FEBRUARY 3, 2017 27

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Maureen McGrain, moderator: Public university presidents are asking for a $100 million increase over the amount outlined in Gov. Brown’s recommended budget in order to avoid double-digit tuition hikes. In that context, what is the financial benefit of strong private universities?

Dr. Melody Rose, president of Marylhurst University: Consider this: Less than 1 percent of the higher

education budget is dedicated to the private universities, including allotments to our students through the Oregon Opportunity Grant, but the independent colleges and universities produce 23 percent of the undergraduate degrees and 43 percent of the graduate degrees in the state. I’d say that’s a pretty high ROI.

Dr. Thomas Hellie, president of Linfield College: Every time a student chooses to go to a private institution

versus a public one, it saves the state money because that student is now being educated primarily by tuition and donor dollars, as opposed to tax dollars. What’s more, we’re graduating most of our students in four years rather than five or six. There’s also a huge economic benefit to the communities in which we operate because of all the people we employ who live there, work there, spend money there and even occasionally start businesses there.

Rose: Our collective four-year graduation rate is better overall than the state’s six-year graduation rate. In addition, our loan default rates are lower. There’s a growing national concern about debt and how crippling that debt can be, both for those who cross the graduation dais and even more for those who don’t finish and

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y 2025, Oregon hopes that 40 percent of residents will have a baccalaureate degree or higher, 40 percent will have an associate’s degree or certificate in a skilled occupation, and 20 percent will have a high school diploma or equivalent. The Portland Business Journal gathered three leaders in the higher education community to discuss how private colleges are meeting the needs of employers as well as those of a changing student demographic.

y 2025, Oregon hopes that 40 percent of residents will have a baccalaureate degree or higher, 40 percent will have an associate’s degree or certificate in a skilled occupation, and 20 percent will have a high school diploma or equivalent. The Portland Business Journal gathered three leaders in the higher education community to discuss how private colleges are meeting the needs of employers as well as those of a changing student demographic.

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MELODY ROSEPRESIDENT, MARYLHURST UNIVERSITYDr. Melody Rose is the 15th president of Marylhurst University and a nationally recognized scholar of women and politics. Prior to joining Marylhurst, she served as chancellor of the Oregon University System (OUS).

Dr. Rose also served in a number of roles at Portland State University, including Vice Provost for Academic Programs & Instruction and Dean of Undergraduate Studies. She is also the founder and first director of the PSU Center for Women, Politics & Policy.

Dr. Rose holds a bachelor’s degree in politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz; a Master in Public Administration, a Master in Government, and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University

P.K. RUNKLES-PEARSONPARTNER, MILLER NASH GRAHAM & DUNN LLPP.K. Runkles-Pearson helps educational institutions navigate complicated human issues with integrity, grace, and in furtherance of the educational mission. She specializes in employment and student rights matters for higher education. Before joining Miller Nash Graham & Dunn, P.K. served as in-house counsel at Portland State University, managing litigation, student, and employment matters. She has regularly handled counseling and litigation involving students and employees, including issues of accommodation, discrimination, harassment, sexual assault, wage and hour, and constitutional rights such as free speech and due process. She is the chair of the Constitutional Law section of the Oregon State Bar.

THOMAS HELLIEPRESIDENT, LINFIELD COLLEGEThomas L. Hellie has been president of Linfield College since 2006, and is the 19th president in the institution’s history. He has a broad background in higher education, having served as a faculty member, an academic administrator and a foundation executive. He was a tenured faculty member in theatre and English at Hiram College. He was vice president of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest for nearly 10 years and president and executive director of the James S. Kemper Foundation in Chicago, Ill. Hellie is currently the chair of the board of the Council of Independent Colleges, and is active with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, Oregon Alliance of Independent Colleges and Universities and Northwest Athletic Council. He has a bachelor’s degree (magna cum laude) in speech and theatre from Luther College, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in theatre history from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Thought Leader Forum:

Higher Education

FEBRUARY 3, 2017 29

never reap the income benefits of a degree. The fact that our default rates are collectively lower tells you something about a¥ordability in the private sector and our commitment to helping students finish.

Hellie: We charge a lot for tuition, but we also o¥er a tremendous amount of financial aid.

