The ideas expressed in city club forums are those of the speakers and not of the City Club of Cleveland Ideastream Public Media or their sponsors.

Production and distribution of City club forums and ideastream Public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, June 27th.

And I'm Cynthia Connolly, director of programing here at the City Club.

And I'm so pleased to introduce today's forum, which is part of the City Club's Education Innovation series.

Today we are talking about Ohio's regional public universities, the likes of Cleveland State and the universities of Akron and Toledo.

Together, they serve more students than any single university in the state, including the state's flagship.

Yet they're often overlooked in both local and national big picture conversations about higher education.

Even though most Americans who do go to college attend an institution within 50 miles of their home, now these colleges are being forced to reinvent themselves, dealing with local workforce demands, adapting to shifting student needs, and sometimes fighting for survival.

All of this comes amid enrollment drops, challenging demographics and pressure at both the state and federal levels.

It is noteworthy that today is also the day that Senate Bill one the Enact Advance Ohio Ohio's Higher Education Act is put into effect.

The bill targets diversity, equity and inclusion, bans faculty strikes, among other measures.

It was sponsored by State Senator Jerry Serino, who did discuss the details of that bill at the city club back in April.

Joining us today are both local and national experts who will discuss the future of regional public universities.

What is working, what is not and what would it mean for Ohio's communities if these universities were to close their doors?

Here with us to discuss this and more is Dr. Jennifer Jennifer Keup executive director at the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, which has a membership of 39 public urban research universities across 27 states.

The Coalition focuses on urban university engagement and key urban challenges in our nation's cities.

Also with us is Dr. Cecilia M. Orphan, associate professor of higher education at the University of Denver and founding co-director at the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges.

She researches how regional public universities promote equity and community well-being and how policy shapes higher education's public purposes and equity pursuits.

And also with us is Dr. Nigamanth Sridhar, senior vice president and provost at Cleveland State University.

And in this role, he serves as a chief academic officer and oversees all academic offerings at the university.

Moderating the conversation is Amy Morona She is a statewide higher education reporter at Signal Ohio.

If you have questions for our guest during the Q&A portion of the forum, you can text it to 3305415794 and City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

Now, members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland please join me in welcoming all of our guests here today.

Well, thank you all and thank you to my esteemed panel here.

My name's Amy Rona.

I'm the higher education reporter at Signal Ohio.

And for the sake of this conversation, some important framing for me is I'm also a graduate, a first generation graduate of a regional public university.

And I spent a lot of time covering regional publics, too.

So very excited to be here for this conversation.

But Cecilia, why don't we start with you?

You know, Higher Ed loves an acronym.

Love is a long, clunky name, but what exactly is a regional public university?

Who attends them?

Where are they?

That's a great question, and it's one that I spent the balance of my career trying to answer because there's not broad understanding of what these institutions are.

Before I get into defining them, I just want to say what an honor it is to be here.

I actually did my dissertation research at Cleveland State and a few other universities in Ohio, so it feels like a very full circle moment right now.

And part of that work was to help define what a regional public university is.

Regional public universities are not ivory tower institutions, very much like we see Cleveland State in the midst of a downtown area, very much enmeshed in the local community.

These are institutions that have missions to be of service to their community and their region.

And because of that, you will often see the place name of where they're located in their name, like Cleveland State, like the University of Toledo, like Shawnee State University, that's right next to the Shawnee Forest in southern Ohio in a rural part of the state in Appalachia.

And so that is a very important part of their mission.

How can we be of service to the region?

And that looks like being accessible to anyone who wants to pursue a college education that looks like reduced barriers for admission.

And it's something that's really interesting.

In higher education, we often define excellence by how many people we exclude and keep out, which is very much antithetical to the purpose of education, which is meant to involve people in bettering themselves and uplifting themselves.

And so regional publics have really worked to redefine excellence by how many people they include and uplift to the same level of excellence as you can attest to.

And I as well.

I was a first generation college student, attended a regional public.

My life was changed by that opportunity.

And we know that around 34% of the students who attend regional publics, they're eligible for Pell Grants, which means they're very low income.

And often that also means they're first generation.

They also educate a large share of students of color and adult learners veterans, immigrants, undocumented students.

So they're just really important access points for higher education.

And then the last piece I'll share about how we can define and think about them is that they are very student centered.

So this is not to say that they don't do research because sometimes in conversations I hear people saying, there's the research institutions, then there's the regional publics, but there is a group like Cleveland State, which I know is going to speak to that do conduct research.

Often that research is in service to the local community.

So it's addressing local challenges, it's supporting the local school district.

And so that kind of student centered nature involves those students in the research about the communities that they come from, because most of the students who attend a regional public are from that local community and they in fact graduate and they go back into that community and they become its business leaders.

It's schoolteachers, it's nurses.

And so there's just a lot that these schools do to support their region.

Thank you for that.

A quick follow elevator question and answer before we open up the conversation to our friends, something I think about a lot and I think it's important to the the jump of this conversation.

