Congratulations to all graduates

Last week I had the honor of participating in Harrisburg Area Community College’s fall graduation, watching with pride and admiration as 450 HACC students “walked” to receive their degrees.

Graduations are the proudest moment for any educator – including this one. HACC President John “Ski” Sygielski – a great colleague, thought-partner and friend – led the ceremony with his usual compassion, humor, and grace. Toward the start, he reeled off a number of characteristics about the graduating class arrayed in front of him, each demonstrating the strength and significance of our nation’s community colleges: the proportion of first-generation college goers (high), the proportion of students with children (higher), the proportion of students who had graduated from high school more than 10 years ago (by far the highest).

Associate professor Jody Newcomer, a member of the HACC faculty, spoke movingly about students’ stories, focusing on those that demonstrated how members of the HACC community – students, faculty, and staff – helped aspiring graduates cross the finish line despite countless difficulties they encountered along the way. “Hand on your back,” as we cyclists say.

You can imagine the ceremony. As graduates’ names were announced, they walked in front of the podium, receiving their degrees to loud and rapturous applause and the occasional shouts of “That’s my mom!” or “Love you, brother!”

When I reflect on the mission of public higher education institutions, I look to universities like ours and our partners in the community colleges and think: God bless this corner of public higher education (a corner which, by the way, enrolls about three quarters of the nation’s students today) and the opportunities it creates for all as the most reliable bridge to opportunity, a sustaining career, a better life, a healthier society. God bless the communities they foster, the faculty and staff who are passionate about a mission that is too compellingly democratic to ignore, who are devoted to students, to changing lives – even saving some.

The challenges we face – that our students face – are washed away for that one, delightful, restorative, celebratory moment that is graduation.

And God bless the students who graduated this month from the 10 great universities that make up our State System and the wonderful faculty and staff who helped them to cross the finish line. Yours has been an incredible journey – navigating the usual difficulties associated with degree attainment in higher education, compounded by the disruption and uncertainty resulting from global pandemic and, for some, the challenges of fundamental organizational change.

You have accomplished what few people do, and in extraordinary circumstances. I know a bunch of you personally. We grew up together within this System, starting more or less at the same time just over four years ago, interacting with one another over the years when I was privileged to attend your gatherings or meet with you during my semesterly face-to-face and virtual campus visits.

I wish all of you well as you turn the page and pursue the next chapter. The story that will unfold for you there will be filled with opportunity, purpose, and joy.

There will be challenges, too. Life is full of them. But I believe you are well equipped to overcome with the skills you have built pursuing your degree: grit, determination, resilience, an ability to communicate and engage effectively with people of all ages and backgrounds, to problem-solve, innovate, hunker down, and do. I hope you will take a moment to celebrate what is really a remarkable and major achievement and, of course, to thank those who have helped you along the way.

PASSHE’s role in Pennsylvania’s innovation imperative

PASSHE’s mission is simple—provide all Pennsylvanians with affordable, high-quality education, enabling them to participate productively in the 21st-century economy, sustain themselves and their families, and contribute meaningfully to their communities. In pursuit of that mission, we regularly review and revise everything we do. Why? Because while our purpose remains, the world in which we pursue it changes at an ever-accelerating pace.

Our students are changing. Today, they come from all walks of life and all ages. It is because of what public universities and community colleges have done since the 1950s that opportunities—once available to only a small fraction of our society—have been democratized. What’s more, high school graduates are no longer the majority of students enrolled in U.S. universities and colleges. As shown by Higher Learning Advocates in the figure copied below, they are joined by working learners, parents, and so many others.

The world of work for which we prepare students is also changing. Sixty percent of all jobs in Pennsylvania today require someone in them with some higher education; therefore, it is not surprising that the more you learn, the more you earn. Accordingly, attending a public university is now the most affordable and reliable pathway to sustaining careers. In part as a consequence, lifelong learning – repeat visits to universities – once the exception, is now also the norm. Programs of study leading to bachelor’s and master’s degrees continue to be a central part of what we do. We therefore need to be more responsive to students and employers who are looking for shorter programs of study that deliver specific skills as recognized by industry-based certificates or licenses. The supply of non-degree credentials has exploded in recent years, reaching nearly half a million at last count, in 2019.

Lastly, the tools we use to fashion our students’ educational experience change—at light speed given the pace of technological advance. A decade ago, online learning was on the cutting edge. Today online learning is common; the cutting edge of educational technology belongs to artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality.

To keep up with these rapid and layered changes in pursuit of our historic mission requires relentless intellectual curiosity and an entrepreneurial spirit that restlessly asks how do we, as educational institutions, better and more affordably serve our students, their employers, our communities? How do we help even more people cross the bridge to opportunity that is afforded to them by public higher education?

To answer these and other similar questions, all we have to do is look to the innovation already existing and developing within our State System universities. They show us the answer, which is, in short, that we innovate, we hustle, we work together with one another, with employers and with schools and community colleges. Here are few examples:

In partnership with Pennsylvania’s Department of Education and Department of Labor and Industry respectively, and with the Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC), PASSHE is exploring the development of a prototype inventory of all the credentials that PASSHE universities and HACC produce in healthcare and IT. The prototype seeks to help students evaluate educational options in these broad areas and how they connect with careers and earning potential. It would also help employers connect with students who have the skills they are looking for. If successful, the registry may be extended to include credentials produced by other Pennsylvania colleges and universities, and/or those from PASSHE universities and HACC leading to jobs in other industry areas.

We are using technology in creative new ways outside the “classroom.” In West Chester University’s moonshot initiative, for example, we are incorporating technologies that use millions of observations about how students progress in their educational journeys to identify the obstacles that commonly trip them up, and the actions that support them best when they stumble.

We work together and with employer partners to build innovative educational pathways that help people enter and grow in sustaining careers, focusing often in areas where skilled workers are in shortest supply.

• Cheyney University, the School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Department of Education, and the Community College of Philadelphia are working in partnership to expand the number of diverse teachers in the Philadelphia public school system. They begin with students in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades, and encourage them to go into teaching.
• HACC, Harrisburg University, Shippensburg University, and the Giant Company are working together to create pathways that connect educational opportunities across the three institutions to build pathways for those seeking to launch and advance careers in agribusiness.
• At East Stroudsburg University, students pursuing degrees in business, education, sports administration, and other fields, are earning badges along the way. The badges testify to their mastery of competencies that are in high demand by employers. Using these badges, students are getting great internships and jobs even in advance of their completing their baccalaureate degrees.

