Thursday, February 15, 2024

Message to Faculty and Staff

Dear PASSHE Colleagues:   

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Millersville University with Dr. Khalid Mumin, Pennsylvania’s secretary of education; Dr. Kate Shaw, deputy secretary and commissioner for postsecondary and higher education; and Dr. Daniel Wubah, Millersville’s president. Meeting with students pursuing various majors in the College of Science and Technology, we saw first-hand how the university partners with high schools, community colleges, and regional employers to develop degree pathways that lead to jobs in high demand in and around central Pennsylvania.

Students spoke about their experiences — reflecting on internships and other work-based learning opportunities. Faculty spoke about the innovations they were introducing to support students traveling along these pathways. Employers spoke to the critical role Millersville plays in helping them to recruit and keep talent in Pennsylvania. And we saw from their perspectives the value of degrees grounded in a general education. It was a fantastic day because it shone a bright light on the energy and dynamism that is apparent across all of our PASSHE universities. We are relevant, we are current, we are energetic, entrepreneurial, and focused on quality, and yes, we are open for business!                  

We also know change isn’t easy. We realize this from many perspectives, but here I will focus on our work lives and the tectonic shifts they have undergone. I think about the significant shifts that have occurred just in my career and am gobsmacked by the breadth of areas in academe that have seen transformation. Thirty-five years ago, when I started as a newly minted faculty member at Glasgow University in Scotland, I was working at a 573-year-old university teaching in a field that focused on the past. Student grades were expressed as Greek letters for which there were no numerical equivalents (to what would you equate a “beta double minus” or even more problematically an “alpha gamma” – perhaps connoting flashes of brilliance but sloppily presented?).         

The World Wide Web was a year or two away from being created, the library was accessible via a card catalog, and while email existed, access to it from home required a noisy (and scarce) dial-up modem. There was “remote connectivity” (it was called a phone). And there were biofuels (known quaintly as “wood”).         

Work life was idyllic. It was simple. 

Yet, my interest in understanding how systems-thinking can catalyze learning would lead me to undertake very different roles that I had never imagined before, things like building data archives and digital libraries, investing in nationwide higher education reforms to improve higher education access and outcomes for historically underserved people, and leveraging the connective and collective power of systems to help all students. Soon, I found myself as a scholar of history — one who studied the immutable and settled (if still vigorously debated) — now focused on the future and the changes it brings.       

Work life got more complicated.       

Amid change, we ask how we can be resilient without becoming cynical. How can we empathize with those involved or impacted by the work? How can we share reflections with and learn from peers making similar journeys — giving voice to uncertainty and doubt — without undermining standing? How can we do this without denying our physical, psychological, and emotional health?       

At our recent Board of Governors meeting, our West Chester colleague Dr. Tina Chiarelli Helminiak — Tina serves as the faculty liaison to our Board by virtue of her role as chair of the PASSHE Faculty Council — spoke about the importance of acknowledging the hard work everyone has done to cope with the transformational changes we are seeing in higher education nationally and here at home in our State System. And she is right.        

I hit on the same set of themes in my remarks to the Board, drawing from my inaugural address in January 2019, in which I reflected on what I had learned from my first 14-campus PASSHE tour. Here’s what I said then: 

I found an amazing collection of institutions populated by incredible people — students, faculty, and staff who take quite seriously why they are there and have immense pride in our mission. 

I found universities that provide engaging experiences you see at the best liberal arts colleges, only at a public university price.

I found universities that are unique in the educational programs they offer. Their distinctiveness stands out in quiet, confident defiance of a misguided, inaccurate public narrative that we are somehow all the same.  

I found universities that are responsive to changing societal needs. Again, defying a different public narrative, they offer a broad array of educational opportunities, focused increasingly on those aligned with employer needs — in healthcare, business, STEM, and other areas.  

I found universities that house some of the most innovative practices I have seen in higher education. I’ve seen a lot in a 35-year career self-consciously located on the leading edge.

And above all, I found a profound sense of optimism amongst people – our faculty and staff who had at that stage experienced deep cumulative budget cuts for over a decade — but who nonetheless had a desire to hope and to create our future—not only to survive, but to thrive.         

Five years and many more campus tours later — through all the shift, change, pandemic and recovery, and integration — I find the very same things to be true. I feel the very same way.          

And at the same time, I recognize and won’t ignore the fact that the level and pace of change we have experienced and that you have managed through also brings exhaustion, burnout, and some level of fear. That is real and will undoubtedly re-surface as conversations initiated by Governor Shapiro take place about how public higher education evolves in the state. (You can read more about his proposals for higher education HERE.)     

In case it is helpful, here is what I plan to do as those conversations unfold: remain focused on two things — 1) what is best for the students of Pennsylvania, and 2) how can I best support you — my colleagues, our faculty and staff — in the work. These two objectives work hand-in-glove and will remain at the forefront for me as the commonwealth considers the future framework for public higher education.         

The Governor has said this is the start of the discussion, which could take quite a while because this scale of change does not happen quickly. Let’s remember this is a marathon, not a sprint.

One further point I must add. In speaking to a new vision for public higher education in Pennsylvania, references have been made to the commonwealth’s broader higher education system as being broken. I don’t need to have a point of view on that, but what I know for a fact is that you — the people who have built our universities and our system and who run them and who work in them in service to our students, their communities, and employers are not broken. You are underserved, maybe, with regard to public investment, but you a not broken. Not by a long shot. You are tremendous, and today, I am as proud and admiring of what you do as I was the first time I had the privilege of touring our campuses.   

We do not live in an acknowledgment culture. I regret that, but I won’t bend to it.          

Thank you for everything you do, for the commitment you show to your university, our system, our students, and this commonwealth — each of you plays a critical role in shaping our future.

