Higher Ed as a Strategic Priority for a State

This episode of Future you is brought to you by Nelnet Campus Commerce, Delivering payment technology for a smarter campus, and by Entangled Solutions. This is Future youe with Jeff Selingo and Michael Horn.

Welcome to Future youe. I'm Jeff Salingo and we're in Phoenix, Arizona, at Arizona State University. Michael Horn, my usual podcast host is not with us today, so I've asked Paul Fain of Inside Higher Ed to join me as today's co host. Welcome, Paul.

Thanks for having me.

It's great to have you here. And we have a great guest today with us, Kim Hunter Reed, who's the commissioner of higher education in Louisiana and formerly the same job in Colorado. And we're going to be talking state politics today and state higher education policy. So it's great to have you here, Kim.

Thank you. Good morning. Delighted to be here. And go Tigers.

Oh, right. Exactly. Well, maybe we get to talk about football at some point. But a question that we ask all of our guests on on Future youe is kind of how did you get started in higher ed? What drew you to higher education? And how do you end up in a job kind of as commissioner of higher education?

It's an interesting story. For me, I have always been I grew up in a family of educators. And so as I worked in journalism, actually, I moved from transitioned from anchoring the news and working in higher education, covering education news to to actually working for a governor, Governor Edwin Edwards, actually, at the time. And when the term was over, I went and visited with him and others about what was next. And of my list of ideas, he said he thought education would be a great place, that there was not a lot of young people, not a lot of diversity, that I could make a difference. And I, of course, had a background of family in K12, not higher education. But I loved working with students and I loved good policy. And so that's really how I transitioned from working, working in a governor's office to working on a college campus, and then from there just sort of zigzagged. Worked for President Obama and the Obama administration, worked for four governors and just have been blessed to do that work and have always been attracted to the education field, realizing that it would make such a difference in terms of moving people from poverty to prosperity. And so I've just had just amazing blessings and opportunities to work for a number of people who have helped to advance my career, worked for the commissioner of Higher Education in Louisiana. This is my third time working at the Board of Regents. And so people have helped me to sort of move through this zigzaggy life to become commissioner of higher education in a state that I love, doing a job that I love.

That's the best thing you could ask for in life, I guess, right, Is doing something that you're passionate about in a place that you love to be.

So, Kim, all 50 states are fascinating, but Louisiana, I would say, is one of the more interesting ones in terms of the higher education system, the differences in the institutions, the students you serve. And I know in your time there you've developed a new strategy, new master plan that has been described as kind of a new vision for the state after coming out of some tough budget years. And still, I'm not saying that money is not a problem in the state of Louisiana, but can you describe a little bit where you're headed and what the plan to devised?

You know, my dad is a coach, mentioned football and he always says it's better to be lucky than good. And I ended up back home in Louisiana after significant budget cuts, after multiple mid year cuts and almost quarterly cuts in the state in higher education. So people had really been in sort of survival mode. So when I arrived, we had two years of stable funding. People were ready to sort of take a deep breath and think about what's the vision for what we want to do. So the timing was right for development of a new strategic plan. Really a vision for how should Louisiana think about prosperity, think about talent development and opportunity. So working with the board, we did set a new strategic plan in place, a new goal. It really represents, I think, a big tent approach. Not a K12 to higher education approach to talent development, but thinking about justice, involved individuals and opportunity, youth and foster youth, and single parents and veterans. So how do we think about bringing all talent developers to the table and redefine or more broadly define talent in a state where one in five people are in poverty and say that we know that skills and competencies matter, this is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity in our state. And so how do we build systems and structures that help everyone get there? So it's an exciting conversation. We've been moving all around the state talking to business leaders and faith leaders and community leaders and of course educators about this vision. And I love that the governor, the Secretary of Corrections, the Secretary of Economic Development are all talking about this is our plan, right, Kim? This is our plan. So not a higher education plan, talking about higher ed, but a state plan and a state vision for something better.

Do you imagine that will result in sustained funding or more funding down the road. Now that there's a bigger tent approach, does that help on the funding side or does it just help on kind of the policy side?

