“In the so-called good ole days,” she noted, “there were still regional, comprehensive universities that were quite happy to be regional, comprehensive universities.”
‘We got very intrusive.’
With the fallout from the Varsity Blues college-admissions scandal still being felt (Natalicio called it “the exclamation point” on the problem of the race for prestige), it’s hard to argue with her. I’ve certainly seen the same during this period, and she’s right.
But I recognize that ambition is also a big part of the DNA of higher ed. Too often, ambition equals expansion, without adequate regard for impact.
I hadn’t fully realized it before I spoke with Natacio, but UTEP’s model is great example of keeping ambition properly focused.
Natalicio told me she had two goals during her presidency: expanding the makeup of the student body so that it would reflect the demographics of the region, and gaining R1 status as a university with “very high research activity” under the Carnegie Classification guidelines. (So yes, it has ambition too.)
The university has achieved both goals. When she took office as president, she said, it was about 50 percent Hispanic; today it’s 80 percent. And it recently achieved the R1 designation. She’s proud of both: “Most people told me, ‘You have to trade off.’”
In expanding access, the university got creative. More than two decades ago, it changed its admissions criteria. While students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class received automatic admission, lower-ranking students were admitted based on class rank and standardized-test scores, and other students who didn’t qualify under either standard were admitted provisionally, as “start students,” who could stay as long as they earned a 2.0 or better in their first semester. And if they missed that GPA, they would get one more chance the next semester.
The university coupled that policy with some intensive freshman-year advising. “We got very intrusive,” Natalicio said. It worked. The retention rate is now above 70 percent.
As Natalicio’s presidency winds down, and she figures out how to downsize from three decades in the presidential home to a condo in El Paso — “I’m going to be tossed out of my public housing,” she said — she’s now trying to manage another delicate balance. That’s the one between being, as she put it, both “depressed and optimistic” about the state of higher ed.
For all her critiques, I think the optimism is going to win out. For one, after working at something for 48 years (or 31), the power of human nature makes it hard to write off the effort as a lost cause. Secondly, as she noted (and I have previously, too), the public focus on higher ed’s role as a vehicle for social mobility has become a bit more prominent in the past few years.
In some circles, at least, Natalicio said she senses the focus on prestige is falling. “I’m beginning to feel that there’s a discomfort” with it, she said. “And that would be good.”
As for my anniversary, a little discomfort about the prestige game would be a pretty great present, too. But if you have other suggestions on how I should celebrate as I glide into Year 32 here, send them my way.
Free college? Yeah, that’s already a thing.
The unveiling of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s free-college proposal (along with her calls for student-debt forgiveness and a ban on federal aid for students at for-profit colleges) has drawn lots of headlines and debate. As I’ve written before, free college, or at least “free-ish” college options, already exist, and in some corners they’re even expanding.
One of these that particularly fascinates me, the accredited, tuition-free University of the People, marked an important milestone last week. It held its first graduation ceremony, with some 800 undergrads and grad students receiving degrees. You can watch the ceremony, which included both live and virtual components, here. And for more on the theory and practices and history of this growing, 10-year-old institution, which now enrolls more than 18,500 students in more than 200 countries, check out my interview from a couple of years ago with its founder, Shai Reshef.
More thoughts on relying on employers for education support.
Last week’s newsletter — on the risks of relying on employers’ support for education — prompted two different reactions from readers: one even more skeptical than mine; the other, more optimistic.
The skeptical one came from David Scobey, director of the Bringing Theory to Practice project at the Association of American Colleges & Universities, and more to the point, a historian. “The United States,” he wrote, “made a historic mistake in the late 1940s, when the defeat of a national health-care plan led to our employer-supplied health-care system (which increased inequality and decreased labor mobility). I worry that, even if the current tuition support turns out to be more than a fig leaf or a weak reed, we’re making the same mistake.”
The contrasting view came from Mark Kantrowitz, a well-known guru on financial aid who is now publisher and vice president for research at SavingforCollege.com. He said the piece had “overlooked companies that invest in education outside their own employees. For example, there’s Prudential Financial’s $180-million investment in education and training for ‘opportunity youth.’ There are also several companies that provide scholarships, and not just to communities in their footprint, such as Dell Scholars, Coca-Cola Scholars, etc. Sure, they get a PR boost, and maybe they help fill the prospective employee pipeline, but sometimes they do it just because it is the right thing to do.”
Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know, at goldie@chronicle.com.