With much appreciation and the deepest gratitude,    

Dan

Friday, January 26, 2024

A bold idea worthy of attention

In my last blog I explained how universities and colleges like ours are adapting creatively to the tremendous financial, political, and demographic pressures that are bearing down on them. They are re-imagining themselves at a rate and pace that is unheard of in higher education, in order that they may continue as essential engines of workforce development, social mobility, and a more accepting and civil society. 

As a follow up, I want to share some thoughts about Governor Josh Shapiro’s proposal for major enhancements to Pennsylvania’s public higher education sector – namely the ten PASSHE universities and the state’s 15 community colleges. In a nutshell, it seeks to leverage the strengths of these very institutions to accelerate the pace of innovation we are seeing here in support of students, their communities, employers, and the state. 

First, the Governor’s proposal would drive substantially more investment into PASSHE universities and into the community colleges, making them significantly more affordable for Pennsylvanians. That is key to filling the state’s talent gap because these institutions serve nearly half of all low-income (Pell eligible) students in the state. What’s more, these students make up more than a third of enrollments at PASSHE universities and community colleges — a far greater percentage than in other sectors.  

Currently, the state is 49th nationally in its investment in higher education. Despite this, these institutions consistently deliver the most affordable, high-quality education options for students and a strong talent pipeline for the state. We are good at what we do in a way that testifies to the quality of our faculty and staff – their creativity and commitment. Imagine what we could accomplish if the state invested more in our work and in our students. 

Second, the proposal seeks to create an entirely new system that would include all 25 institutions as equal members. What a tremendous opportunity.   

Systems can be enormously powerful. PASSHE is a great example. Our universities have worked as a system to drive innovation that has expanded opportunities for students, grown enrollment, and improved metrics — all while controlling costs. Working as a system, our PASSHE universities have partnered effectively with the state to increase funding, enabling us to keep tuition frozen for six consecutive years — a rare accomplishment in public higher education.  

We are all incredibly proud of the progress our PASSHE universities have made, but there’s only so much we can do by ourselves. Imagine what we might accomplish as part of a new system involving our universities and community colleges working together. If done right, this new system can transform how PA delivers public higher education, strengthen our economy, provide pathways for all into and beyond the middle class.  

Change is complicated. It engenders all sorts of emotions: excitement, wonder, intrigue, curiosity, apprehension, and more. So you know, I feel excitement about creating an even more effective higher education system; intrigue about what it will take to bring together 25 unique colleges and universities under one, new umbrella; curiosity about how we can tap into the best of what we know and do and leverage it toward something even better.    

As the governor has said, this is the start of a conversation that will result in a detailed plan. And the details matter. No doubt these will be difficult conversations that require us to ask difficult questions of each other and of ourselves.   

I’m an historian by training, so I feel more comfortable reviewing the past than predicting the future. Still, I can’t help but think that these courageous conversations will present real opportunities for Pennsylvania and the students we serve.  

And as an historian, I’ve observed that moments of true transformation are about convergence – the combination of people, ideas, and time. I believe that we have the people.  We have the ideas.  And now – now is the time.   

Dan 

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Amid the national higher ed swirl, we stand together

Entering into a new calendar year affords an opportunity to reflect on higher education – our shared practice, mission, and passion. Such reflection occupied a good deal of my time during the recent holiday break.

For me, it’s a process. It’s richly informed by my PASSHE experiences and engagements with other universities, colleges, and entities operating in and around higher education. Inputs also include the research reports, articles, and books I consume voraciously when my schedule permits.

To my surprise, I kept bumping up against “disruptive innovation” – a concept I thought had diminished its hold over the “higher ed imagination.” Harvard’s Clayton Christensen developed disruptive innovation decades ago in The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997). It characterizes how small-scale participants in an existing market can compete effectively with large-scale players – even overturn their hold over the marketplace – by introducing new technologies or approaches that give them reach into underserved markets. In The Innovative University (2011), Christensen applied the concept to higher education. He argued that online learning would enable new higher ed providers to challenge existing ones by serving student markets at lower cost and by reaching into new markets. As a result of disruptive innovation, Christensen believed that many higher education institutions would ultimately close.

Christensen was only partly correct. Online learning has changed higher education fundamentally as it has become part of the very fabric at many institutions. When done well and by design, its acceptance by students, faculty, and administrators as a viable, quality means of instructional delivery has grown consistently since 2002, when Babson College started measuring such things. Unsurprisingly, use of online modalities grew consistently, with growth acceleration during and after the pandemic.

Enrollments at large-scale online institutions show no signs of receding, while the footprint of online learning at more traditionally oriented universities and colleges also continues to expand. But online learning has not proven to be the disruptive innovation that Christensen predicted it would be. Yes, there has been a steady uptick in the number of college closures, but nothing that yet heralds the more massive movement he expected. As a consequence, discussion about disruptive innovation in higher education moved onto a back burner a few years ago.

So why did I keep bumping into it over the holiday? Why do I enter the new year wondering whether it is back now with a vengeance, and likely with more staying power? I haven’t nailed that down yet, so here’s a “drafty” best guess.

In The Abundant University (2023), Michael D. Smith argues that the advance of online learning was necessary but insufficient to disrupt the higher education industry (obviously). It significantly expanded the reach of education providers. Still, it did not undermine their monopoly hold over postsecondary education and the awarding of degrees and credentials that employers use as proxies for the competencies they seek in their hires. Smith asks what happens: 
  • When employers engage in skills-based hiring and look for real (rather than proxy) assessments of people’s competencies, whether through examinations used as part of the hiring process and/or with reference to skills-aligned non-degree credentials?
  • When the market for skills-aligned non-degree credentials explodes and includes new actors such as Google and LinkedIn, whose tremendous reach and name recognition reduce to almost nothing the marginal cost of each new credential they produce, and the marketing required to get a student to enroll in the credentialing course or pathway?
Smith isn’t speculating about things that might happen. He is speaking directly to trends that are gaining significant traction right now. A 2023 survey of 800 employers found that 55 percent had eliminated degree requirements for some job positions in 2024 and 45 percent planned to do so in 2024.

