White House forum looks at college costs
WASHINGTON -- SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher joined 11 other top college officials and President Barack Obama on Monday at a White House brainstorming session on ways to control the cost of higher education.
"I think every one of us is doing something," Zimpher told reporters in a conference call after the meeting.Suggestions included greater use of online coursework, capping the credits students can get without earning a degree and making more use of shared services for back-office operations such as billing and purchasing supplies.
Part of Monday's discussion involved best practices by some colleges that can be copied elsewhere."We spent a good bit of time talking about things like incentivizing universities through their states to be more efficient,'' Zimpher said.
"And in that regard, the whole shared services initiative at the State University of New York certainly aligns well."Obama participated for about an hour of the two-hour session, which was moderated by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Participants included Thomas Snyder, president of Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, Carnegie Mellon University President Jared Cohon, and Jerry Shinn, president of Berea College in Berea, Ky.
A couple of university officials said they have capped the number of credits students can earn before obtaining a degree, a move to target so-called professional students who postpone graduation. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill does not allow a student to pursue a second major after nine semesters if he or she has completed coursework for the first one, according to spokesman Mike McFarland.
That was one of Zimpher's takeaway ideas from the roundtable. Another, she said, involves online courses available at Western Governors University.SUNY already has a pilot project with Carnegie Mellon offering limited online courses to SUNY students.
Western Governors University offers online bachelor's and master's degrees for an affordable $2,890 for six months of enrollment, with no cap on how many credits a student can earn during that period.
WGU is a nonprofit school founded in 1997 on a bipartisan basis by 19 Western-state governors concerned about difficulties rural residents had in getting access to higher education.
Enrollment recently surpassed 30,000, according to WGU spokeswoman Joan Mitchell. She noted that the university's students live in all 50 states and include military personnel and family members living overseas.
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