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Nicolet College hosted two top educators Monday. Dan Clancy, president of the Wisconsin Technical College System, and Kevin Reily, president of the University of Wisconsin System, came to the college to speak to the community about the importance of higher education. They were feted at a reception after the presentation held in the college’s theatre.
In introducing the presidents at a press conference held before the main program, Nicolet College President Adrian Lorbetske noted that “We’ve never had two presidents here at once. This is a unique event for us.”
Nicolet College is praised for its innovative partnering programs
Dan Clancy lauded Nicolet College for its partnering initiatives with UW-Stout and the UW System to provide better access for students in career courses in manufacturing and healthcare, as well as working to increase better access to the college for Native Americans.
“Probably one of the most exciting developments is Nicolet’s partnering with UW-Green Bay,” Clancy said. “You're providing students with the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s without having to leave the region. This will be especially helpful to adults who have earned an associate degree at Nicolet and want to earn a four-year degree." He added, "All of these collaborative efforts take advantage of the strengths of each of our systems and help the Nicolet area grow its economic base and workforce.”
Clancy said the technical college system is seeking “new targeted state investments in the next generation of workers, to maintain Wisconsin’s gold standard of workers by matching the tech graduates’ skills with Wisconsin employers’ needs, especially in the areas of advanced manufacturing and healthcare, and the emerging fields of clean energy and green technology.”
The tech system, he said, also aspires to lay the groundwork for students’ success by improving their reading, writing and math skills, for making a seamless transition to the work world.
The third goal, Clancy said, “is for the state to invest in need-based aid, to help people continue their education in the face of increasing costs of education, books, gas, food and childcare. Our economic future depends on its highly-trained workforce.”
“Given this region’s demographics,” Clancy added, “it’s not surprising that Nicolet is focusing its next workforce initiative in the area of healthcare. With additional resources from the state, it will establish a physical therapy assistant curriculum—and typical to Nicolet, you will be sharing this program with other technical colleges.”
The nation and the state are falling behind
Kevin Reilly mentioned he was glad to be at Nicolet while on vacation. “I’m here partly because I’m your neighbor,” he said. “My wife and I bought a second house in Three Lakes a year ago. I was out running this morning, then went for a boatride, and swam with my Labrador retriever…I could really get to like this.”
On a more serious note, Reilly said the big picture for higher education nationally is bleak. “If current trends continue, out of every 100 eighth-graders—if you give them 10 years out: four more for high school and six more for post-high school—we would see a yield about 30 college grads of any type. What about those other 70 ‘lost kids’? What are they going to do without any type of college credential? We already know what they're going to do—not very well.
“We have to change that trend,” Reilly continued. “Our country used to be at the very top of the nations with the most highly-educated. We have now plateaued, with about 30 to 35 percent holding any kind of college degree. We’ve slipped to 8th most highly-educated. Once China and India get where they want to go with their higher education systems, they will be incredible competition. Even in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez wants to build 38 new post-secondary institutions in the next 15 years. This is a silent crisis for our country that our elected officials need to be made aware of.”
In Wisconsin, Reilly said, 25 percent have a baccalaureate degree—the national average is 27 percent, and Minnesota is close to 33 percent. “Why is this important? Because the states with the higher number of baccalaureate degrees have higher income. What happened, people ask? Ten years ago Minnesota and Wisconsin both had about the same number of baccalaureates and same level of income. Now Minnesota is 7 percent ahead of us with their baccalaureate population and $4,000 ahead of us in per capita income.”
The UW System’s “growth agenda” for Wisconsin, Reilly said, has “three simple pieces”: 1) to produce more baccalaureate degrees, 2) attract more people with degrees—“we have lots of area for improvement here," he said, "because we rank 49th or 50th among the states in attracting people with baccalaureates from elsewhere”—and third, attract the jobs that employ people with degrees. “We need to compete globally, at the high end of wages and skills,” he said.
Using the two-year schools as a springboard
Reilly said the UW System is working to attract more technical college associate degrees to the four-year colleges. “We’ve made a lot of improvement in the 12 years I’ve been here," he said. "On four campuses in the tech college system, including Nicolet, students have the opportunity to get a four-year degree. We’re working very hard together to make this happen, and we’re doing this at a time when budgets are tight.
“Given the big jump we need to take," he went on, "people are saying we need 50 to 55 percent of our state population with college degrees—we’ll need more collaboration and partnerships with the business sector, and we need to reach kids early, and communicate to families and kids that ‘you’re not going to have a decent life in this country unless you have some kind of post-secondary education.’”
Reilly noted there are 170,000 students in the UW System. “It’s the largest number we’ve ever had in our history; a number of our campuses are filled to the gills, so it’s not numbers we need but students who stay and graduate,” he said.
“This is about society realizing it needs people with degrees and sending the message to kids early that they need to have good preparation before starting post-secondary education so they succeed. The goal is to get more graduates, not more freshmen.”
The Covenant program initiated by Gov. Jim Doyle, Reilly said, is designed to encourage eighth graders to go for post-secondary education by providing a financial incentive for getting good grades in high school.
“We’re building on this program by signing onto a national initiative, Know How to Go,” Reilly said. “This is aimed at eighth graders and their families through the Internet, radio and video and social networks like Facebook, to get out the message about how to prepare socially and academically for college so that they are successful when they get there.”
Reilly said the UW System was working on a proposal for an undergrad program, possibly for credit, whereby college students would go into the high schools and talk with young students about the importance of college.
Lorbetske acknowledged that northern Wisconsin had additional challenges, given its even lower number of residents with college degrees. He said Nicolet has made an effort to go into the district’s high schools to talk about college. “We’re now looking to go lower, into the second and third grades,” he said, “to talk about college as an option.”