The higher-ed zeitgeists — about the changing nature of teaching in the information age and the value of the bachelor’s degree — get around.
During one exercise, Entangled asked local business leaders when, if ever, the bachelor’s degree would lose its monopoly as the credential of choice for employers in hiring. (The reason: Entangled is evaluating the market for Fort Lewis to offer certificates and other credentials beyond the four-year degree.) Of the dozen-plus folks in the room, about a quarter moved to stand next to a sign that said that was “already true.” Most of the rest said the monopoly would evaporate “in the next five years.”
I hear a lot of this talk challenging the value of the bachelor’s degree from the “disruption crowd” on the conference circuit, but clearly the message has made it all the way to the Four Corners region too.
Likewise, in a conversation about new programs and new ways to deliver them, professors made their preferences known for the personalized teaching they now do in mostly face-to-face classes, but they also showed that they understood that their roles as teachers are changing.
“Certainly, my job is no longer to disseminate content knowledge,” I heard Ann McCarthy, a professor of mathematics, say. She then went on to explain that she sees her job as fostering students’ own creativity and critical-thinking skills within the discipline. So much for the stereotype of professors’ relying on decades-old syllabi.
A little surplus can go a long way for colleges on the margin. Fort Lewis leaders are looking to bolster their financial sustainability so they can pay more competitively — Durango can be an expensive place to live — and stave off layoffs like the ones the college made in 2017-18.
To get there, officials determined the college needs to bring in an additional $500,000 a year, an increase of less than 1 percent in its annual operational budget of about $57 million. I’m surprised the goal is so low. But it just goes to show how little it might take to steady a lot of other colleges now considered on the brink.
Fort Lewis hit its enrollment peak in the early 2000s, with 4,456 students. (Yes, tellingly, folks still know the exact number.) There are lots of reasons for the enrollment falloff — more student interest in the state’s bigger universities and more competition for Denver-area students from outside the state among them. Regional publics in other states could tell a similar story.
Fort Lewis officials had previously thought they could hit that $500,000 target if they could restore enrollment to 3,700 or more. Now, with Entangled in the picture, traditional enrollment growth of 18- to 24-year-olds isn’t necessarily the sole path to sustainability. The college is also looking into other ideas, perhaps more online degrees with a summer residency component or other adult-serving programs, as a means to that $500,000 end.
Challenges remain on the near-term horizon.
—Entangled is almost certain to propose that Fort Lewis offer at least some new degree programs online, even as the consultants recognize that those offerings might be out of step with the academic vibe professors seem to treasure. The courses I heard professors brag about, like “Soil and Society” and “The Art of Protest,” would be at home at any elite, East Coast liberal-arts college I could name. But online programs might make sense for an institution like this, if only, as Lauren Dibble of Entangled noted, because they could make it easier for the college to more affordably hire professors who could teach remotely.
—Demographic shifts make it logical for Fort Lewis to develop programs aimed at older students, but that’s a constituency it hasn’t served extensively in the past.
See you next week SXSW EDU in Austin?
Barring any last-minute changes, South by Southwest EDU is still a go — and my colleague Scott Carlson and I look forward to elbow-bump greeting you as we swap news, ideas, and gossip in the sessions and hallways.
And please be sure not to miss The Chronicle’s Sixth Annual Shark Tank: Edu Edition, on Tuesday, March 10, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Four great contestants will be pitching their ideas to improve higher education, and three sharks (including me) will oh-so-gently beat down their dreams. As always, it should be a blast.
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