Some topics Smith does not address directly are also germane.

The confidence that Americans have in higher education is slipping. Buckle your seatbelts. A 2023 report by Gallup leads with this: “Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%).” Confidence is weaker among self-identified Republicans than among Democrats, but the differences are trivial. Americans’ confidence in higher education is not a partisan issue.

I have addressed this phenomenon before and put it down to a combination of factors. For example, the rising price of higher education puts it out of reach for low- and middle-income individuals, many of whom are disappointed, even angry, and feeling left behind in an economy that increasingly and in gross disproportion benefits the rich. (Arlie Russell Hochschild’s 2016 work Strangers in Their Land is brilliant on this last point.)

Another factor contributing to waning public trust is that higher education issues are getting swept up more frequently in the rough-and-tumble of partisan contests. As a result, higher ed’s reputation has suffered from attacks coming from both left and right along the political spectrum. And it doesn’t appear to matter that those attacks glom onto issues that are highly localized to a specific region of the country or a particular small corner of our vastly diverse industry. We are all painted with the same brush in the public’s mind. We are all Harvard. We are all New College. We are all Michigan State. We are all Missouri.

Recent developments have only exacerbated these confidence-busting and politically polarizing tendencies. Research by economists Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman shows how ruthlessly efficient elite universities are at reproducing privilege in this country. It’s been raising eyebrows among higher education insiders for some time, with occasional play being made with the content in the media (for example, in this article in Forbes). And it has served as background to attacks, again from both left and right, on higher education with respect to its diffidence, irrelevance, and elitism. Reactions to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing response — whatever you think of them — dumped a boatload of fuel on those burning embers.

I haven’t even touched on artificial intelligence, which already is rocking our world and will continue to do so in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. But for those interested in a little foray, have a look at ChatGPT’s response to the prompt I gave it earlier today: “What is disruption theory and how does it apply to higher education?”



I could go on, but I won’t because I want to get to the countervailing argument that I made with myself as I kept bumping into disruptive innovation. (And yes, I admit that Chancellor Dan does not require an audience to engage in the Socratic method, even though the method, by definition, appears to require one.)

My countervailing argument is based on my experience at PASSHE. More precisely, it is based on you, on the work you do in support of our students, in support of our mission as an engine of workforce development, social mobility, and a more civil, tolerant, and generous society. That work is tremendously impactful. It changes lives, saves some, and lifts up whole communities. It counters at every level the skepticism, cynicism, anger, and distrust swirling around higher education, amplifying potential for the industry’s disruption.

Our work – your work – is not performed in service to the one percent. The work is performed as per our birthright – for all Pennsylvanians. And you are damned good at what you do, by any measure. I’m partial to measures showing us how students who enroll from households in the lowest income quintile earn about as much 10 years after graduating as those from higher income quintiles. I’m partial to measures that show when we layer race/ethnicity onto that equation, we get a comparable result. Are there gaps in student outcomes? Yes, there are, particularly with regard to student persistence and graduation rates. They are large and unacceptable, and they exist between black/brown and white students, between wealthy and less wealthy students, and between rural and urban students. At the same time, we are dedicated to attacking these gaps and making progress – not swiftly enough for any of us, I know, but we are making progress, nonetheless.

We have a great deal more to do. But let us be clear, that report refers as much to our energy, dedication, and even innovation in these areas as it does to the scale of the hill that remains for us to climb.

Our work – your work – is closely aligned with employers’ needs. It is career-aligned. It always has been. We were born as teachers’ colleges, for goodness’ sake, and last I checked, teaching is a career. Obviously, the world has moved on, and the communities we serve require a great deal more than teachers. They need – and we produce – healthcare workers, business professionals, engineers and scientists, designers, artists, librarians, and more. They need, and we produce, people who can think creatively, communicate effectively, and work collaboratively as part of teams – skills that our graduates master in part because our programs are grounded in a general education that fosters those skills.

We don’t sit idly by, clinging to past accomplishments as the labor market changes. No. We evolve our programs continuously, because we are the people’s universities operating in service to all of Pennsylvania. You can track that evolution at the university level – I do – and see how changes in university degree programs reflect employers’ changing needs in the regions we serve.

And we continue to respond as employer needs continue to change. Employers we serve are increasingly turning to skills-based hiring. In response, many of our universities are integrating career-aligned non-degree credentials into their degree programs. Some are making such credentials available to non-degree students. The level of innovation is high, it is inspiring, and it is proceeding apace.

East Stroudsburg University is doing great using badges to acknowledge students who master employer-defined skills in specific areas of business, teaching, and sports science. Kutztown University is working with Coursera, through which students will have access to as many as 300 employer-recognized credentials they can pursue at no cost to themselves, thereby increasing their viability in the labor market. Through our partnership with Grow with Google – a partnership launched only last fall – our universities have enrolled nearly 700 students (350 of them unique learners) in courses that lead directly to high-demand credentials.

Our work – your work – is responsive to students’ ever-changing needs. I am acutely aware, as you are, of the challenges our students face, the pressures they are under, the level and breadth of anxiety they deal with as they navigate their lives, our universities, and their careers. Everything we see in the research literature speaks to the importance of highly personalized forms of student engagement – engagement tailored to a student’s specific needs whether performed online, face to face, or in some hybrid modality.

This work is awfully hard to do, especially as we engage more students from underserved markets. The increasing diversification of our student body and our program offerings defies a one-size-fits-all delivery model. And here, too, we’re pretty damned good – you’re pretty damned good. In the past several months, I’ve visited with faculty who are engaging students in research projects that are meaningful societally and tremendously powerful as opportunities for individual growth.