What about people who didn't go to a regional public?

If I'm sitting watching this at home and I didn't go to CSU or Akron, why should I care about what a regional public is and what they what they do and who they serve?

Why does that matter to communities broadly?

That's a great question.

Another way we can think about these institutions is they're stewards of place, and that's something that the American Association of State Colleges and Universities describes them as.

That's the membership association for these institutions.

And that means that if you live within a 30 to 50 mile radius of regional public, even if you didn't attend that school and your kids, you're not planning to send them there.

There are still ways in which that institution touches your life.

It probably educated the teachers that your your child is learning from, or it's a small business incubation, which is particularly important in rural communities.

So some of the work that we have done through the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges is to identify rural serving institutions that are also regional publics.

And we know that half of these institutions are like your Shawnee states that serve a very remote part of a rural community.

If that institute tution didn't exist, then those people would not have the opportunity to go to college.

But beyond that, they're also doing small business incubation in these rural communities, which is really important because rural communities have the highest per capita number of small businesses in the country.

So that's another way in which your life, if you live near a regional public, which most people do, because the the policy that led to their creation was really intended to make sure every American lived within 50 miles of a college or a university, your life is touched by a regional public university.

And we also know through research that the economies of regions that have regional publics and them, they recover more quickly from recessions, they're economically more robust.

And a lot of that has to do with the fact, which I'm sure you'll speak to later, that they align their degree offerings with the economic needs of the region.

Jennifer, I'm sure a lot of what Cecilia said resonates with you.

So I'm curious with your group, the Coalition of Urban Serving universities, many of your members are our peers in cities, places like the University of Toledo, Cleveland State, rejoining your group soon.

What can you tell us just more specifically about those institutions and how intertwined they are to the cities in which they set?

Sure.

And in many ways I'm following up, duplicating what Cecilia said.

So really, urban serving universities are qualitatively different than urban located universities.

Just because you have a zip code that is in the city does not mean you are truly urban serving.

And that is the basis of the members of our organization, which I should say.

I want to almost out myself.

Our organization is affiliated with API Blue, which is the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities and includes major, you know, our one in our two public research universities, including some flagships and some of our members are also flagships, but still urban serving.

But I'm happy to speak from the fact that many of them are also regional, comprehensive regional universities as well.

So when you are, you know, urban serving, you are not just in a city, you are of the city, you are a citizen of that city.

And you rise and fall in some ways with the city.

And the city rises most often with the activities of the university.

And it's very intertwined.

Urban serving universities are often called anchor institutions because they're intertwined so intimately with what is happening in the ecosystem of major urban areas.

We just had an event where we invited our advisory council, which are representatives from organizations that are not higher ed but are on the other side of the coin of the issues that urban institutions are focused on the alliance and hunger, the Council for Large Public Housing Authorities, the Conference of Mayors, the City Managers Association, the National Association of City Transportation Officers, National League of Cities.

We're looking into inviting the association related to Chambers of Commerce or superintendents, because this is who the urban serving universities are working with for the betterment of the city and their students.

It's not.

It's a very porous relationship between institution and city and to be able to uplift them.

And we see that the effects of that are pretty substantial.

Many of our members, in fact, are on the U.S. News and World Reports, social mobility, national social mobility rankings, and actually the to two institutions from USA are tied for first place on that.

And while sometimes that's not the metric that gets the most attention, it is a pretty important metric when you think about the purposes of higher education to really enact social mobility.

And so that's on the student level.

But you're also uplifting communities.

These institutions are very connected to the economies of the area.

They serve often a public health interest.

They're contributing to the education elements of the community.

Sometimes are the only fine arts, you know, fine performing arts centers and major urban areas.

So urban serving universities and often, which overlaps pretty heavily in a Venn diagram with our institutions we're talking about on this panel, are really doing so much for that community and the students in it.

They reflect most often the students that are in those cities.

They typically will recruit most heavily from there, and the students generally stay there and are contributing back civically, economically and whatnot.

And what's really exciting, too, is that these are also becoming destinations of choice for faculty members because of their connection to industries of the area.

So a couple of our member presidents were doing a panel and one of them said an idea that there are other to latch on to and I love, which is a for a faculty member, the timeline for my idea to impact in the research you're doing in these spaces is very short right?

The work you're doing isn't just going to go up in the ether or just this because it's interesting.

It has immediate impact often on the community or in the industries of the area, and that's really exciting without going down a sort of dangerous political path, we also see the widest array of 21st century learners in these spaces, and not just personal identities or ethnicity or race.

We're also talking about, as you mentioned, adult learners, commuter students, poverty affected students, returning students, students with dependents, veterans and active GIs.

The list goes on and on.

Commuter transfer.

Sometimes those that are a little harder to to identify.

And I particularly resonate with this.

I didn't bring my phone up here just because of time, but my father is a graduate and a master.