This necessarily restless quest for continuous innovation and renewal also is pursued in partnership with universities outside of Pennsylvania. Our innovation imperative is a national, not a regional, phenomenon. For example, Indiana University of Pennsylvania is part of partnership with more than a dozen institutions nationally who are considering a simple proposition which, if true, could have profound and very positive impacts on the cost of a college degree. Does a bachelor’s degree always require 120 credit hours of seat time, or can the same learning be accomplished with less, providing that bridge to opportunity in a faster and more affordable manner?

There is significant historic precedent and considerable evidence that such a hypothesis may prove true, and these are described in greater detail in a memorandum provided to the State Board of Education in support of a waiver seeking the necessary permissions to mount the pilot over a period of years with a small handful of courses, gathering evidence about potential for impact. Assuming it is possible to deliver the same learning outcomes in three year as in four, consider the potential impact on the net price we are asking students to pay to acquire a baccalaureate degree. Imagine the impact if the degree is pursued in partnership with community colleges where students might attend for their first one or even two years. Is the potential benefit not great enough to warrant empirical investigation? I wonder what students and their families would say if we asked them? I wonder what they would say if we, as educators—bound by statute to provide the most affordable higher education possible—refused even to consider the opportunity.

These and many other initiatives currently underway at Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities represent the continued innovation and renewal that necessarily defines the world of public higher education today. It requires that today’s college communities bring an entrepreneurial, growth mindset that eagerly looks through the front windshield, only glancing occasionally in the rearview mirror to ensure we keep sight of our historic purpose and core values. It is sustained by investment in our faculty and staff and our willingness to try—but not always succeed—as we constantly seek new ways of expanding access, improving success, and driving down cost of attendance for all our students.

And it entails our staying in close touch with the people and communities we serve, helping them understand why the world of education needs to evolve, why it will look different today than when they were students, why we need continuously to innovate so that more people cross the bridge to opportunity in these post-pandemic times, and why holding true and fast to our mission entails our constantly evaluating and evolving everything we do.

New beginnings

The start of the academic year always makes me giddy. My visit to Slippery Rock University a few weeks ago was another reminder – thanks, colleagues in Butler County! I had the pleasure of touring SRU’s new engineering labs with their super-cool new scientific equipment and totally remodeled, state-of-the-art visual and performing arts spaces. Students entering any of these programs, you are in for a unique and world-class experience. I am genuinely excited for you.

 And I had the good fortune to meet with faculty and staff who were just bristling with excitement about the start of the semester. Maybe that was because there were still a few weeks left of summer or because it was a beautiful day with a nice lunch.  Or maybe it was because the faculty and staff I met with know just how special SRU really is – special as all our universities are – understand our universities’ capabilities and are poised to turn them into real life-changing gains for real students.

Does the pandemic experience cast a long shadow? Yes, of course it does, here as elsewhere across higher education, and the effects of the pandemic are likely to be felt for years as students who have experienced education loss at any point from kindergarten all the way through the education pipeline. So does the integration of six universities into Commonwealth University and PennWest University and the very difficult decisions that universities had to make across the System in order to regain the confidence of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly, and through it the people of Pennsylvania. These, too, cast a long shadow, and they are likely to for some time to come. 

We have traveled light years together in no time at all. Not always comfortably. But in doing so, we have arrived at a unique, historic opportunity to re-establish the role and value that public higher education plays in this state as an engine of economic development and social mobility. Our audience – the people of this commonwealth – is listening with open ears. Have you been following the news media surrounding the State System and its universities? Have you listened to legislative hearings and read the media reports about them? The narrative is shifting. It’s no longer almost exclusively focused on management, financial, and enrollment challenges, or on the workloads and pay of our employees. 

The resurgence of a positive narrative speaks to the power and promise of the public higher education we uniquely provide in this state. It is grounded in the enormous need that Pennsylvania feels for affordable pathways into sustaining careers, without which our commonwealth cannot address its talent gap. The positive narrative is grounded in appreciative inquiry about what we really can do to improve outcomes for the students we do enroll, while at the same time opening the aperture to opportunities we can provide to others who have hitherto been underserved. With the enactment of the FY 2022-23 state budget, the legislature and the governor have invested in that promise at a level that restores our support to where it was near the high-water mark years of our growth. I am so grateful for their trust and confidence – it is so well deserved! I’m certain will be repaid with dividends in the form of more students served. 

I look forward to visiting campuses. As ever, I want to hear from you about the issues on your mind. I also want to know from you what we need to do to deliver on this next phase of our redesign – the one that grows the number of Pennsylvanians whom we enroll and graduate. 

Shortly after the  legislature and the governor solidified their historic investment in us in July, I presented to my manager, the Board, the System’s goals . They double as my goals and factor into my performance management.   

The goals are clustered in five areas:

1.       Expanding student opportunities and improving student outcomes.

2.       Expanding student affordability and growing.

3.       Operating sustainably.

4.       Enhancing our partnership with the state.

5.       Investing in our people and our infrastructure so we can achieve all of the above.

I look forward to getting input from you on the opportunities you see in any or all of these areas, especially 1, 2, and 5. I’m hoping to do that by engaging with you in the work. I want to see how you are advancing these and other objectives in an educational setting, with student supports, and via other means. I also want to engage with you on what you perceive is the cutting edge of your work and our service to our students and this commonwealth.

By the time we meet, it will have been a while for some of us since we’ve seen each other outside the Hollywood squares that frame our Zoom interactions. Spoiler alert: I’m greyer, probably a little shorter, and maybe moving more stiffly than I once was. But I am still an unabashed optimist. As I wrote in my very first blog on this very point: “I can’t help myself. I see great opportunities for our universities, for our System, and – especially – for our students. I do not believe we face any obstacle that cannot be overcome with our collective talents and creativity.” Nothing has changed in that regard. Not an iota. Not in four very eventful years. 

And as ever, this blog serves as one of the many ways for us to exchange ideas. I hope you’ll use it to provide feedback, whether in the comments feature below or by mailing me directly at Chancellor@passhe.edu.