I’ve spoken with colleagues at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who are engaging proactively in a holistic approach to student success, ensuring that every student has access to a human navigator who can connect them with the resources they need to succeed in their very individualized educational journeys. (“Success coaches” and other related terms are used at other of our universities also pursuing this path.) I am inspired by the work our colleagues at PennWest Clarion are doing with the using a novel approach to “emergency aid” – an approach that helps students in need have instant access to the dollars they need to keep them from stopping out.

Our work – your work – is supported with hard-earned dollars received from students and from Pennsylvania taxpayers. Accordingly, and respectfully, you undertake that work with careful stewardship. Here too you have excelled, though the work has been especially challenging. In 2019, our universities adopted a standard budgeting process to get a more accurate picture of our financial circumstances. Initial results became available in Fall 2019 and showed six of our (then) 14 universities were spending beyond their means and dipping routinely into reserves to balance budgets. One of the six had exhausted its reserves and was relying on the others for extensive cross subsidy; four others were headed rapidly in that direction. Worse, the data showed the System careening toward a $160 million structural deficit that, if left unaddressed, would have exhausted our scarce reserves by 2027.

Today, structural deficits of that proportional magnitude are all too commonplace in higher education. They are showing up in like Arizona, California, West Virginia, and at other universities in Pennsylvania, just to name a few. In some ways, PASSHE was fortunate to have identified its deficit sooner rather than later, and to have acted swiftly to address it.

Four years later and because of your hard work, the System is more financially stable. That work has been rewarded by the General Assembly, which approved unprecedented back-to-back increases in state appropriations totaling 22%, as well as significant one-time investments including funds for unmanageable legacy debt burden. And the work was rewarded more recently by the credit rating agency, Moody’s, which raised PASSHE’s credit outlook from negative to stable. Students have benefited directly too. They have not seen a tuition increase for six years and are beginning to benefit from expanded investment in student financial aid and student services, the impacts of which are beginning to show up now routinely in improved enrollment and retention trends.

This is cause for celebration. Yet it is too soon to let down our guard. All of our universities are recovering, but several remain in a weakened state. As such, they are particularly sensitive to exogenous shocks of even the smallest magnitude — fall enrollments or state appropriations that come in even slightly below expectations, or sudden and unmanageable cost increases, for example. The bipartisan political coalition that came together and is essential to continued relatively high levels of state support also requires our constant careful attention and nurturing. Should it fracture, then PASSHE’s state appropriations will fall back into the pattern of neglect that characterized the 2010s, or worse. We need to proceed together with caution and care.

Lastly, the work – your work – is constantly looking for new constructs that enable us to fulfill our mission while taking account of the very challenging demographic, financial, and political circumstances in which we find ourselves. Colleagues at Commonwealth University and PennWest are fundamentally re-thinking educational, business, and administrative approaches so all students, irrespective of campus location, have access to the broadest possible range of academic programs and student supports.

Their stories are beginning to appear, and they should be written, told, and seriously studied. The work involved in blending departments, aligning campus policies and practices, building whole new program arrays and course scheduling protocols is, well, more than heroic. And it has been done in ways that are smart as well as effective.

As another example of innovation, colleagues at Cheyney are implementing a model that promises to sustain the university into the future, utilizing a range of creative partnerships to do so. Their progress is significant, and it is grossly under-recognized, including by those in regulatory and accrediting circles. (Note: Before the break, Board of Governors Chair Cynthia Shapira and I drafted a letter to the university community expressing our admiration for their work and offering our support in solidarity.)

Like many others across our System, these are stories of grit, determination, creativity, and purpose. They testify to our evolution as a public higher education system, our public-mindedness, and to the qualities that should be recognized as fundamental to public higher education. They testify – you testify – to our power and our promise. And it is on that note that I enter this new year.

Wishing each and every one of you a happy and healthy 2024. I look forward to seeing you on campus.

Friday, December 8, 2023

Open Letter to the Cheyney University Community

Dear Cheyney University Community,  

As you know, just days before Thanksgiving, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education placed Cheyney University of Pennsylvania on probation with respect to its accreditation, claiming Cheyney was out of compliance with a number of the Commission’s standards. Not only was the action unexpected, it is deeply troubling to the System and especially to the Cheyney University community because — under President Walton’s leadership — Cheyney has made so much progress addressing challenges that nearly brought this proud and vital institution to its knees only a few years ago.  

Cheyney University is engaged in one of the most remarkable turnarounds in U.S. higher education today. The university’s progress is readily apparent in data on student enrollments and progression, and on its financial condition, all of which have improved over the past few years. It is also apparent in recent reviews conducted by two of Middle States’ own visiting teams, — both of which reported that Cheyney University appears to be in compliance with Middle States standards. 

While decisions taken by the Commission are necessarily made in private, when they overturn recommendations made by the Commission’s own visiting teams — without explanation — they raise concerns and questions that we trust Middle State will address as it considers President Walton’s request for reconsideration. Specifically, we echo the letter’s request that the Commission consider alternative responses before probationary status. We wonder why the Commission did not chose other tools in its toolbox. For example, it could have asked for more information, or issued a report requiring Cheyney to improve performance in selected areas, or issued a “warning” requiring Cheyney’s attention to specific issues.

Now, more than ever, we need to lock arms with, invest in, grow, and evolve our historically black colleges and universities ensuring that they survive and thrive into the 21st century. We have traveled together on this journey and admire the grit, the passion, and the determination you have embodied in pursuit of the mission. You are re-invigorating Cheyney University and succeeding in doing so against the stiffest odds. 

We feel privileged to be your partners and are tremendously proud of what you have accomplished, not simply in these recent and most trying years, but since the university’s founding in 1837. Please know that we are with you one hundred percent on this journey, standing shoulder to shoulder as — together  — we build an even brighter future for Cheyney and for our nation.  

