Dive Brief:
- A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education asks the question of whether higher education helps to perpetuate inequality, a challenge to the often-held idea that higher education is the great equalizer for social mobility in society.
- Using North Carolina as a backdrop, the article examines great divisions in the state's public colleges and universities. On one hand, the best colleges in the state are producing valuable — and profitable —research, and are helping to attract new industries and top employers to the states.
- On the other hand, much of that growth is highly concentrated, leaving the rest of the state out in the cold as manufacturing dwindles and colleges on the other end of the spectrum struggle to identify which fields will experience high growth and demand and yield jobs for graduates.
Dive Insight:
North Carolina's is a problem plaguing many in public higher education. Most realize that not every student can go to the flagship university, but the flagship is the best-funded and most-supported in the state. And for community colleges and colleges with open-access missions on the opposite end of the spectrum, leaders often find themselves trying to work with scraps while often being held to the same standards of expected outcomes as their in-state peers.
The challenges around preparing graduates for the workforce are top-of-mind for every higher ed administrator, and there's no silver bullet answer. Some institutions have found success with promoting a start-up culture on campus to help foster innovation. Others have developed direct partnerships with employers hoping to retrain their workforce. Still others have invited industry leaders to serve on curricular advisory panels to help shape the skills and education students receive to ensure it is consistent with what the employers want. Survival of the entire higher education complex will depend on institutions' abilities to embrace all of these solutions, and work with state and federal agencies to determine which fields are poised to emerge as critical disciplines in national security and the local economy.