Regents President Discusses Transform 2020

                               Dr. Gregory Gray On Transform 2020

                                           By Scott Benjamin

Dr. Gregory Gray, the president of the state Board of Regents, said Connecticut is “in the first phase of higher education reform,” a vital step that the 17 campuses in the system will have to take “if we are to survive.”

He said the Transform 2020 plan that he developed recently with Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) includes bold steps to boost enrollment through scholarships and with financial incentives for students to return to school; an increase in online offerings and distance learning through high-technology classrooms; proposed bond appropriations for upgrades in technology and capital infrastructure; and the establishment of featured departments at each campus.

 “Our demographics are going down, our enrollment is going down,” Dr. Gray said of the current 1.8 percent annual decline in high school students in Connecticut.

“We need to bring innovation to education,” he added during an Apr. 10, 2014 talk to students in a section of PS 104: World Governments, Economies And Cultures at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) in Danbury.

The 17 schools include the four, four-year public universities – Eastern, Central, Southern and Western - the 12 community colleges and the online Charter Oak State College.

Dr. Gray said that eliminating unnecessary duplication of courses will make the system more efficient and address the lower percentage of state appropriations for higher education over the last decade.

HartfordCourant.com reported in September 2013 that Dr. Gray had said the cost per student for online courses at Charter Oak is less than half of what it is at the state universities and community colleges.

“The governor and I share a goal: Keep tuition low,” the system president said.

 “We have to use the money we have more efficiently than in the past,” Dr. Gray said.

“The appropriations from the General Assembly have not kept up with inflation over the last 10 years,” he said.  “There are so many demands on state money today that higher education gets less attention. State legislators say, ‘Where do you want to take the money from: ‘The elderly? Social Services?’ ”

“Nobody wants more taxes,” Dr. Gray said. “So where does the money come

from?”

The system president, who took office in July 2013 after heading a group of community colleges in the Riverside, Calif. area, said the Board of Regents took a bold step earlier this year by approving only a 2 percent tuition increase for the next academic year, a considerable decline from the 5.5 percent increase for the current year.

“We can’t keep raising our prices or we will price ourselves out of the market,” he said, noting that his goal is to have just a 2 percent increase in tuition during the two subsequent years.

In 2011, the General Assembly approved Mr. Malloy’s reform plan which merged the four public four-year universities – Eastern, Southern, Western and Central – with the 12 community colleges and Charter Oak.

Dr. Gray said it was “a dramatic change” that eliminated about $5 million in management costs.

 “A lot of people didn’t like it,” he said in an apparent reference to, among other things, the change for the four-year colleges, which had been under the Connecticut State University governing body since the mid-1960’s.

Dr. Robert Kennedy, who in 2011 became the first president of the Board of Regents, resigned in October 2012 after providing raises to several administrators without prior approval from the Board of Regents.

Former University of Connecticut President Philip Austin became the interim president of the Board of Regents immediately after Dr. Kennedy’s resignation. Dr. Gray was appointed in May 2013 and took office that July.

The system president said since then he has met once a month with Mr. Malloy to develop a reform plan for the Board of Regents schools.

 “He was very interested in what we were doing,” Dr. Gray said. “Whenever I saw him at a ribbon-cutting or another event, he would ask about how the plan was coming.” By last November a draft proposal had been completed.

The $134.5 million Transform 2020 package that Mr. Malloy sent to the General Assembly this last February will, among other things, provide incentives for former students to return to school will up to three classes with free tuition, upgrade technology, expand online offerings and establish distance learning classroom.

The signature program is “Go Back To Get Ahead” in which students that had been enrolled in colleges in the system and have not attended classes for at least 18 months could get free tuition for up to three classes over three semesters if they returned to school.

Ed Klonoski, the president of Charter Oak State College, is managing the “Go Back To Get Ahead” program.

Dr. Gray said the Board of Regents will ambitiously market the program starting in May once the General Assembly has approved Transform 2020. Hearst Connecticut Media has reported that $150,000 has been allocated advertising.

“We think it will be popular,” he said, estimating that “Go Back To Get Ahead”   will probably attract an additional 5,000 to 7,000 students.

Dr. Gray said that six days after endorsing the plan in his State of the State address, Mr. Malloy held at news conference at Manchester Community College and said “five times” that the initial package would be “a down payment” on enhancing the schools.

“I’m not a politician,” the system president said. “But we are rolling the dice that this governor gets re-elected. There’s a lot riding on it.”

