The choices we make

As I approach the end of more than six years as chancellor, I remain in awe of PASSHE’s power as an engine of social mobility and workforce development for all Pennsylvanians and its potential to advance its historic mission against all headwinds.

In so many ways, these state-owned universities have changed little since I first visited them in the fall of 2018. They are today as they were then: each is amazing and beautiful in distinctive ways. Each is populated with incredible people – faculty and staff who are devoted to the mission, damned good at what they do – students who are excited to engage, learn, and grow.

Yet, in so many ways, they have also changed profoundly. Need evidence? Look at the usual “input” and “output” numbers. System enrollment, having slid for more than a decade, is stable; student retention and graduation rates have improved. And having had the honor of never once recommending a tuition increase, our net average price of attendance has declined by nearly 25% in inflation-adjusted dollars, thanks to you, members of the Board, for your courage, and to two governors and several sessions of the General Assembly.

Changes are also apparent as universities respond to Pennsylvania’s urgent need for an adult population with the skills and abilities to sustain its economic competitiveness, health, and well-being.

Let us not forget that sixty percent of today’s jobs in this commonwealth require a postsecondary education, which only fifty-one percent of adults have. And there aren’t enough traditional PASSHE students – high school graduates – to educate into those jobs.

So, what are PASSHE universities doing by way of response?

They are opening their doors to new groups of students, reaching well beyond the “traditional” ones we have served so well for decades. We see growth in:

• dual enrollment programs for high school students;
• strengthened community college transfer and dual enrollment programs;
• degree-completion programs for the million-plus Pennsylvanians who once attended college but did not complete their degree;
• non-degree credentials (taking months, not years), enabling people to upskill and re-skill to improve their competitiveness in the changing worlds of work; and
• bespoke programs that help employers recruit, retain, and develop their workforce.

Changes in educational delivery—notably growth in the number of students enrolled in fully online programs—also reflect our interest in serving new student groups, including those lacking the ability or interest in face-to-face residential education.

Student support is changing so we can scaffold everyone’s success. This is apparent in support for students with insecure housing and food sources, improved academic prep for students entering or returning to postsecondary education, and the availability of “navigators” who help students find the resources and support they need (when needed) to succeed.

The system has also changed. Universities now work together with servant-leadership support from the system office to increase efficiency, improve service quality, and learn more rapidly how to evolve to meet the changing needs of students, their employers, and communities. They share many commonly required back-office services (payroll, HR, benefits, procurement) that drive down costs.

Ok. Big yawn. That’s pretty typical in today’s university systems.

Far less typically, they build “front-office” shared services—notably program and course sharing—to expand student opportunities. That’s a game-changer. Imagine what we can do for Pennsylvanians when any student anywhere in the system can access programs and courses everywhere.

Three other systemwide efforts stand out above others owing to their tremendous potential to position us powerfully to advance into the future in the interest of our students and the state:

1. PASSHE universities are working together to document and support employees’ adoption of high-impact practices that improve organizational performance and student outcomes. We began with budget and program management and have moved on to student-facing educational functions.
2. Using data, PASSHE universities ensure that credentialing programs respond to employee, student, and demographic demand; student support is targeted to help more people make it into and through their education and into a good job; and faculty and staff have information they need to perform at the highest level.
3. System governance is equipped with the incentives and accountabilities that advance the Board’s priorities – ensuring more people are able affordably to engage in and complete a credential that can advance their careers, and the system’s universities are managed effectively, transparently, and in a financially sustainable manner.

PASSHE’s transformation story over the past six years demonstrates that higher education’s future is shaped – but not determined – by political, demographic, technological, and other sectoral trends beyond its control. It shows that the choices people make matter.

