Category: politics

The higher ed agenda and Obama’s second term

What’s in store for for higher education in President Obama’s second term?

Christine Messina-Boyer and Dan Kaufman of Widmeyer Communications wasted no time looking into their crystal ball. Their post, The Impact of the Election on Education, arrived in my inbox Wednesday morning. In that post, Messina-Boyer and Kaufman discuss both pre-college and higher education, and tell us not to expect any big pushes from the White House or the Education Department during the second term. After al, the president has a fiscal cliff, a Republican congress and a sputtering economy to worry about, so get in line, higher ed.

Since I don’t have a crystal ball, I decided to just look at the president’s Blueprint for America’s Future (PDF), a 20-page campaign document that was shipped to 3.5 million households in swing states during the campaign’s final days. Higher ed comes in to play in a few areas discussed in this document. So if this blueprint is to be realized, the president will need a strong and thriving post-secondary education system.

(A caveat: This is a campaign document, and we know how quickly campaign dreams can evaporate in the heat of political deal-making. So take these ideas for what they’re worth. But if you believe they’re worth advancing, work to hold the president accountable to these blueprint details. Also, there are no specifics in this document, so it’s more of a preliminary sketch than a true blueprint.)

  • Slowing tuition growth. Tied to affordability, this detail within the blueprint’s section titled “Improve Education for Middle-Class Jobs” specifically calls for cutting tuition growth in half over the next decade. It also calls for doubling campus-based student aid and incentives for schools that limit tuition growth. So the take-away here is that Obama wants colleges and universities to work on affordability, and maybe somewhere down the line there will be some carrots for those that adhere to the as-yet-unspecified goals.
  • Hope for STEM education. Obama wants 100,000 more math and science teachers so we can “out-compete China and Germany” (among other nations, presumably) “by out-educating them.” The STEM Master Teacher Corps and investments in research and innovation into the best ways to teach math and science will help improve math and science education nationwide.” That STEM Master Teacher Corps, by the way, has a goal of 10,000, not 100,000. So to reach the blueprint’s 100,000 goal will require more math and science teaching degrees.
  • Job training programs. The blueprint calls for community colleges to train 2 million new workers for “good jobs that actually exist.”
  • Research opportunities to support the blueprint’s goals of expanding jobs in manufacturing and energy. To bolster manufacturing, Obama says he wants to build “a new network of 15 to 20 manufacturing innovation institutes to bring together business and research universities to ensure that the next generation of products are invented and manufactured here.” Meeting his “all of the above” energy goals will also require investment in research universities.

Will any of these goals be realized? Obviously, none of these ideas can be achieved by a single president. It will take hard work and cooperation at the highest levels, among the president, his cabinet and Congress. But also it will require all of higher education pulling together — public and private institutions, research universities and community colleges — as well as the business sector.

Still, if the Widmeyer folks are correct in their assessment that the Obama Administration is unlikely to aggressively push an education agenda, then we not see much in the way of progress.

My personal prediction is that we’ll continue to hear calls to keep higher education affordable (or to make it affordable once again) and to increase the number of college graduates — not only from the Obama administration, but from politicians of all stripes, on both sides.

It promises to be an interesting four years.

Friday Five: Money quote edition (#highered angst, #brand storytelling, the #debates and more)

Lots of good stuff to share this week. Here are five worthwhile posts and articles, each equipped with a money quote to whet your appetite for more. Enjoy these morsels.

1. Let’s calm down about higher education is a refreshing perspective from The Atlantic. It comes at just the right time, too, with all the hand-wringing about the state of affairs of higher ed these days. (I’m not immune to a bit of that hand-wringing, myself.)

The money quote:

The point here is not to deny the existence of problems in American higher education. That would be absurd. The point, rather, is to say that much of the writing about the current “crisis” in American higher education is meant to scare, not to inform; to back agendas, not to enlighten or improve. The worries that afflict us are as old as the Republic. American higher education is not going down the tubes.

2. 7 basic types of stories. Which one is your brand telling? A look at the archetypes of stories from a panel of branding and storytelling experts, put together by Ad Age. Quote de money:

“Brands are stories,” [Droga5 executive creative director Ted Royer] said. “They want to embody a story. When we start working with a client, we don’t want to take a brief. We don’t want to just say, ‘What’s your problem?’ We want to go right back to, ‘Why was your company started? What’s your mission?’ We talk about mission all the time, and it’s just another way of saying, ‘What kind of story are you on? What kind of story do you want to tell?’ … Part of our job as an agency is to reignite that and really figure out what that story is.”

3. 11 PR observations from the first presidential debate is PR Daily’s analysis of the way the two presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, came off from a public relations perspective. Sharp observations, all the way down to the way the candidates dressed (although the writer, Brad Phillips, failed to mention how huge and prominent Romney’s American flag lapel pin was compared to Obama’s). Worth the read if you’re interested in PR, branding and personal communication. Money quote:

It’s important to point out that as flat as President Obama was tonight, he didn’t have a particularly “bad” single moment; nor did Mitt Romney have a strong one-liner that will become a memorable debate moment. … Still, don’t mistake this analysis for a prediction of what’s going to happen in November. The two presidential candidates will debate two more times this month, and a strong showing by President Obama and/or a weak showing by Mitt Romney will inevitably change the media narrative yet again.

4. Universities are failing at teaching social media, from Fortune and CNNMoney, quoting William Ward (@DR4WARD on Twitter), of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Quoth Ward:

Digital and social skills can be applied across majors and discipline, not just in a social media class. Faculty must change how they research, learn, communicate, and collaborate and model this behavior in all their classes and for their students.

5. Measuring the real value of a college degree, by Jeff Selingo of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Show us the money quote, Jeff:

[B]efore we buy a car, we can find various measures on everything from gas mileage to results of safety tests. We can turn to objective sources, like Consumer Reports, to check comparisons of similar vehicles and the Kelley Blue Book to see which cars hold their value over time. But when it comes to potentially one of the most expensive purchases in a lifetime, the attitude from colleges has always been that we should just trust them on the quality of their product.

Good weekend, all.