Through all of this, we hope you will consider two things: first, take advantage of the forthcoming holidays to rest and restore. The work we are engaged in for Cheyney is hard, and it is demanding intellectually, emotionally, and even physically. We admire how you approach it with purpose, determination, and even with joy, but the strain is real. This is a marathon, not a sprint. So please look after yourselves.  

Second, please find a moment to reflect on and take pride in your accomplishments.  

Thank you for everything you do for Cheyney University and its students. Your work is as essential as it is impactful for our System, our commonwealth, and our country.

With admiration,

Cindy Shapira, Board of Governors Chair

Dan Greenstein, Chancellor 

Monday, July 31, 2023

Vesting in our collective success: Turning our minds to the future

Blogging has been on my mind for months, only the signal wasn’t getting to my fingers. Recent events transpired to change that. Perhaps it is the appearance of Sirius in the Canis Major constellation and the resulting onset of the dog days of summer. Perhaps it was the recent vote by the Board of Governors freezing tuition for an unprecedented fifth year in a row. Whatever, Clio is mercurial.     

At last, though, two topics: the first looks back on the year past with heartfelt gratitude, the second forward.    

The state budget passed by the House and Senate includes a 6% increase in PASSHE’s general fund appropriation, and the governor has indicated his intention to sign the bill. The investment enables the Board to freeze tuition, and it includes targeted support that will help to alleviate PennWest University’s legacy debt – a burden that produces a structural deficit beyond the university’s means to manage without risking service to its students and to students elsewhere across the commonwealth.     

We are grateful to the governor and the General Assembly, including legislative and committee leadership, as well as the House PASSHE Caucus. We are grateful to the elected officials who serve on PASSHE’s Board of Governors, representing their respective legislative caucuses. All were willing to roll up their sleeves and problem-solve with us about how best to ensure that affordable higher education pathways persist across the commonwealth’s state-owned universities. Their work and bipartisan commitment was critically important and reflects the power and continuing promise of our democratic form of government.    

There is no “I” in advocacy – it is a team sport. Accordingly, I was honored with colleagues at the Chancellor’s Office to support a team that included only the most exceptional “athletes” – our colleagues from APSCUF and AFSCME, our university presidents, and with and through them many of our trustees, a group of campus-based public relations professionals and, of course, our Board of Governors.     

Working closely together, we achieved clearly articulated, shared objectives. Forgive a “Dannerism,” but our advocacy efforts this year and last represent the very best of “systemness.” They utilized distinctive strengths distributed across our great System to achieve effects beyond the means of any one of our universities or constituencies to achieve on its own. 

Hold that thought while I address another topic, also in the vein of looking back and giving heartfelt thanks.    

From time to time, our Board of Governors hosts workshops exploring opportunities and challenges confronting our universities, faculty and students, and industry. Last week, we heard a presentation about work underway at PennWest, which is building one of only two universities created in Pennsylvania in the 21st century. (The other, you won’t be surprised, to learn, is our very own Commonwealth University.) Viewed through any perspective lens, PennWest is an inspiring turnaround story about grit and determination, a people’s commitment to mission, compassionate and focused leadership at every level across the organization, shared governance, identity, and re-imagining what a 21st-century university can and ought to be for its students, employees, and region. Interim President Bernotsky – who was joined by Edinboro’s APSCUF chapter president Dr. Sam Claster – told the story to the Board. It is not a new story to members of the PennWest community, who have lived it and shared in its making. But it was new to the Board and other workshop invitees, including university trustees and leaders of our collective bargaining units. Beyond the tremendous progress that is evident and the optimism and confidence it inspired about PennWest’s future, we learned a great deal about what it takes from all concerned to build a new university while operating an existing one, to fashion new identities – even cultures – while honoring inherited ones, to overcome tremendous obstacles, many of them structural, others unwittingly self-imposed, to work together toward the greater good of our students.    

I have worked in and around higher education for my entire professional life – nearly 40 years. I have never encountered such a selfless, intensely collaborative approach to problem-solving at enterprise – actually, existential – scale. Nor have I been as moved as much as I have been by colleagues at PennWest – by their tales from the front line about renaissance and re-invigoration, and about the most profound kinds of fatigue. I have visited PennWest multiple times, spent countless hours with community members in conference rooms, on Zoom and on phone calls. I am routinely humbled by my colleagues’ tenacity, compassion, and commitment. They all are writing a story that deserves to be told over and over again.     

While the good people of California, Clarion, and Edinboro are squarely at the center of this story, others featured in it and they also deserve and have my thanks. Staff who are on loan from West Chester University and the Chancellor’s Office have extensively supported PennWest’s tremendous advancement. And PennWest is supported generally by its sister PASSHE universities. They threw themselves behind an advocacy effort that put PennWest’s needs – notably for debt assumption – above their own and invested in real, measurable, and tangible ways in PennWest’s success. Both are tremendous acts of “systemness.”     

You don’t see that kind of thing very often in our industry. Collaboration is rife across higher education, but it typically engages individuals and groups who work together in areas where they are already aligned – evaluating new approaches to student success, sharing existing online courses, bringing like minds together to advance the benefits of the general education curriculum, working together in procurement to achieve better pricing.     

At PASSHE, we are experiencing what I will call “deep resource sharing” – where partners work together, committed to the success of the whole, sometimes foregoing their own needs in support of the common good. Throughout the entire campaign – and yes, it was a campaign – we saw the System come together like never before. Sure, there was a voice or two grousing – as there always are – from the parochial and predictable dark corners that refuse to come into the light and see that we are one system – with one bank account – and that helping stabilize one university now means helping everyone in the long-run. I was overwhelmed by the support and concern that the vast majority in our System has shown and its willingness to wrap arms around and stand shoulder to shoulder with PennWest, ensuring affordable, public higher education options exist for all.    