His master's degree is from Cleveland State, and my grandfather is a graduate of Fen College, which became part of Cleveland State in 1965.

But he went many years before that and was texting with my dad last night and he said, I have to find this.

But he said, You can point to your grandpa first in the history of a family to graduate from college with immigrant and with immigrant parents.

He would get up at 3 a.m., go with his father down to the market in downtown Cleveland, load the fish meat and produce in the truck and drive to grandpa's grocery store, unpack it, and then go to class after he would deliver groceries to customers, homes, study at night until bedtime, and then start over again.

He went on to get his undergraduate degree in engineering and drafting and was the first in his family and almost every one of his children and grandchildren have earned a degree.

That's the kind of work that these institutions are doing.

I don't mean to be self-serving without a pass on the applause, but it just was so illustrative and just a text.

I mean, this wasn't like, Hey, tell me what to say.

But it was these are the stories of the students in these communities.

And my grandfather and his family went back and lived in Cleveland for their entire lives, as did most of their children.

So that's the kind of story of that contribution and connection to the communities and surrounding areas.

Can I think I add to this story because there's this beautiful archival image of Fenn Tower, which was one of the first buildings of Cleveland State still standing.

And if you look at this photo, and I use it a lot in my presentations about regional publics, there's a giant parking lot surrounding the building because it offered a lot of night classes for students, exactly like Jennifer's grandfather.

And parking was a huge accessibility issue.

And so this is a way in which these regional publics historically and still to this day promote access and in an often unseen or unnoticed ways that are so important.

We can't keep this provost from all this Cleveland State talking.

I know this man is itching to jump into this conversation, so I thank you.

I should just sit here and let these folks talk about the great things that Cleveland State is doing.

But but I want to pull on a couple of threads from from what both Jennifer said and Celia said.

So, Jennifer, to your point about research and the and the proximity of research that you talked about, I'll just tell you my own personal story.

I've been at Plymouth State University for 21 years.

I came here in 2004 to be a faculty member in the computer science department.

I earned my doctoral degree at Ohio State, which is an R one also urban serving.

But our one institution and my first three or four years, my research was essentially replicating the kinds of things that I used to be doing as a graduate student.

And and then, you know, and I was looking around the the community and I said, what I'm doing here doesn't have a direct relevance to what's happening around me.

You know, I probably wrote papers that a half a dozen of the people around the world read, and that's it, right?

And it sat on a shelf.

And so about, you know, six years in, I had had the opportunity and the privilege to reinvent and work on computer science education and and the and I just came from Georgia, a hall down the street where there are about 250 young people, middle schoolers and high schoolers who are in 23 different STEM camps.

And you know, and that just this week.

But then over the summer, we will serve about 800 students, middle schoolers and high schoolers and about 80 teachers who will be receiving professional development.

And and that all began with in 2013 when we worked with four teachers statewide in showing them what computer science could be at the high school level.

So that's that idea of proximity to place and and translating a faculty members research into what happens in the in the real world.

So so that's just a quick personal story.

But but I want to, you know, just pull out of all I'm going to do is just give you examples of what happens at CSU to what Cecilia said and what Jennifer said about the various kinds of things.

Right.

When you talk about, you know, academic programs that are relevant to our to our community.

Right.

I'll give you the example of of a new program in construction management that we just developed this was a program that that we created because industry came to us and said, we can't find talent soon enough.

We can't find the kind of kinds of people that need to come in and work on our projects.

So so you need to produce more graduates in this area.

And so, you know, we said, okay, we can do that, but who's going to fund it?

And and they said, We'll do it right.

35 companies came in and put money on the table and helped us create that program.

You know, we talk about how are we creating relevance for the community?

You know, we have this program called Swim the Gap.

That's a collaboration between our College of Health and and the the Cuyahoga County, as well as the city of Cleveland and city of once with heights, where we where we will provide swim training for about 3,004th graders, mostly kids of color who normally would not have swim training at that age.

Right.

To you know, to create a an opportunity for a lifesaving skill and and something that every every child needs to have.

You know, our small business development center in our College of Business works on on providing opportunities for students who are most likely first generation, who don't have the opportunity to work on, you know, creating startup companies and things like that, but providing them with the kinds of platform platforms to say, how can they take an idea and translate that idea into something real and provide them with with some kind of startup capital to to move on from there.

But, you know I could go on there's there's a there's an example from every single academic college and academic program that we can we can go but those are those are some you know I'll just say that's how we we live the the ideal of what a regional public university is.

Right.

And then one last point I'll say as well.

I mean, you know, Cecilia brought up research and and the idea of of of some of these regional public universities also having a pretty deep footprint in federally funded research.

Right.

And I'll give you one example.

In our College of Arts and Sciences, we have the Center for Gene Regulation and Health and Disease, which is a group of 17 faculty members in biology, physics, chemistry and biomedical engineering who over the last decade have brought $50 million of new funding to Cleveland State to do high quality what is called basic research.

And I want to take just a second to define what I mean by basic research.