I think it helps in both. Last year we had our first increase in funding in 10 years. And so we have momentum at our back. We have a strong plan. We have, I think, good collaboration. And so I think that will result in broader conversations about policy that matters and hopefully broader conversation about investment and not expenditure. You know, when you have a state like Louisiana that had one of the highest disinvestments in higher ed and then also one of the highest increases in tuition, you're really working against yourself because if people can't afford it, they can't achieve it. So how do we make sure that education in Louisiana is affordable, is attainable, is equitable? That's the conversation that we are having and look forward to continuing to have.

So when you look at the goal of what you're trying to do here, you mentioned hoping to get more students to employment. How does that big tent approach, you know, work in that, in that setup? I mean, do you work with the Department of Corrections to actually do more to ensure that folks, when they get out of being incarcerated, get into higher education, into a job? I mean, can you talk a little more specifically about that employment piece and with the broader group of stakeholders?

Sure. So if you ask someone multiple decades ago, why go to school? They'd say, to learn something interesting. If you ask someone now, they'll say, to get a good job. So people are very focused on education as a passport to employment. So we're thinking about, you know, appropriate competencies and skills. We're thinking about credentials. We want students to be college and career ready in high school because they have a college and career experience in high school. We're thinking about work based learning, apprenticeships, internships, and certainly for the justice involved population. I have visited the institutions. I've looked at both their academic programs as well as their career technical programs, their, well, programs and other things of that sort. But as you know, when you're working with a justice involved population, it's not just making sure they have education and training that is needed in the workforce, but that you have a set of employers who are willing to hire people, people who are companies that are felony friendly. So we're working on both sides. Right. We're trying to make sure that the education and skills are high quality, high demand. But we're also thinking about how do we connect the workforce and how do we visit with companies and industry to make sure that we're identifying their needs and we're helping them to connect with talent as well.

Kim, do you think that, you know, the federal government, obviously, you know, the Higher Education act keeps lagging? We know that the Pell Grant and the federal investment in higher ed is also lagging. It seems like some states are really stepping it up now around higher education. Do you think that higher education, especially in this world where we have lifelong learning and post secondary education, is so critical that there's going to be more competition between states and that really the policy discussions of the next decade are going to happen more at the state level than at the federal level?

Well, I certainly hope we have both. You know, ultimately, I think the model that is built counts on a strong and engaged federal partnership as well as state and local and institution partnership. But when you think about a traditional population and how many regions of the state have a decline in high school students? There will be, and we still see, you know, more competition, even in Colorado, certainly in Louisiana, other states coming in that you may not have seen in terms of recruitment of college students, but you also see four year institutions that have traditionally focused on traditional students now moving into the adult space. Why? Because it makes sense. Because we need people upskilled and reskilled, but also because of the competition around the traditional age students. So I think the policy discussions are going to be around how do we remove barriers for returning adults, right? People who have childcare, transportation, food insecurity. All of those things that in the past we in education said, we'll get your life together, we're here to educate you. And today we're thinking about those as barriers to student success. So I do think the policy conversation is going to be around skills and competencies, but also around what are the barriers and how do we remove barriers. So that means for us in Louisiana, we're thinking about TANF and SNAP and public benefits as a leverage to completion for students. How do you harness every federal and state dollar and think about getting people to where they need to be so that they and their families and our communities will prosper?

I want to ask about competition within the state. Louisiana is one of the 35 states that has a performance funding formula. You obviously have some really deep disparity in the state in terms of resources. You know, say between that university in Baton Rouge and, you know, the south Louisiana college system that has some rural campuses that I know have some very deep achievement gaps and other issues. How do you tackle that, you know, in your job? How do you deal with a research campus that's globally known and small rural community college campuses that have such different resource challenges?

