LearnmoreMN Blog

An old industry learning new tricks

By Jim Campbell, August guest blogger

It’s been said that many of the longest-operating organizations in the world are institutions of higher education. While industries have evolved, the Fortune 500 list has turned over, and political boundaries have formed and changed, the higher education system has held relatively constant. In fact, the University of Minnesota, Hamline University, Saint John’s University, and Winona State University were founded before Minnesota even became a state in 1858. Many of our other public and private schools have been educating students for over a century.

The longstanding higher education tradition in Minnesota is mostly a good story for Minnesota. It has helped us build a world-class workforce, which has enabled decades of relative prosperity.

However, sometimes, strong traditions can challenge progress. Though I haven’t been around quite as long as some of these schools, I have had a long affiliation with Minnesota’s higher education institutions (including earning a BS at the U of M in the 60s, serving on alumni and foundation boards, and serving as interim Dean of the Carlson school in the 2000s). For the past couple decade, I have been completely frustrated by the pace of change at our higher education systems.  But I am happy to say that this past year I have felt an historic shift in attitude and actions among our higher education leadership.

Previously it seemed that to me that though the world evolved in significant ways, the schools were slow to respond. Technology enabled new ways of accessing higher education. Colleges and universities are serving a broader spectrum of the population, as job prospects for those with only a high school diploma have significantly diminished. The new economic normal is putting unimagined financial pressures on the systems and our students. Yet, in the past, Minnesota’s higher education institutions seemed to make only incremental efforts to respond to these forces. And instead of working together as public service providers, the higher education institutions cooperated very little, each sticking to their own domains believing they had little to benefit from working together. I often felt their actions even bordered on unproductive competition.

Since last fall, I have been working with The Itasca Project Higher Education Task Force (see report here), which included higher education leaders Eric Kaler, Steven Rosenstone, Brian Rosenberg, as well as business and community leaders. We have spent countless hours together around the same table discussing the future of higher education in Minnesota, how the systems might work together in new ways, and how business can be a more effective partner. Let me say that again: the leaders of the U of M, MnSCU, and a private college are working together and with business to identify ways to enhance Minnesota’s economic prosperity. We’ve initiated plans to work together to improve workforce alignment, build a stronger ecosystem of research and innovation, and to improve operational efficiencies through collaboration.

Of course we have a long ways to go to get to where we need to be for this 21st century economy. Yet, this activity has felt dramatically different than any higher education initiative I’ve been associated with. Our new leaders are not comfortable with business as usual, and I have felt their conviction to do things differently for Minnesota. In fact, I just learned that MnSCU and some of the private colleges are preparing for their first joint purchase together. This was a very small step, but I believe this is the start of a new wave of collaboration that will positively impact our region.

Though our higher education institutions may very well be around in another hundred years, they need to be very different organizations than they are today. I am pleased that Minnesota’s institutions have acknowledged that need to change and have started down the path.

Getting more from our higher education system requires collaboration

By Greg Page, August guest blogger

Global forces are demanding ever more from our higher education system. Minnesota is fortunate to be starting from a position of strength, but to remain competitive we must be better.

Over the last nine months I have had the pleasure of chairing a task force, convened by the Itasca Project, to identify strategies for higher education in Minnesota that drive long-term, sustainable economic growth and prosperity. The task force included higher education leaders Eric Kaler, Steven Rosenstone, Brian Rosenberg, as well as business and community leaders (see the report here 5MB, PDF).

The group identified a four-part strategy:

• Align academic offerings with workforce needs;
• Foster an ecosystem of research and innovation;
• Form new collaborations across higher education to optimize system-wide intellectual assets and efficiency; and
• Graduate more students with the foundational and technical skills needed to drive Minnesota’s prosperity.

These strategies and much of the task force’s deliberations, centered on a single unifying theme: the need for more robust and meaningful collaborations. The new economy requires our higher education systems to work together in unprecedented ways to benefit from operational efficiencies and to give students better options to achieve their degrees. But getting our institutions of higher education working better together is not enough. The business community must engage with higher education in new ways; such as:

Articulate future workforce needs, in terms of foundation and technical skills and sharing with institutions and students;

Engage with more students to help build their skills and expose them to employment opportunities through student projects and internships;

Partner with our institutions on research and innovation, where appropriate, to support the growth of Minnesota’s core economic sectors; and

Share operational expertise (e.g., implementing shared services).

I believe that through these collaborations we have the potential to create a fundamentally more powerful engine of learning, innovation, and economic growth for Minnesota. While important collaborations have been undertaken in the past, the new efforts foster partnerships with far greater intentionality and scale than previously imagined, creating the nation’s foremost collaboration of educators and employers.

The good news is we’ve gotten a lot of support and excitement for these strategies. This seems to be, thankfully, a non-partisan issue. I’ve had the opportunity to talk with business groups, policymakers, the Minnesota Private College Council, the U of M Board of Regents, the MnSCU trustees, and more. The reaction we have gotten most often to the proposed strategies and intention of renewed collaboration has consistently been “how can we help?” And from the business leaders I have talked with, I know we intend to do our part. We have formed a compact with higher education leaders to be more engaged partners and invite educators and employers to sign on.

