Strategic Plan Report

Relationship with Business Community

As noted, this report is a response to a number of gubernatorial and legislative directives. Among these was the requirement in H.B. 119 that the Chancellor work with the business community of this state to align the state’s higher education system with the needs of business. Leaders of the state’s business community have been generous with their time and insights as the Chancellor responded to this important mandate (see Appendix A). This report incorporates many of the suggestions received during these consultations.

The most important outcome of the consultations was the creation of a long-term partnership between the Board of Regents and the business community, with a commitment on the part of higher education to meet the needs of business and a commitment on the part of the business community to be an active partner in this effort.

The idea of a strong business and higher education partnership is not a new subject for Ohio. In 2003, former Governor Bob Taft convened the Governor’s Commission on Higher Education and the Economy (better known simply as “CHEE”). The CHEE report had a major impact in linking higher education to the state’s long-term economic growth goals.

One product of the CHEE report was the creation of the Business Alliance for Higher Education and the Economy (BAHEE).17 BAHEE, an affiliate to the Ohio Business Roundtable, has kept alive the vision of CHEE and played an important role in recent higher education policy advances, particularly in STEM education. BAHEE, through the Business Roundtable, assisted the Board of Regents in responding to the legislative mandate to seek business input, and has signaled a commitment to be a long-term partner with the Board of Regents as this plan is implemented.

Building on Knowledge, Investing in People: Higher Education and the Future of Ohio's Economy, Governor's Commission on Higher Education and the Economy, 2004

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Satisfaction Survey and Study

KEY STRATEGY: A survey and study of business satisfaction with higher education will be developed and administered annually in partnership with leading business organizations.

The best way to find out whether business is satisfied with the product of higher education is to ask. This plan establishes a partnership between BAHEE and the Board of Regents to develop a rigorous and transparent process for surveying business satisfaction with higher education in Ohio. This plan looks to the business survey and study to not only reflect business satisfaction, but to also serve as a broader measure of quality of teaching and learning in the system as a whole.

As with the surveys that rank individual schools and programs, measurements of the quality of teaching and learning in a higher education institution are necessarily subjective, and always controversial. Study commissions and learned organizations of all types have tackled this question in recent years.

The challenges are formidable. The changing number of academic disciplines, combined with the constant growth of knowledge and information, makes a uniform assessment of content mastery virtually impossible. Assessments of content mastery also fail to account for the importance to employers of general communication and problem solving skills. The skills are as important to the students’ ultimate success as content mastery.

Assessments that measure progress in developing such skills while in college are being studied and tested. Their use as evaluators of the quality of the education offered by individual institutions across the country is likely to grow. All schools in the University System of Ohio will soon be administering at least one of the available assessments measuring student acquisition of analytical and communication skills.

The overall value of such assessments during the life of this plan, however, is likely to be limited. Ultimately, the principle guarantors of the quality of teaching and learning in our institutions are the faculty. Faculty design and teach courses, approve the contents of a particular academic major, issue grades and determine whether to award credit for the satisfactory completion of the course. Through recruiting and tenure decisions, faculty members are also intimately involved in the hiring process itself. The faculty’s decisions are ratified when the presidents of the institutions and the trustees sign their names to the student’s diploma. Finally, the Chancellor is charged with assuring the citizens of this state that degree programs are sufficiently rigorous, and that the institutions that offer them are appropriately organized and financed. This public trust must be exercised seriously as well.

Surveying and reporting on the satisfaction of the business community with the product of the University System of Ohio will be a powerful tool in helping institutions and the Board of Regents exercise this public trust. This tool will be administered at least annually and will enable a comparison over time, allowing us to track improvement or changes in the results. More details regarding the survey can be found in Appendix B.

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Compact between Higher Education and the Business Community

KEY STRATEGY: A compact or agreement will be executed with the business community to substantially increase the number of students participating in internships and co-ops.