You know, when you think about the institutions as anchor points for communities when it comes to education and training, obviously we have a responsibility to make sure that they're serving the students well and that they have the resources to do so. And as I mentioned, we've been about cutting higher education for some time. And so we need to really make sure that we are positioning with a new legislature that is starting up now that we're really talking about this investment in education and why it makes sense for states to invest. But as you know, we've been, we've under resourced everyone and in a funding formula, we've had conversations in the short time that I've been there that here's the challenge in a funding formula when there's no new money, the formula incentivizes institutions to get better. But when you have a fixed amount of money, if you don't get better than the best, you can improve and not receive any resources. So that is a challenge as we think about how to evolve the system focused on outcomes and better student support. But I will say this, we have an under resourced challenge in the institutions. That's a disparity, but we have tremendous equity gaps. In Louisiana, Ed Trust did a report we were the lowest educational attainment state for African American students. We have, as you know, significant poverty in our state. And so how do we think about education in a way that allows us to recognize these challenges and say that we are the solution or we are a critical part of the solution? We think seeing K12 as an extension of post secondary is important. We think making sure that more people are advocating and seeing the value of education is important. I realized both in Colorado and Louisiana when I convened conversations, particularly with communities of color, I assumed the discussion would be around affordability and achievement. The conversation actually was also around culture like the Native American population saying, you know, we send our students to you, they don't come back or they don't come back native. You're not welcoming. How do we make sure that the institutions recognize the challenges and opportunities that exist in our communities? And so I do think there are significant parts in the state and significant parts in the nation where we should make the assumption that everybody wants to go to college, that everybody values education. We have to talk about how the knowledge economy has changed and that is why we need more skills and competencies in a state where a high school diploma in the oil patch or in agriculture would get you a really living wage. But that has changed.

You know, just briefly, I know that talking to leaders in the state in the bad budget years, a really unusual amount of hostility even from state leaders towards higher education, a very tough situation that you all came out of. Do you feel like you've turned the corner? Do you feel like policymakers and those, the public in Louisiana understands that higher education is an economic engine, is something that they need to work for the state? Or do you fear of a slippage at some point back to where you were?

I think the education around the value of higher education is always a work in progress, particularly when you have a change, a turnover in new legislators. We have a tremendous turnover coming in right now of the House and Senate representatives and state senators. So we have, you know, got to ramp it up again and start talking about what it means to be educated, that people who are educated are more likely to pay taxes, less likely to be on public benefits, less likely to be incarcerated. So that's a job that we have to continue to do. But I do think we have moved from where we were, where there was really a government conversation, a policy leader conversation, that you needed to starve the beast, starve higher education in order to force it to change itself, to evolve itself. That was a very damaging conversation. And people followed along and there were significant cuts. So the economy was challenged. But also there was sort of a policy approach that we need to give them less and we need to force them to change. I think we are out of that conversation. But you know, higher ed is not a light switch. When you disinvest, when you take money out and you become a state that has high tuition now I'm saying to students this is a necessity, not a luxury. And they say, but you price it as a luxury good across the country and perhaps in this state as well. So when you are a student without means and we say to you you need skills and competencies, then how do we make sure that you're able to afford the skills and competencies pathway that is before you. So I think the conversation has changed, but it is continuously, certainly a continuous work in progress for us.

Kim, one last question. So you've been talking a lot about how, you know, this big ten approach, and we've been talking about post secondary education more broadly as upskilling lifelong education. Our state systems, the way they're designed. Now, you've been in a couple of states, our state system, state higher education systems, whether that's a coordinating board or whether that's a formal system, are they set up in the right way now? I mean, most of these were set up, you know, decades ago when we thought of post secondary education, you know, 18 to 22 year old full time students, you know, now the, the higher education world is much more fragmented. Are we ready? Do we have the systems in place to deal with these challenges in the states?

I think the responsibility is certainly system redesign. I will say, having worked in two shio agencies, that we tend to be transactional and not transformational. Right. So we meet the regulatory and constitutional responsibilities, but we don't say is our state prospering? How do we think about new pathways? How do we recognize the changing demographic and how do we call the question on who's not getting educated and who does not have the opportunity. So in both places where I've worked and certainly across the country, as I visit with other state leaders and policy leaders as well, I am certainly pushing on this conversation about system redesign. We have lots of pilots, we have lots of incremental excellence, but we don't see a real redesign. You know, over 40 states have an attainment goal, but how many states really have thought about the system redesign that it will take, how to change the structures and systems so that everybody has the opportunity to reach their unlimited potential? That is the work that has to be done so that we can sustain it and continue to move it forward.

