Building Understanding – Studying Abroad

Our world is simultaneously growing and shrinking. We must change our views of ourselves and our increasingly intertwined neighbors, near and far.

Change powers Our University. Quality is judged by the change that occurs in students during their time at Southern. We are doing a good job when we assist a student from Cisne in becoming a physician or one from McLeansboro in becoming a teacher, or my friend from Bluford in becoming an attorney and professor.

One way to change people is to provide them a chance to experience new things. Study abroad, visiting a culture and people unfamiliar, is not a vacation. Travel has been Disneyed, suggesting it is all about childish giddiness and pleasure, until you get the tab. Prior to mid-twentieth century travel was about education and empowerment, not entertainment. But, this does not mean there can be no joy or passion in travel.

The word “travel” has roots in Old French – travail – to labor or toil, suffering or painful effort, and trouble. Study in a foreign land represents the work of change when correctly executed. Going abroad may sound like a vacation, at high cost to families, low value to students, and little or no intellectual benefit. Spring break at Fort Lauderdale – Yes. Study abroad through Southern – No.

Horace Greeley and others advised “Go west young man.” The exhortation continues to have consequence. Our national interest in affairs west, in China, Taiwan or Japan, or south, in Mexico or Central and South America adds dimension, character and value for every student, at once making the world smaller and larger.

The continuing benefit of European experiences and the fundamental importance of Middle Eastern and African travel cannot be overstated. Our students can help build international understanding and appreciation through study abroad experiences. I know they are expensive, and our students are strapped. Neither diminishes the importance of finding ways to make global experiences available to our students.

The late Paul Simon, a great visionary leader and distinguished public mind, appreciated the importance of this in his Lincoln Scholar proposal that became The Senator Paul Simon Study Abroad Foundation Act of 2007 (H.R. 1469 and S. 991) a measure of extended bipartisan interest supported by no fewer than 35 higher education associations.

This powerful public/private partnership has important goals: Increasing participation in quality study abroad programs. Encouraging diversity in student participation in study abroad. Diversifying locations of study abroad, particularly in developing countries. Making study abroad a cornerstone of today’s higher education.

I would like to think that the Senator’s presence on our campus had some impact on his interest and keen insight regarding the importance of global study to create better understanding across national boundaries.

We cannot fear the known in the same way we fear the unknown. It’s impossible.
Our University has a great tradition of providing students a chance to experience the world and have that seasoning impact their lives. Senator Simon, posted at Southern for the last years of his life, knew and appreciated the importance of understanding others. We should all do what we can to make study abroad available to a continually increasing number of our students.

It opens eyes, creates understanding, and builds a better America – in short – it accomplishes the work of Our University.

Beat the High Cost of College

Everywhere you look you hear about the high cost of college. You see it in this newspaper, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Houston Chronicle. Costs are going up at a rate that exceeds inflation. Here and everywhere. The causes and effects of these increases are being deliberated in many venues. I am going to tell you how to shave a cool 33% off the cost of a bachelor’s degree. Thirty Three percent is nothing to sneeze at. If the local car dealers were doing that the lines would stretch half way to St. Louis. It is real money.

The cost of a bachelor’s degree at SIUC is roughly $30,000. A significant investment, but less than most SUV’s and certainly the bachelors’ degree represents an appreciating investment unlike all SUV’s. Unless you are a stock wizard or the holder of significant intellectual property, it is the best investment you will ever make. Lifetime earnings of people with bachelor’s degrees are over $1,000,000 more than those with a high school diploma… that’s from the US Department of Labor.

Miracle on 34th Street

If I told you there was a simple way to shave $10,000 off the $30,000 and simultaneously make the convenience of achieving the degree higher you would jump at it, if the quality of the end result was nearly the same. $20,000 for a bachelor’s degree is a great deal. You know it too because I know you and you are smart. Gimbel’s has a better deal than Macy’s, and I’ll be Santa Claus. Here it is. Go to one of the excellent community colleges in Southern Illinois, John A, Logan, Rend Lake, Shawnee, Southeastern, in alphabetical order, complete an associate’s degree and, with good guidance and careful planning, transfer every course to Southern and graduate on time for a total cost of the bachelor’s degree of $20,000. A $10,000 savings over the student who completes all four years at SIUC. That is real money. A 33% savings. The numbers may be imperfect, but the orders of magnitude are spot on.

Some people at SIUC will be arrogant and tell you faculty are not as good, the courses not as rigorous; the environment not as intellectual. In some cases, they may be right. In other cases they will be wrong. College courses are taught and taken one at a time. Individual faculty members and their teaching prowess and quality vary widely. The best professors at any of the community colleges will not be all that much different than the best professors at Southern. Professors create an environment of excellence at universities, not programs. They will challenge and encourage, demand and care, guide and direct, motivate and befriend. I know. Institutional arrogance will not concede it though. Anyone with a lick of sense who has taken courses at these various institutions knows this too.