Rose: One challenge for private universities is the high-price, high-discount model: oftentimes, the price that we advertise is not the price the student ultimately pays, because universities choose to list the true cost of the education, but discount deeply. There’s an inherent challenge around that model, in particular for first-generation and underserved students. I was one of those: I applied to one big public university and one small Catholic university because that’s what my guidance counselor recommended. I got into both, and my family saw only the top line price point, not understanding that an aid package would likely follow. In my household there was no conversation. The truth is, I probably would have paid less at the small private, but we didn’t even know that was part of the conversation. We do make ourselves very a¥ordable but in a way that whole communities don’t perceive. At Marylhurst, we’ve worked to remove much of the mystery of discounting so that we are transparent about what the true costs of an education will be.

Hellie: There is an image problem. One-third of Linfield students are the first in their families to go to college. One third of

our students are Americans of color. If the only way which we’re presented to them is as this very expensive college, then we do have a problem.

P.K. Runkles-Pearson, Miller Nash Graham & Dunn: I was in that same position of looking at that top line of tuition and saying to myself how is this going to happen? Again, it was the guidance counselor, and I wonder, is that where the conversations are happening?

Rose: We need to overcome the perception of inaccessibility because it’s simply not true. The students of color at the private school alliance institutions within Oregon are represented in virtually the same percentages as the publics. So clearly we’re overcoming the perception hurdle, and we are graduating these students at better rates.

Hellie: You might reasonably ask, ‘Why don’t you just lower your price?’ rather than have all of this confusion. We don’t because we want people to know what it really costs. It’s thanks to our donors, the endowments we’ve created and the fundraising we do that we’re able to make this a¥ordable for our students.

Rose: There’s a conversation around price, and then there’s a conversation around value. Having a 10:1 student-to-teacher ratio, having much higher student-to-adviser ratios than public schools can provide sca¥olding that simply is not possible in all settings.

Runkles-Pearson: That sca¥olding is important for retention. For individuals who are first in their generation to go to college, a particular adviser, a major, a club, whatever it is, provides them with a group of people who are going to follow

them through.

Rose: We hear about that challenge across the country of students not being able to graduate in four years’ time through no fault of their own but because those public institutions are so impacted that they’re not able to move students through at a pace.

McGrain: How does private education fit into Oregon’s 40-40-20 plan? Do you have a role in that second 40 percent?

Rose: The Oregonian printed a story about the 550,000 Oregonians who have college credits but no degree. Having credits but no degree does not enhance your earning capacity. It likely makes you a debt-holder, so these are extraordinarily vulnerable individuals. Many of these folks are holding a handful of credits from a basket of colleges. They often bring life, military and work experience. One of the ways we’ve chosen to address their need at Marylhurst is aligning our curriculum with local community colleges so that we can lower the time and cost to degree for 550,000 people who are struggling to get there and for whom we know a degree can be life-changing.

Hellie: Linfield since the 1970s has been o¥ering adult degree-completion programs. A great example is our very successful RN to BSN program, which is now elevating the skills of hundreds of Oregonians. If we’re going to get to 40-40-20, this population is going to be a critical part of that.

Runkles-Pearson: Both public and private universities are stepping up to the challenge of helping students who have a di¥erent set of needs than traditional students. Whereas many of those folks

might be drawn to online education only, these institutions provide a di¥erent and more supportive experience and that’s why you’re seeing the level of success.

Rose: We’re going to look at your basket of credits and figure out the shortest path to your degree. Then we’ll look at financial planning to make sure you can a¥ord to do it. The so-called “non-traditional student” is now becoming the norm. The future college student in America is going to be more diverse, older and poorer than she is today. So we as an industry and as a sector of independents are in a very plum position to align ourselves with that future because we can serve them so well.

Runkles-Pearson: Private universities can sometimes be more nimble in innovating because there is less internal state regulation. That’s especially important on that second 40 in the 40-40-20 plan, where we’re talking about certificates or associate degrees. I’m noticing universities are innovating in that area, not only with new certificates but with certificates and degrees that tie directly to particular industries and occupations.

Hellie: At Linfield, we’ve created wine study certificates, trying to take advantage of our location in the heart of Oregon’s wine country. We also heard from the industry that yes, having good winemakers is important but that where they’re really needing help is on the business side of their operations.

Rose: Recently we were selected by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to work with a local computer coding school. Because they are not regionally

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Higher EducationCONTINUED FROM PAGE 27

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30 PORTLAND BUSINESS JOURNAL

Contact Anne Van Gordon at 503-219-3406 or avangordon@bizjournals.com. Future topics to include tourism, diversity and commercial real estate.

