Plant pathologists Hanu Pappu and Brenda Schroeder, l-r, President Emeritus Sam Smith and Provost Robert Bates talk at a reception for Sam Smith in the Vogel Plant BioScience Building prior to Smith’s lecture. (Photo by Becky Phillips, WSU Today)
Article by Brian Clark, CAHNRS and WSU Extension
The statistics are alarming: Nearly 60 percent of Washingtonians have only a high school diploma or less. Washington imports more degreed employees than any other state except California. For the first time in generations, children are not necessarily better educated than their parents.
“Higher education is changing rapidly,” said WSU President Emeritus Sam Smith Monday afternoon. “And in Washington State, we are in the midst of an educational crisis.”
Smith’s lecture, “The Changing Environment for Higher Education in the State of Washington,” was the inaugural presentation of the Dr. Sam Smith Lecture Series in Plant Virology. It drew on his many years of experience as a higher education administrator, including 15 years as president of WSU, and on his post-retirement work with national organizations seeking to improve the state of higher education in the United States.
The former WSU president cited four reasons for the state of higher education in Washington and nationwide.
* Legislative appropriations have not kept pace with the state’s expanding population, he said. Currently, 53 percent of the cost of instruction is covered by student tuition.
* An increase in poverty in the state and nation is causing a drop in college attendance. One of the most significant factors determining whether a child will go to college is the income level of the child’s parents.
* For every 100 ninth graders in Washington, only 74 graduate from high school, and of those, only 19 earn an associate’s degree, while a mere eight earn a four-year degree. “We also have a pipeline problem,” Smith said.
* Higher education in the U.S. is unlike that in the rest of the developed world because it is not considered a lifelong experience, but rather the purview of young people alone.
Despite that, Smith said there are some very innovative forces working to change higher education in Washington. Proximity to a campus is strongly correlated with a higher percentage of the population going to college. During Smith’s administration, from 1985 to 1999, WSU opened branch campuses at Tri Cities, Vancouver and Spokane.
President Emeritus Sam Smith, right) received a Plant Pathology fleece jacket from Dr. Hanu Pappu of the Plant Pathology faculty.
Smith also has been closely involved with the creation of early college high school experiences. Thanks to a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, teachers mentor underserved students, who end up graduating with an Associate Arts degree as well as their high school diploma.
“There is a lot of private money being channeled into higher education,” Smith said, “And it is being used to fund the student, not the institution.”
The president emeritus said he is very optimistic about the growing potential for online, distance learning. On-line education bridges the 35-mile radius gap, bringing college to the desktop of anyone with a computer and a high-speed Internet connection, he said. And they can be developed rapidly. Smith cited a post-Katrina effort that, within a week, made available nearly 1,500 courses from 150 institutions to students displace by the hurricane.
“Basically,” Smith said, “The more we can beo n the side of the student, the better off we are. We need new ways of doing business. We have to be able to adapt to change and embrace technology. Fortunately, WSU has a long history of being able to change and of doing it well.”
