Post-Meeting Memo: BHEF Member Meeting (Winter 2010)

Introduction

BHEF members convened on February 5 for BHEF’s 2010 winter meeting at Raytheon Company’s Space and Airborne Systems Headquarters facility in El Segundo, California. The meeting featured keynote speaker U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter, as well as presentations by Michael Cohen, president of Achieve, Inc; Michael McPherson, president, Spencer Foundation; Debra Stewart, president, Council on Graduate Schools; and Charles (Chuck) Vest, president, National Academy of Engineering.

The “Strategic Takeaways” below highlight the key themes from the meeting. More detail about the content and discussions during each session follows in the Plenary Sessions Summary.

Strategic Takeaways

The 2010 winter meeting provided an integrated view of the challenges faced in American P- 12, undergraduate, and graduate education and discussion focused on how to address the most important issues at each major point in this “education pipeline.” Among these issues are: (1) how to implement common K-12 college-ready standards and assessments that will enable students to truly be “college-ready” and successful in higher education and the workplace, and what opportunities the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides to do so; (2) how to increase access to higher education and choice of institution by low-income, first generation students who represent the fastest growing college-age demographic in the U.S. and enable them to successfully attain a baccalaureate degree; (3) how to increase the number of graduates the U.S. is producing in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines to ensure that there are enough STEM teachers and STEM workers to support the U.S. innovation economy; and (4) how to ensure that the U.S. produces enough graduate degrees to equip its economy to continue to innovate and to provide the workforce its employers demand.

In the meeting wrap-up discussion, members grappled with the seeming intractability of some of these issues and sought to identify how BHEF can be most effective in addressing them. In addition to the discussion of issues summarized below, members identified initial elements of an action strategy for BHEF and its members, including:

Find new ways to leverage BHEF's unique membership to spur action to address these complex education issues at the federal and state levels. Among the suggestions: Deepen BHEF’s collaboration with members’ organizations such as the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of American Universities, and the American Council on Education; and step up advocacy with the U.S. Department of Education by providing a white paper that emphasizes the value of bachelor’s degree attainment and policies to enhance access and completion.
Use alliances with other business organizations, such as the BHEF-member led Business Coalition for Student Achievement (BCSA), the Business Roundtable (BRT), and the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), to advance BHEF’s P-12 and higher education agenda.
Better equip members to be effective advocates by providing opportunities for them to connect in new ways to federal and state policy discussions (e.g., the White House STEM Initiative), and by providing information for their use in educating their employees and communities about these issues.
Leverage capabilities and tools that BHEF has developed (e.g., the CRI memberled projects, the BHEF U.S. STEM Education Model, StrategicEdSolutions™) to tackle these intractable problems nationally and at the state level. Seize opportunities for members to act individually, as well as collectively through BHEF.

In concluding the meeting, Chairman Skorton noted BHEF’s significant achievements in strengthening the linkages between business and higher education sectors, deepening members’ understanding of the key education issues that confront us all, and developing substantial capabilities and tools that can be leveraged for impact. He advised members that the Executive Committee will be considering how best to maximize BHEF’s impact going forward and committed to report back to members about its deliberations.

Keynote Remarks by U.S. Under Secretary Kanter

U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter reviewed President Obama’s education priorities, which align well with those of BHEF. BHEF is working closely with Kanter and others at the Department of Education to advance a visionary set of national priorities across P-16 education, including Race to the Top, the Innovation Fund, and the College Access and Completion Fund. BHEF also is working with Kanter and the Department in moving toward reauthorization of ESEA and increasing awareness about the importance of STEM education.

Kanter stressed that education should be a cradle-to-grave endeavor for all Americans, from pre-K to lifelong advanced learning, and that there is a strong relationship between education and economic prosperity. According to Kanter, education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it is a prerequisite for success. The administration aims to produce an additional 10 million college graduates by 2020 and reclaim its role as the country with the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. In light of this, Kanter proceeded to outline President Obama’s education reform agenda, including:

Challenging states to adopt world-class standards rather than a specific standard. Obama’s economic stimulus plan includes a $5 billion incentive fund to reward states for, among other things, boosting the quality of standards and state tests.
Reducing student dropout rates, which requires turning around the worst schools.
Improving college access with a particular focus on affordability and using the data the government already possesses.
Committing to at least one year or more of higher education or career training.
Focusing on college completion, especially around career pathways, STEM programs, transfer and articulation, and remediation.

In closing, Kanter highlighted the administration’s interest in hearing from BHEF members.

Plenary Sessions Summary

Plenary I: Can the Reauthorization of the Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Ensure College Readiness for All?

The goal of this session was to elicit members’ input on recommendations for the upcoming reauthorization of the ESEA in the context of the historic levels of federal funding that are being made available for P-12 education and the current focus on common college and career-ready standards across the nation.

Co-moderator Ed Rust introduced the session, highlighting the economic implications of educational attainment. Rust noted that the reauthorization of ESEA is fundamentally about creating an educational pipeline that will enable students to develop a skill set that prepares them for college and lifelong learning. He then provided an overview of how business groups, particularly BCSA, are advancing an agenda for ESEA reauthorization. The agenda includes seven principles focused on strengthening standards, rewarding success, and use of data-driven decision-making, among others.¹ He urged BHEF business and higher education members to support these principles.