The Opportunities Ahead

Saturday, July 9, 2022, was a day I won’t soon forget – filled with gratitude, steeped in humility. Melissa and I were at the Kutztown Festival, a celebration of Pennsylvania Dutch culture that dates back decades. The sky was clear, the temperature forgiving, the mood particularly high because this year, unlike the past two, the festival was unimpeded by pandemic accommodation. If you haven’t been to the festival, you should go.

My mood was additionally brightened, because the day before the General Assembly had passed and the governor had signed the state budget, approving a historically unprecedented 16% increase in the System’s appropriation (from $477.5 million to $552 million) and $125 million in one-time funding.

I am tremendously grateful to Governor Wolf and the General Assembly for their belief in the power and promise of public higher education that is our System. Recovering the confidence and investment of our owners – the state – has been a long road – at least a decade long, but I’m sure those with greater lived experience of our System’s recent history would be justified in pushing its start back even further. And it has been a hard road to travel. Gratitude again. This time to our faculty, staff, trustees, and alumni who are on this journey together. For your effort, commitment, compassion, collective creativity, resilience, and intelligence.

Our future lies ahead, and I urge all of us to look forward, together. There will be challenges. But the opportunities are even greater, and I am confident that we can choose to take full advantage of and go after them. As a collective (but only as a collective) we are that good, that talented, that capable.

This week, I reviewed those opportunities for the Board. They are the rationale of our System’s redesign; they comprise the promise we made to the state in return for its re-investment. In those opportunities lie our future success. They have been regularly featured in this blog, so I will treat them briefly here.

Our opportunities are grounded in the state’s needs – particularly its needs for an adequately educated workforce. We are the state’s owned universities. It makes sense for us to align our priorities with its needs. And they are urgent.

Sixty percent of today’s jobs require someone in them with some higher education that has been attained by only 51 percent of Pennsylvanian adults. The need is particularly great among adults with B.A.s and M.A.s, but there is also significant demand for so-called non-degree “industry recognized” credentials (typically resulting from short and very focused courses of study).

We cannot fill that gap by relying solely on our traditional source of students – those attending college soon after graduating high school (although we can increase the share of them that attend a State System university). There simply aren’t enough of them, and their number is projected to decline significantly from 2026.

There are opportunities nonetheless – big ones.

• Improving graduation rates of the students we do enroll.
• Enrolling traditional aged students who are “college ready” but not college bound, or in regions or communities that are generally underserved.
• Enrolling adults who are looking to complete a degree they began but interrupted years ago.

Taking advantage of these opportunities requires that we continue to work with our owners – the state – and with new partners, like employers who turn to internships and tuition assistance programs in order to build the talented workforce they need and struggle to maintain, to lower our net average price. The greatest opportunities we have are with people who can least afford attending a State System university – and we are the most affordable option in the state.

Taking advantage of these opportunities entails continuous evolution of our academic programs – doubling down on degrees and non-degree credentials in areas that lead to careers in occupations that are particularly starved for talent, such as healthcare, IT, financial services, and education, to name only a few; expanding hybrid and fully online options for people who are unable or choose not to participate in a face-to-face experience; developing more pathways that connect directly with the workforce and assist students along through in-service learning options.

Taking advantage of these opportunities requires that we strengthen the capabilities that have made us so successful, for so long, with so many traditional students. Turns out, education is not a water hose – turn it on the next person, they get just as wet as the last. You know this. Education is highly personalized. Effectively engaging a working adult with a family and a job is wholly different than engaging a student-athlete who attends one of our universities directly after graduating high school. And there are as many other fine distinctions of student need and mindset.

Taking advantage of these opportunities, in other words, means that we invest in ourselves, in our faculty and staff – in further developing already strong skills and abilities, so that we may be equipped to go forward. The investment we sought from the state, was made with these goals directly in view. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to equip ourselves so that we may not only survive but thrive into the 21st century.

The priorities that I presented to the Board at its meeting this week – each associated with a set of measurable goals – provide a framework within which I have cast my own goals as chancellor (goals that are posted annually to the web), and within which I expect our university leadership to operate, focusing their attention and effort. Working within their own shared governance structures, presidents will determine how and where to direct their efforts and associated resources, all of which are distributed to them for their use. I would expect them, as in all things, to direct their efforts differently in ways that reflect local circumstances, opportunities, and strategic priorities. (System Redesign has as a design principle, giving universities a higher degree of responsibility for determining their strategic direction in return for a higher level of accountability to the Board.) And I look forward in reporting back in these pages, and elsewhere, on our collective progress.

Gratitude to be sure. And yes, at long last a sense of excitement at the prospect of re-invigoration, reinvestment, and growth.

And that feeling of gratitude brings me to humility and back to our visit to the Kutztown Festival, and the people we met on July 9, the passions they showed for our System, its mission, our students; the quality of their work; the brilliance of their insights. One was a trustee of Kutztown University. He grew up in the community, understands its history through generations of lived experience, is the perfect advocate for Kutztown and our System – admiring of its role and its work, ready and willing to give up precious spare time and deliberate attention to ensure continuous improvement.

Two others work at Kutztown. One is an anthropologist who began his work on a Polynesian island (as anthropologists do). His interest in the Pennsylvania Dutch grew naturally from his location at KU. His facility traveling across the cultures he knew and had researched in order to illustrate insights about how culture in general evolves and changes, was nothing short of inspiring. One spent a lifetime researching and writing about the Pennsylvania Dutch from a KU center, ensconced recently in new digs and hosting a collection of over 20,000 items. Both live and breathe the Pennsylvania Dutch – its folklore and folklife (yes, there is a distinction between more literary and more material aspects of a culture). They are also amazing teachers. Experts in the craft of meaningfully guiding the rankest of novices through information and toward insights – even wisdom – that drive a deeper understanding of the unmodern world. I know because I was enthralled by the richly discursive tour we enjoyed that morning. I know because I couldn’t extract myself from the “seminar” tent that afternoon where any number of topics were presented and discussed. The festival is undoubtedly a centerpiece for both colleagues and has been for years. I’m guessing they are spending long hours throughout the 10-day duration and multiples of that again in prep. We were there on the ninth day. If they were tired and worn out, it was not obvious. Quite the contrary. Their energy and enthusiasm were positively infectious.

