Solutions for Higher Education with Southern Utah University President Scott L Wyatt

Show Notes:

This week on the podcast we talk with Madeleine Rhyneer from Richmond, Virginia where she is the Vice President for Consulting and Dean of Enrollment Services at EAB. She recently had an article published entitled "No, Your College is Not An Exception" in the Chronicle of Higher Education and we just had to discuss that with her.

Featured Quotes:

One of the things that I've been challenging people with . . . in the last few months is to ask . . . , "What's your elevator pitch?" Which is the business way of saying, "What's the 20-second introduction to your university to a person who really doesn’t know you at all?" And most people sort of look at me like, "Oh my goodness." Or they'll go to, "Well, we're really friendly" or "We're small." And I'm like, "OK, friendly is pretty much table stakes in any kind of market where you're serving people and small is not a point of distinction at all.
Madeleine Rhyneer, EAB

I feel like it's important to have honest conversations and sometimes they end up being pretty direct conversations to say, "Actually, to the public, we all do more or less the same thing, and we do it more or less close to them, more or less well or not-well, more or less online or in a virtual format." And that the traditional, 'If we build it because we're here, they will come,' that just isn't working anymore.
Madeleine Rhyneer, EAB

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Show Notes:

President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith sit down with Jon Boeckenstedt, vice provost for enrollment management at Oregon State University. They discuss the adjustments colleges need to make to stay alive over the next decade, including more transparency in pricing and reducing barriers to admission.

Featured Quotes:

. . . there was a Gallup Poll just a few weeks ago that talked about the American public’s confidence in higher education and how important it was or is or isn’t and the number who said it was very important has fallen from 70% to 50% in just three or four years. So, I think people are becoming less willing to put forth and put out that much effort and that many resources for the education that they believe, I think, is largely a commodity anymore . . .
John Boeckenstedt, Oregon State University

. . . we can kind of get by from year to year if everything external stays the same, but when those big things happen outside the university in society, or politics, or government, or economics, or just public perception, we’re not always well equipped to handle that dramatic, punctuated equilibrium.
John Boeckenstedt, Oregon State University

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Show Notes:

President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith sit down with Ryan Hagge from the American Academy of Innovation, and SUU’s own James Sage and Johnny MacLean, to discuss the balance between content and skills in project- and competency- based education.

Featured Quotes:

So, the classic example when people hear the word “project,” they automatically think “Science Fair” and that’s not really what we’re talking about here. The whole idea of project-based learning centers on student-led inquiry, research, and design. That means that you may pose this essential question, is what it’s called, this big question and then the student gets to really dictate the direction that they take that learning from there. And the question is such that it can’t be a Google answer, so, there’s no one side of the answer, there’s some current debate on the issue.
Ryan Hagge

I think about my family and that they work in their profession for many, many years and they developed skills in management or account or all kinds of skills and there’s no mechanism for higher ed to award credit for those demonstrated skills. So, being able to assemble a portfolio, being able to apply standards and then map competencies to college credit...Is a really transformative thing for higher ed. It really is innovative.
James Sage

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Show Notes:

President Scott L Wyatt and Steve Meredith kick off the 2020-21 season by introducing this year’s podcast theme: Innovation in Higher Education: Lessons Learned. They preview some of the topics to be discussed, like the partnership between SUU and Southwest Technical College and SUU’s Three Year Degree program.

Featured Quotes:

We don’t give salary increases for people that are creative, we don’t give a bonus to anybody like that. But as you move up the ladder and get to the top, so you’re at the point where you can be the most creative and influence change the most, it seems like in the public sector, that you also tend to irritate more people. And, as we say in politics, “Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.”
Scott L Wyatt

. . . disruptions always lead an organization or a person into being better or worse at the end of the disruption. So, that’s...and the approach that we’ve tried to take as a university is we are going to be better at the end of this pandemic.”
Soctt L Wyatt

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Featured Quote:

"Steve, we haven’t done a very good job in the higher education community of responding to the various criticisms that are waged against higher ed and we...I guess this podcast was an attempt to try to really explore this and think about it a little bit."
~ Scott Wyatt

Full Transcript and Additional Links

Previous episodes referenced in this podcast:

• Episode 1
• Episode 18
• Episode 27
• Episode 39
• Episode 3
• Episode 17
  Links to each episode can be found in the transcript web page.