104th Annual Meeting - Athens Area Chamber of Commerce
Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr.
Classic Center, Athens, Georgia
April 5, 2007
Thank you for the invitation to participate in this annual meeting. I am pleased to be here and to join you in honoring your ATHENA Award candidates as well as the Chamber’s Ambassador of the Year. I particularly applaud this Chamber’s efforts to promote women in leadership in this community through the ATHENA awards.
Let me also acknowledge the presence of elected officials from Athens and Clarke County. On behalf of the Board of Regents -- and President Adams -- we appreciate your partnership and thank you for your ongoing support. And we also appreciate the partnership and support of the Governor and the General Assembly in our efforts to transform lives here in this community and throughout the state.
For example, Rep. Bob Smith has assumed a key leadership position on education issues. He is just one great example of the type of informed, passionate, and dedicated public servant we need in state government.
These are very hard jobs. My father was a state representative in Pennsylvania and I know that as an elected official, one takes much criticism and receives little praise or thanks.
That adage is especially true when it comes to money. While the process is by no means complete, the Governor has made a very strong recommendations for our upcoming fiscal year 2008 budget. These recommendations included full funding of our formula ($80 million increase) -- critical to serve our students -- a strong salary increase (3 percent increase) and strong capital construction package ($228 million). Looking closer to home -- the Governor recommended funding for UGA’s needed Pharmacy building ($37.2 million), a strong level of funding for the Georgia Research Alliance in which UGA is critically involved ($10 million), and money for medical expansion in Athens ($3.8 million).
As the budget works its way through the legislative process, the General Assembly has shown support for the Governor’s recommendations for the System. So, in light of this great support for public higher education in this state, let me ask a question. How many of you have taken the time to thank the Governor, Rep. Smith or other members of the General Assembly for their support for the single greatest driver of this state’s economic engine -- public higher education? I encourage you to do so -- in person, in an email or letter or phone call. These hard-working individuals will appreciate it.
I mentioned the University System’s role in driving Georgia’s economic growth. Let me take the remaining time allotted tonight to highlight what this means in application. There are two levels of activity on which I will focus: general academic preparation and more direct workforce and economic development. This group understands how important these two elements are. You understand how closely linked they are and, indeed, how they must be in order to create jobs and growth.
Tonight I am not going to spend time going over Georgia’s educational track record and its challenges. Those are known by virtually all in this room. We all understand that Georgia has work to do in order to post gains in the academic preparation of our children -- from Pre-K through college.
But let me talk more about what we are doing as a state to change things. Last year, Governor Perdue called together all of the agency heads involved in education. Under the leadership of State School Superintendent Kathy Cox, this group has been working to develop a coordinated, unified strategy and action plan. As an aside, of course, our first goal was to create yet another educational acronym: AEAH, the Alliance of Educational Agency Heads.
Our primary goal -- to increase Georgia’s high school graduation rate and correspondingly decrease the dropout rate. What that does for us in the University System is to increase the size of our educational pipeline. Georgia actually does a good job of sending its high school graduates on to college. In 2004, a significant 64 percent of public and private high school graduates in Georgia went directly to college.The average for the nation that year was 55.7 percent. [from National Center for Higher Education Management Systems data]
Our problem is not with the percentage of high school graduates seeking higher education. Our problem is that according to Georgia Department of Education figures, only 70.8 percent are graduating. So, if we can increase the high school graduation rate, we will see larger numbers of graduates moving to postsecondary education. And that is the critical pipeline Georgia must have in order to remain competitive globally.
You do not have to look far to find examples of lost business opportunity because an educated workforce was just not available. This certainly gives focus to our work at the AEAH.
And I want to call another point to your attention about this new effort. We are setting very clear goals and objectives and metrics to measure progress and success. It’s important that this be a transparent process. It is also important to demonstrate a clear return on the investment.
On our end of the pipeline -- at the University System -- once the students comes to us, our goal is to keep them engaged in learning and on track to earn a degree. Thus, we at the System are focusing on improving our retention rates from the critical freshmen to sophomore year. For the University System, this is currently at just above 78 percent; for UGA, the retention rate is 95 percent.
And, we are focusing on improving both graduation rates and shortening the time to degree. The current graduation rate for the System is 56 percent -- for UGA it is 79.5 percent. The national average today is six years to earn a bachelor’s degree. We want more of our students getting out in four. Candidly, we need to make more room for those waiting to come in the door.