So, here’s the thing … Melissa and I have both brushed up against the analytical underpinnings upon which our colleagues had built their professional careers. Melissa is an art historian, curator, and critic for whom artistic expression is a window onto cultural flows and how they stack up at once to shape and reflect specific moments in time. I am and always will be a one-time historian who got swept up in the early 1980s by the use of artifact as evidence. Elizabeth Johns and Henry Glassie were two of my academic heroes back in the day. You can imagine the conversation with colleagues once we discovered how and where our worlds collided. It didn’t take long to find the touch points in our respective academic lineages or to connect on issues where we found a common source of interest – the transmission of minority languages and prospects for revitalizing them, for example.

As chancellor, I get to interact so often with so many of our faculty, staff, and students. But I rarely have an opportunity to engage so directly with people around the academic and educational aspects at the center of our work. On July 9, I did. And I was deeply humbled by the experience.  I have always been tremendously proud to be affiliated with this great organization, but never more so than on that day.

The Kutztown Festival – at least put it on your to-do list. It is an effective entrée into a distinctive American heritage that combines engagement with material and performance cultures, arts, crafts, and yes, academic research, with a modest and wholly entertaining dose of commercialism.

Why a system? The Power and Promise of Public Higher Education

Students choose a university because it’s a good fit for them. Students know this. Parents know this. (I know this, having lived the experience with our two kids.) The choice is often driven by a combination of factors such as the school’s reputation, academic programs, cost, size, location, overall “feel” of the campus and more. 

But I wonder if there is an added value for students who choose to attend a PASSHE university? If the State System did a joint marketing campaign with any of our universities, how would the benefit of being part of the system be represented? What distinctive qualities does it provide for a PASSHE university student, their parents, the surrounding community? Great questions. So good, in fact, that I thought I’d suggest some answers here, where I could also invite comment from you.   

Advantages appear to me in two categories: 1) those having to do with the fact that PASSHE universities are public, and 2) those having to do with their being part of a system.  

CATEGORY 1: THERE ARE AT LEAST FOUR REASONS STUDENTS BENEFIT FROM ATTENDING A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY:    

Public universities are the most affordable four-year higher education options in the state. While the state contributes a mere 25% of our total revenues, students fund the remaining 75%. That 25% is vitally important and allows us to maintain a net average price of attendance that is lower than at other Pennsylvania universities and colleges. While the price gap has narrowed over the years, it still exists and is important to the students we serve—70% of whom are from low- and middle-income Pennsylvania families.

Yes, of course, other Pennsylvania universities and colleges receive federal and state funding. This includes Pell and PHEAA state grants made directly to students, as well as federal and state agency investments that are made directly to universities and colleges. Perversely (though this should come as no surprise in a society that has proven to be so good at reproducing privilege across generations), elite, private research universities enjoy the highest level of public support when measured in dollars per student FTE. At the University of Pennsylvania—a research powerhouse that also manages an important medical establishment—19% of students receive federal grant aid, including Pell and Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) dollars of $8,449, as compared to the $4,132 average that 51% of State System students receive. 

It is also true that many schools—state-related as well as private—offer some of their students enough institutional aid to rival a PASSHE university price. Penn even boasts that students from families earning less than $90,000 a year will attend tuition-free. It can do this because it has a sizeable endowment ($20.5 billion in 2021) and a “high fees, high aid” tuition model. That means it enrolls as many students as it can who pay full price so it can subsidize those from lower-income backgrounds who cannot. The challenge is that no school, no matter how richly endowed, has enough financial aid to consistently beat the net average price paid by students at a State System university. That brings me directly to the second distinctive advantage of a public university.   

Public universities are readily available to all Pennsylvanians. We are inclusive. There are at least two ways to think about our inclusiveness: 

• We accept most students, providing a path that is unavailable at many other colleges and universities. Our two most selective universities respectively admit 80% and 81% of all applicants. The rest of our universities accept 90% or more of those who apply. This means we are available not only to students who enroll directly in our honors colleges and are as good academically as students anywhere in the country, but we also accept those looking for (and deserving) a second chance to advance themselves educationally—students who may not be considered elsewhere. Yes, at Penn you can have a free ride on tuition if you earn less than $90,000, but only if you are fortunate enough to be among the 7% of all applicants that are admitted.
• State System universities are the most affordable four-year option in Pennsylvania, which creates opportunities for students who are priced out of other universities. No surprise, then, to discover that:
• 70% of our traditional-age students (those enrolling within a few years after high school graduation) are from families earning at or below the average/median household income in Pennsylvania; 
• 32% are first in their family to go to college; 
• 33% qualify for Pell grants, meaning they are from lower-income families.  
• Also, unsurprisingly, our students are as diverse as the demographics of Pennsylvania, because we are the people’s universities.

Public universities are absolutely critical to the economic health and well-being of Pennsylvania. This is an audacious claim. It’s also true. As I’ve written elsewhere, 60% of all jobs in the state today require a person with some higher education—anything from a credential in phlebotomy to a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Yet today, only 51% of all Pennsylvania adults have some higher education. That creates a so-called “talent gap.” And the gap is growing. Workforce estimates suggest that by 2030, Pennsylvania will require 15.7% more people educated to the master’s level, 8.1% more to the bachelor’s level, 5.5% more to the associate level, and 4% more with non-degree credentials.   

To fill its share of the gap, PASSHE universities would need to produce 2,000 more bachelor’s degrees, 1,200 more master’s degrees, and perhaps as many as 2,500 additional non-degree credentials every year, starting today, and sustaining that level of production at least through 2030. Every other Pennsylvania university and college would also need to expand its credentialing productivity proportionally to achieve that goal. Here’s the thing. They can’t. Why? Because there aren’t enough people who can afford the average price of attending other universities and colleges, and other universities and colleges don’t have enough financial aid to lower their net average price to enroll enough students. Realistically, given the economics of private and state-related higher education, PASSHE universities are the only economical path to reduce the talent gap by educating and graduating enough people to meet the needs of the workforce in Pennsylvania.    

The marginal cost of each additional credential is lower at a State System university than anywhere else. And let me be clear: I’m describing a math problem, not making a statement about the relative value of private, state-related and public universities and colleges. This brings me to a third distinctive value claimed by PASSHE universities. (Did I already say they are Pennsylvania’s only public universities?)  