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Thought Leader Forum:

Higher Education

accredited, they have not been able to o¥er financial aid. They have a mission of educating underrepresented coders, but without proper regional accreditation, they have financial barriers to entry for those underrepresented students. So the DOE has created an exception for eight institutions nationally to work with an unconventional educational provider and using third-party validators to make sure we have quality control. Their coding students will be able to come to Marylhurst for a certificate and then a degree, all wrapped into our accreditation and therefore financial aid eligibility. We’re still moving through the final approval process with our regional accreditor and the DOE, but it’s these types of innovative partnerships that will help meet the educational demands of a modern generation.

Runkles-Pearson: And the success of the experiment you’ve been able to do under that DOE waiver is going to give you some evidence that demonstrates why your program works.

Hellie: Many American corporations have come to realize they’ve been looking too much to hire people based on the content they’ve just mastered and not enough about people who have learned how to learn, who have communication skills, who are able to work in teams, who don’t always think in straight lines. It has changed the way in which they are looking for potential employees. At larger corporations, which study these things, they are realizing that the people with those skills are now supervising those who came in with a very focused, specific skills that became obsolete after five years. In the long term, they need people who are going to be able to adapt to a changing business environment and improve their skills. It suggests the skills these students are getting from the more old-fashioned liberal arts fields are actually benefiting them in the long run.

Runkles-Pearson: I help employers with employment law issues, and one of the things I notice about employees who end up having some employment conflict is that there usually is a critical lack of these soft skills. These are frequently the things that cause rifts in a workplace and inhibit employee success.

McGrain: How do you see online learning growing and changing?

Rose: There have been several significant changes in online learning. One is we can now connect to learners around the globe. Online learning has a radical potential for expediting cultural competence and understanding. Another change is we simply have more data about what works and what doesn’t in the online learning environment. There’s a lot of professional development needed to support our faculty teaching in this modality. We know that certain groups of students excel in that setting and others need more support. One thing I’m keen on is the notion of using Big Data to change our teaching on the fly. In an online setting where Big Data informs my teaching, I would be able to do an online assessment overnight of how well a lecture stuck. So we’re not getting the student’s reflection about the course

midterm or at the end of term but in real time. There’s a lot of potential there.

Hellie: When we were doing strategic planning five years ago, one of the questions was how do we ensure that the fundamental principles of a Linfield education are true of our traditional students but also for online students? The fundamental thing had to do with small classrooms, relationships with professors and individualized learning. Our incoming freshmen are coming to us having always lived with their devices, and they’re accustomed to learning and communicating in that way. Virtually all of our courses have some tech or digital component.

Rose: We’re also not quite so afraid of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) as we once were. Back when some of the well-heeled universities put some of their courses online for free, there was a lot of fear that MOOCs would be the end of higher education as we know it. That fear has largely fallen away because we’ve found ways to harness the potential of those opportunities. We’ve discovered their limitations. If you have a MOOC with 500,000 people in it, most never finish it. It doesn’t provide that intimacy of learning that we can provide.

Hellie: The hope was this would be a way for those with few financial resources to get a college education. Ironically, those who were able to complete the MOOCs were among the best educated and the best heeled. This is the great irony about college costs and how it is we provide education for those who don’t have financial means. The great irony is that they are more successful at colleges like ours than at public flagship universities or community colleges. The financial model sends students in that direction but in terms of the potential for their success, we are able to do it better.

Runkles-Pearson: What is important about online education through an established brick and mortar institution is that not only does it give you the information but also the community and the skills to learn. The MOOC doesn’t do that. The MOOC gives you the information without any of the structure. There’s not a one-size-fits-all for online learning. For example, many are using the flipped model in which you use the online component to deliver the content and then you have an in-class component where people get to speak with each other and the professor in small groups.

Rose: It’s also hard for students to hide in an online environment. When it’s at a manageable size, the online environment allows the professor to call on people, to draw them out in guided conversations without making them feel completely on display.

Runkles-Pearson: In the future, a lot more of our conversations are going to be with people not in the same room as us, so students need to learn to communicate on video or in a written email, as well.

McGrain: Going forward, how do you see the institutions and the industries collaborating?

