Education ‘Stakes Have Never Been Higher’

This article, written by Jason Kornwitz, was originally posted by news @ Northeastern on January 13, 2017

Under Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Ted Mitchell deliv­ered his final speech as a senior member of the Obama admin­is­tra­tion on Thursday morning at North­eastern Uni­ver­sity, saying that inno­va­tion in higher edu­ca­tion is crit­ical to the suc­cess of the nation’s democracy.

“Our col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties must strive each day to embody the highest aspi­ra­tions of this country,” Mitchell told nearly 100 edu­ca­tion stake­holders who filled the Alumni Center for the hour­long event, which was orga­nized by the New Eng­land Council. “They must be a bul­wark for lib­erty and equality, diver­sity and inclu­sive­ness, freedom and oppor­tu­nity,” he added. “If we retreat from those respon­si­bil­i­ties, we risk the via­bility of our democracy.”

Since his appoint­ment in 2014, Mitchell has over­seen a score of poli­cies, pro­grams, and activ­i­ties related to post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion and fed­eral stu­dent aid. To spur edu­ca­tion, eco­nomic growth, and social pros­perity, he’s led the charge to imple­ment Pres­i­dent Obama’s goal to develop “the best edu­cated, most com­pet­i­tive work­force in the world.”

Throughout his talk, he under­scored the impor­tance of expanding edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties for all Amer­i­cans. He focused in par­tic­ular on edu­cating non-​​traditional stu­dents, whom he described as “todays new normal.” “To reach the president’s goal,” he said, “we need to open the doors of higher edu­ca­tion to stu­dents usu­ally excluded from college.”

For Mitchell, col­lege edu­ca­tion is cru­cial to closing the nation’s income inequality gap. According to new data com­piled by the Eco­nomic Policy Insti­tute, the average col­lege grad­uate earned 56 per­cent more than the typ­ical high school grad­uate in 2015, the largest such gap in EPIs fig­ures since 1973. What’s more, high school grad­u­ates are less likely than their college-​​educated peers to be mar­ried, own a home, and con­tribute to a 401(k)-style retire­ment plan.

“The stakes have never been higher for post-​​secondary edu­ca­tion,” Mitchell explained. “Our col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to col­lege access and afford­ability must remain strong if we want to sus­tain the health of our democracy.”

Mitchell noted that North­eastern has served as a leader in higher edu­ca­tion inno­va­tion, pointing in par­tic­ular to its part­ner­ship with Gen­eral Elec­tric Co. in a new fed­eral edu­ca­tion inno­va­tion pro­gram. Known as EQUIP, the Edu­ca­tional Quality through Inno­v­a­tive Part­ner­ships pro­gram aims to increase stu­dents’ access to inno­v­a­tive post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion while spurring novel col­lab­o­ra­tions designed to arm more Amer­i­cans with the skills required to excel in the 21st century.

“Our part­ner­ship with North­eastern makes this feel like home,” said Mitchell, who first vis­ited the uni­ver­sity in 2014 for a round­table on higher edu­ca­tion. “It’s a priv­i­lege to be here.”

Level, Northeastern’s boot­camp designed to equip pro­fes­sionals with in-​​​​demand data ana­lytics skills, is men­tioned in the Office of Edu­ca­tional Technology’s sup­ple­ment to the National Tech­nology Plan, which Mitchell announced on Thursday at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nology. And Northeastern’s ALIGN pro­gram—which offers eight master’s degrees in cutting-​​edge indus­tries to working pro­fes­sionals who do not have the expe­ri­ence to match the needs of these fields—is another example of the university’s inno­v­a­tive approach to life­long learning. Launched in spring 2014, ALIGN is the nation’s only expe­ri­en­tial grad­uate degree pro­gram for stu­dents who want to switch careers and need both an advanced degree and the real-​​​​world expe­ri­ence to do so.

Noting the program’s suc­cess in her opening remarks, Philomena Man­tella, senior vice pres­i­dent and CEO of Northeastern’s Pro­fes­sional Advance­ment Net­work, said: “North­eastern is all about inno­va­tion. We believe higher edu­ca­tion has the oblig­a­tion to con­tinue to inno­vate while removing the chasm between work and learning.”

In the Q&A, mod­er­ator Chris Gabrieli, chairman of the Mass­a­chu­setts Board of Higher Edu­ca­tion, asked Mitchell to name the top pri­ority for post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion stake­holders. In response, Mitchell chan­neled North­eastern, noting the impor­tance of designing flex­ible learning pro­grams for non-​​traditional students.

“We’re doing every­thing we can at the insti­tu­tional level to break the tyranny of time and space to create pro­grams that are more tai­lored to where stu­dents are and what their oblig­a­tions are,” he said.

Later, one audi­ence member asked Mitchell to assess the cur­rent state of the nation’s higher edu­ca­tion system. “We are edu­cating more Amer­i­cans across a broad spec­trum of back­grounds and abil­i­ties than ever before,” he said. But, he added, “we’ve been slow to con­nect higher edu­ca­tion out­comes with the changing dynamics of the economy.”