Public universities are engines of social mobility. A while back I published what were then very new data on State System graduates’ salaries one, three, five, and 10 years after graduation. The data demonstrate the true power of public higher education.   

• The vast majority of our graduates get “good jobs,” earning considerably more (nearly a million dollars more on average over a lifetime) than people who end their formal education after receiving a high school diploma.
• Ten years after they graduate, students who enrolled in one of our universities with a low income will be earning about as much as students who enrolled with a high income.  
• The same leveling-up effect is apparent when you layer race onto income. Thus, a low-income Black student will, 10 years after graduation, be earning about as much as a high-income white student.

Yes, other universities and colleges also propel their graduates into good jobs and drive social mobility. But few if any of the four-year options in Pennsylvania can claim the depth and breadth of impact that State System universities have. Benefitting from state support, we open our doors to and serve a higher proportion of low- and middle-income students than are typically found elsewhere. PASSHE universities sustainably serve far more low- and middle-income students than private and state-related universities that rely on a high-fees, high-aid approach along with massive endowments. That’s the whole point of public higher education. Our universities are funded to change lives—a lot of them—to lift up people and their families en masse. 

CATEGORY 2: OUR STUDENTS BENEFIT FROM ATTENDING A UNIVERSITY THAT IS PART OF A SYSTEM OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES.   

Universities are more efficient when they are part of a system. These efficiencies reduce university costs and help to keep student tuition and fees down and/or achieve greater impact (typically measured in service quality) for the dollars they spend. Some examples:

• By buying as part of a procurement collective, universities gain leverage in the marketplace and secure lower prices than they would if they operated on their own. 
• By sharing appointments (employees), universities can fill vital roles with talented people who may not be as affordable or available or make as much sense financially to an institution operating independently. Among other examples, our universities share human resources functions to improve efficiencies and several universities share courses and faculty in order to provide students with more offerings. This level of cross-university coordination is groundbreaking for the system and is only the beginning of what we can accomplish for students to control costs and expand their opportunities.

Students gain expanded educational opportunities as State System universities share educational programming. Shared programming is a centerpiece of our System Redesign, which at its core envisions a world in which students enrolled at one PASSHE university can more easily access educational opportunities at another PASSHE university. We know that technology is a foundational component to running a university—upgrading to a modern, cloud-based, mobile-enabled platform will enable all students to benefit from a common set of functionalities. It is so important a centerpiece of our work that we have invested $14 million in realizing the vision by implementing a common student information system (SIS). Installed in phases over a four-year period, the “OneSIS” will enable students seamlessly to find, register in, take, and get degree credit for courses available at PASSHE universities other than the one in which they are enrolled. Think of the opportunities.

Working together, universities can offer students more educational opportunities than any one university could on its own. By sharing courses (as opposed to full academic programs), universities provide their students access to:

• More majors, minors, areas of concentration, and experts or specialists than they can afford on their own; and 
• greater course availability to help keep students on track to completion.  

Systems are “scaling agents” that can accelerate innovative ideas and practices that expand student access, improve affordability or improve student outcomes. What the heck does that mean? Innovations are relatively easy to dream up, pilot and prototype. Taking them to scale is a different matter. The vast majority stagnate at the pilot or prototype stage, never reaching a majority of potential beneficiaries even where they demonstrate positive impact and financial viability.  Systems are uniquely able to drive innovations to scale more quickly in order to benefit the students they serve.  

Other ways students benefit from universities working together in a system include:

• PASSHE universities offer reasonable class sizes. All of our universities deservedly boast of a caring and committed faculty and student-facing staff that put students first. And faculty engage with students in classes that are intimate in scale: 53% of all classes have fewer than 25 students and only 4% have more than 60. This kind of intimacy is common at private liberal arts colleges, but at few other institutions.
• Our universities maintain a wide range of athletics programs, student clubs and associations that emphasize student engagement. That’s a good thing because research shows that students who are engaged in the life of a university do significantly better in terms of graduation than those who are not. 
• Undergraduate degrees are grounded in a general education that provide students with the important skills—critical thinking, communication, etc.—that employers universally value, while including specific technical or professional skills that equip students for their career path. While the combination is not wholly unique, it is rare. And it significantly advantages State System students in pursuit of sustaining careers.

CONCLUSION

When I consider the question of how to articulate the value of choosing a university that is part of a public system, I am encouraged by all of this and more. Because we are public, PASSHE universities remain the most affordable four-year higher education option—allowing students from every walk of life to gain a pathway to opportunities that would be closed at other schools. And because we are a system, each university can do more together than they ever could by themselves. That is a real value to our students. 

Now, I want to hear from you. I invite you to comment in the space below or send me your thoughts via email (chancellor@passhe.edu).

______________________________

[1] by Kriss Deiglmeier & Amanda Greco, “ Why Proven Solutions Struggle to Scale Up”, Stanford Social Innovation Review (August 10, 2018) 

System Redesign Phase 3: Reinvest & Renew

The past holds keen insights into the future. (I suppose you’d expect that perspective from an historian.) Nonetheless, the State System’s Board of Governors plumbed these insights when it met earlier this month to review the progress of our System Redesign in addressing student affordability, systemwide financial health, alignment of academic programs with economic and societal needs, and student completion rates. The reflection was grounded in data—as it must be—and showed our universities bending even the most rigid trend lines in a promising direction.

There’s lot to say grace over, and if you’re interested in a deeper dive, consider the introduction to our 2022 accountability report, which will be available online soon. And none of our progress just happened by itself. It resulted from the hard and careful work of our students, faculty, and staff—much of it done under horrific and challenging circumstances wrought by the pandemic.

The review also illuminated our ability to evolve rapidly to deliver on our mission: providing Pennsylvanians affordable pathways to sustaining careers, enabling them to participate effectively in the 21^st century economy and to contribute meaningfully to their communities.

Focused on the next phase of our System Redesign, the Board has turned its attention to the one curve we have yet to significantly affect: enrollment. Having declined at most of our universities for more than a decade, this is the one curve we must absolutely bend for the sake of the commonwealth, its people, its economy, and its social well-being.

