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Remarks
Council of Independent Colleges and
Appalachian College Association Meeting
Richard Ekman
President
Asheville, NC
June 9, 2002
One of the major themes to emerge from CIC's recently concluded year-long
strategic planning process was the nearly unanimous view of the 200 college
and university presidents who took part in the planning roundtable discussions
that CIC ought to do more "to make the case" for our sector
of education. At the time, the emergence of this consensus seemed to be
extremely welcome news for me as a new CIC president, because it suggested
a clear focus for collective activity by CIC on behalf of all small and
medium-sized independent institutions. My view has been-and continues
to be-that CIC ought to be the main organization serving all institutions
that have certain common characteristics, irrespective of relative affluence
or degree of selectivity, and it was reassuring to learn that, at least
on this point, most people agreed. Accordingly, I have, like most of us,
described our colleges by their most common attributes-small, residential,
devoted to the liberal arts, purposeful about values and traditions, committed
to service to the community, flexible, and teaching-and-learning oriented.
But lately I have come to suspect that this prototype may be too hypothetical.
No one college or university embodies all these attributes, and each of
us, when we describe the virtues of one institution, tends to pick and
choose among them.
The difficulty of making an aggregate case was further illustrated at
a recent meeting of the advisory panel to the Consortium for the Advancement
of Private Higher Education. The Consortium is, as many of you know, a
sub-unit of CIC, and the deliberations of the advisory panel provide useful
expert guidance to CIC in planning future programs. At the April meeting,
one member, Jamie Merisotis, a distinguished researcher on higher education,
said that CIC needed to be careful to distinguish "public policy"
from "consumer marketing." His view is that consumer marketing
is best left to individual colleges, while CIC might well focus on matters
on public policy. He cautioned that most students and their parents are
not concerned about the theoretical distinction between public and private
colleges. Rather, as consumers, they want to know the content and requirements
of a degree program at a specific institution and what enrolling in the
program will cost.
However, Philip Altbach of Boston College, an equally distinguished
member of the panel, said he believes that CIC and others could do a lot
more to inform consumers. He believes, for example, that the Jesuit colleges,
working collectively through their association, have done a particularly
good job of informing the college-shopping public about the distinctive
characteristics shared by all Jesuit colleges and universities.
A third member of the panel, Ronald Calgaard, president emeritus of
Trinity University in Texas, cautioned CIC to be extremely focused. He,
like Merisotis, believes that CIC should focus on public policy rather
than consumer marketing, and believes that only one issue can be dealt
with effectively at a time. His advice, therefore, is to pick an issue
that provides an extremely good inroad into a central and related questions.
For example, he suggested, why doesn't CIC explore in a highly visible
way the processes by which tuition is set at "flagship" state
universities?
Discussions such as this one have, over the past year, altered my view-which
is currently that "making the case" for private higher education
is a lot more complicated than it at first appeared to be, and that we
need to be prepared to disaggregate our approach to the issue.
Many of the terms in our litany of institutional attributes, for example,
lead immediately to further choices. If we are to differentiate between
public and private institutions, identify our core constituencies, or
select strategies that will be effective in making the case, here are
some additional choices to consider:
- Small - When we use this term we usually mean to suggest that a college
operates on a human scale and gives personalized attention to students.
We have difficulty, however, controlling for connotations that suggest
limitation, confinement, or lack of options.
- Residential - Not all colleges are largely residential, but those
that are tend to use this term to suggest the close connection between
what happens in a student's experience in class with the student's experience
out of class. Our difficulty is in anticipating whether the residential
community in which a student lives during college is as pleasant as
the one he or she comes from. Are the dorms as comfortable as a student's
home? Is shopping, entertainment, or access to a natural landscape as
convenient as a student is accustomed to (or what he or she would like
to become accustomed to)?
- Liberal arts - All of us share the conviction that the liberal arts
are the essential part of undergraduate study, but we sometimes do not
do enough to address the relevance of this course of study to a student's
ultimate career goals. We need to be sure to couple our enthusiasm for
the liberal arts with evidence of postgraduate success.
- Purposeful about values and traditions - For most colleges, these
traditions are mainly religious, and do help to underscore the extent
to which colleges help students live lives of moral engagement, civic
involvement, and community leadership. What is harder to deal with is
the fact that many of the religious denominations are themselves losing
members. This situation complicates any effort to highlight the difference
between a college with, say, a Presbyterian tradition from one with,
say, a Methodist tradition.
- Flexible - By this we mean that our institutions are not bureaucratic
and are highly responsive to students' needs. The vexing unanswered
question is often whether, by being flexible, our institutions are perceived
as lacking standards and rigor.
