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| English: The entrance to the headquarters of the California Community Colleges at 1102 Q Street in downtown Sacramento. This building is also home to the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement of the California Department of Justice. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-06-07/features/os-famu-hazing-james-ammons-20120607_1_trustees-trouble-confidence
California's community colleges are streamlining their managements:
For Immediate Release: June 7, 2012Contact:Edit Ruano, Full Court Press Communications O: 510-550-8176; C: 530-305-9427
California Needs Two Million More College Completions to Stay Economically CompetitiveReport from business and civic leaders outlines steps to improve higher education to better serve students and taxpayers even in tough economic timesLong Beach, CA – If current trends continue, California’s higher education system won’t produce the college degrees that the state needs to maintain its vitality and economic leadership, according to a report released today by business and civic leaders. The state’s public and private colleges and universities will graduate more than three million students with bachelor’s degrees and technical credentials between now and 2025, according to the report. However, the state will need more than five million to stay economically competitive, leaving a gap estimated at 2.3 million.
The new report, The Road Ahead: Higher Education, California’s Promise, and Our Future Economy, calls for streamlining community college management and increasing coordination across all types of colleges to fill this gap in degrees and technical credentials. The recommendations were developed by the California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy Council, a group of business and civic leaders who met over the past year to take stock of the higher education needs of the state.
“The greatest source of jobs for California comes from our residents’ talent and creativity,” said Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster and California Competes Council Chair. “On our present path, we will fall far short on the number of degrees and certifications necessary for our future economy. We must ensure that higher education equips Californians with the skills they need to succeed; it is those skills that will fuel the economy of the future,” he added.
, called on state officials to recognize that “we must embrace pragmatic solutions that help students make their way through college and compete in
California’s new economy. Our future economic growth depends on us preparing students for the high-skilled labor market. We need strong leaders who are willing to advance innovative solutions and insure accountability for the success of students and the state.”
Responding to the report’s findings, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, Superintendent-President of Long Beach City College, acknowledged some of the political barriers to change. “Colleges are complex organizations that value tradition and have entrenched interests which can make change difficult. But the status quo will not serve the interests of students, the taxpayers, or the economy. College leaders must accept the challenge of increasing the number of degree and certificate holders and embrace policy decisions that will help us confront that challenge.”
Council member Paul Hudson, Chairman of Broadway Federal BankAmong the proposals set forth by the Council is streamlining and improving community college management to better address the needs of students and to be more responsive to California’s economic and workforce needs. The group argues for both transforming the California Community College system office so it can more effectively lead the colleges in its purview, and restoring clear accountability for decision making to local boards and administrators to grow the number of degree and credential holders in the state.
The report also highlights the need for state policy makers to have a mechanism to help them prioritize funding to increase transfers, degrees and certificates across all state colleges and universities. That would be achieved by chartering an independent Higher Education Investment Board that would also take over responsibility for managing the state’s scholarship programs.
To view a fact sheet of the report’s findings, please visit http://bit.ly/cacomexec. To view the full report, please visit http://bit.ly/cacom. See below for quotes on the importance of this report for California’s business, civic and education leaders:
Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, California’s 6th District“Despite the hurdles of an economy still struggling to recover, we cannot sacrifice our state’s future. This report shows that we have a high bar to remain competitive on a national and global playing field and underscores the need to ensure we help students get where the economy needs them to go.”
Assemblymember Marty Block, Representing California’s 78th District and Chair, Assembly Higher Education Committee “California’s continued economic leadership depends on graduating more than two million more students with a four-year degree or technical certificate by 2025. A degree or certificate is the starting point for success in today’s economy. I commend California Competes for its efforts to rally resources and attention to this critical need.”
Scott Himelstein, President, California Community Colleges Board of Governors“This report reinforces the imperative that California must act now to increase attainment rates for certificates, degrees and transfer and close the achievement gap for historically under-represented students. The California Community Colleges Board of Governors is committed to improving student success and welcomes the engagement of California Competes and other stakeholders committed to achieving these goals.”
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Higher education leaders, policy experts call for reform, innovation to control rising costs, improve quality
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (June 7, 2012) – High school class of 2012 graduates will soon find themselves entering a higher education system facing unprecedented challenges — and skyrocketing college costs are only part of the problem. In the new report "College 2.0: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Reforming Higher Education," released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a panel of education leaders and policy experts identify critical challenges facing U.S. higher education and offer ambitious solutions to reform — and reinvent — the system itself.
The report was created as part of a Kauffman Foundation retreat in December that brought together a panel of 30 education analysts and practitioners to examine the challenges facing higher education and generate ideas to overcome them. The group addressed key topics including campus-level obstacles to innovation; accreditation; state and federal regulations; academic productivity; measuring student-learning and job-market outcomes; and how to take educational innovation to scale.
"U.S. higher education today faces a host of problems from rising costs and dismaying dropout rates to low productivity and failure to effectively serve nontraditional students," said Ben Wildavsky, Kauffman Foundation senior scholar for research and policy and co-organizer of the retreat. "We see an urgent need to not just reform, but rethink, how colleges and universities deliver education to enhance quality, access, and graduates' success in the workforce."
"College 2.0" showcases ambitious ideas for reinventing higher education, focused on making better use of technology, developing a culture of measurement and performance incentives, and creating smarter regulation. Recommended actions fell into six broad categories, including:
- Tackle campus-level obstacles to innovation.Faculty should be treated as enablers of innovation and provided incentives such as research funds to encourage development of innovative teaching models. Likewise, state policymakers should give colleges incentives to innovate by offering higher levels of funding to institutions with better student outcomes (and, presumably, more effective curriculum and teaching).