To encourage this, last year we implemented our guaranteed tuition, which fixes tuition for entering freshman for four years. This sends a price signal to do everything possible to graduate in four years and avoid a fifth year tuition increase.
But we also want our graduates moving into the world truly prepared to contribute. That’s why our new strategic plan, for example, will take a hard look at our overall curriculum. Our goal is to make sure that our curriculum is relevant to today’s world and today’s workplace.
Last week the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on free trade and globalization. In the article, I was struck by a comment made by Alan Blinder, a former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and now a Princeton economist. Looking at the continued migration of jobs from the U.S. to overseas locations, Blinder notes that it is not enough for U.S. colleges to simply educate Americans.
He has issued a call to “retool America’s education system so it prepares young people for jobs likely to remain in the U.S.” Blinder comes close to calling it negligent to simply tell students they have to go to college to compete in the global economy. And, he warns, the vaunted college diploma could lose it’s “silver bullet” status unless we work now to ensure we have identified the challenges ahead for the U.S. economy.
So, when we today talk about educational reform and working together, it does have real urgency and the potential of profound impact. We are in a new world. We are no longer preparing just an educated elite. Our challenge in higher education is to educate a much higher percentage of our population to a much higher level than in the past. This is the only way we will remain globally competitive.
Let me look quickly at some of the University System’s more direct and immediate efforts to strengthen Georgia’s economy. As in our work on academic preparation -- this is also a team effort.
Georgia was one of five states selected to participate in the National Governors Association Policy Academy for Workforce Development Strategies. Georgia’s winning proposal was to develop a regional workforce development sector strategy for advanced manufacturing in the automotive industry in west Georgia, centered on the new KIA plant. The University System of Georgia is a key player in this collaborative effort. And University System campuses are deeply involved, as well.
Because Georgia was able to quickly put this automotive advanced manufacturing workforce development strategy together, the National Governors Association agreed to let Georgia begin another workforce initiative. This time, it is for the Life Sciences industry sector in the Athens/Gwinnett area. As you may be aware, Governor Perdue has identified the Life Sciences as a key strategic industry focus for the state.
The Life Sciences initiative, which began this past January, pulls together the various life sciences workforce development efforts. It integrates them to create a sustainable, pro-active workforce development effort. The project planning group, which consists of regional community leaders, decided to focus Georgia’s efforts on three major areas: BioPharm, BioAg, and research and testing. Of course, the University of Georgia is an integral part of this effort. A number of UGA life science researchers and the staff of the Fanning Institute, who are experts in leadership and community building are very much a part of the effort.
And, you also may be aware from some occasional news coverage of the Medical College of Georgia’s and UGA’s collaborative efforts to expand physician education in the region. Athens is an ideal location for this collaborative and expansion, because we can efficiently and effectively build upon UGA’s existing bench strength in the life sciences.
We have many system-level economic development efforts in place, as well. ICAPP, which stands for Georgia’s Intellectual Capital Partnership Program, has educated more than 3,000 employees for knowledge jobs that have a high demand and low supply of educated workers in Georgia. These ICAPP graduates have returned to the state treasury more than $2.7 million in payroll tax revenues since 2001.
The University System also is involved in developing two proposals for $5 million WIRED Initiative grants. WIRED stands for Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development, and is a U.S. Department of Labor program. One of Georgia’s two proposals also will be in the life sciences.
I could go on, but hopefully this gives you some sense of the scope of the challenges we face, and the many levels on which we must prepare to meet these challenges. From academic preparation, to direct workforce development -- the University System is working alongside its many partners to ensure Georgia’s economy remains competitive and growing.
Here in Athens and Clarke County, the University of Georgia is engaged with the community, its elected leadership and the business community. And I want to point out that UGA is engaged and working closely with Athens Technical College on many workforce issues as well.
I’m here to say that in the University System, we are working very hard to create a culture that moves us away from the favorite line of bureaucrats everywhere: “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help!” My goal as chancellor is to recast that to say, “We’re part of the community, and we want to work with you to deliver measurable results for the community.”
We need each of you to hold us accountable for our successes -- and, inevitably, our misses. But long term, you must understand, we are committed -- as is this chamber -- to transforming lives and creating economic opportunity through that wonderfully transformative tool of higher education. Thank you.