Regarding the future components, Dr. Gray said a consultant would start an information technology audit by early May and the Board of Regents would seek a bond appropriation during the next fiscal year.

He said early estimates indicate that the update will require $280 million to $300 million.

Additionally, Dr. Gray said the governor is committed to long-term building repairs. He said initial estimates indicate that it would cost $500 million to $700 million to upgrade the infrastructure over the next 20 years.

The system president said 96 percent of the students in the Board of Regents system are from Connecticut and 80 percent of its graduates stay in the state. He said 35 percent of the high school graduates in Connecticut go to Board of Regents schools.

This is in contrast to the University of Connecticut at Storrs, which for more than a decade has received more out-of-state admissions applications than from students living in Connecticut.

To generate additional enrollment, Dr. Gray said that every community college should have a pre-college program for high school juniors and seniors.

Additionally, he said the four-year state universities, such as Western, should be attracting more state community college graduates.

“If you’re graduating from Naugatuck Valley Community College, then we want you to think 10 times before you would think about going anywhere but Western,” Dr. Gray said.

He said Regents scholarships will be offered for some students who are going from a two-year to a four-year college in the system.

Dr. Gray said data indicates that many state community college graduates opt to attend four-year colleges outside Connecticut, private schools in the state and the University of Connecticut at Storrs.

On another topic, Dr. Gray said between now and December the faculties at each campus will “be very engaged” in discussing what subject areas should be featured.

Dr. Gray said some faculty members have been critical of featuring particular programs, but he indicated that it happens at colleges across the country.

He said among the Big 10 schools, for example, Penn State is the place to go to study agriculture, Purdue for engineering and the University of Michigan for business. However, he said each of those campuses have comprehensive programs in which you can get a quality education even in the areas that are not featured.

“That’s a loaded question,” Dr. Gray said in response to a query on possible changes in staffing levels as a result of Transform 2020.

The American Association of University Professors, the bargaining unit for the teachers, praised the objectives of Transform 2020 but expressed concern that there was no indication of additional funding for instructors to teach the additional students that are projected to attend the schools.

Dr. Gray said the full-time to part-time teaching ratios are quite good at the four-year state universities.

However, he said there may have to be some alterations made at the community colleges, where about 65 percent of their classes taught by part-time teachers.

Despite a tepid economic recovery, Dr. Gray said that system has added 100 full-time faculty members over the last year. He said he hopes that changes are made through the coming years based on the particular enrollment at each of the 17 schools.

The system president has said several times over the recent months that Charter Oak State College would undergo the largest transformation, noting that it probably will be the place for students to take online classes at their respective campuses so there would not be unnecessary duplication.

Dr. Gray said the projected increase in online learning would make college accessible to more students and also enhance their learning.

 “If it were up to me, every student would have to take at least two online classes to graduate,” he said. “It gets students engaged in a different way.”

Dr. Gray cautioned though that Charter Oak’s program would have to be structured differently than the Massive Open Online College programs that have been offered at some major universities in recent years where 10,000 or more people are taking the same course and the average completion rate has been 9 percent.

Slate.com has reported that Southern New Hampshire University has an online division with 34,000 students in which master teachers develop much of the content and adjunct instructors correct the student projects and act as coaches.

“The technology that we’re talking about will change 10 times in the next 30 years,” Dr. Gray said.

At some point students will be able to do their online classes on their wrist watch.

He said Transform 2020 would include high technology classrooms in which through television connections, on-ground classes could be taught at multiple campuses.

“Within three minutes you feel as though you’re sitting there,” he said regarding the remote classrooms which should be available within a year.

In response to a student question regarding the limited use of technology by many faculty, Dr. Gray said that he believes after a small amount of faculty use the high technology classrooms there will be a “snowball” effect that will prompt other teachers to want to utilize them.

In reply to a faculty question, Dr. Gray said he supported the flipped classroom structure in which students watch videos or listen to audio of lectures by the instructor and then do work in class.

He said the digital information revolution of the last 20 years “is a tremendous challenge for faculty,” since, for example, his 12-year-old granddaughter can get an answer from Google on her Smartphone in two seconds.

One student in the class said that many students at Western are not interested in the campus experience since 80 percent of them are commuter students and they would be motivated to take classes during the first two years at the less-expensive community college or do the bulk of the work online.

Dr. Gray said that is a concern, but noted that, for example, at Western you can take classes in the theater arts with professors that direct Broadway plays on the weekends.