- Rethink accreditation.Accreditation should place the fewest possible restrictions on both new and existing providers to encourage innovation. It should focus much less on inputs and much more on outcome measures, such as student performance and loan default rates. Online learning should be largely deregulated as long as minimum course-level outcomes are specified.
- Streamline state and federal regulations.States should relax existing rules to make it easier to start charter colleges, including community colleges. Like K-12 charter schools, charter colleges should be given great flexibility in exchange for improving student outcomes. Also, Pell grants for low-income students should be staggered, providing fewer dollars up front and more as students advance toward degree completion. Colleges' and universities' eligibility for enrolling students who receive federal loans should be tied to bringing down costs.
- Improve incentives to boost academic productivity.Universities should identify and financially incentivize those professors whose time would be more productively spent in the classroom rather than conducting and publishing scholarly research.
- Fill information gaps about student-learning and job-market outcomes.To provide prospective students — and taxpayers — better metrics to assess higher education institutions, all states should provide information on labor-market outcomes by creating "unit record" data that link information on individual students' college experience to how they fare in the job market.
- Overcome barriers to taking innovative models to scale.Clear and accessible information about prices and student outcomes, both in the classroom and in the labor market, will introduce greater competition in the higher education sector, creating more opportunities for new entrants to introduce new models and take the most successful ones to scale.
Participants included Shai Reshef, founder of the University of the People; the management editor ofThe Economist; the founders of startups 2tor, Inc. and StraighterLine; senior leaders of nontraditional universities such as Olin College and Western Governors University; the president and CEO of Kaplan, Inc.; the directors of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Center for American Progress; and professors who both study and participate in postsecondary reform initiatives.
Higher education leaders, policy experts call for reform, innovation to control rising costs, improve quality
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (June 7, 2012) – High school class of 2012 graduates will soon find themselves entering a higher education system facing unprecedented challenges — and skyrocketing college costs are only part of the problem. In the new report "College 2.0: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Reforming Higher Education," released today by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a panel of education leaders and policy experts identify critical challenges facing U.S. higher education and offer ambitious solutions to reform — and reinvent — the system itself.
The report was created as part of a Kauffman Foundation retreat in December that brought together a panel of 30 education analysts and practitioners to examine the challenges facing higher education and generate ideas to overcome them. The group addressed key topics including campus-level obstacles to innovation; accreditation; state and federal regulations; academic productivity; measuring student-learning and job-market outcomes; and how to take educational innovation to scale.
"U.S. higher education today faces a host of problems from rising costs and dismaying dropout rates to low productivity and failure to effectively serve nontraditional students," said Ben Wildavsky, Kauffman Foundation senior scholar for research and policy and co-organizer of the retreat. "We see an urgent need to not just reform, but rethink, how colleges and universities deliver education to enhance quality, access, and graduates' success in the workforce."
"College 2.0" showcases ambitious ideas for reinventing higher education, focused on making better use of technology, developing a culture of measurement and performance incentives, and creating smarter regulation. Recommended actions fell into six broad categories, including:
- Tackle campus-level obstacles to innovation.Faculty should be treated as enablers of innovation and provided incentives such as research funds to encourage development of innovative teaching models. Likewise, state policymakers should give colleges incentives to innovate by offering higher levels of funding to institutions with better student outcomes (and, presumably, more effective curriculum and teaching).
- Rethink accreditation.Accreditation should place the fewest possible restrictions on both new and existing providers to encourage innovation. It should focus much less on inputs and much more on outcome measures, such as student performance and loan default rates. Online learning should be largely deregulated as long as minimum course-level outcomes are specified.
- Streamline state and federal regulations.States should relax existing rules to make it easier to start charter colleges, including community colleges. Like K-12 charter schools, charter colleges should be given great flexibility in exchange for improving student outcomes. Also, Pell grants for low-income students should be staggered, providing fewer dollars up front and more as students advance toward degree completion. Colleges' and universities' eligibility for enrolling students who receive federal loans should be tied to bringing down costs.
- Improve incentives to boost academic productivity.Universities should identify and financially incentivize those professors whose time would be more productively spent in the classroom rather than conducting and publishing scholarly research.
- Fill information gaps about student-learning and job-market outcomes.To provide prospective students — and taxpayers — better metrics to assess higher education institutions, all states should provide information on labor-market outcomes by creating "unit record" data that link information on individual students' college experience to how they fare in the job market.
- Overcome barriers to taking innovative models to scale.Clear and accessible information about prices and student outcomes, both in the classroom and in the labor market, will introduce greater competition in the higher education sector, creating more opportunities for new entrants to introduce new models and take the most successful ones to scale.
Participants included Shai Reshef, founder of the University of the People; the management editor ofThe Economist; the founders of startups 2tor, Inc. and StraighterLine; senior leaders of nontraditional universities such as Olin College and Western Governors University; the president and CEO of Kaplan, Inc.; the directors of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Center for American Progress; and professors who both study and participate in postsecondary reform initiatives.
Media Contacts:
Rose Levy, 646-660-8641, rose@goldinsolutions.com, Goldin Solutions
Barb Schulte, 816-932-1103, bschulte@kauffman.org, Kauffman Foundation
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/us-colleges-and-universities-must-take-entrepreneurial-approach-to-overcome-challenges-according-to-kauffman-foundation-report.aspxRose Levy, 646-660-8641, rose@goldinsolutions.com, Goldin Solutions
Barb Schulte, 816-932-1103, bschulte@kauffman.org, Kauffman Foundation
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