It's it's it's not research that's easy to do.

It's research that is the hardest to do, which is you're asking scientific questions for the sake of asking those questions, not because that is a product that's going to show up next year in the market, but because you're asking a question which could lead to a drug discovery 20 years down the line right.

I'll just give you one example of that, because, you know, and then I'm last examples.

Last example.

Thank you.

Thank you.

A moderator.

You know, I have a you know, there's a faculty member, you know, who is this is really cool because you walk into his lab and he's got these refrigerators full of little test tubes with that, with fruit flies.

And, you know, because fruit flies, their entire lifecycle lasts about 70 days.

But if you want to study Alzheimer's disease and how brain aging occurs, you know, doing that in a in an organism that has a lifecycle of 70 days is much easier than somebody that has a lifecycle of 70 years.

Right.

So, you know, that that's a that's you know, that is work that will could lead to drug discovery years down the line.

Right.

But having access to that kind of research for first generation students from Cleveland is really, really critical.

You know, talking about research, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about the past six months and the federal and state pressures we've seen at the federal level.

We've seen research cuts across the country to some of those programs, those NIH funded programs.

We've also seen all kinds of things.

That's certainly an understatement of, you know, preemptive DTI, compliance and financial pressures, different different things.

So I'm curious from those are two national experts.

How are we seeing these federal and state pressures play out RPOs, and how might that be different than, say, private colleges?

So I can start in Jennifer, I'll turn it over to you.

But I think one really important thing to note is that regional public universities have been facing these pressures for a long time because states have become very politically active within her education.

So an example of that is in Idaho.

Boise State University is literally in the sightline of the state legislature, and they have been the focal point of a lot of the anti I legislation and organizing like a couple of years ago.

And so I think what's happening at the federal level, a lot of those policymakers have studied what other states have done and are borrowing some of those tactics and the language from the legislation to put in the executive orders and such.

So for a lot of regional publics, this is not new policy.

What's different is that now the federal government is getting involved.

So that's one thing to note.

The second is this conversation around indirect costs.

One thing the Trump administration to clarify quickly, can we do a Yes, I'll definitely I was about to define it.

You know, so indirect costs are basically like the tax and institution charges for the the cost that it requires to create that infrastructure that Naghmeh was just talking about, the labs, the staff that clean and maintain the labs, all of the the infrastructure that goes around, research that takes money.

And a lot of institutions don't have that money already, especially regional public universities that have, for every student, $1,000 of state and federal funding to the 20,000 per student that the Ohio State University has.

And so these are very legally funded institutions.

And when you one thing the Trump administration is, is critical of is that indirect costs that institutions charge on these large federal grants and contracts and is trying to pull that away.

Well, if that happens, that means all of that tax that the institution can charge the federal government to be able to create the opportunities for this research that goes away and that will completely carve out the research that these institutions are doing.

If it happens, other institutions like the Ohio State, they have an endowment in the billions of dollars, they can more likely absorb those losses than original public.

So that's just one example I'll describe and I'll turn.

And for how are your members handling things now?

It's certainly difficult and being associated with A-plus, which is all research one research, two universities, you know, and many of our all of our members are are at least our two, if not our one, are are affected by the closing of these grants, grant agencies, these federal agencies, as well as the limitations on indirect costs.

In fact, one institution that was in our membership did a back of the napkin math one time.

Just quick math that said, like if if the indirect costs go to the level they thought they would, that would put them in a deficit of $200,000 a day.

And they are to relatively small research activity in comparison to some of our members.

So this is real operating costs that are affecting things.

And I ask whenever someone gives you tells you about the a napkin, math like that, which is such a staggering figure, what do you think back to them?

Well, I mean, I thank goodness that you're a part of this organization because right now, applause And, you know, really fighting the good fight for that.

Did you want to say something on it or.

Okay.

Oh, just what is our one or two?

My okay, so so Research University is the Carnegie Classification or Carnegie Foundation does a classification of of four year institutions and they give them either a designation of research activity and R one is very high research activity in terms of I'm getting an exact cutoff, but they get it's 50 million in funding a year and 70 PhD graduates every year.

Yes.

So that's the highest level of research activity.

And then there are twos that are lesser.

I think it's 10 million.

So R two or two is 5 million of of research expenditure and 20 PhD graduates a year.

So Cleveland State is an hour to our research expenditure is actually higher than that 50 million level but we produce about about 40 PhDs on average.

So therefore we fall in that category.

Thank you.

Can we just segue way back to the the pressures just so we don't get too lost in the weeds here for a time?

So the research is one definitely one thing, but there are other pressures that I have my eye on too that are really affecting the these institutions as well.

There's a lot going on with financial aid policies and how like that are going to students and universities.

And the way that they are being structured is such that the students that are attending these kinds of institutions, the ones that are poverty affected come first generation and the other will be affected more than others who might have other resources, other cultural capital or social capital to backfill that.