Bending the Enrollment Curve

Sixty percent of all jobs in Pennsylvania, and the vast majority of new jobs, require someone with a postsecondary credential—everything from a certificate to a Ph.D.—but only 51 percent of adults in the state have one. That’s a big and growing gap that exists in areas ranging from the trades to health care, financial services, advanced manufacture, agribusiness, IT, social work, education, and the public services. The gap is structural and we need more people acquiring postsecondary credentials to close it.

To fill our share of the gap by 2030, our State System universities must annually graduate 2000 more bachelor’s, 1200 more master’s, and 2000 more non-degree credentials, and yes, that’s starting right now.

The only way to deliver more degrees and credentials is to expand enrollment—recruit new students and retain the students we enroll.  

How many more student enrollments will it take to meet those credentialing levels? About 11,500 undergraduates, 3,500 graduates, and maybe another 5,000 students pursuing non-degree credentials.

There are other reasons to focus on growth. Economic impact is one: State System universities’ economic impact declined by more than 25 percent between 2015 and 2021 largely because fewer students are living, studying, and spending in the communities where our universities are located. Jobs are another reason: the number of people the State System universities can employ is tied directly to the number of students they enroll.

Strategic Enrollment Growth

The good news is we know who and where the students are and how to recruit, enroll, retain, and graduate them. We also know our success growing enrollments will require the same kind of transformational thinking that has driven System Redesign thus far. It requires systemic and consistent action taken comprehensively across the State System. Frankly, I think the task ahead will require an even higher level of fundamental transformation in our practices and mindsets than we’ve seen thus far. Here are a few reasons why. 

There is real undergraduate enrollment growth potential with low- and middle-income students in the 18-24-year-old age group (let’s call them “traditional students”), especially with community college transfer students, with under-represented minorities (given the combined effects of population growth and continued improvement in high-school outcomes), and with those who are “college ready” but not “college bound.” 

Adult students (those over the age of 24) present additional opportunities. Pennsylvania is home to a million adults with some college but no degree. That’s a big number.  And there are further opportunities with short-course, non-degree programs for people seeking to reskill or upskill, and for employers looking for qualified talent in high demand roles. (I wrote about these last month.) We estimate our share runs annually to as many as 5000 additional credentials per year, typically in areas where we have proven competency—health care, business, information technology, etc.  

All of these opportunities engage students who are in so many ways core to our historic mission. But serving them successfully, with integrity, will require far-reaching transformational changes in how we work. 

Opportunities with traditional and non-traditional students require us to continually retool student supports and pedagogy in order to serve those who are:

• first-generation students unable to draw upon their parents or guardians to help navigate the path to and through postsecondary education;
• students who never thought college was for them or that they could afford it;
• students with more capability than they applied in high school;
• under-represented minority students seeking university communities that are welcoming, supportive, and safe for all with faculty and staff who reflect the diversity of the students and have the cultural competencies to meet students where they are irrespective of their race, creed, color, gender identity, politics, socioeconomic status and world views; and
• community college transfer students who need us to implement our Board’s policy by admitting AA and AS degree holders as juniors with 60 credits—no questions asked, no courses retaken— and to provide specific supports in combination with our community college colleagues that facilitate progress.
  
  

The Path Forward

We have a good track record, and here are just a few examples: Kutztown has increased first-to-second year retention by 5 percent since 2014; Cheyney has improved graduation rates by 18 percent since 2014; and Ship and others have begun to chip away at retention gaps between under-represented and other students. So, yes, we can. There is existence proof here and elsewhere. 

But this work must be strengthened, done comprehensively, and with even greater impact in order to produce better outcomes for all, not just the 61 percent who ultimately “cross the stage” and receive their degrees. We cannot possibly grow traditional student enrollments with “stop-out” (students who pause their education but don’t dropout) rates travelling at 24 percent (and higher for Black and Hispanic students). It is unconscionable. Not right. Unfair. Not ever, and especially not when students are sacrificing so much to attend. We have an obligation as recipients of public funding and student tuition dollars (much of which is provided by loans that saddle our students) to do better. 

Our adult student numbers are also unlikely to grow beyond the anemic 10 percent level where they’ve hovered for decades, unless we create educational pathways that are suited to their lifestyles, which typically don’t and can’t accommodate on-campus experiences. Here, too, we have a good track record, but must do more. Among other things, we must expand our fully online degree pathways. Even though our online undergraduate enrollments have grown 89 percent since fall 2012, we are still tracking behind the national average. We must also expand supports for those fully online learners and for adult learners whose needs are different from those of more traditional age college students. 

Finally, we also have a good track record with non-degree credentials, which I wrote about in last month’s blog. We’ve grown enrollments there by 246 percent since 2015 and are annually adding new programs that meet particular workforce demands. But there is much more to do in producing more non-degree credentials serving high demand areas. There is more to do, too, revising and refining supports for students pursuing non-degree credentials because they have different recruitment, enrollment, educational, and support needs than other students. Darn that postsecondary education! Pity it isn’t as simple as a garden hose—turn it on the next student and they get as wet as the last one.

We have so many strengths upon which to build:

• our universities are centrally important to the communities they serve;
• our students’ success and their inclusion has become a design principle in everything we do.
• we ground our work not only in our sense of mission but also in a set of basic human values that revolve around compassion, tolerance, and a humbling regard for our role as educators in contributing to a civil society, and promoting civil discourse; and
• energy is building at many of our universities for serving students who need our help now but who come to us from relatively new and underserved groups. 
  
  

Re-imagine, Re-invigorate, and Re-engage

I am not concerned one iota about capability, energy, entrepreneurialism. We have tremendous faculty and staff.

I am concerned about our clock speed. Time is not our friend. We are not the only actors seeking growth opportunities in these spaces. Enrollment in the state’s only public four-year universities is a wonderful thing and a great idea; but it is not an entitlement.

And there is the nub of the transformational task ahead of us. Our success will not be based on who we were or on slick and revitalized marketing campaigns (although our history is a proud one and a powerful attractor, and yes there is work to be done in recruitment). It will rest on the quality and relevance of the programs we offer and on the effectiveness of the supports we provide our students. It will rest on our abilities to adjust what we do to reach each of today’s students where they are, not where they were a dozen or so years ago (or where we were when we were in college). 