Kim, thank you so much for joining us on Future youe. And we'll be right back.

This episode of Future you is brought to you by Nelnet Campus Commerce. Nelnet Campus Commerce delivers payment technology for a smarter campus. The Secure Payment Solutions for Higher Education are PCI Level one, validated and integrate with every major erp. From payment processing and refunds to payment plans and online storefronts. Nelnet Campus Commerce helps process payments on campus. Learn more@campus commerce.com this episode was also made possible with support from Entangled Solutions. If you want to shape the future of education, Entangled Solutions would like to hear from you. Entangled Solutions is hiring smart, mission driven team members interested in helping world class institutions solve their most vexing challenges in learning and education. Learn more at Entangled Solutions.

And welcome back to Future you. That was a great conversation with Kim Hunter Reid of Louisiana. And I'm joined by my guest co host this week, Paul Fain from Inside Higher Ed. It's great to have you here with us.

Great to be here. Such an impressive interview.

Yeah. So Paul, one of the things that really interested me in that interview was her talking about was Kim talking about this kind of strategic plan for higher education that just wasn't about higher education, but kind of this big tent philosophy. Does that mean that when things get tough again in the state that you have a lot of friends because you're part of this big tent, or do you think higher education is going to still run into the same problems that it always has in terms of being the balance wheel of state budgets?

Right. You know, I didn't view it purely cynically. I do think there's some, some genuine sincerity in the shift toward bringing in stakeholders like the Department of Corrections or the governor to have more of an ownership of a master plan for higher Louisiana, I think it's safe to say could use one. But I have to say I have not heard a state higher ed officer talk about that approach where it's not just higher ed coming to stakeholders and saying, hey, buy into this plan we have. But more of a, this is yours too. And I also heard her talk a lot about a focus on employment and skills and competencies, which I think from her side of things, it's certainly, I think gives you a better chance of having support in the legislature and frankly from business and employers in the state.

You mentioned skills and competencies, which she said very often, not degrees, not credentials, skills and competencies. And I thought it was interesting in talking about the different populations in the state that she said need skills and competencies. And the problem in many states is that you say it's necessary, but then you're not really providing the opportunity. And it seems again that this strategic plan is focused on trying to get everyone up and get these skills and competencies, but at a reasonable price and a reasonable opportunity. So that we're not trying to get Everybody to get a 4. It's not about trying to get everybody to get a four year degree or a two year degree, but it's about trying to get them the skills and competencies they need to get a job.

Absolutely. She's leading with the state's needs and its citizens needs and employment and earning a living wage is the primary need. And again, I don't, I mean obviously other hired officials in other states do this as well, but I haven't heard it articulated quite that way. And you know, Kim Hunter Reid came from Colorado, a state that's done a lot on competency based education or just focusing on skills and employment in its higher ed system, a pretty experimental, aggressive state, and with its governor, Jared Paul will continue to do that. And she was at the White House under Obama, which obviously, you know, they got a lot of flack for focusing on four year degrees, which they probably deserved, but certainly in the tail end of their administration put a lot into, hey, higher education should also be about employment and skills and should also be about serving the needs of employers.

And they also have performance based funding there. And when we see performance based funding systems in the states, they tend to be tied to completion and degrees. So I guess are we, can we move to a system where we're starting to assess competencies and skills as our friends at Burning Glass will talk about, Skills and competencies matter a lot in this job market. Employers are, are looking less at the degree necessarily and more at the competency skills. We know that outcomes on salaries mattered more there. I guess the question I have is though, are state performance based systems really designed to capture that as much as they are to capture enrollments, retention and completion? Is I guess the question as we go forward?