So I do have grave concerns about some of that financial aid policy and going into effect and what that means for students at our campuses in terms of the larger financial picture.

And then the other is honestly, all the changes we don't think about them at well is immigration.

And international students also are going to gravely affect these spaces as well.

And that may seem one step removed, but it does have financial implications for students who are enrolling what they feel comfortable that they're able, given their classification and immigration, what they're able to get access to.

And then the last is, if you look at the overall architecture and I'm not here to explain what's happening, the administration or the choices that are making, please don't make me do that.

But that's the next forum.

But it does appear that pretty universally they're trying to push a lot of make the federal footprint smaller and the state footprint larger.

The things they are moving to the state level tend to be things that pull from the same pot of money set of other resources or constituency attention and public heart strings as higher education.

And so there's maybe a lot more competition in that space for not a whole lot of resources.

So the pie is going to I'm a little worried the pie is going to get cut a little smaller as you start seeing Medicaid getting pushed down, other federal policies getting pushed to state level.

You know, even the management like with us private education getting pushed down to the state level, there's just less resources to do more things.

And that will take a lot of, I think, attention and resources and finances away from these kinds of institutions that are state funded.

So there are multiple things that I'm looking at right now that are intersecting to affect these institutions financially.

Amy, if I may, just.

Just a quick.

This isn't a financial impact.

The financial impact.

I'll just agree with what what Jennifer and Cecilia said.

But from a real impact for students, right?

I mean, you know, again, when research funding gets cut, when indirect costs get cut, what impact happens is, is on our undergraduate students, because in many of our labs, there's you know, our faculty members have described this as a scaffolding of faculty members working with postdoctoral researchers who are mentoring graduate students, who are in turn mentoring undergraduate students who mentor high school students who come in, you know, into the labs.

Right.

So so there's that whole sequence of of mentoring that occurs.

And again, like I pointed out, I mean, you know, 50%, 49% of our undergraduate population is on the Pell 41 for 48% of our students are first generation.

Right.

So when we talk about that high number of students who will not get another experience to be in a research lab, you know that that is the real impact.

Quite aside from what dollars and what staffing issues that we might have to have for sure.

And as you guys can see, this is such a robust conversation.

We could keep going for hours.

But I hope there's threads that folks pick up on for our Q&A section, which we will segue to momentarily.

So last question is purely for fun.

Honestly, for my own enjoyment, just something I've been wondering kind of broadly of big transition is if you could wave a magic wand and have someone understand something about our pews or about your institution that you think is misunderstood, what would that be like?

What's one thing you really want people to know or one misconception you really want to clear or you know, you want to tell people in this room one thing that they'll walk out and say, I learned this specific thing.

What would that be?

I could start really quickly.

I have attended a community college, regional, public and a Ivy League institution, and the best teaching I ever experienced was at the regional public.

Those are exceptional teachers and the educational quality is excellent and the assumption is that it's poor quality and there's actually research to back that up, that the the excellence in teaching happens in this sector.

It doesn't happen at the hotshot high powered research institutions.

That's a good one.

What?

Well, because it is.

Well, you know, if I if I had to pick a different one altogether, you know, the the variety of academic programing that happens at regional public universities, you know, and again, this isn't just about CSU.

This probably 100 institutions across the country that if you take out the name and the colors will be exactly the same, they'll have about 70 to 80 undergraduate programs, about 70 to 80 graduate programs, and two or three really strong research areas.

And that's the thing, right?

So when you talk about, you know, what is missing or what is unknown, it is it is finding that critical connection between the the whatever the regional public is and what is the big area in that in that city or in that community.

Right.

You know, and that connection between the the the gravity of the city and what happens at that university.

And if you get the benefit of thinking while they're talking or so last word with you.

Every every higher education institution is dedicated in their mission to three things research, teaching and service.

That is the fund.

Those are the fundamental pillars of what higher education does, particularly public higher education.

But all of it you usually have.

We not in say, like the flagships, they do the research and the rest of it is kind of much less weighted.

Right.

If you look at the pie chart of activity, liberal arts colleges, that's all the teaching, right, with much less that these institutions, if you were to look at the distribution of of activity, it's almost equal in all of those areas and almost if there could be more than 100% most mathematicians in the room, your heads are going to explode.

It would be bigger than they are doing all of these things to the greatest degree as compared to other institutional types.

They are doing incredible research, as you've heard.

Whether there are one or two, what are funded by whomever, Amazing, incredible research, basic and apply that you hear.

The teaching is stellar, as Cecilia mentioned in terms of comparison, incredible.

They're teaching a large number of students and the faculty are carrying often pretty heavy teaching loads.

And that service component is in direct service to the communities around them.

It's not just like through the buffer of what faculty members put on there for their tenure and promotion file.

It's like, Oh yeah, I chaired this and I was the editor of this journal and I was on this committee on campus.

This is like, No, I was deeply embedded in this community and doing service to this city, to this community.