Making good choices:

• faculty and student-facing employees continually evolve their practice to help more students succeed;
• university leaders mobilize followership behind clearly articulated, analytically derived, and data-driven strategies, ensuring their universities keep pace with rapidly changing student and workforce needs;
• universities work together as part of a system to accelerate each other’s progress, build on strengths, and shore up weaknesses; and
• state elected officials make policy and budget decisions that strengthen public higher education as an engine of workforce development and social mobility.

Yes. We can.

Actually: “Yes. We do.”

The transformation story also suggests that higher education can tackle the most difficult and complex challenges – even the seemingly intractable ones.

I’m frequently asked what the most important thing is that I’ve learned at PASSHE.

My answer? The obstacles typically thrown in the way of change (“we can’t do that because...”) are mirages.

Where necessary reforms are constrained by policy, we change the policy; where impeded by employee capability, we invest in professional development; where constrained by law, we sometimes even change the law.

I’m also asked what, if anything, will stand in the way of continuing progress. As a trained historian, I’m loathed to make predictions. But if I had to, I’d say that inertia coupled with the absence of any collective sense of urgency is the greatest challenge.

It doesn’t need to be.

Remember March 2020 when the global pandemic taught us that universities offering face-to-face and residential education are designed to accelerate the spread of lethal airborne disease? Social distancing, it turns out, is orthogonal to their operating model. And so, in a matter of weeks, faculty and staff re-imagined and retooled the operating model at every level of the organization.

What the general public saw was just the tip of that iceberg—students learning remotely via synchronous web-based applications. Below the waterline was a comprehensive, largely invisible re-crafting of supportive policy, operational, contractual, and regulatory environments. (Like you and most folks in higher education, I’m exhausted just remembering it.)

Still, that experience shows us what we can do when we have a collective sense of urgency. Can we achieve a similarly transformational level of urgency without the threat of a global pandemic?

I wonder. I hope so.

Why? Because the need for continued transformation is, well, urgent.

• The tsunami of disruptive change associated with AI is here – its headwaters are already crashing down on our shores.
• Our business model is still broken. Sure, PASSHE’s tremendous and difficult work financially stabilizing the system, and its universities bought us a little time but not salvation. In what time we have, our universities must choose what students they serve and then equip themselves, accordingly, retooling aggressively if they decide to serve a more comprehensive array of students or downsizing significantly if they remain primarily serving traditional students.
• The partnership with our owners—the state—has been strengthened, and like any partnership, it requires constant nurturing, care, and attention. Unlike many partnerships, it is susceptible to economic cycles, suggesting we should reimagine ourselves in ways that protect us when our partner finds it difficult.
• Competition intensifies as universities and colleges aggressively seek to attract the same students to enroll. And guess what? They are choosing from the same relatively small set of strategic options we are considering.
• And the public’s trust in higher education is in freefall.

Time is not our friend when addressing these challenges.

Looking across the national landscape, it is clear that the swift and agile higher education institutions will effectively address these issues. By so doing, they will win the race to higher, sustaining ground while better serving their students and communities.

Others will wither. Some will be consumed, and others will disappear. Sadly, many will be left as shadows of their former selves, lurching through crises against a backdrop of constant and severe recession management. Sure, legacy, history, a misplaced sense of entitlement, and political connectivity may help a few, but probably not very much and not for long.

And the stakes in this race? They couldn’t be higher.

I fear it is possible that the postsecondary education sector will double down on reifying privilege and widening social inequality. While I believe the arc of history remains tilted in that direction, we can bend it.

The past is not prologue; the future is the cumulative effect of individual choices, and choices have consequences. PASSHE’s transformation story to-date has confirmed that conviction. Change is possible, and that fuels and sustains my irrepressible optimism.

Thank you for this tremendous opportunity to serve. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with and learn from you — faculty, staff, trustees, presidents, board members, system office and university colleagues, our elected officials, and — above all — our students.

Know for a fact that I will follow your progress from afar (though I’m not sure that description is entirely accurate for old uptown Harrisburg, which is about a mile and a half from where we sit).

And, as ever, we have a lot to do. So, onwards.