Lessons of My First Year and Our Next Steps at UHD

Over the past year, I've shared some of the key lessons we've learned at the University of Houston-Downtown that might be shared with other universities.  I started the blog when I began as president at UHD.  For new followers, I encourage you to read some of the earlier posts.

In my last post, I mentioned efforts by President Obama, Lumina Foundation, and others to increase the percentage of adults with college degrees.  The University of Houston-Downtown is the 13th largest public institution in Texas and the second largest university in Houston. Over 80% of our students work 30 hours or more and about a quarter of all students work more than 40 hours or per week, often in two jobs.  The average age of our students is 28 years. So, our students are predominantly working adults, many of them have children and families to support.

UHD has been nationally recognized as a Top 100 university in producing minority baccalaureate students.  We rank 33rd in the country in awarding baccalaureate degrees to Hispanics and 47th for awarding baccalaureate degrees to African Americans. This past year we graduated over 2,400 students with bachelor's and graduate degrees. We are determined to increase these numbers.

Followers of this blog have asked me to briefly summarize some of what occurred in my first year as president at UHD.  When I arrived in Houston and at UHD, I began my presidency by walking around and listening.  I visited with students, faculty, alumni, regents, members of the President's Advisory Board, and elected officials. I spoke before most colleges at UHD and several departments.  I held focus groups and distributed a survey online and via email asking five very simple questions: 1) What does UHD do very well and where could we excel? 2) In what areas does UHD pretty good and with a different emphasis could be very good? 3) What areas should UHD stop doing? 4) What resources does UHD leave on the table (grants, foundations, corporations, partnerships, etc.) and, lastly, 5) If you were UHD president for one day and could make one change, what would it be?

We put together a team of faculty and staff to summarize the survey results.  We then held several leadership retreats, built around the Good to Great model, and used the survey results as a starting point.  We revised our mission, established goals, and this summer decided upon a single big goal (BHAG in the Good to Great vernacular): UHD will be known as a premier city university engaging every student in high impact experiences.

We also agreed on preliminary goals and metrics for 2020.  For example, we want to dramatically grow graduate programs and expand our research.  We project that UHD will have over 22,000 students by 2020 with roughly 8-10 per cent of total student enrollment coming from graduate programs.  We will greatly expand the number of online degrees with roughly a quarter of all enrollment online by 2020.  We have already launched discussions among the faculty on steps we can take to implement these ambitious goals.

But key to our focus is building strong undergraduate degrees developed around a culture of high-impact experiences.  What are high-impact experiences and why do we want all UHD students to receive these experiences? They include learning communities, undergraduate research, peer mentoring, first-year experience programs, service learning, internships, work teams, capstone courses, etc. These activities engage students in experiential learning and provide them opportunities to work closely with faculty.  Research nationally and our own experience show that students who participate in high-impact experiences are more likely to graduate than those students who don't receive such experiences.  They are also more likely to graduate on-time.

UHD has a long history of such programs, including the Scholars Academy which has been recognized by the NSF and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for their success in graduating students from underrepresented ethnic and racial groups in STEM fields.  UHD also has a long history of providing high-quality internships with corporations, non profits, and public agencies, as well as service learning courses that address issues affecting the Houston area.  In the course of the planning retreats, we decided to build off this strength, expand it, and make it a cohesive part of the UHD learning experience.

But, we also want to ensure our students are prepared for 21st Century jobs. Technology is changing rapidly and industries are developing new jobs and requiring new skills. Most of the top 10 jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004 and many companies in the Fortune 500 did not exist in 1990.  One of the nation's largest public agencies did not exist in 2000.  So, we must not only prepare students for jobs that exist today, we must provide them with skill sets they can use to solve problems that don't yet exist with technologies that haven't been developed for industries that now seem only distant dreams.

I have asked our faculty and the provost to work together to decide on what every UHD graduate should know in the 21st Century.  They will be using as starting points the work of national higher education organizations, such as AAC&U, AASCU, ACE, and others, along with recommendations of the U.S. Chamber and American Association of Manufacturer's. These groups recommend that all college students graduate with critical thinking skills, analytical and problem-solving skills, global understanding, team work, and excellent communication skills, among others.  Our faculty will decide on appropriate competencies.  We will then integrate these competencies into every major UHD offers and assess learning to those competencies.

We are also working hard to retain and graduate students.  This year we launched a common reading program with 800 freshmen students receiving the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. Nearly 60 faculty and over 600 students participated in a special session a week before classes to discuss the book.We made a pledge to the students: if they agree to work hard, take the required courses, and regularly meet with an adviser, we will mentor them and help them to graduate on time.  Faculty are now following up with those students to ensure their success. 

Finally, we are meeting with community colleges throughout Houston to re-affirm and re-sign joint admission and reverse transfer programs so that students from community colleges will earn full credit at UHD.  More than three-fourths of our students are transfer students, so it is important that we build strong partnerships and full articulation with the major community college districts that surround UHD.

UHD will do everything it can to increase the number of degrees we award.  We want to be part of the national effort to increase the percentage of adults with college degrees.  I will keep you informed of our progress.

How the U.S. Can Regain Leadership in Degree Attainment

My last blog entry dealt with the cost of the educational achievement gap in the United States.  But, we also have a college attainment gap when compared to other industrialized countries. 