The permanent working relationship with the business community established through this plan will go beyond an annual survey to include the establishment of a compact between the business community and higher education. This compact will initially have three clear objectives:

  1. Increasing the number of students participating in co-ops and internships.
  2. Increasing the number of incumbent adult workers receiving training leading to credentials.
  3. Marketing higher education.

Employers who are seeking skilled employees can greatly increase the available talent pool by offering internships or co-op arrangements with colleges and universities. Many successful models exist that can be expanded statewide. For students, co-ops and internships have many direct benefits, including making college more affordable by offering paid internships, providing real world experience and skills needed for employment, and an opportunity for a job after graduation.

Co-op and internship programs are a key strategy to keep our best talent right here in Ohio. Research shows:

Summary: Benefits of Cooperative Education for Ohio’s Taxpayers, Ned Hill

The University System of Ohio’s accountability measures include doubling the number of juniors and seniors in cooperative education or internships. Training and upgrading the skills of workers is a core function of any business organization. The decision on how to invest worker training funds is based on the needs of that business. While some of these funds are spent on training that leads to higher education credentials, much is not. To achieve the goals of this plan, the state must convince businesses to spend a larger share of their training dollars on programs that will lead to credentials that employees will carry with them for the rest of their lives. In order to convince businesses to do so, higher education must develop programs that have the necessary value to the business enterprise and are delivered in a time and manner that is convenient to the business and its employees.

The compact between higher education and the business community will design and implement strategies that enable this challenge to be met on both sides. Some elements of this plan will be helpful in getting the compact started, including the plan to create “stackable certificates” earned from training programs that meet industry standards.

Adults in training programs are critical to Ohio’s workforce solution. Almost 75 percent of Ohio’s current workforce will still be working in 2020.19 According to many Ohio employers, the lack of technical skills in their workers impacts their ability to achieve economic success.20 This compact will help adult workers meet the changing demands placed on them by employers who are in turn competing for advantage in the global economy.

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Marketing Higher Education in Ohio

KEY STRATEGY:To increase enrollment, attract and retain in-state and out-of-state students, a statewide marketing campaign will be coordinated with the marketing and communications efforts of Ohio higher education institutions and the business community.

Broad initiatives aimed at increasing enrollment by 230,000 students and positioning colleges and universities as drivers of the economy will require an aggressive higher education access campaign that includes a strategic marketing and advertising component. Ohio must compete as a system to keep students from leaving the state to attend college, to recruit national and international students into specialized fields of study, and to brand its system as high-quality and affordable.

As a part of the compact, the business community has expressed an interest in partnering with the state of Ohio to pursue a sustained higher education marketing campaign. The Chancellor will work with BAHEE and the Ohio Department of Development on this effort.

Individual colleges and universities spend millions of dollars annually for recruitment of students and to increase brand identity. These efforts are to be encouraged because they benefit the institution as well as Ohio’s profile in higher education.

There needs to be a more coordinated effort to assure the best use of these dollars. To that end, the Chancellor will ask colleges and universities in the University System of Ohio to work together to promote and market higher education in a state that is facing a critical challenge of educating and training workers. This effort will be a supplemental one and not meant to supplant current marketing and advertising efforts at individual institutions.

The Chancellor will also work with the Ohio Department of Development to develop marketing materials that bridge higher education and economic development, and support the overall branding of the state of Ohio. The recruitment of new businesses into Ohio requires direct participation of Ohio's network of public and private higher education institutions.

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Tracking University System of Ohio Graduates

KEY STRATEGY: A system-wide strategy for tracking graduates will be established.

Most schools make an effort to track graduates, but it is expensive and difficult. Yet these efforts are increasingly important to a state like Ohio. Tracking our graduates would help us document the success of the system by knowing what and how our graduates are doing, as well as provide employers with potential candidates for employment and graduates with updates on job opportunities in Ohio. It would also encourage graduates to come back for more education, and assist with fundraising.