That is something that's hard to get your head around when we have otherwise in the higher education ecosystem relegated each of those things to different types of institutions.

These are institutions are doing all three to an incredible level and they are dedicated while doing so to both access and excellence, which is a really hard thing to do to meet both of those at the same time.

Well, thank you all.

This is a lovely conversation.

Please indulge me while we do a reset As we transition to the Q&A portion of the event.

SO for those just joining via our live stream or radio audience, I'm Amy Morono, the statewide higher education reporter at Signal Ohio and moderator for today's conversation.

Today, we are talking about the future of regional public universities like Cleveland State and the universities of Akron and Toledo.

Joining me on stage are Dr. Jennifer Quip, executive director at the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities.

Dr. Nick Streeter, Senior Vice President and Provost at Cleveland State University.

And Dr. Cecilia Morphett, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Denver and founding co-director at the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges.

Thank you all.

Great.

Pete, we will start with you here.

Great.

Thank you.

Great conversation.

My name is Pete Valliere.

I'm a researcher with Policy Marriage Ohio and a co-founder of Honesty, Fraud, Education.

Dr. Coop, your story about your father and grandfather made me think about this.

And then you and Dr. Streeter, you also talked about the high percentage of Pell receiving students.

So the house, the U.S. House in its proposal, seems to be wanting to limit eligibility to full time students and increasing number of hours.

You have to to get Pell to to to study.

And so I'm wondering, you know, especially in a state like Ohio, where there's been essentially a double digit cut to state support for public higher ed if you take inflation into account over the past two decades and also a poorly structured grant program for, you know, the state financial aid program that's also connected to Pell.

How do you see that impacting our schools in Ohio?

But however, in other states, if they do the study has a different flow.

But if they do change that to to the House proposal, how do you see that impacting the kind of universities you're talking about?

And they both looked at me, you know, on big beautiful bills and reconciliation.

I'm not sure I'm equipped for that.

But no, it's what I said.

I'm very concerned about what that means.

Paul is a complex thing, though, because on the other side, to be fair, there's great deal of interest investing in short term Pell, which allows for that sort of quicker certification kind of thing.

So it's it's a complicated thing that I'm certainly not a financial aid expert by any means, but I will say that I do, as I said, have grave concern about what that is going to do.

And it does seem to be that the yeah, that's the cutoff is increasing so that fewer and fewer people have access to it.

And so there are students that I think are going to be gravely affected by this and maybe have to look at different options.

And I think in some ways that's where I see often we didn't talk about this, but the relationships that these institutions also have of community colleges in the area might become even more critical to create pipelines to offset that.

And so I that's another conversation.

But these institutions typically do have very strong articulation agreements and connections to community colleges.

That's another part of the ecosystem of urban areas, typically is this community college two four year pipeline with these institutions.

So it's a poor oversimplified answer to your question.

But yeah, I'm right there with you.

In terms of the concern, I don't know that I have an answer.

And the institutions, it's important to consider the impact on them.

I want to also expand on the human impact.

So when I graduated from college, it was in 2006, I attended Portland State University.

I qualified for maximum Pell Grants and my Pell Grant plus the I think it was like 500 or $1,000 of state grant aid covered the entire cost of my tuition and fees, my books and some of my living expenses.

And when I tell my students now who study higher education that that was the way was for me 20 years ago, they cannot believe it because not only have we made are we considering making it harder to get Pell, which by the way, was created with this promise or compact in mind, that if you aspire to better yourself in your family and go to college, the federal government will help you make that happen.

That was a promise we made to Americans in this country, and that promise has slowly been chipped away at.

And I will tell you right now I have a seven week old son and a two and a half year old daughter, and their lives are profoundly different than my life was as a child because of Pell.

That is the impact of Pell.

That is the human transformation that Pell has created for generations.

And we are stripping that, and it is deeply troubling.

A quick reporter's note as also just someone who had a Pell Grant.

Also, Pell also opens you up to so many other scholarship opportunities, last dollar programs, etc..

So the added piece of context to keep in mind there.

Hi, Kirsten Ellen.

Great.

Like Science Center.

There's a lot of buzz about micro credentials.

Is this harmful, helpful to urban regional universities?

How are these affecting you?

I'll take a crack at it and then I'll let my colleagues jump in as well.

So there is a lot of buzz and and, you know, our approach to it is, again, if we are serving this region, if we are Cleveland's University, then we have to provide opportunities of different kinds to the different kinds of students that come to our door.

Right.

So so if there are students that come and say they want a micro credential, we're to figure out a way to provide those micro credentials.

If there are companies that come along and say, we want to create a talent pipeline that with a micro credential, then that's what we do.

What we are doing, on the other hand, alongside that is, is is making close alignments with our regular, what I'll call regular degree programs degrees seeking students and saying how can we create transition pipelines?

So a student may come to us and say, I'm not interested in a four year degree, but I want to learn how can how I can do podcasting right?

