Last night, President Obama delivered an address to the nation.  He focused on the state of the economy and his administration’s plans for the economic future of our country focusing on energy, healthcare, and education.  I thought I would examine his plans for education as it relates to higher education and compare them to the public policy initiatives and thought pieces that have previously been published.

President Obama’s speech led off with a discussion of the global economy and the fact that “the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge.”  One of the first persons to stimulate a national discussion on this topic was author Thomas Friedman with the publication of his book, The World is Flat, in 2005.  Friedman cogently makes the point that technology has opened up the ability for companies to effectively employ engineers from India and China while conducting their business from the U.S.  Friedman also discusses the higher rates of education in countries with former third world status where it is recognized that the ticket to financial success is a good education.

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Last month I published an article about the December 15 letter to Congress requesting that six percent of President Elect Obama’s economic stimulus package be allocated to higher education.  The fifteen higher ed associations that drafted the letter, in my opinion, neglected some of the pressing issues that most in the online higher education community understand quite well.  Specifically, the letter seemingly altogether ignores the needs of students attending classes less than half-time and the initiatives of for-profit institutions to provide quality educational opportunities.  In the January 30 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Milton Greenberg, professor emeritus at American University, also calls the fundamental tenets of the letter into question.  The points in Greenberg’s article are worth considering and I especially liked his emphasis on the fact that to change the state of higher education today, we should first look at improving the quality of elementary and secondary education in America.

Universal education in the United States is no longer a novel idea; in fact, K-12 education has become something most Americans take for granted.  Even with issues of access and affordability in the world of American higher education, the possibility of obtaining a college degree is not out of the question for most Americans.  For many in the world, however, education is far from a “given;” millions of children in developing nations never see the inside of an elementary school classroom and the concept of achieving any level of postsecondary education seems as likely as sprouting wings and flying to the moon. 

One UNESCO report estimates that “only about 3 percent of young people in sub-Saharan Africa and 7 percent in Asia attend some form of postsecondary education.”  Compare these statistics to postsecondary education statistics in industrialized nations (approximately 58 percent of the population in industrialized nations pursue some form of postsecondary education)  and for the United States alone (60 percent) and it becomes clear that a large sector of the world’s population is not able to access the valuable skills gained through higher education.  In the United States, we have had 150-200+ years to develop our three tiered system embracing community colleges, four year colleges, and research universities.  The fixed costs of opening physical campuses, particularly in areas of large geographic expanse, often exceed the limited budgets of developing countries.  Even China’s successful and rapidly expanding economy cannot keep up with the infrastructure involved in building college campuses.

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An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s July 25th issue references language in the HEA reauthorization bill that “could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students’ homes.”  The article profiles a few technologies that institutions are piloting to confirm that the student taking the exam/quiz is the individual who registered for the course.  Some of these technologies can invade the individuals’ privacy, even collecting fingerprints.

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I attended The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual Executive Leadership Forum in Washington, DC and had the opportunity to listen to a panel discussing the pros and cons of signing the Presidents Climate Commitment. David Oxtoby, President of Pomona College and former Dean of Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago, made a point which was similar to my thinking that he had some reservations about his and any institution’s ability to achieve carbon neutrality but thought that the process of examining efforts and pledging a commitment was important. Oxtoby earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry from UC-Berkeley and has the background to understand the scoring system. Another point that he made was that his institution does not and will not buy the emission credits that other institutions have purchased as he does not believe that the buyer can control the long term outcome (the owner of the forest could harvest the trees, for example). Mark Wrighton, Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, said that his institution had not signed the Commitment but discussed the many activities underway to reduce carbon emissions including supporting a light rail with five stops at WU and providing rail passes to employees. Kathleen Schatzberg, President of Cape Cod Community College and one of the charter signers of the Commitment, discussed her efforts to obtain state of Massachusetts approval for the first LEED-certified building at a state higher ed institution. Other efforts at her campus included converting 80 percent of previously mowed open space to meadows and receiving funding for a wind turbine. I left the session inspired by the efforts of the three institutions and their presidents.

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