In looking forward, I’m conscious of completing my first tour of duty for the State System in the coming weeks and embarking on my second. I am grateful to and humbled by the Board for the confidence it has demonstrated in me by renewing my appointment. Upon reflection, a couple of themes spring to mind and are worth sharing. The first – and this should in no way minimize my gratitude to the governor and General Assembly for their support of their state-owned universities – a 6% increase in our state appropriation is fantastic. When coupled with a tuition freeze, though, it nets a 2% increase in our total revenues in a year when cost increases still exceed 3%. Put another way, to keep pace with inflation we require $64M in additional resources over and above what we had budgeted for last fall. We have netted $33M. To wit, in 2023-24 we are $31M short of anticipated cost increases not including increased labor costs (estimated last fall at 2%).

What does that mean? To me, it means two things. First, we will need to continue making difficult trade-off decisions. Such decisions are ultimately in the hands of university leadership working to accomplish their goals within the policy environment and operational parameters established by the Board of Governors. I expect those difficult decisions will be taken after consultation with key stakeholders and communicated effectively in a timely manner. I do not expect that difficult decisions will be the product of or reflect consensus. It’s great where that happens, but by their very nature, such decisions are rarely reached in a consensual manner.

Second, it means that we need to double down on growth. I’ve written about this extensively over the past several years, in part because growth is the long-term goal of our System Redesign. (The short-term one is financial stabilization across the System – something that we are closer to today than at any time in the recent past.) Growth is critical. The state requires us to grow. Today, 60% of all jobs in Pennsylvania require someone with some postsecondary education – credentials that only 51% of Pennsylvanians have. And the greatest demand is for people with B.A. and M.A. degrees in areas where we are strongest: business, healthcare, STEM, education, and public services. If you look at the number of credentials we’ve produced in those areas, we have been stable, maybe even grown a tad since 2010, when overall enrollments declined by nearly a third. Additionally, Pennsylvanians need us to grow. Postsecondary education is still the most reliable pathway into and beyond the middle class. Indeed, postsecondary attainment levels track directly with higher incomes and less exposure to unemployment as well as a variety of desirable health and other outcomes.    

There are two ways to grow. Enroll more students and grow the proportion of enrolled students who complete. We need to do both. As I keep saying any chance I get, where else will Pennsylvania get its nurses, its teachers, its business leaders, its science and public service professionals? How else does Pennsylvania fuel its Main Street economies?       

Growth is also imperative to address our financial challenges in a lasting way. As a wise and close-in advisor once told me, “Austerity is not a strategy.” Yes, of course, we should advocate for increased support from our owners. We have, we do, we shall. And we are making progress – so much so that we have held tuition flat for six years while at the same time more than doubling the amount universities make available to their students in the form of institutional aid. Our general fund appropriation has increased by 25% since 2018-19, and the level of state funding per student FTE is currently $7,674, which in inflation-adjusted dollars, is equivalent to per student funding reached in 2003-04. Great.     

But we must also be more aggressive in growing enrollment. So, I can’t help wondering what we could accomplish in enrollments if we work together there as effectively as we have worked these past few years in advocacy and supporting PennWest? What does working together mean in this new context? To me, it means vesting in our collective success at the university level first and foremost, because that is where students are – that is where they go. And yes, of course, there are System roles, and we should explore those, too.     

In my first weeks here almost five years ago, I had three conversations – two in person, one by email – that frankly surprised me. All offered explanations for the System’s already protracted experience of declining enrollments. One proffered that we’d have better retention and graduation rates if the administration enrolled better students (and there was I naively thinking we were privileged to work as public universities helping Pennsylvanians of all backgrounds realize their fullest potential). Another laid blame upon faculty for not engaging as effectively as they might with students we enrolled. (Call me old-fashioned, but I never believed that asking folks to just “do better” was an effective approach to continuous professional development or organizational performance improvement.) A third extolled the value of gateway courses, because they weeded out students who didn’t “belong” in college. (Silly me, I guess I believe in the profoundly democratic impulses of public regional universities and the thrust of the completion movement that swept over them two decades ago.)   

I’ve heard these memes before. It’s not as if they are unknown or unspoken in our industry and our sector. So rather than responding (not a strength – sitting on my hands), I focused my attention on other more pervasive (thank goodness) and more inspiring conversations that are truer reflections of our character and culture. Thus, as examples I remember and remember being profoundly proud of:     

  • A conversation at Slippery Rock with a group of faculty and staff who informed me with heads nodding all ‘round that enrollment management gets prospective students onto campus where “faculty close the deal.” 
  • A tour of West Chester’s Moon Shot for Equity Initiative, which represents a coordinated, analytically driven, all-hands approach to improving outcomes for academically at-risk students.  
  • A deep dive into how science students’ faculty-led research experiences at Lock Haven parlay faculty passions for both discipline and students into a profoundly effective tool for improving student engagement and success.   
  • A morning with Mansfield’s Public Safety Training Institute, where faculty and administration work closely with regional employers and others to design and deliver scarce safety and emergency response certifications. The institute is at once addressing employer and regional needs, creating robust pathways into meaningful careers while contributing significantly to enrollment.  
  • Our journey with Cheyney, which has demonstrated that you can “shrink to grow.”    

And then, of course, there’s PennWest, where the all-hands approach to enrollment management this past year is, touch wood, delivering far better than expected outcomes with new and returning students for Fall 2023. 

More demonstrable evidence that yes, we can – when we turn our minds to it. To that end, on the eve of my second tour of duty, I invite a conversation about what more we can do together to meet the state’s pressing workforce development needs, to serve our regions and employers even better, and – yes – to grow. Let’s begin with aspiration, if we can, not with constraint. I’m happy to discuss constraints, of course. It’s just that after five years, I’ve not encountered one constraint that was materially beyond our ability to relax if we chose. At least in my experience, our most oft-cited constraints are also of our own constructs.    

