I was fortunate enough to be invited to a LEED event on Friday, September 7th. LEED is an association (Linking Education and Economic Development) dedicated to encouraging alignment between the needs of industry and education in the greater Sacramento area. The format was breakfast with a keynote speaker, a panel of speakers, and a series of other speakers. The general tone of the meeting was about the strides the local higher ed community has made to produce workers capable of making the region’s economy grow.
Sacramento has, like much of California, three tiers of higher ed – community colleges, a CSU campus (CSU Sacramento) and a UC campus (UC Davis). This is aligned to the overall California Master Education Plan where the community colleges offer open enrollment to anyone who can pay a minimal per unit fee; the CSU system focuses on undergraduate and masters degrees; and, the UC system focuses on research and Phd programs. In Sacramento, over 80,000 students attend the Los Rios Community College district’s programs. This was seen as a net win under the master plan. CSU Sacramento, reported that they have been so successful that they have been allowed to offer a Phd in Education, a relative rarity under the master plan. And, rightly so, the officials from UC Davis bragged about their leadership positions in wine making, bio-engineering, medical research, and their new focus on clean and green energy technology.
It was easy to see how the case can be made that their efforts have been beneficial to the region’s economy. It is clear that companies in the area are appreciative of the efforts of the education institutions. So, was there anything to be concerned about?
Well, I found it a little interesting that the pace of technological advancement would be so strong and so little would be mentioned about the application of technology to the educational process. I sat next to a lady who had the position of being on the governor’s staff to oversee how the educational institutions were using the public’s funds. When I asked her if there was a desire to use technology, particularly in the first two years of college to distribute so called “general ed” classes over the Internet, she said that she felt there was a negative reaction to such a thought by the higher ed institutions. When I pointed out that there were many private companies, Kaplan and the University of Phoenix for example, that were doing this today, she fell back on the old saw about those degrees not being fully accredited.
Her information is out of date, but I did not press her on this point. My colleague was especially chagrined that there is so little being done to challenge the status quo in this respect.
In Issue 14 of the iJournal, Dr. Omid Pourzanjani wrote the article,
Higher Education in the 21st Century:
The Impact of Online Instruction and Services
In the article, he makes a compelling case that the day is coming when general ed classes will be open to anyone on the Internet and it won’t matter to you degree which on-line provider serves up the content. He speaks about the implications of this for the current institutions of higher learning and how they will have to adapt or perish.
For me, the goals of the LEED group must go beyond that of just linking industry and education together. There must be some current of improvement in education that is carried forward within the organization.
Of course, this is just my opinion…
