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September 23, 2009

College leaders tout higher education’s economic impact in Wabash Valley

By Sue Loughlin

TERRE HAUTE — With their combined workforce, payroll and enrollments, Vigo County’s higher education institutions have a major impact on the local economy, college officials said Wednesday.

“We don’t bill ourselves as a college town, but we certainly should,” said David Behrs, president of St. Mary-of-the-Woods College.

Behrs and other Vigo County higher education leaders took part in a panel discussion during the fall meeting of the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors at Indiana State University.

They were questioned on such topics as tuition increases, online education and academic preparation of high school graduates.

The panelists were Behrs; Dan Bradley, ISU president; Matt Branam, interim president, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; and Jeff Pittman, chancellor, Ivy Tech Community College-Wabash Valley Region.

The colleges complement each other and work in partnership, the presidents said. There may be some competition for students, but there is little overlapping of programs, Bradley said.

The college leaders were asked about tuition increases and how they are determined.

They say their institutions are committed to keeping tuition affordable, but increases are still necessary.

At ISU, tuition went up 3.9 percent this year. Bradley said it was necessary to offset state cuts. The university took a 7 percent cut in state appropriations over two years, and in addition, it cut $10 million from its budget. “We felt we couldn’t cut anymore,” he said.

The tuition increase was based on how much the university had to “add back” to operate at a reasonable level, he said.

Over the past 20 years, “All of our superinflationary tuition increases can be correlated with a reduction in state appropriations,” he said.

ISU is committed to keeping tuition increase very close to inflation and at inflation, if possible, he said. “We will need some help from the Legislature to make that happen,” Bradley said.

Branam said the Rose-Hulman board of trustees is committed to keeping an education at Rose “as attainable as it can be.” In recent years, the college has been able to keep tuition increases at about 5 percent annually.

Pittman said Ivy Tech’s statewide tuition increase was higher than usual because of limited increases in state funding coupled with record enrollment growth.

Indiana’s private colleges also have been impacted by state budget cutbacks, Behrs said. The state student assistance grant was significantly reduced. As a result, the Woods “decided to put $225,000 more into student aid to help offset that,” he said.

The college leaders also were asked about the future of online education.

Bradley believes that online education “will be the predominant method by which master’s students are educated,” except for some programs that require face-to-face, hands-on instruction.

It’s also going to dominate the market for those over age 30, he said.

He doesn’t believe traditional vs. online education can be compared. “They are different products that lead you to the same location” in terms of knowledge acquired, but they are not the same experience, he said.

Some students will do better in a traditional, face-to-face format, and others will do better online.

He believes students right out of high school do better in a traditional environment, and adults may do better in a nontraditional setting.

Online education requires good time management skills, and recent high school graduates are use to a more structured environment, he said.

Many ISU classes have a “hybrid style” that use many Web resources, he said.

Pittman noted that “demand for online learning at Ivy Tech is enormous.” This past spring, about 26,000 students — or 25 percent of students statewide — took online courses.

Distance education “opens a lot of opportunities,” Pittman said. “It helps create efficiencies, and in our case, it helps take a lot of pressure off many of our facilities” with record enrollment growth.

Typically at Ivy Tech, students will take one or two courses online but still take some classes on campus, he said.

St. Mary-of-the-Woods College will begin offering a new, fully online undergraduate degree program in the spring; students all over the world could earn a degree from the Woods online.

Behrs believes that online education “has changed the higher education landscape significantly and I think it blurs the age of the student.” He’s not so sure it can be categorized as traditional vs. non-traditional.

Many recent high school graduates will be learning in a “hybrid” environment that uses both face-to-face and online learning, Behrs said.

Bradley noted that online education “is not significantly cheaper” than a traditional education and in some cases can be more expensive. Its primary value is its access, he said.

The college leaders were also asked about the academic preparation of those entering college.

Ivy Tech is an open access institution, Pittman noted, and remedial education is one of its largest programs for both recent high school graduates and adults returning to college.

He said that 65 percent of its students need remedial education.

At the same time, he noted that Ivy Tech increasingly is seeing high school graduates who are well-prepared academically. They are deciding to start their post-secondary academic careers at Ivy Tech, Pittman said.



Sue Loughlin can be reached at (812) 231-4235 or sue.loughlin@tribstar.com.

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