Keep your eyes wide open. The missions of a community college and a university are different. Don’t go looking for an electron microscope, a world renowned poet or artist, a top100 research library, a leading psychologist, a big time, nationally ranked, basketball or softball program, or on-campus housing at the community college. But if a cost effective education is what you are after and you come to Southern first, even with the highly competitive tuition and fees here, you are making a mistake. If you are looking for a charged research environment with graduate and professional educational excellence and head over to John A. Logan, you also are making a mistake. Know the institutions for what they are. Know that basic coursework can be well structured, challenging and intelligently delivered in many settings, and different people have different needs and aspirations.

Remember the line of the woman in Miracle on 34th street who says that the recommendation to go to Gimbel’s rather than Macy’s, “…has made a Macy’s costumer out of me.”

The university needs institutional self confidence to take this brave position in this environment. Santa Claus gave it to Macy’s. The university needs to do what is best for the individual learner and their family. If the university did that, in the end, it would lead the parade just like Santa Claus. And a positive partnership could help meet the educational needs and aspirations of the people of Southern Illinois as cohorts, not competitors.

Mission based excellence, widely perceived and recognized, is the best marketing in the world.

Opportunity is Southern

All universities are a consequence of the culture in which they exist, while simultaneously changing it. These confounding and conflicting realities are the bedrock on which public higher education in America is constructed.

This cause, to seek to change a world of which we are part, is a noble and high calling of service. In order to achieve our potential and mission of providing educational opportunity so that people may be changed, so in turn society may be positively changed, it is imperative our university seek variety.

Excellent universities should vigorously pursue and deeply appreciate the fullest compliment of cultures and views. Diversity produces vitality, and intellectual vitality produces educational opportunity. Having an array of ethnic and cultural backgrounds adds to the quality of the educational experience for all students, reflects reality, and is essential in a robust study environment.

Our university must champion this concept for two reasons.

First, it is right from a moral and ethical perspective. Universities are agents of public service, and the public good, and have a responsibility to serve all. Just as surely as biological diversity produces a strong ecosystem, intellectual, social, cultural, and ethnic diversity produce a strong university.

Woodrow Wilson said, in 1900 at commencement when President of Princeton, “One of the things that make us unserviceable citizens is that there are certain classes of men with whom we have never been able to associate, and whom we have, therefore, been unable to understand. I believe that the process of a university should be a process of unchosen contacts”. Wilson would fit in well at Southern.

A university of variety becomes a bulwark against ignorance, myopia, tyranny, and social incest, as surely as a homogeneous university stimulates them. Reflection is worthwhile. Our University was shaped as a ‘normal school,’ and later recast as a research university. Research universities are influenced pervasively by the land grant tradition, an outgrowth of the German polytechnics. The need to respond to changes in agriculture and industry, the change from draught animal agriculture and the industrialization of handicraft manufacturing, were the genesis of the Morrill Act that created land grant universities.

It, coupled with the need for an educated and proficient workforce, to move agriculture and industry into a new form of service to human kind was the recognition that learning was for the many rather than the few, a powerful and transformative manifestation of cultural egalitarianism. This notion thrives in all the best universities.

President Morris shared this vision for Our University and the concept that all people should have a chance, an opportunity, to change themselves. This vision is consistent with the Morrill Act, enacted by President Lincoln at the height of the War Between the States.

It states the purpose of public universities “… to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life”.

Second, our history and tradition is one of embrace, not exclusion. As the nineteenth century drew to a close Southern graduated African Americans. Not popular, common, or welcome in many quarters of society but it was, and is, Southern. In the twentieth century Southern was barrier free before the greater society understood the Americans with Disabilities Act or the relentless challenges of being blind, deaf, or in some other way physically challenged.

University leadership realized the value of providing opportunity to those otherwise excluded, not by birth, or class, but by race, creed, view, disability or social status or distinction.

Education at once provides and levels ground.

We have lived it in three different centuries. Universities become living artifacts of society and are appreciated by those who work, study and graduate from them for the opportunity they offer. Southern is a place where a great variety of views and life circumstances are lived, offered, discussed, debated, and examined… even when the views and illumination of differences may not be popular or comfortable.

It is our job.

A public university that is reflective of, and responsive to, the population it serves will be better. It will produce vitality. Opportunity will be abundant in vital environments. Opportunity is the cornerstone of our university and will always be strengthened as we reflect and respond to those we serve.

It is who we are and who we must be.