Part 1 of this series, “Attack of the Politicians,” discussed the widespread notion that higher education’s purpose is, first and foremost, to prepare students for the workforce. Part 2, “Higher Education Strikes Back (Weakly),” focused on the idea that higher education actually serves a multitude of purposes, preparation for a career being perhaps the most important, but far from the only, purpose. Part 3, “A New Hope,” considered the findings of a Gallup-Purdue study that correlated particular experiences and opportunities students had as undergraduates with a subsequent rich and fulfilling life – and surely “a great job and a great life” is something that all prospective students (and their parents) desire.

Now, in Part 4, I examine the efforts we at Roger Williams University are making to ensure that our students receive these highly desirable experiences and opportunities, as a way of demonstrating the ultimate value of an RWU education. Here, then, are the nine major experiences that the Gallup-Purdue report found to be highly correlated with great jobs and great lives.

The numeric figure that follows each experience is the percentage of the 30,000 college graduates surveyed by Gallup who indicated that they “strongly agreed” that they had had these experiences as undergraduates.

1. A professor who cared about the student as a person (27%): RWU faculty are hired, retained, tenured and promoted based primarily on their effectiveness in teaching our undergraduates. RWU’s classes are deliberately kept small, averaging fewer than 20 students, in order to foster personal connections between individual students and their professors. In fact, when asked what one thing they hope never changes at RWU, the overwhelming response from graduating seniors is the close personal relationship between faculty and students that developed over their four undergraduate years. Bottom line: our faculty care about our students.

2. A professor who made the student excited about learning (63%): Not every student arrives on a college campus (including Roger Williams University) with the motivation to excel. Accordingly, our faculty assume the responsibility for motivating students and encouraging them to become excited about learning. Our students may become motivated because of the skill of a professor in presenting subject material in class in a fundamentally engaging and exciting manner. Other students become motivated because their professor includes them in a research project. Still other students become motivated because they become a part of interdisciplinary teams of students and professors working on often-complicated problems and projects in our external community. We see how motivated and excited students are about research and hands-on experiential projects during one week each spring when they present the results of their individual work through posters and talks at our weeklong SASH (Student Academic Showcase and Honors) Conference. This year, 468 students – the equivalent of almost half of our graduating class – presented at SASH.

3. A mentor who encouraged the student to pursue his or her dreams (22%): Very often, it is our faculty who serve as mentors to our students. But mentorship can come from anyone on the campus – including the juniors and seniors who serve as student senators, Presidential Ambassadors, Orientation Advisors, Student Advocates and Resident Assistants, as well as the staff in the Division of Student Life, senior administrators – even the departmental secretaries. I have never seen or worked on a campus where the entire staff is so completely focused on student success. It is sad to see that only about one in five of the college graduates in the Gallup-Purdue study strongly agreed that they had had a mentor while in college. I am confident that the percentage of RWU graduates responding affirmatively would be much higher.

4. An internship or job where the student was able to apply what she or he learned in the classroom (29%): Internships are common in many of our academic departments. At RWU, in fields as disparate as journalism, architecture and public relations, internships are required for graduation. Many of our students in a variety of majors graduate having had two or three internships. Similarly, students in fields such as engineering, construction management and finance are placed in summer jobs where they are able to demonstrate in the field what they have learned in formal classroom work – and often these summer jobs and internships translate into a permanent position after graduation.

5. Active involvement with extracurricular activities and organizations (20%): Roger Williams University has more clubs and organizations than many much larger campuses, and every year students who have the desire to do so can (and do) create new clubs. Our campus is a hive of activity on every night of the school year, where social life is not dominated by fraternities and sororities (since we have none), but by clubs, intercollegiate and intramural athletics, and service organizations of every kind – an outgrowth of the fact that the great majority of our students live on campus and truly enjoy the company of their classmates.

6. A project that took a semester or more to complete (32%): One of the hallmarks of a Roger Williams University education is the opportunity to do research with faculty (a thesis or senior project), or to be on a Community Partnerships Center interdisciplinary team of students, in a for-credit project guided by faculty. These projects originate from community nonprofits and government agencies and require the analysis of, and recommendations for solving, complex problems, using students from several academic specialties that, of necessity, must learn to work together. These projects are a semester or more in length, and, in the last three-plus years, we have had more than 150 such projects, involving more than 1,300 students.

7. Felt well prepared for life after college (29%): About once a week throughout the school year, my wife and I host dinner parties in our home for small groups of students. We are curious to know more about the students: what state or country are they from; how was it that they chose RWU; how are they enjoying their experience here; if they are seniors, have they secured a job; how well prepared do they feel as they leave the campus for the “real world?” The information is anecdotal, of course, but while many of our seniors express some reluctance to leave the campus life they know and love, overwhelmingly (and certainly at a rate much higher than Gallup found in its study) they feel well prepared for the next stage of their lives. They feel this way because they know that they have what it takes to be successful: they are confident because of the education and mentorship they have received at RWU. Their off-campus experiences in internships, study abroad, or in presenting the results of their research at regional or national conferences, coupled with a great work ethic, are the icing on the cake. They feel that they can compete with the graduates of any university.