We need to review with an open mind and be willing to change, even fundamentally, how we educate and support our students, recognizing and tailoring our work to their very different needs. We need to evaluate our practices against those deployed elsewhere, integrating what demonstrably delivers for our students. We need to change our policies and, where necessary, our contracts to accommodate, invest in, and support our faculty and staff to develop their skills and abilities and unleash their creative energies. We need to feel empowered to take risks and to innovate knowing that innovation doesn’t always work the way one hopes, and be willing to back away quickly from unproductive efforts—to “fail fast.” To grow, we need to re-imagine, re-invigorate, re-engage. 

The one-time federal funds committed last June by the General Assembly have been instrumental in catapulting us into this critically important phase of our System Redesign, and I am grateful to the Governor and the General Assembly for their bi-partisan support of this investment.

But, and lastly, we cannot bend the enrollment curve and achieve the credentialing productivity the state requires on the back of one-time money.

The students who represent our best growth opportunities—the very same students who the state needs credentialed in order to meet its workforce development needs—include students who have been historically excluded from higher education and/or come from communities that are under-resourced. Accordingly, we can expect that, for some, crossing the finish line will require a higher level of innovation and support than can be afforded by their tuition and fee dollars alone.

These students are in danger of being priced out of Pennsylvania’s public higher education. Low- and middle-income students are squeezed particularly hard. And Pennsylvania’s public higher education is the most affordable four-year option in the state.

Investing in Students for Pennsylvania’s Success

By honoring the significant additional investments identified in a letter sent in November to the Governor and the General Assembly—investments that the Governor included in his budget earlier this month—our state owners can unlock and unleash the power and promise that is public higher education.

They can make those investments with confidence, based on demonstrable evidence, that their state system will:

• continue to operate with utmost efficiency;
• spend dollars in pursuit of clearly and publicly defined goals resulting in improved outcomes for all our students and their future employers; and
• continue to invite accountability and be held to the highest performance standards.

Investment will fuel and rapidly accelerate the transformation we have begun and for which we have shown real progress. More importantly, by bolstering public higher education as the affordable bridge to opportunity for all Pennsylvanians, our owners will generate the credentials the state needs, enhance the state’s economic competitiveness, and respond to employers’ urgent and crying need for the talent they need to succeed in this commonwealth.

Understanding our DNA

I didn’t expect to enter the new year feeling very optimistic, not after gorging on year-end retrospectives and prognostications, watching COVID sweep the nation, and demonstrating to myself and my family the absence of fine motor skills required to construct a level-4 Revell model. But there it is. You see, in the interstices, I continued my usual steady diet of higher education trend review. My review is typically an undirected browse following breadcrumb trails thrown up by newsfeeds, social media, and colleagues. Yet with all its serendipity, my quest over the past several weeks kept arriving at convincing stories of higher ed’s adaptivity, including a variety of aspects related to pandemic effects, technology change, evolving student need, etc. I want to focus here on adaptivity to employer-driven demand, which naturally enough brought me back to HERI’s Freshman Survey.

The survey, published since the 1960s, captures changing attributes and perspectives of the first-time, full-time students who enroll annually in U.S. higher education. Did you know, for example, that 84 percent of 2019 freshmen cited “ability to get a better job” as a very important reason in their decision to go to college? That’s about the same proportion as those who cited “to learn more about things that interest me” as an essential reason, and it is a full ten points higher than the proportion opting for “to gain a general education and appreciation of ideas”.

More newsworthy is the trend line. The goal of getting a better job scored higher among freshmen in 2019 than four decades ago when freshmen scored it south of 75 percent. The importance of getting a good job only burst into the mid-80 percent range in the last several years. In my view, I owe this to the dramatic rise in the net price of attending college, students’ increasing reliance on loan funding to pay for their education, and the resulting opportunity costs that are associated with their obtaining a college degree.

Colleges and universities, like students, have adapted to these changing conditions by emphasizing the long-range market value of their credentials and aligning credentialing programs ever more closely to workforce needs. Their adaptation shows up in State System university data (review of which is especially enjoyable over eggnog), as evident in our annual accountability report that we provide to the General Assembly in support of our appropriations request (new report coming soon!), and some retooled data dashboards. Our program array—the degrees, majors, minors, areas of concentration—constantly evolves. Between 2015 and 2021, 266 new certificates and 213 new degree programs were added to our collective array, while another 66 certificates and 396 degrees were retired from it. As a result of that evolution, we have seen:

• a pronounced shift to programs that directly feed high-demand occupations—about a third of our baccalaureate degrees conferred every year are in STEM-H fields, and a quarter are in business. Along with education, these three broad areas now contribute more than half (56 percent) of the undergraduate degrees that the State System universities produce annually;
• growth in the number of graduate degrees (where there is an even higher concentration of programs feeding the high-demand areas) and the proportion of graduate students in our overall student population (up 4 percent overall in the last ten years, and between 5 and 10 percent over that time period at eight of our universities);
• dramatic increases in the number of non-degree credentials that target specific employer need and help people upskill and re-skill to advance their careers and lift their families (up 246 percent since 2015 to 1,220 annually); and
• the success our graduates have in Pennsylvania’s economy (as demonstrated with data published in my October 2021 blog).
  
  

Why is all this happening?

1. Workforce development is in our DNA. In the nineteenth century, our universities were conceived as pipelines feeding high-demand, under-supplied occupations, notably in education where demand for teachers skyrocketed on the back of public investment in elementary and secondary education. While our universities’ programmatic focus has evolved significantly since then, their roles as engines of economic development and the concomitant social mobility that ensues has not. As an aside, I have to admit I always chuckle when I hear higher education leaders (sometimes in fist-pounding mode) claim their institution or sector is solely responsible for workforce development. A little humility, please. That responsibility, in truth, is shared by secondary schools, community colleges, vocational and trade schools, research universities like IUP and now West Chester, liberal arts colleges like Cheyney and Mansfield, and regional comprehensive universities like the rest of our State System universities. And we would do well to at least acknowledge the role played by the largest post-secondary educational sector (measured in terms of annual expenditure) that exists outside the formal higher education establishment and includes corporate training programs, trade apprenticeships, coding academies, and a growing range of the like.
2. The size of the talent gap is so great that educational providers must step forward together to fill it. While there is overlap in the credentialing programs that characterize Pennsylvania’s complex and diverse higher education ecosystem, the talent gap is (in my view) over-stated. It also tends to exist in areas with high student or employer demand (where it is an advantage to have more rather than fewer providers) and/or low regional supply. The latter has typically encouraged four-year universities to offer associate degrees. Stakeholders pay too little attention to the creative partnerships that exist where institutions in different sectors collaborate, bringing their distinctive competencies to bear in partnerships that deliver real advantage to their students.
3. Our baccalaureate degree programs ground our graduates in a critically important general education. That means they combine the soft skills that employers look for most (communications, critical thinking, problem-solving) and familiarity with some of the theoretical and technical constructs of disciplines that lead directly to high-demand occupations. That blend—enhanced by great faculty who help students learn how to think and create—lends to the distinctive value of a State System university undergraduate degree. Additionally, we see universities collaborating more and more to retain—actually broaden—opportunities in low-enrolled but vitally essential programs in the arts and humanities and certain STEM disciplines. University integrations in the northeast and west will accelerate the trend, as will the System’s recent investment in a single student information system—a technology platform that will allow us to realize two of our greatest and as yet largely untapped potentials as a System:

