AACU Opening Plenary - January 21, 2010

Martha Kanter (prev. Chanc. Foothill/DeAnza) now Under Secretary for the USDE.
Jamie Merisotis - Pres. Lumina
Ronald Crutcher - Pres. Wheaton College

Merisotis-
Business Roundtable - spring board addresses gap of education and workforce needs.
They want innovative technologies and lifelong learning.
Call for incentives to encourage increased college retention ratings.
Meet goals of liberal learning. Not just for a degree, but high quality college education.
Defining student learning outcomes. Defining Quality Assurance.
It takes all to meet: Business, k-12, policy, philanthropy.
Bologna Process - Tuning
Working with three states (including California CSU) Leave autonomy, but guarantee quality/relevance of degrees ... quality AND quantity.

Martha Kanter
Priorities: Access/Quality/Completion
25% of kids aren't ready for kindergarten. Should we be surprised when they aren't ready for the rest of their schooling experience?
Texas outreach - of students that quit after earning 100 units, 1/2 of the returned with outreach.
Most dropped due to $, family, jobs.
CAHSEE - Calif. exit exam - tests on 10th grade reading, 8th grade math. What we ask for is what we get.
We don't expect enough of our students.
Demand Quality, but provide support. (Push low quality English paper back to student, but tell them where to go for tutoring.)
Grant coming - Pres. Obama: access/ outcomes - higher ed/workforce.
Pres. Obama's 2020 goal will increase higher ed by more than 10m students.
We need to show quality, learning outcomes (what they are & how they change their lives)

Crutcher
Co-chair of LEAP initiative
Evolving consensus, first generation, narrow training. Faculty assessment, outcome synthesized.