It’s a pleasure for me to accept this invitation to join you for a few moments as the Building Bridges Initiative showcases its efforts and looks towards its future.  It’s an opportunity to not only renew friendships, but also to be at the cutting edge of what is developing as an exciting field of work: the study of the nonprofit management education arena.  I come to you, as Dan pointed out, as head of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, a higher education association, headquartered in the nation’s capital, and distinctive in the sense that it is an association of over 400 public colleges and universities across the country, with strong emphases on undergraduate education and upon meeting the work-force needs in our society.  I come to you, as Dan also pointed out, from the perspective of having spent more than 20 years engaged as a proponent of this field.  I have watched with pleasure and welcomed surprise to see nonprofit management unfold as a field of study but more importantly as a profession in which many of you are engaged.

My contributions today will essentially focus upon some trends that I see in higher education that will carry into the 21^st century.  Then I will attempt to relate those trends to the work in which many of you are engaged.  The essential premise under which I operate is that higher education institutions in this country were created to fulfill society’s aspirations and to promote the common good.  Sometimes universities lead in the formulation of public opinion.  On other occasions, we are led by that public opinion.  When we look at the history of higher education in this country, we see that its development has been pretty much in tandem with the development of society.  As we look to the future, I don’t propose I have a crystal ball that I can look into that’s better than the crystal ball you can look into, but I do see some unfolding trends which I think will have implications for those of us who work in higher education and for those of us who work in the nonprofit sector.

Let me identify five of these trends and share with you my thoughts on each.  The first trend is the growth and provision of continuing education.  You know the 20^th century was characterized by the growing recognition of the necessity for a college degree.  It was the flourishing of the Land Grant movement, of the normal school movement, the advent of teacher colleges, the GI Bill that expanded citizen participation in higher education, the founding of the community college movement, and the expansion of the percentage of our citizens who are receiving a college degree.  It was a fabulous century for education and one of clear movement.  But as we look toward the 21^st century, we see this as a century, at least at it’s beginning, of continuous learning requirements and opportunities.  We have an obligation in higher education to provide that continuing education for the working population.  We have moved beyond youth to an adult population that seeks continuous learning.  We will see an amazing creation of new career opportunities.  It has been said that 50% of the jobs that exist today did not exist 25 years ago.  If there is truth in that statement, and I believe there is, it emphasizes how daunting is the task of preparing people for tomorrow’s careers when you don’t know what those careers will be.  It is an obligation from which we cannot shirk. It also tells us that we will have a population of learners who will be returning to higher education in whatever form that it takes in the 21^st century to re-tool and to prepare for new careers as old jobs become obsolescent.  There will be ongoing professional development in all fields and in all parts of the world because as we move into a market economy, strong competitive elements will drive the creation of employment opportunities.

The second trend that I think we will see will be the expansion of access.  Now in this country, very clearly we have a very strong mandate for access in all parts of our society for all Americans.  When one moves beyond the borders of this country, we are seeing, across the globe, increased recognition in virtually every part of this world to provide greater access to citizens of that particular country to higher education.  There’s a recognition that education must be inexpensive because economic prosperity and the improvement in the quality of life is seen as a direct correlator of increased educational attainment on the part of all segments of a given society.  This country has always struggled with issues of diversity and ensuring that all ethnic groups and all groups of color from this country advance educationally and economically.  We want all Americans to enjoy economic prosperity.  At times, programs such as Affirmative Action, can be found illegal or judicially unacceptable, but that does not change the mandate that those of us in higher education have to find judicially acceptable alternatives.  No one wants an America characterized by racial and ethnic differences and by social and economic class inequality.  The problems in this country and across the globe are being intensified by the concept of the digital divide.  It used to be just a few years ago, we talked about our students being computer literate when they came to college.  Today we talk about first graders being computer literate or not being computer literate.  The gap between students entering kindergarten and first grade today is probably greater than it has been at any time in my lifetime. 

