Spring 2005 issue

Chancellor's column

Higher education expert cautions Minnesota against complacency

Minnesota's grades:

• B-plus for how well students are prepared for college,
• A for participation in college (the percentage of ninth-graders enrolling in college within four years),
• C-minus for affordability,
• B-plus for college retention and completion, and
• A for providing economic and civic benefits to the state.
• All but five states received an "incomplete" in learning because of inadequate benchmark data.

Patrick Callan, director of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, spoke Feb. 22 to higher education officials gathered at Metropolitan State University.

Patrick Callan has some provocative words for Minnesota's leaders.

Callan, director of the California-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and a national expert on accountability in higher education, visited with public officials, educators and legislators on a recent visit to Minnesota.

His message: Minnesota, and the United States, must provide higher education to much greater numbers of people than ever was envisioned in the past.

I found Callan's message both sobering and inspiring, and I'd like to share just a few of his observations.

What has changed the most in higher education in the past 25 years? One thing jumps out, Callan said: "It is highly unlikely that anyone who does not have some training beyond high school will have a middle-class life. Society relentlessly punishes the undereducated, whether it be the undereducated individual, the undereducated community, or the undereducated state."

He added, "What's at stake here is the vitality of the middle class. Education doesn't guarantee you a good life, but the lack of it is likely to guarantee the opposite."

Just as the country rallied in the '40s and '50s to send the GIs to college, and in the '60s to send the baby boomers to college, today "we need to ratchet up the education level," Callan said. "When we designed the current system of higher education, we didn't design it to serve the number of people that will need to be served."

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities certainly have been experiencing increased demand for higher education. Since fall 1998, our enrollment has grown by nearly 28,000 students. Over the same period, state spending per student has declined, from $5,148 to $4,002 today. If Callan is right, and I believe he is, it will be a challenge for all of us to meet this future demand.

Callan's organization publishes the "Measuring Up" report cards that grade how each state is doing in higher education. In the 2004 report, the most recent, Minnesota's higher education system ranked second in the country.

James H. McCormick

The report card, he said, is a national comparison that helps states focus exclusively on results, not effort. "We don't give anyone credit for trying, or for spending money on higher education," Callan said. "We give states as much slack as the global economy would give them."

While many states, including Minnesota, have great colleges and universities, the national report card looks at higher education from a state's perspective, not an institution's perspective. How well states are doing in getting young people prepared for higher education is a key question, he said.

In the college preparation category, the report card looks at how well secondary students perform on national assessments in math, science and reading, and on whether they take high school courses that will prepare them for college. Overall, he said, states have made more progress in this area in the past 10 years than any other area.

"If you graduated from high school in the past two or three years, you are much more likely to have taken the courses you need to prepare for college than if you graduated 10 years ago," Callan said. "The bad news is that 30 percent aren't graduating from high school at all. This is a huge problem for the United States.

"Don't tell us you've got great colleges and universities when 30 percent of the people in your state can't use them," he says. "That's not my idea of a high-quality higher education system."

Minnesota's lowest grade, a C-minus, came in the area of affordability. But only two states - California, with a B, and Utah, with a C - scored higher. All other states got D's and F's.

The report card looks at what percentage of a family's income it takes to send a person to college, factoring in all available financial aid.

"Minnesota does better than most states, but the country's been losing ground," Callan said. "We have made it harder to go to college than it was 10 years ago - it's indisputable."

While Minnesota ranked relatively high among the states, Callan said higher education leaders here should not rest on their laurels.

"If anything about these good grades causes you to be complacent, it would be a big mistake," he warned. "Minnesota does better than most of the rest of the country, but put that in the context of a country that isn't doing very well. Demands are outrunning our ability to produce educated people."

Callan noted two danger signs in Minnesota's statistics: the gap in college participation of white students compared to students of color and the "surprisingly low" percentage of working adults participating in higher education.

"You are better positioned than most states to meet the demand," he said. "The question is, can you build on that success?"

Callan's observations are a wake-up call. He reminds us that we need to be "relentlessly focused on results" if we are to keep up in a globally competitive economy. Our question should not be, what is good for our colleges and universities. Our question should be, what does Minnesota and the United States need from higher education and how can we best provide it.

Minnesota's educational pipeline

For every 100 ninth-grade students:

• 82 students graduate from high school four years later.
• 54 students immediately enter college.
• 38 students are still enrolled in their second year.
• 25 students graduate with either an associate degree within three years or a bachelor's degree within six years.

Source: Policy Alert, a publication of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education