A comprehensive tracking system is an example of a project that would be very expensive for each school to do individually, but more manageable when the costs and benefits are shared as a system. The University System of Ohio will organize this effort.

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The Ohio Skills Bank

KEY STRATEGY: The Board of Regents will lead the Ohio Skills Bank (OSB) to link workforce supply and demand at the regional level. Ohio Skills Bank regional teams will also facilitate articulation and transfer between adult workforce centers and community colleges.

An important responsibility of the University System of Ohio is to ensure that businesses in Ohio have access to a ready supply of educated and technically prepared workers to enable the business to grow its Ohio-based employment. This is accomplished primarily by increasing the overall educational attainment level of Ohio’s workforce, and demonstrating that those who graduate from our schools have the analytical, communication and problem-solving skills that businesses need from all workers.

This general approach, however, cannot alone meet the needs of businesses for workers trained in specific skill sets or possessing required industry-based credentials.

Economic development-driven programs have funded workforce development projects for individual employers on a project-by-project basis. Most community colleges and adult workforce centers also offer training through contracts with targeted employers. These transactional strategies play an important role, but they must be led by a unified organization whose primary focus is on meeting the needs of Ohio businesses. This organization is the Ohio Department of Development. The Ohio Board of Regents will support the Department of Development in these efforts.

In contrast, the Board of Regents has primary responsibility for systemic efforts at workforce development. It takes years for students to be recruited and trained in many professions. This process cannot start only when a business has identified a new growth opportunity, or the opportunity will be missed.

To address this challenge, the Ohio Board of Regents will implement the Ohio Skills Bank, which will directly link industry demand to workforce supply in each of Ohio’s twelve economic development regions and through statewide strategies aimed at the state’s largest industries. In each region, the Ohio Board of Regents will convene a consortium of all the education and training providers involved in workforce development. The consortium will be led by a qualified agency or individual based in the region. The consortium will be provided with data and assistance from agencies throughout state government organized by the Board of Regents. The job of the consortium will be to analyze the demand for employment in the region and the supply of students and programs, then determine what changes need to be made to guarantee that the education and training providers are recruiting and training the right number of people in the right types of programs to support a growing economy.

Each regional economic development director (who report to the Director of the Ohio Department of Development) will convene a committee of business and industry leaders. This committee will meet regularly with the education and training consortium to review its work. The committee will also advise and assist the consortium in developing an acceptable plan for the workforce needs of the region.

The Ohio Board of Regents will collect the work of the 12 regions for presentation to the Governor’s Workforce Policy Advisory Board, which will serve as the statewide equivalent of the regional industry committees. The Board of Regents will also make sure that its funding formulas and incentive programs support those institutions who respond to the data and strategies developed by the Ohio Skills Bank by creating or modifying programs and expanding the number of graduates in key areas.

The Ohio Skills Bank will also serve as the link at the regional level to key strategies in adult education. These strategies, discussed elsewhere in this report, include:

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Support Department of Development Recruiting and Retention Efforts

KEY STRATEGY: The Board of Regents will create an office, with a dual reporting relationship to the Chancellor and the Director of Development, that specializes in gathering and presenting the necessary expertise during the competition phase of business relocation and expansion projects. This office will then facilitate the relationship between the business and the school once the state’s proposal has been accepted.

The Ohio Department of Development takes the lead in recruiting new businesses to Ohio, and encouraging Ohio businesses to stay and expand their operations. The Department frequently puts together and offers specific packages of state support to the companies to assist them with their relocation or growth plans. These packages, which include a wide range of incentives, more than pay for themselves in increased earnings and tax dollars received from the companies and their employees.

Companies with whom the Department of Development is working are increasingly interested in the state's ability to provide the talent they need to expand their operations in Ohio. These talent needs are often very specific, but they also range over a wide variety of disciplines even for a single company. It is not unusual for a single company to need highly skilled machine operators, computer software designers, accountants and finance specialists, managers and doctoral level scientists. Companies also want to be located near world-class research that will help them become more innovative, productive and profitable. The demand for talent and research can usually not be met by any one school, but can be met by linking the business to a number of academic programs at many different schools. Of course, this requires a great deal of work and expense for the business.