You can visualize two groups of young people:  those who have grown up in families who have computers and who have been provided with the advances in technology.  These students have become adept at that, even young children and pre-school children.  Then, there is another group of children who have had virtually no contact with the computer world and modern telecommunications.  These problems are also compounded by social conditions in our country.  I will just cite from the state from which I just came, South Carolina, that in 1997, 1 out of every 4 children born in that state was born to a single parent.  We will have a significant number of young people coming into the first grade in two or three years who will have enjoyed few benefits of family life.  Not everyone who fits in that category will be disadvantaged, but we will have a high number of at-risk children coming through our school system, at the same time we will have a high number of technologically advanced kids ready to move on.  There will be some major challenges to face.  I mention these things because we have a responsibility to try and address them. 

The third trend that I see developing in higher education is the developing programs for new careers.  I made reference to the fact that many of the jobs in existence today did not exist a quarter of a century ago.  There is a belief that universities are slow to change.  There is truth to that statement, and there are also elements of mythology associated with it.  Someone said once that if a doctor from the 16^th century would show up in one of our hospitals today, he would be amazed and stunned and totally lost, but that if a professor from the 16^th century showed up at a university, in a couple of weeks, he would get the hang of it.  That’s the truth part of that statement.  What is mythology is the concept that universities do not change particularly in various curricula.  Universities adapt very well to the creation of new curricula to meet the work-force needs of society.  One sees the development of majors in the computation sciences, and in fact, on some campuses, the creation of separate colleges for computing engineering, systems management, programming, network administration.  There is a rapid and significant advancement occurring on our campuses to adjust learning modes for the new careers and the expectations.  Well, the same has occurred in other fields.  Two decades ago we never heard of occupational health and safety.  Now we have campuses graduating specialists in this field being grabbed up immediately.  The biotechnology field has spun off a constellation of majors, and students are entering in those fields.  There is a field with a distinct major that I was unaware of until I went to Clemson University: packaging science.  Every one of these graduates is going out for $40,000+ as a starting salary.  And that brings us to this field developing in nonprofit management.  Significant progress is occurring. 

The fourth trend is localization.  The changes that have occurred economically and politically across the globe are staggering.  And their impact on higher learning is just now being felt.  Campuses recognize they have to prepare students for careers which will place them in other countries.  Not only must there be a language and cultural competence in the process, we have to overcome, in this country, a great deal of insularity and isolationism that has dominated not only our country but to some degree our campuses.  There will also be a movement of faculty resources as, increasingly, faculty from our campuses work overseas and faculty in other countries come here.  English has become the language of commerce followed, I should say, by Spanish.  We’re seeing on our campuses a drop-off in the study of other languages, but increases in the study of Spanish.  In other parts of the world, English had become the dominant second language and the only universal one.  The implications of all this will really be significant to us. Yet in the world today as we look at the problems: whether they’re in the Middle East, whether it’s the instability of political regimes in the upper part of South America or whether we’re talking about Yugoslavia, there is a sense among Americans, among people elsewhere in the world that we’ve got to solve these problems because economic prosperity comes with peace.  The good life can be achieved by all if we can solve some of these problems.  Yet our understanding of the causes of these problems is limited simply because ours has long been an isolationist society.

The fifth and last movement that I want to chat about is movement toward engagement.  Dan made reference to the fact that I served on the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.  Kellogg does a lot of good things.  They make good cereal.  Buy some, if you haven’t already.  They support conferences such as this, and they also support those of us in higher education who are seeking to chart a future that is consonant with the development of our country.  Of the reports made by the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, one of them has significant applicability to our future, and that was the report on the engaged institution. Over the course of the history of higher education, there has been a movement along a continuum – let me briefly describe it.  The earliest higher education institutions were appropriately classified as “Ivory Towers”.  It was a place of refuge, much like monasteries in the Dark Ages.  Learning occurred in a closeted setting in which the external and negative influences of society were not allowed to disrupt the work of scholars.  The development of the Land-Grant Movement brought with it the concept of extension.  In an organized way, particularly in the agricultural and family life areas, we had university staff go into society and teach citizens what we thought they needed to know.  We then moved from extension to outreach, essentially expanding the number of disciplines on a campus that would have interaction with the external world.  In business and in rural health care, for instance, elements of university activity benefited society.  What this task force indicated, what the Kellogg Commission endorsed, was the concept that in the 21^st century, universities will be engaged with their communities, however that community is defined.