• ensuring students anywhere have access to courses and programs everywhere, and
• enabling a greater breadth of program and faculty expertise in low-enrolled and specialized domains than any single State System university could possibly afford based on its own enrollments.
  
  

In sum, our program array evolves to track workforce demand because we are good at what we do. We listen by engaging with our communities, our students, our employers, and our state owners. In doing so, we learn about demands and needs that are going unmet.

We innovate to meet those needs.

We hustle.

If you ever doubt this, have a look at your favorite university program. If the program you are looking at is of recent origin, you’ll see entrepreneurialism and passion combined with rigorous and careful analysis and planning focusing on student and market demand, program viability, and, yes, on cost and revenue. Somewhere near its origin, you’ll find a small cadre comprising mostly faculty and often energized by a single entrepreneurial individual, who is able to articulate demand and translate it into actions that capitalize on opportunity.

There are a lot of great stories to be told about the learning experiences our universities provide. Collectively, our universities offer nearly 800 undergraduate, 300 graduate, and over 200 certificate programs across more than 250 academic areas. They are responsive to real and pressing societal needs and produce the talent that drives Pennsylvania’s workforce. Let me focus here on four of the newer and more uncommon ones that may come to characterize many in the next generation:

• Cheyney University’s Workforce Enhancement Network in Cybersecurity is a partnership between the university and employers AT&T and PSECU. It offers a short-course certificate program that qualifies completers for skilled and highly under-supplied entry-level roles in the IT space. The program helps employers fill an acute regional talent gap while at the same time diversifying their employee base. The program also provides working learners with sub-baccalaureate credentials that offer instant access to high-demand jobs and thus an initial foothold on a career development (and associated social mobility) ladder. From this initial foothold working, learners have clear pathways to more advanced certifications, leading to career advancement (and ultimately university degrees).
• Clarion University’s award-winning 2-year Plastics Process Technician Apprenticeship program was designed by 12 regional plastics manufacturers to bridge a specific and real skills gap in northwestern Pennsylvania’s manufacturing workforce. A great advantage of this program is that employers supply credit-bearing apprenticeships to enrolled students allowing them to earn while learning and effectively aggregating employer demand to “pull” students through the program.
• Shippensburg University partners with the supermarket chain, Giant, and higher education providers (Harrisburg Area Community College and Harrisburg University) to upskill current Giant and other employees in various competencies required in modern supply chain management through a variety of credentialing programs developed in coordination with the company.
• Millersville University’s Registered Behavioral Certification program provides onramps for immigrants and refugees into entry-level roles that pay sustaining wages while filling an urgent regional talent gap. In partnership with employers, the program guarantees students a job interview upon completing a certificate.

So, what distinguishes these programs? What are their salient characteristics? Why are they important as potential growth areas? Six things:

1. They focus on non-degree credentials involving shorter bursts of learning, anywhere from six weeks to two years. As such, they provide opportunities for working learners to increase their earning power without committing to the time and expense required for an undergraduate or post-baccalaureate degree.
2. They result in industry-recognized credentials that employers acknowledge as bestowing upon their holder the competencies and skillsets required to perform effectively in a particular role or category of roles. Industry recognition is essential in building an effective “market” for these degrees. It provides employers with the confidence they need in credential holders and—as importantly—offers prospective students with the confidence they require that the time and expense involved in acquiring the credential will be returned in increased marketability and/or earnings.
3. They engage employers as partners in a variety of ways:
   a. identifying competencies and skillsets around which credentialing programs are designed;
   b. providing financial incentives for prospective students, notably in the form of credit-bearing apprenticeships and/or jobs for credential holders; and
   c. providing a pipeline for students, notably where employers offer tuition assistance to their employees who enroll in the credentialing programs to re-skill or upskill.
4. They enable social mobility in at least two ways:
   a. As short courses, they do not require the time or financial commitment of a degree program and, accordingly, are available to low-income, working, and other students whose life circumstances do not otherwise position them to participate in and reap the benefits of a post-secondary education; and
   b. Where credentials “stack” upon one another as parts of well-developed pathways, they allow working learners to continue their educational journeys and expand their workforce participation and earning power throughout a lifetime.
5. They meet students where they are in their working and learning journeys. This effort is especially important for non-traditional students who may not have the academic preparedness necessary to succeed immediately in a college degree program. Further, students enrolled in most of these programs earn while they are learning, and most will have jobs upon completion.
6. They expand upon and enhance the regional character of our universities because they are responsive to regional needs, and universities develop them in partnership with regional employers and others.

Does any of the above mean I think State System universities will or even should shift wholesale to the supply of workforce aligned non-degree credentialing programs? Hardly. But I do believe that such programs:

• support the economic health and competitiveness of all regions in our Commonwealth;
• enable more people to participate effectively in the 21st-century economy and to become socially mobile than would otherwise have an opportunity to do so;
• reflect and grow the stewardship and care our universities have always shown to their regions;
• reflect the entrepreneurial character that has historically driven continued innovation in and relevance of our universities; and
• supplement—and in many cases grow directly out of and/or build upon—core capabilities in undergraduate and post-graduate degree programs.

In all these ways, such credentialing programs are a natural outgrowth of our genesis, another chapter in the constantly evolving story of our educational programming, and—as Pennsylvania’s only public university system—a responsibility associated with our service to the Commonwealth.