When I enrolled at East Central Junior College in Decatur, Mississippi, 40 years
ago, I received a Pell Grant and several scholarships based on a strong high
school academic record.
Still, my parents and grandparents had to pool all the resources they could find, and I had saved money earned by working after school and during the summers while in high school. I was a short-order cook at a local restaurant on the weekends while attending East Central, and we found a way to make it work like many of my friends and their families who were in the same situation. I only recently paid off the student loans which funded my bachelor’s and graduate degrees, more than 30 years after that odyssey began.
What I did not have to deal with all those years ago was a broad societal questioning of the value of earning a higher education. The value proposition of higher education was strong in my family and in most families then, but something has changed over time, at least for some people. I was the first person in my family to go to college, and my grandfather did not care if I majored in history or chemistry, journalism, or education. He simply wanted me to be the first person in his family to be “educated” by his definition, which meant earning a college degree.
He was convinced that earning that degree and learning what I would learn on that path, along with the strong work ethic he and others had already instilled in me, would provide me with opportunities to lead our family out of multigenerational poverty, to serve my country and the world as a more informed, well-rounded citizen, and to better understand the world around me which he correctly assumed would change vastly during my lifetime. In other words, he assumed I would do something noble with my education, but he did not care precisely what I did with it as long as it was noble. That was enough for him and for his generation.
Today, we must convince prospective students and their families of the value proposition of education in other ways. It is no longer enough to argue that it has intrinsic value to finish molding young people into more holistic citizens. We must now focus on the economic value — the return on investment of going to college. Fortunately, that is an argument we can make easily enough.
One of my best friends who just retired as the superintendent of a public school district always espouses as one of his guiding principles: “All education should lead to work.” To that, he adds that there are four equally desirable pathways out of high school:
- Join the military. Serve our nation, and we thank you in advance for your service.
- Become an entrepreneur and start your own business but be careful in doing so to make sure that you have acquired all the skills, training, and resources needed to make it a success.
- Focus on career and technical education, and graduate high school workforce ready.
- Prepare yourself in high school for college success and pursue higher education at a college or university.
I agree with my friend that all these pathways are viable and good. I would argue that a college education can enhance even the first three pathways, but even as a college president, I do not argue that higher education is absolutely essential for every person to succeed in life. What I
would argue against (and my friend would agree with me) is the societal perception that some people are not “college material,” implying that they are not good enough or well enough prepared based on the circumstances of their birth, where they live, or other factors. One of my most fundamental beliefs is that every person who is willing to work hard and make the necessary sacrifices is college material, and it is less their job to come to us fully prepared than it is our job to meet them where they are and provide them with all the resources needed to succeed.
Back to the changing value proposition of higher education, I said it is easy enough to demonstrate economic value, so consider these statistics, according to the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities, of which West Virginia University is a member: on average over a lifetime, college graduates earn $1.2 million more than those with a high school diploma as their highest credential; the median annual income of bachelor’s degree holders is 84% higher compared to those with a high school diploma as their highest credential; and college graduates are half as likely to be unemployed as those with a high school diploma as their highest credential.
My grandfather was careful to instill in me the belief that no person is more valuable or important than any other person, and any job done with pride and dignity which allows people to provide for their families and contribute to society is just as noble as any other. Those points are not in debate. As census data indicate a declining birthrate and a declining population of traditionally-aged college students projected to last perhaps as long as my expected lifespan, colleges are already feeling the pinch of declining enrollment and looking for ways to attract more non-traditional students and to ensure their continuing relevance and leadership potential in the days and years to come.
To maintain that relevance, to regain any public trust that has eroded in American higher education, and to grow that trust moving forward, colleges will be required to bravely reinvent themselves. Colleges will have to maintain the same basic academic and workforce programs with the addition of new programs relevant to the communities they serve, the same quality of residence life and student support programs, and the same fundamental commitment to community service. We will have less revenue from a smaller student pool for which we will all be competing, increasing costs for the goods and services which colleges require to operate, and projected level state and federal support in most cases, so we must offset those trends with increasingly creative ideas to prioritize the funding needed to support the most critical work of students, faculty, and staff.
To stay the same in today’s arena of higher education is in fact to go backward, and backward is not a direction that West Virginia University Potomac State College intends to take. In the coming weeks, I will share with you some of the innovative ideas we are putting in place to ensure that we are here, ready, and able to serve this generation and the generations to come. We will honor our founding values and principles and be guided by our core mission and vision. Some of the choices we must make to ensure our continuing viability will be tough ones, and we will make them with a balance of courage, caution, compassion, and creativity.
When the five years of our new strategic plan have come and gone, I believe that WVU Potomac State College will emerge as an even stronger and more purpose-driven institution just as committed to your service as we have ever been.
Warm regards,
PSC Campus President