BizVoice March / April 2015

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38 BizVoice/Indiana Chamber – March/April 2015
NO EASY ANSWERS
Charting the Future of Higher Education
By Rebecca Patrick
For a century, Hoosiers didn’t need a college degree
to make a good living. But with the manufacturing-
based economy changing dramatically and giving
way, in part, to the knowledge-based economy, you
can’t make that case anymore.
Amid the backdrop of an increased emphasis on postsecondary
education, we turn to three recognized leaders in the higher education
community to discuss the current climate and what needs to happen next:
• Jo Ann Gora, president emeritus at Ball State University;
• Stan Jones, president of Complete College America;
• Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation;
Initial snapshot
A quick survey of the college landscape reveals some obvious
challenges: rising tuition, student debt and getting more students to
complete their degree. The latter is the focal point for Jones and his
organization.
“We know that completion rates at most colleges in the country
don’t exceed 50%. So the freshman class looks very good in terms of
numbers and in terms of diversity, but in the graduating class we only
have about half of those students there – and we’ve lost a lot of the
diversity that we set out to accomplish. So that’s a huge challenge,” he
offers.
For Gora, who was Ball State’s president from 2004-2014, the
most pressing issue is “understanding the values proposition. There’s a
lot of discussion on the cost of higher education but very little
discussion about the value proposition – what you get for this
investment. And it should be seen as an investment,” she declares.
“I used to say to parents you can get a public education for what
you would pay for a decent car, maybe a $30,000 car. And that car
will start depreciating the minute you drive it out of the showroom,
whereas the value of your college education should appreciate over
time.
“Too often the conversation stops at the sticker prices, and it
shows at most colleges that most students are getting some form of
financial aid that is reducing that cost. And data compiled in Indiana
shows that most families overestimate the cost of a college education.
They think it’s less affordable than it actually is. Having a clear
understanding of the true cost and true value of a college education is
a great and important challenge,” Gora concludes.
Merisotis takes a different track. He contends the greatest
dilemma facing higher education today is defining its role in meeting
current workforce needs.
“The big problem is the way this system is constructed. The way
it delivers higher education today does not have the capacity to meet
that rising demand for talent … for reasons that have to do with the
fact that we don’t graduate enough of the students who start, the fact
that affordability is a problem – at least for a certain portion of the
students, the fact that our ability (is lacking) to effectively use
technology to serve the large numbers of students who still don’t have
access to higher education – low-income students, first-generation
students, students of color.
“What’s challenging in higher education is that it has got to
continue to do what it has always done, which is continue to be the
engine of social progress in the United States. It has always played that
role,” he notes.
“It would be ironic if now that we need higher education more
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