Let’s have a discussion about university and system approaches, and let’s be ambitious in our aspirations and reach. How do we work together to achieve growth? Can we offer material incentives or rewards to individuals or groups? Are there process changes or approaches we should consider that create safe places to try and sometimes fail? What can we do to increase the clock speed of our efforts (because with speculative ventures, it is better to know sooner rather than later, when we have expended fewer rather than more resources, about the likelihood of success)? How do we fund the journey? Do we hold out and wait for new money, risking being left behind by other universities and colleges that are also thinking as hard as we are about how to grow, or do we factor innovation for growth into already complex trade-off discussions? How do we articulate to prospective students the value proposition of attending a State System university? A recently published report shows we are known for being relatively affordable – indeed, that affordability is our most vital “selling point” to prospective students. Are there other selling points into which we ought to be leaning harder? What more can we do to raise our retention and graduation rates, engage our students, and make their experiences “stickier”? Presently, our student retention and graduation rates are average when compared to our like universities nationally. Call me biased, but in my view, we are anything but average. We are nothing short of extraordinary.     

Onward. 

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Purposeful Action

As a system of public universities, we have worked intently over the past four years to foster greater transparency, understanding, and confidence in our financial planning and reporting efforts. Today we have a multi-year comprehensive planning process (CPP) that provides a constant two- and three-year glimpse into what lies ahead. That has been a remarkably useful tool, but from time to time it is important for us to lift our eyes to the horizon and look even further down the road.

At the Feb. 15 Board of Governors workshop, we reviewed financial planning scenarios that run out to 2030. Extrapolating from university CPPs and grounded in our System Redesign priorities, the forecasting exercise can inform Board decisions and its ongoing evaluation of System progress.

As background for that conversation, I am circulating to you this summary of trends that will shape U.S. higher education in the years ahead, with links for those wanting to know more. To be clear, these trends will create headwinds. They also will create opportunities that smart institutions will take advantage of – strengthening themselves as engines of economic development and social mobility, expanding student and employee headcount, and securing themselves financially.

State System universities are well positioned in this regard, although our work will require purposeful attention to the continued evolution of educational and business models.

Let’s dig in.

SUMMARY OF U.S. HIGHER ED TRENDS:

TREND 1: Enrollment in U.S. higher education will remain under pressure.

University and college enrollments will continue to shrink in most regions, with less selective public four-year universities (like System universities) and community colleges losing the most ground. The high school leaving population – our traditional market – will contract by about 10% in Pennsylvania in the 10 years after 2026. The growing skepticism about the value of higher education won’t help. It reflects a variety of concerns having to do with the cost of a postsecondary education and the return available from that investment, notably in graduates’ earning power. There is a political dimension to the phenomenon – some are more skeptical than others – but the trend lines are nonetheless unfavorable for all, irrespective of political identity.

Also adding pressure on college enrollments are:
  • Employers who look beyond degrees as a measure of employee competency (this “emerging degree reset” is gaining ground and sweeping up large employers including Apple, Google, and IBM, and the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Utah).
  • Aggressive competition from public universities and systems that give in-state tuition to residents of contiguous states (a means by which SUNY doubled its applications for Fall 2023).

TREND 2: Institutions will compete hard along a few axes to counter declining enrollments.

1. Preserving/growing their share of a shrinking traditional market

A key to surviving the enrollment bust involves retaining and graduating more of the students that an institution enrolls. The greatest opportunities may exist for less selective universities, provided they can evolve and adopt pedagogical and student support practices that demonstrably engage students most effectively. PASSHE universities are ploughing this field hard and making progress thanks to a raft of innovations in both classroom and non-classroom settings, and thanks to the creativity and commitment of our faculty and staff. That work needs to continue, broaden, and ultimately accelerate. It may benefit significantly from formal employee professional development. A recent study of faculty professional development offered by the Association of College and University Educators found solid evidence of its positive impacts measured in terms of student course completion rates and learning outcomes, and a five-fold return on training investment.

2. Expanding degree completion programs for adult students with some college and no degree

In Pennsylvania, a million people over the age of 25 have some college but no degree. (There are 35-40 million nationwide.) Not all want to complete their degree, but some do – enough to spawn aggressive competition in degree-completion programs. Programs that award credit for prior learning and make educational, student support, and business and administrative functions available outside normal business hours are positioned well, along with those that offer remote learning options and adult-tailored supports (e.g., child care, as well as financial aid, career, academic, and other kinds of advising).

Recruiting, enrolling, and educating adults is something we do – adults account for about 12% of our student body, compared to 37% of the student body nationally. Scale requires evolution of our business, administrative, educational, and support functions in ways that advantage adult students and compete effectively with other institutions seeking to serve them.

3. Expanding availability of ‘non-degree credentials’ (NDCs)

As we will hear from two leading experts during our workshop on Feb. 15, the credentialing world is complicated. There are over a million unique credentials awarded by academic and non-academic providers. About a third of them are degrees (associate, bachelor’s, etc.) and certificates awarded by the nation’s 11,000 postsecondary providers – 4,300 of them eligible for Federal Title IV funding. The rest are available as certificates, badges, licenses, and other credentials from more than 50,000 providers.

Further, by any measure, the number of non-degree credentials (NDCs) produced each year now dwarfs the number of degrees produced. Driving growth are the cost of college degrees and skepticism about their value, employer willingness to use other measures of employee competence, and accelerating change in the world of work, which requires that earners constantly re-skill and up-skill in order to remain relevant in the job market. While media attention focuses more on non-traditional providers like LinkedIn and Coursera, universities and colleges are moving into this arena by offering NDCs to:

Degree-seeking students for competencies earned by completing credit-bearing courses (e.g., Credly badges awarded by ESU).

Non-degree students who are seeking specific industry-recognized skills, like those available at IUP’s Academy of Culinary Arts or in certificates available from Mansfield’s Public Safety Training Institute, for example.