How can that podcasting four week certificate or a micro credential translate into interest for the student and an opening of eyes and doors so that they may eventually end up with a with a four year bachelor's degree in communication?

Right.

So that's the you know, that's that ladder that that we need to make clear.

And I think it becomes even more critical for an institution that is a regional public than four, four, four, four for an R one or for a private institution, because you know, this institutions typically have long waitlists, right?

You know, institutions like mine are are essentially saying like, well, how can we get more people that we can serve and support as opposed to how can we keep people out of here?

Yeah, ditto in many ways.

Just two quick things.

One, I think that the the hallmark of American higher education is its diversity and its the the different ways people can connect to it.

And to the degree that those credentials are immediate, get people educated, get people in.

And I was also to mention that they are typically historically called stackable degrees, right?

You get somebody in to do that and that interested and then maybe they want to do journalism or you know the challenge with stackable degrees though is that we tend to make them very isolated.

Right.

And it's up to the students then to string them together.

And prior to where I am now, I used to be at the National Resource Center for the first year experience and Students in Transition and your worst leakage points and any any persistence of any kind of program is that transition where it's up to the students to say like, okay, now this degree needs to stack on that one.

What do I do?

So as we create, think about stackable degrees and what you're speaking about, we have to think about how they really do link up right in ways that are very organic and easy for students.

Go Yeah, I love that.

You know what?

I think I do want to pursue a degree in journalism, and then it's not just sort of going, okay, that's a great idea how some of that, you know.

So I think there can be real opportunity.

Quick follow up.

And I know I'm not supposed to, but I can't help but not one.

I don't know about the journalism degree, but just kidding.

My boss is in the room.

But to I think it's a very important point, especially right now, and the workforce palette expansion conversation to say not all micro credentials or credentials broadly are created equal, right?

So can we give just a very quick kind of overview of what that process looks like, not even in terms of accreditation or like boring stuff, but just, you know, like are a why or how people weigh one credential versus another in terms of value and who's doing that right now nationally.

And I know again, that could be a whole other forum.

Yeah, that could be a whole other forum.

And actually I'm going to give a very brief answer to that.

And then again, because that's a that's a long topic that we can keep going on the in Ohio, the way that we talk about these micro credentials is based on what the state calls in-demand occupations that jobs Ohio has defined.

And there is a list that is a there is a specific list of, you know, various job codes and and associated zip codes that that education programs get associated with that.

You say, you know, if you do if you do this kind of certificate or credential, if you earn this kind of thing, here's where you could get placed in a job.

So that's that's that's the level at which the state defines it, and that's where we'll leave it at this point.

Thank you very much, Dr. Jennifer, for sharing with us the story of your grandfather.

I was just wondering if any of the other panelists had any stories to share about how the regional universities have aided immigrants and or refugees.

I mean, you know, I'll just share that.

I'm myself a first generation immigrant.

I came to this country to go to graduate school.

I grew up in India.

I've earned a college degree in India.

I did not attend a regional public.

Like I said, I went to Ohio State University to earn a graduate degree, but that's what brought me to this country.

I will say, you know, 14% of our students at Cleveland State are international students.

Students that that that come to the United States, come to Cleveland to earn a degree.

And, you know, across the university, 80% of our graduates are within the state of Ohio ten years after graduation, working and contributing to this economy, into this into this community.

So so when you talk about immigration and immigrants, that that's a that, you know, Cleveland is losing population to the rest of the state and and Ohio's losing population to the rest of the country.

We have to have ways of attracting people to come to our community, to come to our city and grow the population and and grow the impact not just I'll add another example.

In my home state of Colorado, the University of Northern Colorado is located in Greeley, Colorado.

It's a very rural part of the state, and it's also the site of a refugee resettlement area.

And so that university does a lot of work to partner with support and also educate the children and the refugees that are being resettled there.

So that is another example of how that regional service mission plays out in a very specific and unique way to that community.

So we also find there are a number of refugees in addition to international students that go through different types of visa processes that these institutions serve.

It's a great question and if you want, I mean, that's on a story, but more resources.

Another of our partner organizations and the alphabet soup of DC, the National Association of System Heads, or Nash, has a major refugee project they're doing with their system heads.

And many of these regional comprehensive institutions are part of systems, and so that might be worthy of taking a look.

I thank you very much.

I am a very grateful product of the University of Akron Master's program Eviction.

Yes, and I enjoyed every second of being on that campus and have quite a debt of gratitude to the University of Akron.

I loved this.

You know, the idea of the threefold mission and this question is a little bit about mission creep.

The thing that distinguishes also these schools is that they're, you know, urban and computer based.

But then with this component also of the international student, the mission creep involving, say, real estate with urban with these schools and the internal pressures of having to save money.

Budget concerns have led to a lot of, say, online learning and perhaps investment in property that has been difficult with the diminishing population of schools.

Can you say anything to the sort of internal pressures that college that these colleges have to make that they might either be able to avoid with or, you know, anything that about the internal pressures.