Rose: One is the ability to take education o¥site. If you have 20 employees who need an MBA, we’re going to bring the

education to you. Also, there’s insu«icient curriculum in the Willamette Valley around hospitality. Early in my tenure, we formed a task force with industry leaders to have a conversation around their future employment needs and how to co-design a curriculum to serve those needs. If approved by our accreditor, we’ll have a new hospitality bachelor’s degree this fall. Higher ed is notorious for admiring a problem. One of my passions is getting ourselves as an industry from admiring the problem to solving the problem using the insight from our industry partners.

Hellie: We’re still more nimble than some of the publics are. We are meeting with representatives from the wine industry now to see what’s next. It really is showing how di¥erent disciplines can be brought to a topic but also prepare students in a variety of ways to be successful after they graduate. Over 90 percent of our students do at least one internship before they graduate. Also, we’ve started a business-in-residence program at Linfield. We bring an executive on to campus who spends some time there. For instance, we’ve hosted Linfield alumnus Craig Ostbo, whose marketing firm Koopman Ostbo works with companies that are recognized for their social good.

Runkles-Pearson: It’s not just an industry coming to an institution and saying ‘Train our folks, here’s what we want it to say and we want our stamp on it.’ And neither is it the institution saying, ‘Liberal arts is amazing and we are going to fill our students’ heads full of philosophy and send them out into the world.’ The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. You see students start applying their education to a business context and realizing how important the soft skills are. You also see a students get out there and realize the practice is not what they thought it was. Both are good outcomes. And it’s happening in many di¥erent ways. For example, my firm is sponsoring a program where business students are going out and helping small businesses become B corps. They’re applying their business expertise, they’re seeing how the business works, and they’re also realizing that business can be used for good. And another example, PSU has architecture firms partnering with architecture students and others to design sleeping pods to house the homeless. That probably never would have happened had it been just the students involved.

McGrain: What are your thoughts on potential policy shifts under the new presidential administration?

Hellie: The nominee for the Secretary of Education graduated from a small, liberal arts college, so we hope she understands our sector. But there are other issues that are less certain.

Runkles-Pearson: Nothing is certain, especially on the legal side of things. Colleges and universities have been working mightily to comply with the rules and regulations that have been set down by the Obama administration. Some of those regulations have very good goals, and most of the people whom I work with in the higher ed community agree with those goals. At times, the regulation and the process was di«icult to comply with and required a lot of energy. So much has been based in not administrative

regulation but in sub-regulatory guidance which is passed — and can be repealed — without any sort of notice or comment. So here are a lot of people complying with what could go away very quickly with the stroke of a pen. Regardless of what you think of the ultimate policy aim of these changes, uncertainty is di«icult in any environment. Institutions want to spend the majority of their time and e¥ort working on their pedagogy, but uncertainty means that those resources may go to figuring out compliance.

Hellie: Vanderbilt conducted an analysis of administrative costs and why they had risen. Almost all of it had to do with compliance of federal regulation. It was a bipartisan commission that did this. Once the results were published, the DOE was disappointed by what they learned; it pointed a finger they hadn’t expected. We don’t know what will happen, but we hope that some of the regulation will at least be modified.

Runkles-Pearson: And it goes farther than just the DOE. For example, the VA is a big deal because there’s a lot of financial aid tied to that. The Obama administration, having had di«iculty passing things through Congress, turned to regulation in a way that previous administrations have not. Those regulations have tied compliance to federal funding, and not just student financial aid. Unraveling what those regulations are, how long they’re going to be in place, if they change, when they change, and how they change, is going to keep us on our toes for a little while.

Rose: We were formed by the Sisters of the Holy Names, who arrived in Oregon the year we became a state (1859). These women have dedicated their lives in service to social justice, education of the whole person and serving the underrepresented. At Marylhurst, we’ve lived those values since 1893. We’re not stopping now.

Runkles-Pearson: Because of the changes on the federal level, I think we will notice more attention paid to these issues in Salem now. We may, I hope in collaboration with local and state legislators, find a way to protect our vulnerable populations. “Sanctuary” is a word coming up a lot. It has nothing but the best intent, but it means di¥erent things to di¥erent people, and we need to consider what the risks and benefits of those things are.

Hellie: We’re in this business because we care deeply about the success of our students. When we even suspect that there may be some threat to their well-being, potential and future, it’s like one of your own kids being threatened.

Runkles-Pearson: In some ways, it’s not about what you do as a matter of legal requirement, but what kind of environment you choose to promote. One thing that institutions can do is to continue to enforce the good policies that they already have.

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