Achieving public purposes through higher education:
A leadership forum

By Greg Wegner, Director of Program Development,
Great Lakes Colleges Association

At the University of Virginia on June 8 and 9, 2008, AGB co-hosted a major conference with the Miller Center of Public Affairs. The focus was on higher education's necessary contribution to the nation's continued economic, social, and civic vitality in a century of global markets, rising job skill requirements, rapid technological advancements, and heightened competition for careers providing entry to the middle class. The forum, entitled, “Examining the National Purposes of Higher Education: A Leadership Approach to Policy Reform,” included some 60 participants representing a broad cross-section of higher education stakeholders.

A core theme of the exchanges was the need for universities and colleges to meet the challenge of educating a greater share of the nation's population, including those who have not had high rates of persistence and degree completion. Revitalizing the knowledge and skills of Americans is among the most urgent national priorities of the twenty-first century, though it is one that must be accomplished largely through the actions of individual states and regions.

Participants a broad cross-section of higher education stakeholders, including past and present Virginia governors

Among the participants in the AGB-Miller Center event were university presidents and board members, state higher education executive officers, state senators, and other policy makers, including both a former Governor and the current Governor of Virginia. Gerald L. Baliles, who currently serves as Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs, was Governor of Virginia from 1986 to 1990. Governor Baliles has served as leader of two AGB task forces focusing on the challenges of the academic presidency and the critical importance of an effective governing board in a president's success. The most recent of these projects produced the 2006 report, The Leadership Imperative: The Report of the AGB Task force on the State of the Presidency in American Higher Education. A key finding of that report was the need for “integral leadership”—denoting a president's ability to engage productively with a range of constituencies, forge a common vision, elicit buy-in, and identify strategies to achieve a shared purpose.

The Charlottesville forum effectively expanded the concept of integral leadership beyond the institutional context to the larger domain of fulfilling the nation's public purposes through higher education. In a variety of ways, participants affirmed the need for partnerships among a range of constituencies to sustain the public well-being within the nation and its states. While the particular strategies for enhancing higher education attainment vary by state and region, many components of an effective plan are common to any setting.

More than any other single officer, it is the governor of a state who creates the policy environment that encourages public universities and colleges to direct their energies toward the fulfillment of pubic purposes. A notable quality of the AGB-Miller Center dialogues was the participation of Virginia's current Governor, the Honorable Tim Kaine, a strong supporter of higher education in Virginia. At one point of the exchanges, Governor Kaine spoke of the combination of exogenous and indigenous forces to bring about significant change in higher education. The GI Bill, the advent of Sputnik (leading to a pronounced emphasis on science education), the Education Amendments of the late 1960s and early 70s (creating the programs of financial aid that made possible greatly expanded access to higher education) each was an external event that changed higher education by creating incentives for actions that universities and colleges had not previously taken.

Governor Kaine suggested that a combination of exogenous forces (in the form of progressive public policy) and indigenous forces (led by university presidents held accountable by capable and committed trustees) together have the potential to change institutional behavior in ways that advance the public well being.

Other participants suggested that state and regional partnerships—coalitions of many stakeholders characterized by common values and shared educational vision—can help change the incentives that determine the priorities of universities and colleges. Among the avenues higher education could meaningfully pursue are greater emphasis on lifelong learning for adults, and renewed efforts to work constructively with K-12 schools from a recognition that these institutions are suppliers of higher education's future students.

Call for greater differentiation of mission among universities

Nothing in this agenda should be understood as a call for diminishing the importance of research undertaken by major universities throughout the nation. The AGB-Miller Center exchanges did not propose to prepare the workforce and citizenry of the future by sacking the federal research budget. What is needed is much greater differentiation of mission among universities and colleges within states and throughout the nation. Not every university should aspire to be a flagship, and no one is well served by institutions investing inordinate energy and resources seeking to become a kind of university they were never intended to be. In many cases what is required is a reclaiming of mission such that institutions align their priorities more closely with the needs of the state and region they were founded originally to serve.

Finally, to revitalize the achievement of public purposes within the nation and its states will require an act of political will to invest in higher education as the means of creating a more highly educated and productive citizenry. Within each state there is a need for integral leadership to help ensure the nation's continued educational and economic vitality in the twenty-first century.

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