Michael Cohen then described a parallel process that is underway to develop common core standards in math and language by a majority of states, due to be completed in March. Achieve is soliciting feedback to ensure that the standards capture the knowledge and skills needed for students to succeed in college and beyond. Cohen encouraged BHEF members to evaluate these new standards and ask: If a student meets these when graduating from high school, will s/he be prepared to succeed in my higher education institution or workplace? Cohen expressed concern about the multiplicity of assessment tools that are being developed to measure achievement of the standards and emphasized the need to be clear about what level of performance will be required to meet the standards. He also emphasized the importance of aligning P-12 and higher education curricula to ensure that “college-ready” actually means that students are ready to undertake college-level coursework. Rust noted that there is real need for a consumer focus here – parents and communities should better understand what level of quality the education system needs to deliver and demand it.

Members discussed the importance of:

Encouraging states to adopt the common core standards, including in science.
Ensuring that state and local curricula and assessments are aligned with the common core standards and higher education.
Bringing into greater alignment P-12 and higher education curricula and the expectations of high school students, parents, and teachers and higher education institutions about college readiness.
Involving parents and communities in changing attitudes, expectations, and college readiness.

Members proposed increasing strategic collaboration with organizations such as BCSA and Achieve, and explored the possibilities of BHEF working with these organizations to provide Web-based and other content to assist members in advocating to school boards and other policy makers. They also proposed educating their employees about the importance of increasing standards and aligning K-12 and higher education curricula.

Plenary II: Improving the STEM Pipeline – Insights from the U.S. STEM Education Model

This session was designed to update members on the Obama administration’s recent STEM initiatives and to highlight initial lessons learned from BHEF’s U.S. STEM Education Model that can support efforts to improve STEM education and increase the number of students who earn STEM degrees. Members’ policy recommendations were solicited along with their suggestions for next steps to advance use of the Model.

Bill Swanson provided an historical overview of BHEF’s STEM modeling project, which developed from BHEF’s STEM Initiative and its goal of doubling the numbers of STEM graduates. The resulting BHEF U.S. STEM Education Model, developed by Raytheon and donated to BHEF in 2009, has been the basis for new understandings of the STEM pipeline. Brian Fitzgerald noted the unprecedented opportunity currently available at the federal level to advance STEM education policy as a result of the Obama administration’s initiatives, and BHEF’s ability to seize this opportunity due to the Model and BHEF’s STEM Initiative.

Fitzgerald then highlighted the key initial insights gleaned from the modeling effort, outlined in BHEF’s Increasing the Number of U.S. STEM Graduates working paper distributed to members at the meeting. A key insight gleaned thus far, Fitzgerald noted, is the fact that neither a P-12 nor higher education strategy alone is sufficient to significantly increase the number of STEM graduates. Instead, mutually reinforcing strategies are required. The Model suggests that focusing on undergraduate education yields the most immediate return on investment because at that level, students enrolled in STEM are both interested and proficient – prerequisites to successful persistence in STEM – and 50 percent of these students currently abandon the STEM disciplines.

Chris Roe then demonstrated the Model for members to illustrate the findings highlighted, including the impacts of comparative programs designed to improve college success on undergraduate retention of STEM majors, the impact of STEM-capable teacher attrition on the number of STEM capable students, and the temporal lag that exists between implementation and impact with various interventions. Warren Baker and Dick Stoddard then described STEM efforts underway in California and Ohio, respectively, and their potential use of modeling and similar tools.

In the ensuing discussion, several members agreed that while we need to continue to pursue improvements in P-12, the most strategic emphasis in the short-term should be on retaining the undergraduate students already enrolled in STEM majors. Some participants stressed the need for a mechanism to identify effective retention strategies. Others named several retention programs that merit additional funding, including STAR, a California program that provides project-based research learning and connects STEM teaching undergraduates with national labs and master teacher mentors to enhance STEM retention. Charles Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering, reinforced the importance of practical learning for college students in STEM and members agreed that effective programs that should be scaled to a national level.

Plenary Session III: Are U.S. Baccalaureate Attainment Rates Poised for a Fall? The Impact of the Economy, Policy Priorities and Changing Demographics

This session focused on whether current federal policy, which emphasizes strengthening community colleges, is sufficient to ensure baccalaureate degree attainment in light of trends signaling future declines in attainment levels. Members considered policies around college transfer, four-year college completion, and higher education financing, among other things, to reverse these trends, taking into consideration the recession and dramatic state deficits.

