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March/April 2015 – BizVoice/Indiana Chamber
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than ever before, it becomes an impediment
to that because it doesn’t want to change …
it doesn’t want to be part of meeting that
rising demand for talent in the country.”
End game
What college truly provides should be
more top of mind for both students and
institutions, Gora insists.
“Too often when we talk about college
today, we talk about preparation for that first
job out of college and how much they will be
making. And we do it in lofty terms of
outcome-based assessment. But in reality
what a college education has always been is
preparation not for your first job but for a
lifetime of jobs – some of which have not
been created yet,” she asserts.
“What a college education should
provide are those critical thinking skills that
will enable you to adapt to a changing
workplace environment. (It’s about) really
getting universities to buy into the whole
notion of testing their students so that those
critical thinking skills can be tested as high
school seniors and then they can be tested as
college seniors so you can see whether there
has been development.”
Adds Merisotis, “Those critical thinking
and problem solving skills are exactly what
employers need. And what they say is that
they need people with those skills because
they want employees for the long haul, not
people for the short term.
“And employers are willing to pay a
premium for people who have the talent to
help them be successful as companies,” he
remarks. “So employers are looking at higher
education in some form. It doesn’t have to be
a four-year degree. It can be an associate
degree or a high-quality certificate, etc. But
the point is they are looking to higher
education to produce that talent.”
Gora fears these are the types of things
“getting lost in the national conversation
about cost and accessibility. It’s not just a
matter of get them in and get them out. It’s
really a matter of what happened while they
were there and how has that prepared them
for a constantly changing future.”
Tackling completion
Everyone agrees that graduation rates
are a major concern.
Results of Complete College America’s
recent report,
The Four-Year Myth
, even
surprised Jones.
“There are only 50 public colleges in the
country out of 580 that graduate half their
students in four years. So it’s more typical
that we are looking at students graduating in
four and a half years, five years and longer.
So we have a tremendous loss of students
between when they start and when they
complete. And we’re interested in not only
having students completing on time but
having them complete at all,” he states.
For decades more students have rightly
been encouraged to go to college, Jones says,
but “now the right thing to do is to recognize
that it’s almost a false opportunity if the
students don’t have a realistic chance for
success.
“Part of that is the student’s
responsibility, but I think increasingly
universities and colleges have to step up their
responsibility in terms of how students get to
the graduation day.”
One simple step is having full-time
freshmen take 15 credit hours instead of 12,
which already puts them on a five-year plan
out of the gate.
“We do have (schools) like IUPUI,
which, in the course of one year, raised the
number of incoming freshmen taking 15
credit hours from 27% to 53%; and now they
are at 63%. It’s a cultural shift ... but it’s a
simpler thing colleges can do.
“Some things are more complex, but the
basic point is that colleges have a
responsibility,” Jones reiterates.
He’s also “impressed and optimistic”
about changes taking place nationally and puts
Indiana “as one of the three or four leaders in
the country in respect to changes that are
occurring that can dramatically increase the
numbers of students that we graduate.
“Ball State recognized early on that they
wanted to increase their graduation rate;
and they did over a period of time rather
steadily, and introduced some innovative
programs. Now I think almost every public
college in Indiana is focused on completion,”
Jones offers.
“Five years ago when we first started
talking about college completion, there was a
pretty substantial pushback from people who
were concerned it would hurt access or
concerned it would hurt quality; and that’s
since changed.”
Early declarations
Intrinsically tied to completion is getting
on the proper path once at college.
Jones and his group maintain there
should be proper channels put in place so that
students aren’t making all the decisions about
majors and coursework on their own.
“It’s one of our big pushes … because at
many colleges, it’s a luxury to kind of trip
over the right course that makes you say,
“It would be great if states and maybe
the federal government provided
funding for students – loans that were
forgiven if students completed (a
degree) in a certain period of time, if
students held onto a job for X number
of years, if students worked in a
certain part of the country.
– Jo Ann Gora
“There are no jobs for recent high
school dropouts. There are very few
jobs that are sustainable jobs for
recent high school graduates. The bar
has risen in terms of what people
need to accomplish to be competitive
in the economy.”
– Stan Jones
Indiana Vision 2025: Outstanding Talent