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I feel like I've heard the description of performance based funding, which I think I mentioned. 35 plus states have some sort of formula in the books as kind of a version 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. The first version was pretty rough. Graduation rates, maybe a couple enrollments. But now you've got equity increasingly being baked into some of these formulas. In California, I know they do that. I think to your point, employment and earnings, we're going to see more and more of that. There's certainly interest in the federal level, but the state's already doing it. The real question to me about a performance formula formula is does it actually incentivize the behavior that it says it does. I mean, most of them hold colleges harmless. Hold harmless so that they don't really, if they fall behind, they don't really get cut too much. And frankly, I think Kim mentioned this too. The increases aren't there when you deserve them too. So they really do need to be meaningful to make a difference, I think.

Yeah. And she talked a lot about that. When the money's not there, how do you reward institutions that have improved if you can't give them more money? Right. Because otherwise that incentive is lost as a result.

Yeah. Just to agree with you on you need the money to incentivize the behavior. But as we've seen in Pennsylvania and some other states, systems have to be pretty nimble to adjust to the needs of the state. And no shots at Pennsylvania, my home state. Absolutely. And they're starting with a pretty difficult structure. I think we can leave it at that. But, but systems more broadly, not just Louisiana. Where are they in your mind in being prepared to tackle some of these fast moving goals?

And I think she answered that really well in saying that for the most part, state systems, whether you had coordinating boards or whether you had very deep state systems that are running colleges and universities are mostly regulatory. Right. Are you approving new degree programs, hiring new presidents and allocating the performance based funding, for example. But they're not really thinking strategically further ahead. And you know, you brought up Pennsylvania, which recently where the community colleges started working with southern New Hampshire and out of state, private. And you know, we know Dan Greenstein very well there who runs the Pasche system. Those the state colleges, universities, systems. A couple of many years ago when I was still at the Chronicle uncovering Pennsylvania, you know, Penn State expanded all their two year old schools to four year schools and the state Department of Education didn't love it, but there was not really much they can do about it because again, it's a state that is not heavily regulated. And so when you don't have a coordinating board or any sort of coordination that is thinking about what's next, they end up just falling back into kind of the old way of doing things. And that's mostly around approving new degree programs and things like that. And so my thinking is that you need really good leaders like that pushing the state in a new and different way in the position that she's in as commissioner. You know, Kim has had a varied career. I didn't really know that she was a journalist, that that's how she started her career. But she's been in Colorado and Washington and Louisiana. I'm assuming that we're going to see her really moving into new positions, I would imagine in the future as well.

Absolutely. You know, Louisiana will be a really fascinating place to watch under her leadership. I mean a better budget system, but some enormous problems that will persist. So curious to see how it plays out for her. But I think it's a safe bet to call her a rising star and someone we might see back in Washington someday.

Right. And Louisiana also just lost one of their other rising stars in F. King Alexander, who left the LSU presidency and is now going to be the new president at Oregon State. So it'll be interesting to watch what happens to lsu. I should mention for our listeners she mentioned Go Tigers early on in the podcast. We interviewed her the week of LSU winning the national championship. So we're pretty excited about that big win. And sorry for my podcast partner here who's from Ohio and Ohio State didn't make the national championship this year, but maybe the Big Ten will make a comeback someday. What do you think, Paul?

Ohio State's done all right of late and you know this well, Jeff, when you think about the big spending on athletics, LSU and Ohio State are in that very small class of just printing money around their athletics. So good for them.

I wish they would print some of that money and help some of their state residents a little bit more when it comes to education. But we'll get back into sports on another day on on Future you, but that does it for this episode. Thanks to Kim Hunter Reid for joining us. And thank you very much to Paul Fain, my old colleague at the Chronicle and now at Inside Higher Ed, as an editor there, for joining us today as a guest co host. And especially, thank you for listening. We love hearing from you. So please drop Michael Horn, who's my usual co host, and me align with ideas, comments, questions or even complaints. Hey folks, Michael Horn here. Hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Future youe. And just a reminder to please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and if you like the podcast, rate

us so that others can find us and find out about the good conversations

that we're having here. As always, thanks so much for listening.