Employees at partner organizations to which universities provide bespoke training. PASSHE universities offer more than 300 NDCs, but not at scale. Scaling up requires:

  • A credential registry – that is, a catalog of all the credentials we offer, degrees and non- degrees alike, and a strategy for expanding their number in a focused way, including by identifying credentials that can be made available to students by completing existing courses.
  • Marketing and student recruitment campaigns that leverage a growing catalog of NDCs and student-facing systems appropriate for non-degree students.
  • More (and more intensive) employer partnerships that build demand for NDCs, including through internships and tuition-assistance programs.
  • Expansion in credits made available for prior learning, including for NDCs.
  • A business model that supports competitive pricing in the non-degree market.

4. Emphasizing credentialing pathways over degrees

Lifelong learning has become an imperative. It is no longer reasonable to assume that someone can amass in a few years the full range of skills and competencies they need to participate effectively in the 21st-century economy. And yet, that assumption is what higher education degree structures and business models are largely built upon (see Carey, The End of College and Craig, A New U).

Credentialing pathways offer a solution. Pursuing them, working learners move back and forth between higher education and the workforce, acquiring credentials as they go and “stacking” them so that some of the credits earned count toward the award of the next credential(s).

Nursing pathways (depicted below) are commonplace, defined and largely standardized by professional accreditors operating in tandem with employers. Such pathways are being built for other industries by educators and employers working in partnership to define competencies required for critical industry roles, translating those competencies into credentials, and then offering credentials to students in ways that enable students to “stack” them just as nurses do as they build their careers.

PASSHE universities have experience in this regard. They partner, for example, in #Prepared4PA – an initiative that pairs education providers with employers in six major Pennsylvania industries to do the credential design and development work referenced above. Scale will build on work supporting adult degree-completion programs and the delivery of non- degree credentials. And it will require that State System universities use the aforementioned credential registry to show existing and prospective students how the degree and non-degree credentials that are available interact with one another and with those available from other providers to create career pathways.



 
5. Engaging even more aggressively with technology

A dozen years ago, technology was seen as a means of reaching into new markets. Today, it also promises improved student outcomes.
    • “Mega” universities that now enroll over 120,000 students annually (e.g., Southern New Hampshire, Grand Canyon, Liberty, Western Governors, and Arizona State universities); and
    • Universities and systems trying to break (late) into a crowded market for fully online degrees by acquiring for-profit providers (e.g., Purdue’s acquiring Kaplan), investing significantly in home-grown capability (e.g., UNC System’s $92M investment) or in partnership with online program managers that support fully online programs on the basis of revenue-sharing and/or fee-for-service models.
  • Technology use improving student outcomes is apparent in growth in the “adaptive courseware” market (think super-smart digital textbooks that adapt themselves to each user’s learning needs) and applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence (think “smart” technologies that mine vast wells of data and use other means to guide supports offered to students to assist in their educational journey). The vigorous debate about uses in higher education of ChatGPT (think super intelligent AI-driven authoring agent – yup, it will write your essays) is particularly illuminating in this regard.
PASSHE universities are fully used to technology adoption and adaptation. We’ve been doing it for decades. And we’ve learned that success requires employee professional development – something that can be in short supply for institutions experiencing enrollment declines and resulting financial pressures.


THE ROAD AHEAD

I have every confidence that PASSHE universities can translate headwinds into opportunity in these and other ways. I also believe we won’t be successful unless we are purposeful and aligned in our approach. So, in the interest of our expanding that alignment (and transparency), I offer four caveats:

1. We are not alone in considering the opportunities presented above. That’s a comfort. Our redesign priorities are now within the mainstream of contemporary higher education. It is also concerning. Competitors to whom we have lost market share since 2010 are not standing still.

2. We can’t assume our talented, mission-driven faculty and staff will simply figure out how to find, enroll, and graduate adult students, build and help students of all backgrounds navigate complicated lifelong learning pathways, and/or deploy the latest generation of technology to greatest effect. Adequately resourced investment in people, systems, processes, and practices will be critical.

3. We need to strike a balance in our portfolio of offerings – for example, between on- ground and online learning, degree and non-degree pathways, adult and traditional students. Balance builds resilience against further, future changes in one or another parts of the higher education marketplace. It also allows us to explore innovations deliberately, developing the necessary competencies over time with constant attention to indicators that help us determine where we might need to course correct.

4. We will need to attend to budgetary realities, even where we don’t like them. Two aspects here:

a. State support: I understand arguments that suggest we are letting our owners, the state, off the hook by living within our means and making the trade-offs in class size or program scope, for example. Better, it is said, to hold fast and demand more, and to heap the evidentiary basis of our demands on our owners, who are third worst in the nation in their support of a public higher education that delivers good and tangible results. While I agree with the need for aggressive and analytically driven advocacy, I struggle with the idea of digging in and waiting for the investment we sorely need. Our operating margins are thin at best, which means we don’t have a lot of time to wait. More worryingly, the students and employers and communities in our midst need our help now.

b. Use of existing resources: They will be the principle means of support for new endeavors. Here’s why: For nearly 60 years after World War II, funding flows into U.S. higher education allowed it to evolve additively – building new without dialing back much on existing. Even when per-student state funding came under pressure in the 1990s, overall revenue followed enrollments, both of which grew. All that changed when enrollments began to decline (for PASSHE, a dozen or so years ago). While there will always be opportunity to support innovation with new dollars, more reliable and lasting investment will come through the choices we make about how existing dollars are used – what scope of operations, programmatically and otherwise, we maintain while investing in the new.

The emphasis on choice requires a fundamental shift in mindset that operates at all levels – one that is neither comfortable nor easy to make. At the same time, the cost of not making this shift is real. It entails tying us to models of and markets for higher education that are declining in size and public trust and enthusiasm. As ever, choices matter, and thankfully, right now the choices are ours to make.

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

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.