In one generation's time, the U.S. has gone from leading the world in the percentage of adults with college education to 12th in college attainment of young adults 25-34 years of age.  Three countries have college attainment rates for young adults above 50%, Canada (55%), Japan (54%) and Korea (53%). Even more troubling is the fact that the U.S. is one of only two industrialized nations that has a higher college attainment rate for older adults (54-64) than for young adults (25-34).  So, we're moving in the wrong direction.

President Obama has set the goal of leading the world in adults with college education. At his August 9th speech at U.T. Austin, he reiterated his goal of "producing 8 million more college graduates by 2020 so we can have a higher share of graduates than any other nation on earth,"   Secretary for Education Arne Duncan has called this effort "the North Star" for the Obama administration's education initiatives.

President Obama calls this push to regain international leadership in college attainment "the economic issue of our time."  Why?  He made that point very clear, "It's an economic issue when nearly eight in ten new jobs will require workforce training or a higher education by the end of the decade."

Several organizations have developed plans to help the United States reach this goal by 2025.  The Lumina Foundation for Education has set the 'big goal' of 60 % of Americans to have 'high-quality degrees and credentials' by 2025.  Most other national organizations  have set 55% as their target. (View the Lumina Foundation's interactive map to see where your state stands here.)

Either way, it is quite a stretch. To reach the goal of 55% of Americans with a college degree, requires the U.S. to produce 64 million new college degrees, with at least 16 million degrees produced above current levels.   So, how might it be done?

Several states have developed strategic plans to reduce the achievement gap and stretch goals for producing more college graduates.   Two states have very specific plans for increasing college attainment.  Kentucky has set a goal of 'doubling the numbers' of college graduates by 2020.  Texas has developed a plan, Closing the Gaps 2015, with a goal of awarding 210,000 certificates and degrees from public universities by 2015.

What impact would raising college attainment levels have on the U.S. economy?  According to CEOs for Cities, simply raising the college attainment rate in the 51 largest cities in America by 1% would yield a 'talent dividend' of $124 billion. Raising it 10% would produce $1.2 trillion!

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board projects that if the state successfully meets its plans, by 2030, it will reap increases in $489 billion in spending, $194 billion in gross state product, and $122 billion in personal income, as well as 1 million new jobs.  Similarly, Kentucky projects that if it reaches it goals by 2020, it will increase personal income by $159 billion and and state tax revenue by $9 billion.

Most states have already developed plans to increase high school graduation rates and college completion rates.  However, to reach a 55% college attainment rate by 2025 will also require strategies to attract working adults back to college to earn a degrees. According to a report by the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning, 32 states cannot meet the targets by solely relying on the traditional college-age population. Moreover, even if every state reached 'best-case scenarios' in improving high school graduation rates and college completion rates, America would still be a little over 3 million short of the 64 million new degrees required to hit the 55% target.

According to projections by National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, by 2025, two states (Texas and California) would need to produce over a million new degree holders over and above current degree production levels.  This is conceivable with a broad strategy that includes both traditional K-16 pathways (such as improved achievement levels, reduced dropout rates, rigorous curricula, improved college readiness, and improvements in college graduation rates) along with plans to addresses the educational needs of working adults.

In Texas, for example, only 29% of all Texas have an associates degree or higher.  Over 2 million Texans lack a high school degree (21.6% of all adults).  In 2000, more than one million Texans had never completed the 9th grade.  Over 2.5 million Texans have some college, but no degree.  Clearly, helping adults obtain high school and college degrees must be a part of plans for increasing the percentage of adults with college degrees.

If community colleges and four-year institutions can attract less than half of that 2.5 million to return to college and to earn a degree, that would produce 1 million more Texans with a college degree.  Similarly, if Texas was to get 50% of adults with less than a 9th grade education to earn their GED, followed by a college certificate or associate of arts degree, that would yield another half million Texans with some college education.

Several organizations have made recommendations to help the United States increase college attainment.  The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are working towards a common framework for national standards for high school graduation reflecting college and career readiness.  Not all states signed on (Alaska and Texas, for example, have not), but most are joining the effort.

The Educational Trust promotes efforts in K-12 to reduce the achievement gap between whites and nonwhites and has expanded those efforts in higher education.  Recently, it has joined force with 24 public university systems to cut the college-going and graduation gaps for low-income and minority students in half by 2015, producing a report to show progress of major public universities. 

The College Board has issued a "Completion Agenda," with ten recommendations: 1) provide voluntary preschool education, universally available to children from low-income families; 2)  improve middle and high school college counseling; 3) implement the best research-based dropout prevention; 4) align the K-12 education system with international standards and college admission expectations; 5) improve teacher quality and focus on recruitment and retention; 6) clarify and simply the admission process; 7) provide more need-based grant aid, while simplifying financial aid processes; 8) keep college affordable; 9) dramatically increase completion rates; and, finally, 10) provide post-secondary opportunities as an essential element of adult education programs.

Meeting the President's call to regain national leadership in college attainment will not be easy.  But, it is essential for the future of America. As President Obama stated, "Countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow."  Those whom we educate today, may be the innovators of tomorrow.  America must invest in its future.

All over the country, organizations and universities are engaged in discussions of how we can rise to the challenge.  In my next blog post I will give examples of what we are doing at the University of Houston-Downtown.