To help make Ohio more competitive in landing business attraction and expansion projects, the Board of Regents will partner with the Department of Development to develop the specific expertise at putting together employment and research pipelines for individual businesses that span multiple institutions and academic programs. Specifically, the Board of Regents will create an office, with a dual reporting relationship to the Chancellor and Director of Development, that specializes in gathering and presenting the necessary expertise during the competition phase of business relocation and expansion projects. This office will then facilitate the relationship between the business and the school once the state's proposal has been accepted. In this way, higher education will become a specific benefit for companies looking to locate, expand and grow in Ohio.

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The Leadership Center for African-American Males

KEY STRATEGY: A center will be created to study the factors leading to success in college for African-American males and to lead an effort to implement best practices across the state.

Another clear need of business and industry is a talented, highly-educated and diverse workforce. Workforce diversity is vital to the strength and overall competitiveness of a knowledge-based economy. As a general rule, when a significant portion of any state’s population does not have the education and skills to contribute to and compete in a knowledge-based economy, the state is not maximizing its economic potential. Investments in the creation of a more diverse workforce will result in tangible benefits to the economy such as more jobs with better pay, measurable increases in innovation, increased attractiveness for business and industry, a better quality of life, expanding the value of products and services to a broader audience, and enhanced customer relationships.

Education and training must serve as the foundation for creating a diverse workforce in Ohio. African-American and Hispanic students continue to lag behind in almost every measurable educational indicator. With the assistance of federal, state, and institutional college access programs, great strides have been made in the effort to close the achievement gap in Ohio.

Created as part of the Higher Education Act of 1964, TRIO programs provide educational assistance and cultural enrichment activities to low income, potential first generation middle and high school students in the effort to help them progress through the educational pipeline. There are currently eight TRIO programs in operation at 17 different University System of Ohio campuses. GEAR UP is a federal grant program designed to increase the number of low income students who are prepared to enter and complete a postsecondary education. States may apply for six-year grants and services must be delivered at high poverty middle schools and high schools. The Board of Regents currently administers the GEAR UP grant for Ohio’s eight sites in partnership with the Ohio College Access Network, a network of college access programs that operate as nonprofit organizations designed to increase the number of at-risk students who pursue postsecondary education.

Ohio is deeply committed to the transformative work of all Ohio college access programs in support of University System of Ohio goals, and will work to increase the size and scope of these programs as we are able. But we can do more. A clear need in this state is to increase our ability to recruit African-American males to higher education and to provide the environment in which they can succeed. Addressing this challenge cannot be left to a government program that is subject to the vagaries of the biennial budget process. For this reason, the Ohio Board of Regents will lead the development of an independent Leadership Center for African-American Male Achievement.

The Leadership Center for African-American Male Achievement will be a research-based facility that will have a focused agenda managed by its own faculty with the goal of identifying issues and recommending strategies to correct them. The Leadership Center will focus its work in four areas: educational policy analysis and development, advocacy, research, and evaluation and training. The Center will be established and operated with private funds. The Governor and the Chancellor will provide the leadership to develop a plan of action and help recruit private support for the endowment. Public and private institutions of higher education and business leaders will be invited to partner on this effort.

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Promoting Ohio Colleges and Universities Across the Globe

KEY STRATEGY: The University System of Ohio and Ohio’s private colleges and universities will work together to promote higher education in Ohio across the globe and share the costs of recruiting international students.

At no time in history has global competence been as important as it is for today’s students. The University System of Ohio must create opportunities for students to obtain the knowledge and experience needed to be productive citizens in this new landscape.

The University System of Ohio will have an aggressive international strategy involving several overlapping components:

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