Looking ahead, Oswego will have a lot of uncomfortable questions to answer, but also the tools to adapt to the changing higher education picture.

George Washington University President Emeritus and author Stephen Trachtenberg posed some of them to more than 100 administrators, faculty and staff gathered for the annual President’s Opening Breakfast Aug. 31.

“Oswego really does have opportunities,” Trachtenberg said, citing new construction, growing programs and reasonable tuition. “I find this an exciting institution both in terms of what’s here and what’s being developed for the future.”

Oswego President Deborah F. Stanley opened the forum-style presentation by pointing to a recent Chronicle Research Services report titled “The College of 2020.”

“It identifies three longstanding business models in higher education and predicts continued success for two – the elite, brand-name research university on one hand, and the community college and for-profit institution on the other,” Stanley said. “It predicts a decline for the third model, a model that sounds uncomfortably close to the SUNY model.

“[We want] faculty, staff and administration to think about how we can, in an integrated fashion, change this university in very profound ways and do exactly what our mission is today,” she added later.

Trachtenberg explained that many external factors are driving change in higher education.

“We used to be a monopoly … we’re dealing with a change in public perception,” Trachtenberg said, likening an unchanging public colleges to the struggling newspaper industry.

The Association of American Universities, which represents the country’s relative handful of 62 elite research sites, is unlikely to add many more colleges to its ranks, he said. Meanwhile private, for-profit institutions offer low tuition and convenience.

Even in the face of those competitors, there is still a place for the traditional college setting, Trachtenberg said. The campus life does have a critical part in character development.

“We need to turn [students] into adults in a way that parents can’t,” Trachtenberg said, adding that distance learning should not be ignored.

Just as unconventional means like online degrees become the norm, so too could three-year degrees. How about courses offered all seven days of the week or summer as a true companion to fall and spring semesters, Trachtenberg asked.

“The creation of an institution is like creating a mosaic: It’s a lot of small stones put into the right place,” he said. “An organization must unite around a vision – for an institution to make the next step, they have to do it as a group."

-- Shane M. Liebler

PHOTO CAPTION:
This year's President's Opening Breakfast was Webcast live, then uploaded for sharing.



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