David Skorton opened the session and Michael McPherson described college degree attainment trends contained in his recent book, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities, co-authored with William Bowen and Matthew Chingos. The data reflect the leveling off of educational attainment in the U.S. population since the 1950s; significant disparities in B.A. attainment among socio-economic groups in the U.S.; and the positive influence on college success of having at least one parent who graduated from college, regardless of socio-economic status. McPherson described the phenomenon of student “under-matching” (i.e., students attending a less selective or lower cost institution than that for which they are qualified) and its significant, negative impact on the likelihood of completing a four-year degree. Additionally, he described his findings relating to the impact of net price (i.e., the actual cost of attending college borne by a student) on B.A. attainment. The negative effects of under-matching and high net price on degree attainment among lower socio-economic groups, he argued, suggest the need for public policy changes to improve information available to students about the importance of college graduation, differences among institutions’ graduation rates, and improved student aid to decrease the net price borne by students. McPherson also observed that problems with two-year college completion suggest the need for more effective “articulation arrangements” between twoand four-year institutions to increase transfers to the latter.

Much of members’ discussion centered on the impact of barriers to enrollment (e.g., enrollment caps) created by capacity constraints in higher education institutions; inadequate financial aid for low-income students; and concerns about “under-matching” identified by McPherson. Members also identified the challenges and costs associated with educating under-prepared students, which affect persistence and completion. Some members, in the face of shrinking state support for higher education, called for a national policy to address funding for higher education, suggested making Pell grants an entitlement, and suggested that institutions receive formula-based federal funding to help them support the low income students they serve. Other members favored BHEF’s support for President Obama’s goals of community college attainment, but suggested that BHEF should make a compelling case for the value of a bachelor’s degree. It was recommended that BHEF prepare a white paper on this issue for the secretary of education that also proposes strategies for the effective use of the Education Department’s College Access and Completion Innovation Fund to improve access persistence and completion.

Plenary Session IV: Renewing Graduate Education: Recommendations from the Commission on the Future of Graduate Education

This session capped the day’s discussion of the P-20 education pipeline with a presentation of preliminary results and recommendations from a Commission on the Future of Graduate Education report. Members engaged in a discussion regarding how, and to what extent, BHEF should support the Commission’s recommendations.

Molly Broad introduced the session and Roger Ferguson and Debra Stewart reviewed the work of the Commission on the Future of Graduate Education, which is examining the assumption that production of graduate degrees is key to U.S. competitiveness as well as analyzing trends in degree production. According to Stewart, the Commission’s review of labor market data suggests that the graduate degree supply is not adequate, even when assuming stable demand. In contrast to the U.S.’s haphazard “system” for producing graduate degrees, she noted that China, Europe, Brazil, and Australia are making systematic investments to increase their capacity to produce graduate degrees, and China is expected soon to surpass the U.S. in the production of math, science, and engineering degrees. Meanwhile, an increasing number of U.S. employers believe a graduate education is necessary to meet workforce demands, yet trends suggest that significant impediments exist to increasing graduate enrollment. Additionally, Stewart suggested that the quality of graduate education is evolving, and increasingly is characterized by interdisciplinary/hybrid training that combines in-depth disciplinary training with managerial training.

Respondent Chuck Vest suggested that renewing America’s commitment to educate its people is vital at this juncture. Globalization is no longer the future – it is here ― with the result that R&D spending extends far beyond America’s borders. He urged that society should broaden the vision of the PhD career path and rethink the master’s degree to increase flexibility, among other things. He challenged the view that “central planning” is the route to increasing the number of post-doctorates in society.

Members then engaged in a lively discussion. Many agreed that it would be most productive to frame the issues surrounding graduate education as innovation and workforce-driven, rather than as focused on global competitiveness. The intellectual tension in this framing also was noted, as a focus on innovation would tend to lead to one type of preparation while a workforce focus may more likely lead to other emphases. The latter approach, for example, would highlight helping industry, e.g., aerospace, address high-need areas through means such as the professional science masters degrees, and would focus on comparable advanced studies in business and finance disciplines. The discussion also highlighted the fact that federal support for research is the primary source of funding for STEM graduate education in the U.S., in contrast with more systematic means of increasing graduate degree production used elsewhere, and some members suggested a need to rethink how graduate education is financed.

Conclusion

The meeting highlighted a series of challenges that the U.S faces in improving education at all levels. The meeting wrap-up focused members’ discussion on the concrete steps that members could take to help address these challenges, including collective action around an advocacy agenda through BHEF.

In addition, several overarching issues emerged, which may provide a focus for future meeting topics, including:

Can business and universities collaborate to help P-12 create new learning models that enable more students to access postsecondary education and do so earlier at lower overall cost?
Can public higher education maintain its current business model in light of declining state appropriations and rising enrollment demands?
Are there new types of collaboration between business and universities both in the form of new graduate programs and new support for graduate education that could ensure an adequate supply of workers in high-need sectors of the economy?

¹Specifically, the principles are: (1) expect internationally benchmarked standards and assessments to reflect readiness for college, workplace, and international competition; (2) hold all schools accountable while putting a laser-like focus on ending “dropout factories”; (3) measure and reward teacher and administrator success; (4) foster a “client-centered approach” by districts and schools; (5) leverage data systems to inform instruction, improvement, and interventions; (6)invest in school improvement and encourage technology and other innovations to improve student achievement; and (7) establish a dedicated strategy and funding stream to improve STEM education.