These ambivalences have led me increasingly to ways of making the case
that dwell on the outcomes of higher education rather than the characteristics
of the process of education. I cite lifetime earning statistics, such
as those Michael McPherson has developed, and use evidence such as the
data that Ernie Pascarella and Pat Terenzini have assembled for the Appalachian
College Association's alumni study. I use statistics on degree completion
rates, such as the ACT's. And I cite the disproportionate role of small
private colleges in producing the nation's career scientists, preferred
K-12 teachers, and other contributions to American manpower needs that
are clearly in the national interest.
Some of these arguments may be more effectively utilized by an individual
college or university, some by an affinity group (such as the Minnesota
Private College Council, or the Lutheran colleges, or the Appalachian
College Association), and some by a national organization such as CIC.
Is there a clearer course of action if one focuses on "making the
case" by emphasizing the "public policy" side of the matter?
Should CIC pick one issue on which to concentrate? Several possibilities
could provide useful vehicles for "making the case" more generally
on behalf of our sector. Consider these as central questions on which
to hang a campaign to "make the case:"
- How much portable student financial aid should the federal and state
governments provide, and what should the criteria be for its use-need
or merit-and what should the groundrules be for eligibility-the threshold
and the ceiling?
- Should student loans be given favorable tax treatment in order to
advance national priorities? For example, should students who enter
certain professions, such as nursing or K-12 teaching, be eligible for
loan forgiveness?
- In an era of ever-increasing rates of college-going among high school
graduates, is there a normative percentage of the high school graduates
in a state who should be helped to go to college with substantial support
by the state government? Should the state government's primary goal
be insuring access to general education in order to achieve greater
civic involvement by a higher percentage of its high school graduates,
or should the main goal be preparation of leaders for particular sectors
in which the state has previously identified-and, perhaps, quantified-needs?
- If it can be demonstrated that private institutions are more cost-effective
than public institutions, does it follow that private institutions deserve
greater support from state tax funds?
- If a private institution contributes to the economy of the state more
than public institutions do, should the state reward that contribution?
How?
- Are the honors colleges that are being created at many state universities
inconsistent with the missions of the state universities? Are honors
colleges equitable uses of taxpayers' dollars?
As you can readily see in each of these examples, there is a direct contrast
drawn between public and private institutions. That in itself raises a
question in our thinking about how to "make the case:" many
believe that the different sectors of higher education should not criticize
one another, that only broad, united efforts to emphasize the importance
of public support for higher education will succeed. Any future effort
by CIC to focus on public policy questions in a highly visible way will
of necessity require a great deal of coordination with NAICU and with
the state associations.
Let me add still further ideas for discussion by listing what CIC is
already doing to make the case on behalf of our sector:
- In March 2002 we arranged a meeting for 19 college presidents with
high- level editors and reporters from The New York Times to discuss
candidly how Times reporting about our sector could be better, and to
help presidents understand better what the Times regards as newsworthy.
- Every year CIC arranges a meeting for foundation officers with college
presidents. There is no question that many foundation officers come
to the meeting merely out of curiosity, but leave with a much better
understanding of our institutions and, in some cases, with a resolve
to support them. The number of foundation officers who participate has
grown each year.
- We collect and circulate to campus presidents a variety of articles,
letters, speeches, and other materials that we believe will be helpful
to you in making the case in your own essays and speeches.
- Recently we've begun to work more directly with campus public relations
directors. There is a CIC listserv for them and we are planning to organize
a series of workshops.
- Every so often, CIC speaks out for independent higher education. Most
of this is pretty benign-letters to the editors, and op ed pieces-but
occasionally it requires unusually blunt language, as was the case for
CIC's statement about the Lumina Foundation's report on the affordability
of college.
- Because so many of the ways we already describe our institutions'
advantages are anecdotal and rhetorical, CIC has been working hard to
assemble data that point in more persuasive ways to the superior performance
of our institutions.
- CIC is now organizing a symposium for college and university presidents
and business leaders on the relationship between the liberal arts and
business careers. The Kemper Foundation is supporting this effort.
- CIC is trying to promote more appropriate measures of quality in higher
education by seeking to influence accrediting organizations, governmental
agencies, and others. The National Survey of Student Engagement, for
example, has been given a lot of visibility at CIC's conferences because
we believe it offers measures of effectiveness that are appropriate
for our kind of institution and are neglected by other organizations
concerned with institutional rankings, such as the US News survey.
I hope that these thoughts will help stimulate your own thinking in the
sessions that follow this one about ways in which we can do better in
making the case for our sector of higher education. I also hope you will
let me know your thoughts on what CIC's role ought to be, in contrast
to the roles of other organizations and individual colleges and universities.
Thank you.
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