Cherry shares suggestions for higher education

Commission suggests changes to increase Mich. college graduates

April 25, 2005 —

Michigan Lieutenant Governor John D. Cherry visited the Saginaw Valley area Thursday to discuss his commission's report on higher education, explaining some of the recommendations on the future of higher education and its role in Michigan's 21st century economy.

Created in the spring of 2004 through an executive order by Governor Jennifer Granholm and chaired by Cherry, the Commission on Higher Education and Economic Growth had two main charges: "Build a dynamic workforce of employees who have the talents and skills needed for success in the 21st century economy," and "Double the percentage of citizens who attain post-secondary degrees or other credentials that link them to success in Michigan's economy."

"Michigan exports too many of our highly educated younger workers," Granholm said at the time of the Commission's creation. "To compete in the new, knowledge-driven economy, we must determine how we can maintain our educated workforce - the future of this state is in their hands."

The Commission began meeting in June and published the report in December, and in accepting it, Granholm said the report "makes it clear that our state's path to a robust economy with good paying 21st century jobs requires all our residents to complete their education beyond high school."

The report included recommendations that call for Michigan's high schools to have higher standards in preparing all students for post-secondary education and guaranteeing all students the opportunity to earn a college degree.

Additionally, the report called on Michigan's colleges and universities to do a better job helping students complete degrees or certification, to make it easier for students to transfer from one institution to another and to bring back larger numbers of adult workers with some college credits to complete their degrees.

Another point of emphasis for the Commission was the underlying "track" system, a long-standing tradition of essentially selecting and sorting students into college and non-college tracks. The Commission stressed that this process is harmful to a student and his or her future job potential and to the Michigan economy.

"When I graduated in 1969, I could go from graduation to General Motors," Cherry said. "You can't do that today. You have to have at least some sort of post-secondary education to get there."

Cherry explained that because of that system, the constitution mandated that every person have a free public education through high school. The thought was that a high school education was what it took to prepare students for life after graduation. Today, Cherry said, that preparation date is somewhere past grade 12, so the state has to fill a broader responsibility in getting students past high school. The solution to this, Cherry said, was to create a different merit scholarship system.

According to Cherry, the new program will reimburse students for the tuition they pay in their first two years of college, up to $4,000. If the student attends a community college, they must attain their associate's degree to receive the reimbursement. If the student attends a four-year university, they will reimburse that $4,000 upon reaching junior status. To qualify for this reimbursement, however, the student must receive a high school diploma, fulfill the public service requirement now being imposed on the current program, and take the ACT.

"You don't have to score a certain level (on the ACT)," Cherry said. "It encourages students to take the test. In taking the test, many people will find out that they will succeed at a post-secondary institution."

Another recommendation provided was replacing the high school MEAP test with the ACT, to encourage students even more to pursue their education beyond high school. Cherry said there are inherent flaws in the MEAP, and having students take the ACT, a test used for college admission purposes, would give students more reason to want to take the next step to a post-secondary education.

"(The MEAP Test) has no predicted value," Cherry said. "I think that is why a lot of students are reluctant to take it. What does it mean to them? The only thing that it did mean to them was that they potentially qualified for the (Michigan) Merit scholarship. You couldn't get a Merit scholarship without at least taking the MEAP."

The Commission found a better option in the ACT; however, Cherry was unsure who would pay the cost of each student's test. Currently, students themselves have to pay to take the test. Cherry didn't know whether the school districts or the state would be paying the bulk of the costs. Cherry said the Commission looked at other states that used the ACT instead of other assessment tests, and found the results to be positive.

"More students went to college (in those states)," Cherry said. "It's because the ACT had a more predictive quality to it. You knew that the ACT would predict how you perform in college. There were students who didn't think they were good enough to go college who found out that they could in fact do college work."

Cherry also addressed the state's involvement in better unifying secondary and post-secondary education in communities. The state can only recommend that communities become more cohesive; the community itself is the one that has to do it, he said.

"The community here in the Saginaw Valley needs to be encouraging opportunities for policy makers, administrators and faculty at these local institutions to collaborate together," Cherry added.

Cherry pointed to an example in Big Rapids, saying that the president of Ferris State University meets once a month with all of the individual school districts' superintendents in a community education forum. "It takes that kind of local collaboration to begin to encourage that dialogue," Cherry added.

The Commission held six public hearings over a two-month period in September and October to further its understanding of the state's higher education issues. One of the hearings was held at SVSU, on Monday, Sept. 13.

Many people from the Saginaw Valley region testified, including SVSU President Eric Gilbertson and others from SVSU and Delta College.

"What they were able to do was give the perspective of this region on some of the issues the Commission was dealing with," Cherry said. "Some of those issues and concerns are different than, say, those in the U.P., and some were the same. But you do get the local perspective on a state-wide problem. We got a good, strong feel for what was important to people who lived in the Saginaw Valley."

In addition to Cherry's visit to the SVSU campus, he discussed the Commission's findings with the Michigan Educators Apprenticeship Education and Training in Frankenmuth and had a luncheon with other various community leaders.