Bowles calls for 'refocus' of UNC
News & Observer 2/3/07
"We are much more supply driven," Bowles said of the UNC system. "We do what we durn well want to."
That will change, he said.
Bowles said within the next 18 months he plans to take an entourage of professors and campus leaders across the state to listen to citizens and business people about what North Carolina needs from its public universities.
"We've got to see if we can refocus our university to meet the needs of North Carolina over the next 20 to 30 years so that we can be competitive in this new, knowledge-based, global economy," Bowles said. "We must make sure that our students get the skills and the education they need to compete with the world's best and brightest, wherever they may be."
Bowles' call to "get off our duffs and do something" was the down-home expression that seemed to exemplify the theme of this week's Emerging Issues Forum, which was titled "Transforming Higher Education: A Competitive Advantage for North Carolina."
Hundreds of education leaders and policymakers heard messages from speakers that at times sounded like dire warnings:
* Universities must make fundamental changes if the United States is to remain competitive in an economy where jobs require brains, not brawn.
* Colleges must reach out to poor students and students of color, who are a growing part of the American population.
* Institutions must get control of skyrocketing costs, which threaten affordability for the poor and middle class.
* Colleges must be held accountable to the public for their performance and their output, which too often are substandard.
The two-day conference drew big names, including U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, and Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard University president.
Summers gave North Carolina leaders his prescription for how higher education must change: Unleash the energy of the young, measure success and failure, and stay focused on the long view. The biggest mistakes are always missed opportunities, he said.
One key to American progress in the 20th Century was the GI Bill, which paid for the education of soldiers returning from World War II, Summers said. That guarantee that everyone should have a shot at a college education is more important now than ever, he said.
"Our society depends on a sense of inclusion," Summers said, "a sense that everybody can have a part."
Paying more for less
That ideal is in danger, some cautioned.
American universities must get beyond the notion that cost equals quality, said Martha Lamkin, president and CEO of the Lumina Foundation for Education, which focuses on college accessibility.
Lamkin likened rising costs to an arms race fueled by popular magazine rankings. Other countries are producing more college graduates at a lesser cost, she said.
"We are spending more money per student than our competitors, who are zooming past us," Lamkin said. "So we're paying more and getting less."
On Friday, several hundred participants heard about UNC-Chapel Hill's Carolina Covenant and N.C. State's Pack Promise, which offer debt-free education to the poorest students at the state's two largest universities. Other such programs have sprouted up at universities across the country.
But that won't be enough to change a trend that endangers American prosperity, some leaders warned. Poor and minority students attend college at a much lower rate than middle class and wealthy students, while the U.S. population is becoming more diverse.
Universities must go out of their way to reach to the growing proportion of poor students and minority students.
Charles Reed, chancellor of the California State University, described some innovative approaches to getting more low-income students interested in college. The university regularly holds college fairs at African-American churches. It disseminated 750,000 posters in eight languages that outline the necessary steps to college.
"We can't wait for students to come to us," Reed said. "We have to go out of our comfort zones and go directly into the community and find these students."