes, of course, some trepidation (this work is hard), but offering another kind of renewal, renaissance—watching that sun rise.
In a few weeks, we will begin to invest new one-time dollars, using them to support innovation that will secure a brighter future for our students and strengthen our universities as engines of the Commonwealth’s economic and workforce development, social mobility, and equity. Yes, of course, all of our universities have continued to invest in their futures even through the most challenging of times. But in the coming year we have an incredible opportunity to advance that work in a powerful coordinated fashion—an opportunity made possible through the leadership of Governor Wolf and a bi-partisan coalition in the General Assembly that has committed $200 million to the system over a three-year period. They believe, as I do, that this system and the benefits it bestows on the people of this Commonwealth are worth fighting for, worth investing in, worth partnering around to accomplish.
The new state investment, coupled with an additional $100M generated by the System’s pre-payment of its SERS pension obligations, provides us with a $300 million multi-year war chest of one-time funding that, if used strategically and not consumed by recurrent operations (a lesson that higher ed learned the hard way after the Great Recession in its use of ARRA funds), we can significantly:
- advance our System Redesign goals focusing in particular on growth (improving outcomes for current students, expanding pipelines for new ones, (adults and students seeking fully online and non-degree options, respectively), and ensuring our university communities are welcoming and supportive environments for all their members, and
- support our universities that need to transition to sustainable operations, including our newly integrated ones—their success is critical to the health of the System overall.
A couple of points are worth some further reflection:
First, the state’s unprecedented investment in the State System reflects the hard work we have done together, strengthening the General Assembly’s trust in our operations and their significance. Amongst other things, it involved:
- radical transparency about our operations and their impacts—strengths as well as weaknesses; opportunities as well as challenges;
- deliberate and concerted efforts to manage to our new enrollment realities and to operate in ways that did not continue to heap increased cost upon students who can ill afford them;
- a willingness and commitment on our part to address (not just talk about) our most difficult challenges – attainment gaps that persist between white, black, and brown students; campus communities that are not consistently inclusive and welcoming of all their members; the persistence of unsustainable operating models that were beginning to threaten the system as a whole;
- educational efforts documenting the vital role higher education (PA State System Universities included) plays in the future of this Commonwealth, and the critical importance of ensuring affordable options are available to all Pennsylvanians; and
- building coalitions between people who share a common genuine interest in viable public higher education but have very different views about how best to achieve their common goal.
Second, the investment results in part from having very deliberately aligned our advocacy efforts across the System, enlisting the influence and voice of our collective bargaining units, trustees, and university and Board leadership. This lesson is particularly potent. It demonstrates we do well when we work together with a sense of urgency. Imagine what we will accomplish applying the same approach to the re-invigoration, re-imagination, and re-investment that is now becoming possible for the first time in quite a while.
Third, the confluence of exciting opportunities represented in this blog creates a kind of watershed moment. Think about the scope of the co-occurrence:
- return to campus after more than a year away for many;
- establishment of two wholly new universities built in partnership upon the tremendous, historic, and distinctive strengths of three regional treasures, and seeking deliberately to design themselves around today’s and tomorrow’s students;
- significant new investment—the first of its kind in decades—that we can focus strategically on our future, our students, our growth;
- a stronger partnership with our elected leaders.
Should we choose to, we can take advantage of this co-occurrence and begin to change the narrative that has surrounded the State System and its universities for too long—a narrative that contributes to its challenges (the System was characterized in a recent Chronicle article as a “whipping post” enabling the state to ignore more systemic challenges). Given all that we have accomplished and all that lies ahead, our universities are the place to be in public higher education today—actively re-imagining what the 21st century university can and ought to look like; building on historic strengths while innovating aggressively in the interest of our students and this Commonwealth. Aligning around that message, working together to take full advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead—that too is a choice. I know what message I want to pursue. But my voice is not strong enough on its own, which is why I ask you to join me in making our case to any remaining skeptics to demonstrate what I have always believed (and in fact observed) to be true – that there is nothing we cannot accomplish if we choose to work together...e pluribus unum indeed.
Once again, relief to see a light at the end of a very long tunnel. Joy to begin building—focusing on growth. Yes, of course, some trepidation because the path to our success requires continuous and often discomforting change, community cultivation, and alignment. But overwhelmingly a sense of renewal, renaissance, rolling up sleeves, and working together to help that sun rise.