The Itasca Project higher education task force has been a remarkable journey and there’s much to do yet. The fact that business leaders, the U of M, MnSCU, and the Private Colleges agreed to work together to chart a new course for higher education suggests this is a new era. Given the intensifying global competition, we must move with urgency into that new era of collaboration.

STEM: Is elementary too soon?

By Tony Murphy, March guest blogger

We hear a lot about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), both as a K-12 education issue and a challenge to meet future business personnel needs. The Obama administration is clearly focused on this as a major initiative. Equally at the state level, there is a focus on STEM education, particularly with the introduction of engineering standards in the recently revised K-12 science academic standards. Why this focus and why now?

There are numerous reasons for this. Many reports over the last decade have pointed to the low numbers of STEM graduates in this country and the low numbers of people of color and women in particular STEM areas. If the U.S. is to maintain its economic power, then we need a well-educated workforce that can meet the demands of business in a growing technological era. In this state, one of the largest achievement gaps exists between white students and students of color in science and mathematics. As a state with many of the nation’s top STEM companies located here, we need to tackle this issue, as the students in the current classrooms are our future workforce, business leaders and policymakers. Finally, and by no means the least important is that we live in an era where technologies develop and evolve at an ever-increasing rate. Just witness the growth of the cell phone industry since the early 1980s or our almost total dependence on the internet for personal, educational and business matters. These technologies and associated developments have both positive and negative consequences on our lives, society and environment. Students in K-12, and indeed in post-secondary education, need to be STEM literate so that they have the skills and knowledge required to live in this technological age, and also the critical thinking skills to consider and decide about our growing reliance on STEM areas.

Given all this, how do we introduce our students to STEM — and equally as important — when do we start? As a high school life science teacher and university professor, I have come to realize that we need to begin as early as possible with our children, certainly in elementary school, and even possibly before that. Children, at birth, are natural scientists, engineers, and problem-solvers. They consider the world around them and try to make sense of it the best way they know how; that is by touching, tasting, probing, building, dismantling, creating, discovering, exploring and so on. Yet, by the time they reach 4th grade, a third of them have lost an interest in science and by 8th grade this has increased to almost 50%. By this point in the K-12 system, the STEM pipeline is reduced to half of what it should be. So, how do we go about reversing this? How do we encourage more children to maintain their interest level in STEM? In my next blog, I will propose one possible solution, but what do you think? Is elementary too soon or not soon enough?

Welcome to a new year…and a new economy

By Margaret Anderson Kelliher, January guest blogger

As I prepare to start this new year in a new role as president and CEO of the Minnesota High Tech Association (MHTA), all of us need to start preparing for a new economy powered by a new-look workforce. Those who succeed in this new economy will be those who are consistently finding ways to innovate, and this new workforce must have the skill set to perform the jobs of the 21st century.

One major reason for the struggling economy is the current mismatch between the skills needed to fill the jobs and the skill set of those seeking employment. In order to begin closing that gap, and keep it closed in 2011 and beyond, we must provide our future workforce with the high-tech skills necessary to fill the jobs of the new economy. Companies depend on having the necessary talent available to fuel their ongoing growth and profitability. Skilled and motivated workers that are able to combine technical skills with business skills are essential for innovating new products and services, discovering new business opportunities, and synthesizing multiple pieces to solve business challenges. Having the right talent to deliver products and services to customers today will be essential to create the innovation necessary to succeed tomorrow.

For over a quarter century, MHTA has worked diligently to promote the growth, sustainability, and global competitiveness of Minnesota’s technology-based economy through advocacy, collaboration, and education. The 350 member companies that make up MHTA have joined together not to promote their own organizations, but to ensure that Minnesota’s economy is able to thrive. Priority number one for our organization is science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education; because we understand that the workforce of the new economy will require proficiency in these subjects if Minnesota is to remain globally competitive.

There are a number of education-related policy principles that we have laid to out as part of our mission of keeping Minnesota’s tech-based economy growing and competitive. For example, we specifically advocate for:

• high standards for all E-12 students, and endorse statewide standards, particularly in math and science;
• measuring Minnesota student performance against international student performance;
• availability and use of technology in schools;
• investment for research in higher education that leads to commercialization of technologies in the private sector; and
• ubiquitous broadband access.

We are strong advocates for these issues; however, advocacy alone is not enough for our proactive member companies, so through our web portal, www.getSTEM-mn.com, they and other community leaders are connecting directly with STEM teachers across Minnesota to bring resources and industry expertise into the classroom to get students excited about fields in science, technology, engineering, and math.

As the mother of two teenage children who I want to make sure are getting the education they need to be able to compete for 21st century jobs, and as the president and CEO of a business organization whose members depend on a constant stream of uniquely skilled workers, I am distinctly aware of the need for strong STEM education for Minnesota students. In the new year, MHTA will continue to be a voice on business and education issues facing the new economy. I encourage you to create a profile on getSTEM, receive the weekly emails from STEM teachers looking to enhance the learning experience for their students, and contribute time or resources as you are able. The students of today are the workforce of tomorrow, and we cannot sit back and hope they will have the skills for the new economy — we must ensure that they do.