The 50% Solution

David Leonhart is right. (NYT, 9/8/09, “Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates“). We need to graduate more of the students who currently enter college at age 18. And he is right again when he identifies the shortage of skilled college graduates as a significant threat to our social, civic, and economic welfare.

But relying on the logic in ”Not Crossing the Finish Line”, a recent book by William Bowen and Michael McPherson, doesn’t solve the problems identified. Graduating a higher percentage of current learners as Bowen and McPherson advocate is, at best, only 50% of the solution. As a Princeton Alum, president emeritus of a community college (Community College of Vermont) and a state university (Cal State Monterey Bay), I’d love to agree with them. But their proposal, getting the existing institutions to do better and graduate more 22 year olds, is neither broad enough nor deep enough to succeed.

If we focus solely on the traditional student body, we will fail because the projected shortage of college-level work skills is larger and expanding faster than even a reformed and improved student pipeline can fill. If we want to meet the projected workforce demands in this country, we need to double the number of degrees being granted. So, beyond making our current institutions more productive, we need to harness the talent of the current workforce as the key source of more highly educated workers.

Today’s adult learners include yesterday’s fully qualified students, identified by Bowen and McPherson, who failed to finish college or opted out altogether. They have clear capacity to learn but they face multiple obstacles. Money is one of them. But linking college affordability solely to reducing the impact of high tuition and fees at elite institutions through more government funding ignores the real possibility that effective higher education can be done more cheaply and effectively in this Web 2.0 world.

Indeed, the public conversation is awash with emerging thinking about new possibilities in higher education. For over a year, I have used a working name for a new Bachelors Degree model, Oxford.com, implying the value of the web as a learning resource. And, in “At Your Fingers, an Oxford Don” Steve Lohr (New York Times, 9/13/09) describes the cost and quality value that web-based/online learning brings to learning. Then, Zephyr Teachout (Washington Post, 9/13/09) lays out the case for a changing world in higher education using clear examples in “A Virtual Revolution is Brewing in Our Colleges“. Additionally, the enormous potential for new modes of learning was recently discussed by Anya Kamenetz and Bob Cringely. Not everyone needs, or can afford, a college education that comes replete with sport teams, student housing, embedded faculty research, 9-5 classes and the myriad other expenses that drive up college costs while squeezing instruction budgets.

Lifelong learning is not a new concept. But creating a support system sensitive to lifelong learners would make a huge difference. Here are five examples.

• Organize learning in multiple modalities so that it is available and affordable throughout life.
• Create flexible degree plans that respond to the needs of adult learners and workers.
• Recognize college-level learning regardless of where and how it was gained.
• Remove the barriers to taking time off and returning to college. Every time a student transfers or “stops out”, it is estimated that s/he loses a year in progress towards the degree. Now, that’s a disincentive.
• Eliminate the “transfer tax” so that all learning can be assembled on one transcript and counted towards the degree.

If we made it a policy priority for adult learners to work, pay taxes, and progress in an unfettered fashion towards their degree at a speed and pace they choose, more people would complete their degrees. And, if we promote other modalities of learning, made possible by web 2.0, many more would prosper and succeed, possibly at a lower gross cost.

America is a land of second chances. We have chosen not to channel and control the human spirit, but to unleash it. To suggest that the solution for higher education lies with 18-22 year olds in traditional institutions flies in the face of everything that we know about where learning is going. Rather than focusing on completion rates, I’d suggest focusing on success rates at the course level for each student. In a world where learning is lifelong, leaving school may be a legitimate part of the journey. And in a world where we need to double the number of qualified workers at the associate’s degree level or higher, we need to develop new models that deliver consistent, reliable, and valid learning outcomes throughout a learner’s life.