GSE professors call on state funds for higher education policy changes

At a Wharton Public Policy Initiative event last night, two Graduate School of Education speakers urged states to take stronger leadership roles in structuring public college education to prepare graduates for the workplace. The two GSE speakers, Laura Perna, chair of Higher Education Division and Joni Finney, professor of Practice, recently coauthored the book “The Attainment Agenda: State Policy Leadership in Higher Education .”

The event, hosted by Andrew Coopersmith, managing director of the PPI, also brought in guest panelists from the Law School and the School of Design. He hoped to raise student awareness about the higher education issues that are prominent at colleges all across the country. ”[Penn] students should really be aware of what’s going on in higher education in general and not just at their own school,” Finney, who is also the director of the Institute for Research in Higher Education, said.

The panelists focused on a conceptual model from the book which describes the relationship between state policy leadership and equal opportunity learning. Perna, also executive director of the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy, encouraged strategic use of state fiscal resources, which are greater than those of the national government available for higher education improvement.

The goal of this conceptual model is to minimize the gap between the education quality provided to students at four-year colleges versus that provided to students at two-year community colleges. Interim Dean and Presidential Term Professor at Penn Law Wendell Pritchett discussed how, if each state regulated what is taught at community colleges so that students could acquire practical skills, these students could be more competitive on the job market. With this system in place, he predicted that resumes would no longer be eliminated from consideration simply because a candidate has an associate degree instead of a bachelor’s or master’s degree .

This is not the first higher education event at which Finney and Perna have spoken in recent months, and it will not be the last. Since publishing their book, Finney has traveled all across the western states, speaking with state legislators and education organizations, trying to persuade them to consider her conceptual model. In November she will move to the Midwest, and soon after, the South.

“A plan is important, but you have to have it be shared,” Perna said.

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