If you will allow me to just read a few lines from that report, I think you’ll get a flavor of where we think we will be going.

“Engaged institutions are the ones that have redesigned their teaching, research, and public service functions to become even more sympathetically and productively involved with their communities.  We believe the engaged universities can enrich the student experience and help change the campus culture.  It can do so by enlarging opportunities for faculty and students to gain access to research and new knowledge and by broadening access to internships and various kinds of off campus learning experiences.  The engaged institutions must also put their resources, their knowledge, and their expertise to work on the problems facing the communities they serve.”

As Sara pointed out, maybe more applied research is what the engaged university will be doing: focusing more on solving problems of the communities they serve.  The Commission recommendation here was simply stated: 

“We recommend that institutional leaders develop plans for engagement, plans that recognize that engagement is not something separate from and distinct from universities, but a part of its core mission.” 

That movement towards engagement has tremendous implications for your work.  Where the university meets its community, whether it’s in business assistance, industrial research, school reform, health care delivery, agricultural field trials, or youth agency management, there will be ferment… intellectual ferment.  The engagement of students with practitioners in the field will be significant, particularly in the human service area.  This is a movement whose time has come.  Just look at the undergirding issues in the Presidential election in our country, and you are in the forefront of that movement.  There will be expanded opportunities for service learning as we engage students in working off-campus in ways that enhance their educational experience.  Students have always been involved in volunteer activities.  The challenge to universities is to translate those kinds of activities into learning experiences that are meaningful for the education and the professional growth and development of our students.  We think that will occur.  Our association, for example, has just entered into an agreement with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to try and work out ways in which students from our campuses can be engaged in those Boys and Girls Clubs: in working with the young people that are served, particularly the at-risk kids whom the Boys and Girls Clubs significantly focus upon. 

Beyond opportunities for service learning, I think we’re going to see an extension of the interests of faculty as they seek to expand that body of knowledge about nonprofit management.  Remember, there is interaction here: knowledge from the campus is transferred to the field, and knowledge from the field is incorporated into the body of knowledge that shapes instruction on the campus.  A true partnership, I think, will unfold, and there will be collaboration among agencies, among universities, and between agencies and universities.  There will be advisory boards.  There will be integrated student learning experiences and a national network of practitioners who will be in the forefront of the development of this profession.  We have challenges on the campus. 

Let me conclude my comments by focusing on those challenges.  We must provide leadership for change on the campuses.  At times, that is difficult, but we must have the leadership of the campus – Presidents, Chancellors, the Vice President and the Deans - all singing from the same hymnal.  The faculty reward structure must be clear and must be consistent with those priorities.  There must be expectations in writing for faculty members who are going to be involved in engagement and working with external communities, and the criteria for promotion and tenure must reflect that.  That can be difficult because these are areas where universities have been slow to change.  There are campuses, however, such as Oregon State University, which are making dynamic strides to achieve those ends.  And we must figure out better ways to evaluate the quality because the reward structure in a university is built not upon the recognition of activity but upon recognition of achievement.  How we can go about distinguishing quality in various kinds of activity is critical to how successful we will be.  I think the nonprofit management field will develop.  It will unfold into either a separate discipline or a subdiscipline.  It will have a distinct body of knowledge.  It will have a network of practitioners, and the key element that brings it all together is the development of a code of ethics widely accepted as to how practitioners can function.  Then you truly have a profession.  I think it needs the support of practitioners.  It needs the support of university officials, and we need the support of civic and business leadership to sustain all our efforts.

I look forward to discussions with you.  Thank you.