WILLMAR -- Trustees overseeing Minnesota State Colleges and Universities are about to begin a long-term planning process that will take the public college system through the next decade.
The 2020 Plan is the next step for the Board of Trustees after developing a four-part set of initiatives in the past year.
David Olson, the board's chairman, spoke at a luncheon meeting of the Ridgewater General Advisory Committee Thursday at the college's Willmar campus.
Olson, who is the president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, toured the campus Thursday morning. He took part in a demonstration in the nursing simulation lab and viewed a presentation about educational uses for the online gaming community Second Life.
At a meeting later this month in Bemidji, MnSCU trustees and administrators will begin meeting to develop a plan looking 12 years into the future, Olson said.
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The meeting will involve the head of the University of Minnesota's board of regents to discuss their plans for the future, as well.
"It would be a shame if we were tripping on each other," Olson said. "We shouldn't have tax dollars colliding."
State resources are limited, and public higher education is not likely to see an influx of new revenue, Olson said. "We, as MnSCU institutions, are going to have to provide a better education for less money."
Olson said he is excited about developing the 2020 Plan, something that will require "a pretty big crystal ball." Minnesota appears to be the only state attempting to plan its college system's efforts 12 years into the future, he said.
Members of the Ridgewater committee asked if MnSCU was also considering working more closely with K-12 schools in developing a long-range plan.
The MnSCU trustees spend a lot of time talking about that subject, Olson said.
The state's education system needs to talk about a plan that involves all stages of education from pre-kindergarten through college and "how you make the system function better."
One current problem for the colleges and universities is the number of students who need to take remedial classes when they start college, he said.
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A shortage of nursing programs and teachers across the state is another concern for the board, Olson said.
Ridgewater President Doug Allen said lots of programs around the state have expanded in the recent past but will sometimes run into "bottlenecks" in finding clinical training.
Olson said the MnSCU board decided to narrow the number of issues it would focus on, and came up with four initiatives:
- Provide access to the underserved and underrepresented.
- Increase focus on science and math, encouraging students to study in the fields and to become teachers.
- Find out what a MnSCU education actually costs students.
- Develop a succession plan that will be in place when the system's chancellor eventually decides to retire or move on.
MnSCU is also wrapping up work on a "dashboard" of information about each campus, listing how it ranks on 10 different measurements. The system's four-year colleges and two-year institutions are ranked separately.
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That program, too, appears to be a first in the country, Olson said. Some have criticized it as being too simple, he said, but it gives a snapshot of each school.
"We think the faculty, the administration and the board all agree that we can't be afraid to measure ourselves," Olson said.
