Mississippi institutions of higher learning remain highly accessible and affordable to all citizens but suffer from low attainment rates or failure to graduate, the state’s commissioner of Institution’s of Higher Learning said Monday.
Dr. Glenn Boyce spoke to the Greenwood Rotary Club.
Boyce was president of Holmes Community College in Goodman for more than nine years. Under his tenure, the school increased its graduation rate, expanded locations and opened numerous new programs throughout its district, earning recognition as one of the nation’s highest-achieving community colleges by the independent Aspen Institute.
Boyce said Leflore County and the Delta should feel good about Mississippi Valley State University and Delta State University, both of which experienced “some of the largest growth in the system” this year. He credited, in part, outstanding presidents at both institutions with the positive turn.
Boyce, who oversees eight universities, said he is often asked whether the state has too many of them.
“These two schools alone, Delta State and Valley, have $146 million operating budgets,” Boyce said. “Watch that much money leave a community, and that’s devastating.”
Universities provide economic value and other measurable value to a community through the arts, athletics, research and other activities that people often don’t appreciate, he said. More importantly, he said, it’s essential for Mississippi and its students to recognize the importance of a higher education to raise the quality of living in the state.
Boyce cited Bureau of Labor statistics that show increased earnings for those with college and advanced degrees and increased unemployment for those without degrees.
He cited a recent Georgetown University study showing that from 2009 through 2015, 11.6 million jobs were created and all but 100,000 of them went to people with some college courses on their resume.
“The majority of those jobs, 8.4 million, went to bachelor’s degree holders,” Boyce said. “Employers increasingly want more qualifications.”
As more and more jobs become automated, he said, it will become even more important for the human work force to be better educated and capable of creative, innovative thinking as well as strong technical skills.
To that end, Mississippi is on a good track in one way. It has increased Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates by 31 percent over the last five years.
But the competition among colleges to attract students is fierce, Boyce said, and Mississippi’s greatest task is to keep students in school and to graduate them efficiently and promptly.
“In terms of attainment, as a state we rank as one of the lowest,” Boyce said. Only 13 percent of Mississippians hold bachelor’s degrees and 7 percent have graduate degrees, despite a much higher percentage who start out going to college but do not finish.
“Getting in is not an issue,” he said. “The key is staying and completing, and we’ve got to do a better job.”
Schools must prepare students better for college, given that only 11 percent of potential college freshmen in the state earn an ACT score that says they are college ready, he said.
“At the end of the day, the reason students drop out is about money,” Boyce said.
He thinks the thought process of current college students — borrow as much money as you can get — is faulty and leads to unbearable amounts of debt. Between 2003 and 2014, student debt climbed from $241 billion nationally to $1.3 trillion.
“It’s not because of rising tuitions,” Boyce said. “It’s because students take too long to graduate.”
He cited the tendency among today’s college students to “take the victory lap” and increase their time in college by a year or so, racking up more debt.
A solution he proposes is more dual credit courses offered by high schools that would lessen the amount of time it takes a college student to graduate. Community colleges, like Holmes, he said, want to be in all high schools, offering courses to students for college credit.
“Delta high schools need to be enrolled in that,” Boyce said. “I say this humbly: All three of my daughters used this system, and all three graduated in three years.”
Boyce addressed the problem of college grads leaving the state. He said medical professionals of all types are most likely to stay in Mississippi, and engineers are most likely to go elsewhere because they are looking for jobs in technical fields.
“I’m committed to finding out how we can get tech fields interested in Mississippi,” Boyce said.
In particular, biomedical engineering could be an attractive industry for the state, but the state’s schools currently offer emphasis in biomedical engineering but no degree programs.
“If we create biomedical engineering graduates, will biomed companies come here? We need to explore those questions,” he said.
Boyce said that Mississippi is one of only 18 states nationally “that spends more on prisoners than on students.” On the flip side, Mississippi offers a strong, affordable and accessible IHL system with a $4.6 billion annual budget and 25,000 employees.
What Valley and Delta State have to offer those potential students looking for a place to land, Boyce said, is the ability to provide personal customer service and make a student feel at home.
“I got that feeling being president at Holmes,” he said. “They take care of you, and students want to be taken care of.”
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