8. Felt emotionally attached to the college (18%): When high school seniors come to an Open House at RWU, we often ask them, “How many of you would like to have one more year of high school?” Of course, they look at us as if we had lost our minds. One more year of high school? You have got to be kidding! No one ever puts up his or her hand. But, four years later, when I talk to our graduating seniors at one of the many celebratory events we hold for them, it’s quite a different story. About half say they would love to come back for another year at RWU, even as they acknowledge that it’s time for them to move on. They are sometimes wistful to the point of tears. There is no question in my mind that the large majority of our graduates have formed a strong emotional attachment to our campus – and that is something of which I am very proud.

9. Felt the college was passionate about the long-term success of its students (24%): I have previously mentioned the unusual level of commitment our entire staff at RWU has for maximizing our students’ success, and how the students, when asked what they hope will never change, overwhelmingly talk of the close and supportive relationships they have developed with both faculty and staff. They reference conversations they have had with high school friends who went to other colleges, and report their recognition of, and appreciation for, the fact that their experience at RWU was exceptional. As president, I am very confident that the percentage of our graduates, especially in recent years, who would “strongly agree” that their college was passionate about their long-term success would be significantly higher than the 24 percent found by Gallup in its study of 30,000 college graduates.

The Takeaway

Well, of course a university president, given the opportunity, will brag about his or her campus, faculty, students and programs. So kindly forgive my enthusiasm about Roger Williams University. But there are two points that I want to make as I end this blog post:

1. From the Gallup-Purdue study, we in higher education now have a far clearer sense of which experiences matter most to our graduates as they seek to have a life well lived. Surely, our collective objective should be intentionally to increase the likelihood that our students will have such positive experiences (rather than just leaving everything to chance) – and yet I see very little evidence that this critical study – one that provides answers and direction to an industry (higher education) that many observers feel is in grave need of answers and direction – is being taken seriously by educators. Rather than reconsidering and reframing their institutions’ educational objectives, too many campus leaders seem intent on staying the course – even though they have no real sense of what that course is, or where it will take them.

2. I take no small delight in learning that many of the things we have been doing at Roger Williams University historically, and even more in recent years, align very well with the experiences that were shown to matter most in the Gallup-Purdue study. But there is more that we can do, and are doing, not only to increase the opportunity and likelihood that our students will have these experiences, but also to survey our students and graduates to ascertain whether they “strongly agree” that they are receiving them.

I remain very optimistic about the future of Roger Williams University and about our growing reputation in preparing our students in an exceptional manner to have a great job and a great life.

For the past 18 months, I have made numerous posts wherein I have described my reactions to seeing the gradual disintegration of both the public and private models of higher education, in a manner akin to watching a slow-motion train wreck.

Well, the rate of disintegration is increasing. The slow-motion train wreck is speeding up. Consider five categories of evidence from the news media in recent weeks:

(1) The gap between the wealthy privates and everyone else is becoming a chasm.

My claim in my blog post of Oct. 15, 2013, that, in some respects, the wealthy colleges and universities seem more like investment companies that do a little teaching on the side now seems more prophetic than ever. Two recent articles make the case.

In “How American Universities Turned into Corporations,” Time, May 22, 2014, documentary film director Andrew Rossi points out that the American model of higher education, from the time of the founding of Harvard in 1636, has depended on “constant improvement and expansion” – and that the resulting educational arms race is no longer sustainable, except for the most affluent of institutions. “As universities succumb to this cost disease, they begin to resemble businesses more than nonprofit schools charged with a public mission. The future of higher learning and, more broadly our society hangs in the balance.”

The second article, “Princeton’s Top Money Managers get 46% Pay Raise in 2013,” Bloomberg, May 20, 2014, underscores both the widening chasm between the wealthy privates and the rest of higher education, and the notion that these institutions have effectively become businesses. The top investment official at Princeton received total compensation of $3.9 million in 2013. (Princeton’s president, by comparison, earned just $979,636.) The top investment official at Harvard was paid $7.9 million, while Harvard’s president earned a “mere” $1.04 million. Whether or not one believes that any college president is worth $1 million, the fact that the chief investment officer is earning between four and seven times as much as the president provides telling testimony regarding how the institutions value the services of the institution’s leader, as compared to those overseeing investment returns. And all this time you thought the most important person on a college campus was the football coach!

(2) Many public institutions continue a downward slide.

Shortfalls in state budgets, often accompanied by enrollment declines, have put many public institutions in significant jeopardy.

