In education news, the number of UW two-year campuses going to online classes instead of
in-person instruction has risen to three. At West Bend, Fondelac, and Marinette, UW-Richland
has closed altogether. The Marinette campus is part of UW-Green Bay and its Chancellor,
Michael Alexander, says the writing was on the wall what with declining enrollment and
competition for students from the nearby Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.
There has to be access points to education. UW-Green Bay has to have a presence in Northern
Wisconsin, and we're investing in the high schools there to be clear. So with our Rising
Phoenix program and other things that we do for students, particularly who are interested
in college to get them a head start on that college experience, to be able to offer classes
that the high schools might not otherwise be able to offer with a smaller population
in the high school, right? These are things that we absolutely are trying to do to help
that region because it does matter, right? We can't look at the problem and just throw
our hands up. We have to find a way to actually make it better, and that's what we're trying
to do here. And again, I go back to the NWTC issue, right? I think we think a little differently
about this, I think, sometimes, but I want to be clear. Most of those classes, if not
all those classes, those 14 classes, there's a class that's pretty much being identically
taught by NWTC. Why are we duplicating our educational resources in an area that is
harder to serve because of how spread it out it is with the number of people that are there
in the population? We've got to think differently about how we access, they give access to those
people who want it. So what does the closure of two-year campuses to in-person classes
across Wisconsin mean for access and degree attainment for students? We check in with
the National Nonpartisan Nonprofit Group, MDRC, and its research associate in the area of rural
higher education, Alyssa Ratlich. And thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for having me. So you have written that rural colleges matter. How so? Rural
colleges are often the only access point to higher education post-secondary training and
workforce training for people who live in rural areas. Many people living in rural areas are
simply unable to move away, to go to college, and they do not always have online access to be able
to take up online offerings. So the ability to go to a college, and again, these might be distant,
we might be traveling 25, 50, even 100 miles to college, but it still means folks can stay where
they are from, where their families are located. When you're closing campuses, it can be really
challenging for those folks to continue to engage or to achieve the post-secondary credential
that they're interested in. Because in the end, what happens when there are what you call education
deserts? Education deserts have a chilling effect on students' likelihood of going to college,
but also importantly their likelihood of completing college. Nationally, most students who are
attending college are doing so within about 25 miles of their home. It's not really these days
the traditional sense of being 18 and going off to college and living on campus. These days,
most college students are commuting in. A lot of them, particularly in the two-year space,
are attending part-time. And today's college student is much older than the traditional
conception. Those folks are not going to pick up and leave. They often have families and jobs
and responsibilities, nor do they want to leave. Often time we hear that our rural folks want to
stay where they are, contribute to the local community, and having workforce training or a
college degree can help them do that in a meaningful way if they're able to access it.
So the UW Green Bay two-year branch in Marinette is going mostly online. Doesn't that still afford
access to rural students? There are many rural students
for whom online access is going to be enough, right? And when we think about our students who are
coming out of high school, have good access, have good knowledge of the internet,
yes, that can be a good option for them. However, there are going to be a lot of folks that are
not going to be able to take that up. Often times that's older folks or people who are living in
very remote and rural fringe locations where they simply don't have reliable broadband
or in some places don't have internet access at all. There are still parts of the country
without reliable internet access, and many of the online course offerings are going to require
a high-speed connection or the ability to download documents that just is out of reach for people
who are living really off the grid. So what about the fact that for the campuses that are
realigning or even closing, the problem is really low enrollment, which makes maintaining
the whole kind of campus infrastructure untenable. Doesn't it make sense to basically
downsize for the university system? It may make sense. If there's not a willingness to invest
in supporting those campuses at the state level, yes, it can be an untenable situation when you look
at the bottom line and the budgets. That is ultimately a philosophical question we have to
grapple with, right? Are we willing to fund places that we are going to be seeing budgets
really struggling to make ends meet given the reduction in students at the cost of potentially
some of those students are going to struggle with or be unable to complete a college degree
if that location is closed? So a recent paper from the Federal Reserve discussed how employment
and manufacturing and the agriculture sectors has decreased in Wisconsin over the past 10 years.
Where does that leave people who haven't up-skilled for a changing economy, especially
in rural parts of our state? Yeah, it is an enormous challenge. It's a great question.
We see this in a lot of places across the country where natural resources, economies or
agricultural economies are changing. And we also know that it is harder than ever for
agricultural workers and family farms to make ends meet. At the same time, there is an additional
technological component to many of those jobs that could be greatly benefited from some additional
workforce training or technological training. So leaving folks in those areas without access to
that training can make it really difficult for them to compete in a changing economy.
This is especially true for those folks in those communities where people want to stay where they
are. There is always the option, of course, to move to a big city, but that just continues
to hollow our rural towns and counties out. So if we want to keep the sustainable economy in these
places, we need to figure out how we can support folks to be able to afford and complete up-skilling,
whether that's a traditional college degree or a trade certificate or workforce training.
Right. We leave it there. Alyssa Ratlidge, thanks very much.
Thank you. For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin,
visit our website at pbswisconsin.org and then click on the news tab. That's our program for
tonight. I'm Frederica Fryberg. Have a good weekend.
Happy to join anytime. Great.