You know, you've talked a lot about the external pressures, but what about the internal pressures?

Who wants to spill the tea?

Well, I'll take a crack at it.

Right.

I mean, so again, what a campus of 14,000 students, about 1800 students live on campus housing.

Right.

So that's, you know, 13, 14%.

We are largely a commuter campus, right?

I mean, you know, more than 80% of our students commute to our campus, commute to two classes, many if not most, actually most if not all of our international students actually live off campus.

Very few of our international students actually live in CSU housing.

So so again, you know, from an internal pressures perspective, you know, the pressure, I'll say and I and I have my colleague Randy Nike, who manages enrollment management of live and stayed here.

You know, he will say the the the big challenge is finding that right mix of students who want to who want a residential experience at an urban institution versus the student that just wants to come in for 3 hours a day, attend classes and leave again.

You know, to the point that I think we've all been making it for the last 40 minutes, we want the student, right, all of those students.

We want to be able to support the student who comes in as a commuter and we want to be able to support and provide the residential experience for the student who wants the residential experience.

Again, you know, you used the word mission creep in your question.

I don't see it as as mission creep when we when we provide residential opportunities as well as commuter opportunities.

I see it as supporting all the students that come to our door.

Right.

So so it's, you know, early on, Cecilia, you talked about not being selective and the term that that we talk about at CSU is inclusive excellence.

So you're saying, you know, anybody that that wants a CSU education, we will provide one and we will provide the best possible education to that student in the way and provide the wraparound supports that that student needs.

And so so I would put that in that bucket of how do we support our student body?

I'm going to talk about parking again because I guess I was the parking attendant of this forum.

But parking is a really important symbol for all of this.

And there was a time when states like Ohio, like Colorado, invested heavily into regional publics, so much so that 50, 60% of their funding came from the state.

What proportion of your budget comes from the state?

Right now between 27 and 29, depending on how you count.

Okay.

So that's a huge loss.

This is something that hasn't been studied, but it's something I've observed through my research, not in a systematic way.

When states started cutting funding, one thing institutions started doing was charging for parking seems like a small issue.

It is not a small issue.

Another thing that they started to do is tear down parking garages and build dormitories.

Dormitories is a source of revenue.

Is it mission creep?

Possibly, because you in some ways that's signaling to students who belongs here, who we are trying to prioritize.

The other side of that coin is institutions are really desperate to try and figure out how do we keep the doors open and serve our students, knowing that the state just like we are eroding The promise of Pell States have eroded their promise to support these institutions.

And so they're they're really struggling with trying to figure out how do we serve all students and generate the revenue that we need to keep the lights on.

So glad to have the last questions.

No pressure.

Oh, I mean, this is really pressuring.

But anyway.

Hi.

My name is not pronounced Yea, hers.

I'm a summer fellows with the clean foundations.

Also a grad student with NYU Wagner Scholar Public Services.

My questions has to do with the recent crackdown on DUI.

I wonder if you can respond to the recent crackdown.

D.I.Y.

University are changing a lot of this initiative to more broader term like belonging, but also don't know, refusing to give more funding to university because they don't want to be associate with the term.

My question has to do with what is your strategy in responding to the current state and federal restriction for DUI and how what is some of the plan that your university doing to ensure that you're still supporting marginalized student while also making sure that all the progress that we have done in relation to this is not being reversed because the current administration's.

So I would go ahead.

You can touch that third rail.

That's all you know, I'll take that as well.

You know, because again, if we say we are Cleveland's and and this is a city that that that is a a large, diverse metropolis that that has a variety of different kinds of people that live here.

It is our job to serve all of our students.

I think that, you know, when we talk about the state and federal policies, you know, the at the root of it is it are policies and programs at universities that that might be seen as exclusionary programs.

Right.

The programs that we offer in our university and our division of student belonging and success are intended to be inclusive, not exclusive.

They're not intended to keep students away from each other.

They are intended to create spaces where different kinds of students can come and discover each other and learn about each other.

So.

So again, you know, from from our perspective, it is we're here to serve all of our students.

We're not talking about how we can create exclusionary groups.

And that's how our response.

Thank you so much to Dr.

Cope, Dr. Orphaned Dr. Schraeder and Amy Morono for joining us at the City Club today.

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The City Club would like to welcome students joining us from the Mentor program of Cleveland.

And we would also like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by the Cleveland Foundation Summer Internship Program.

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Thank you for joining us.

We are off next Friday, July 4th in honor of Independence Day.

But be sure to join us the following week starting on Tuesday, July 8th.

We will welcome American Bar Association President William Bey to discuss the rule of law.

And on Friday, July 11th, we welcome Tim Hafey, the lead investigator, into both January 6th and Charlottesville.

He will discuss his book, Harbingers and How We Can Protect Democracy in the years ahead.

You can learn more about these two forums and so many more at City Club dot org.

That brings us the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again to our speakers into our members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Cynthia Connolly and this forum is now adjourned for information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club.

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