The magnitude of the problems of public institutions varies enormously from state to state, but some state colleges and universities are seeing a level of difficulty beyond anything they have experienced in decades – if ever.

The University of Maine system recently approved a budget that not only required spending more than 75 percent of its emergency reserves, but also necessitated eliminating more than 150 positions – and the budget is still not entirely balanced. (The Maine system has been steadily losing enrollment for seven years.) (Bangor Daily News, May 19, 2014)

Although Gov. Jerry Brown of California is proposing an increase in state appropriations for the public universities, the state is currently spending between 35 and 40 percent less per student in inflation-adjusted dollars than it did 10 years ago – and Gov. Brown was quoted as saying “They’re going to have to have a serious conversation with the professors, the staff, of how you lower the cost structure.” (San Jose Mercury News, May 13, 2014)

Vermont’s funding of public institutions amounts to just $2,655 per full-time equivalent student, making the colleges and universities highly susceptible to enrollment declines – and at least two of the colleges have seen drops of five to 10 percent in the past four years. The result has been to cut staff. (Vermont Public Radio, May 14, 2014)

North Carolina has cut per-student funding by more than 20 percent since 2008, resulting in a 35 percent increase in tuition – yet over that same time period the flagship UNC-Chapel Hill campus has had to eliminate almost 500 positions and 16,000 course seats, and has increased class sizes. This year, Gov. Pat McCrory has proposed another $49 million cut for higher education. (Charlotte Observer, May 19, 2014)

(3) Many private institutions have again missed their enrollment targets.

The data are just starting to arrive, but institutions in many regions of the country are facing serious budgetary problems due to enrollment shortfalls.

In the Philadelphia area, many of the private colleges and universities came up short. Widener University, for example, is down almost 10 percent. Almost two dozen others are still accepting students, and many are attempting to lure students who have committed to other institutions by offering very generous aid packages. (One student with a high school GPA of less than 2.5, and a 940 on the SAT, was offered up to an 80 percent discount at several schools – a measure of the desperation felt by some institutions to increase their enrollment.) (Inside Higher Ed, May 21, 2014)

Enrollment at Iowa’s 33 private colleges is collectively down by four percent over the past four years, but a quarter of the schools face declines in excess of nine percent. (The Gazette, May 12, 2014)

(4) The reluctance to consider changes in the model is as strong as ever.

Colleges and universities continue to endorse the “high-cost/high-aid” model, despite overwhelming evidence that the model is no longer effective – and faculty on many campuses are unwilling to consider pedagogical changes.

Despite continued warnings from pundits about the coming impact of online education (“What Lies Ahead for Digital Education,” Forbes, May 7, 2014; “Why MOOCs Are More Like Health Clubs Than Hospitals,” Forbes, May 15, 2014), the great majority of universities continue to resist changing their model (“Rutgers Graduate Faculty Rejects Online Degree Compromise,” Inside Higher Ed, May 9, 2014). It is that attitude that leads to predictions that up to half the colleges in the country will close in the next 15 years, despite the broad acknowledgement that, as a country, we need to educate a larger fraction of our populace at the college level.

(5) Student debt is only going to get worse.

In the face of stagnant family incomes, rising college costs, and increased interest rates on federal student loans, more graduates will be leaving college with even larger debt loads.

A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that the four in 10 households led by people who were under the age of 40 and who had student loans averaged $137,010 in total debt, whereas similar households with no student loans averaged just $73,250 in total debt. (abqjournal, May 15, 2014)

Interest rates on federal student loans for undergraduates are scheduled to jump from 3.86 percent to 4.66 percent, starting July 1, 2014 – a 21 percent rate increase. Graduate loans will increase from 5.41 percent to 6.21 percent – a 15 percent rate increase. Direct PLUS loans will increase from 6.41 percent to 7.21 percent – a 13 percent increase. (Inside Higher Ed, May 8, 2014) Higher interest rates will require higher monthly payments on a loan of the same amount, and will increase the already astronomically high level of overall student debt, even if students do not increase the amount they actually borrow – something they almost surely will do, should colleges continue to increase their tuition.

The consequence to the economy of even the current level of student debt was the subject of a recent article in The New York Times (May 14, 2014). Student debt has grown from $300 billion to $1.1 trillion in just the last decade. In the same time period, the percentage of 27- to 30-year-olds with mortgages has dropped from 30 percent to 22 percent – and much of that drop has been among people with student debt. A similar pattern has occurred with auto loans. The inevitable conclusion? Student loan debt is holding back the economy.

Each of these issues is concerning. Collectively, they are truly frightening. The slow-motion train wreck is picking up speed – and there’s very little evidence that the resulting catastrophe to our young people and to our national economy can be averted.

At the local level, however, those with the will to do so can make a difference – and Roger Williams University intends to try.