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> Summary of Events > Talent Dividend Breakfast - June 11, 2009
Talent Dividend Breakfast - June 11, 2009
On Thursday, June 11 about 20 greater Stamford business, government, education and foundation leaders convened at the University of Connecticut Stamford branch for a Talent Dividend Breakfast that was convened by Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, UConn Stamford Vice Provost Michael Ego and Norwalk Community College President David Levinson.
After hearing a presentation by Carol Coletta of CEOs for Cities on the national Talent Dividend initiative, the group discussed ways to increase college attainment in greater Stamford. There was consensus that the Talent Dividend target of a 1% increase is much too low, particularly given the ongoing shift in the Stamford economy towards jobs requiring expert thinking and complex communication capabilities. At least a 10% increase would be a more appropriate target for Stamford. Many ideas were discussed, including some which are longer term in nature, including an integration of secondary school and community college (Middle College) and the transformation of the community college to a four year institution (in part to address the constraint which tuition costs at existing four-year institutions place on completion, and also to counter the resistance of the University of Connecticut administration to the expansion of the Stamford campus). The ideas below focus on the more immediate opportunities discussed:
Increasing completion. The obvious low-hanging fruit is to focus on increasing the completion and matriculation rates of students currently enrolled in Norwalk Community College and the University of Connecticut Stamford branch, and to re-engage Stamford adults who have completed some college.
Reforming Developmental Education. Developmental education was instituted in most community colleges across the nation over the past two decades to address the literacy and math deficiencies of many students. Students are tested at entry and those who score below a set level (e.g., 10th grade reading level) are placed into developmental education (a euphemism for remedial education). The theory is that this will enable students to ultimately succeed in regular community college courses. In fact, what happens in many cases is that students get stuck in this developmental education vestibule, burn up their student loans, get bored and drop out. Research on national best practice in adult education clearly demonstrates that integrating, rather than sequencing, basic education and skill training results in higher rates of persistence, completion, matriculation, job placement/retention, and wage growth. NCC has received a $740,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to reform its developmental education program as part of a national effort aimed at increasing community college completion rates.
Doubling Internships/Experiential Learning at NCC and UConn Stamford. The key pattern recognition skills (expert thinking and complex communication) that adults need to succeed in the 21st century as workers, citizens, parents and learners cannot be acquired through classroom schooling alone. A significant amount of pattern recognition capability is developed through experience, typically in the company of someone else who is already very good at pattern recognition, but may not be fully conscious of how they do it. As Michael Polyani put it, "We know more that we can tell." Mentored internships and various kinds of experiential learning are not simply ways to make post-secondary education more interesting and more connected to the community (they do have that effect, which helps to increase college completion and talent retention); they are in fact essential to the development of the capabilities which students most need in life. They need to be at the core, rather than the margin, of every student's post-secondary experience (they should be part of every student's secondary experience as well). The PreK-16 system is too self-referential. It measures success primarily using assessment tools that purportedly predict readiness for, and future performance in, the next level of the system, rather that what is required for success in the adult roles of worker, citizen, parent and life-long learner. Effective citizenship and parenting have always demanded expert thinking and complex communication; the significant recent change is that the economy now demands these capabilities as well, across all sectors and all job levels. The PreK-16 system has not yet caught up with this shift, and to a large extent is still testing and producing graduates for an industrial-era economy of rules-based thinkers (both managers and workers) that no longer exists. We aim to aggressively exploit the new alignment, taking advantage of the fact that Stamford is the business center of Connecticut. An initial goal is to double the number of internships/experiential learning opportunities for students at UConn Stamford and NCC. This initiative could also work in the other direction: e.g., corporate employees (especially HR professionals) could volunteer in return-to-college events targeting 21-50 year-olds, patterned after a similar effort in Philadelphia.
Forgiving a Portion of State Student Loan Debt Based on Completion. This will both reduce the cost of college completion and provide a powerful incentive for completion. It will require state legislation, which we will introduce in the next session.
CEOs for Cities could be a Resource for Stamford. What are other cities doing to increase college completion? What has worked? What hasn't? Has anyone figured out how best to assess pattern recognition skills (versus rules-based thinking or knowledge content)? State-level data on college attainment, partial completion and the state-level Talent Dividend (as we will need to make a state-level case to enact the loan forgiveness legislation proposed above). CFC should convene the network annually to trade experience.
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