Interview: Joseph Marbach

it liberates the student from the requirement that they be on campus, something which could be helpful for a host of reasons. Moving forward, educators believe, higher education will be adopting a hybrid approach to learning, in which both routes will be opened to students. This has the potential to be one of the success stories of the pandemic, as, over the last year, the quality of remote pedagogy has improved by leaps and bounds.

New Jersey also has a state leadership that has a track record of working to reduce the financial burden higher education can put on its students and their families. The state has passed several measures aimed at increasing accessibility. In the 2018 state budget and coming into effect this year, as part of a plan to make community college free for all, the state allocated $50 million for tuition support for low-income students. Gov. Phil Murphy took it a step further in the 2020 budget, adding another $50 million to New Jersey’s outcomes-based funding scheme, which would mean that four-year public institutions could offer two years of tuition for free. New Jersey is poised to continue on this path of big spending: at $44 billion, its 2022 budget is its biggest yet. Up to $75 million of the money is being earmarked for school construction and building maintenance, especially in underserved urban districts.

The federal government is also playing its part in Joseph Marbach

President Georgian Court University

How has Georgian Court University continued to grow despite last year’s challenges?

What we’ve found is that we need to focus on some new markets and find nontraditional students. That comes back to our mission of serving the underserved. We saw growth even during the pandemic in two areas. One is with second-degree completers. In January, we launched an Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) program. We already have over a hundred applications and they’re being reviewed now. We’ve had significant demand in that area and we think that’s going to increase as health workers are held in such high esteem.

The other program that we’re launching in September is for students with intellectual disabilities. They are students who are not ready for a full college curriculum but they’re young adults and they’re ready for the college experience. We received a $2.5 million federal grant to run this program. We’re working with partners like the College of New Jersey, which has run a very successful program. We’re working alongside them to raise awareness of these young people who get through high school and there’s nothing for them to look forward to. .

What would you say to critics who say that a college degree may not be as necessary anymore?

In general, we just find that people with a college degree are far more successful in just about any measure you can come up with, whether it’s lifetime income or when the economy is bad.

When it comes to other social indicators like who’s married, who’s happily married, generally, people with college degrees score higher in those areas. In some ways, we started to make education purely a commodity: What kind of job are you going to get? What’s the return on investment? At Georgian Court, we get high marks for return on investment and regularly moving people from a lower socio-economic status and into the middle class. But a college education should be more than that and that’s part of what we do at Georgian. We’re helping form individuals.

Rowan University has been named the fastest-growing public institution in the country for two years in a row

helping support New Jersey’s schools: as part of the American Rescue Plan, the Biden administration’s signature coronavirus relief stimulus package, public schools across the state are due to receive $2.7 billion. As this money gets divided up, it will make a world of difference to underserved urban communities such as Camden. With a lot of strings attached, both from the federal and the state level, the money will be accessible until 2024 and has school districts across the state figuring out how to navigate its strictures. One area in which a portion of the funds must go, according to the state’s plan for the money, is the issue of learning loss that resulted from time spent away from school during the pandemic.

Such emphasis on education from the highest levels of state and federal government appears to be paying off: New Jersey has a higher number of high school students than the rest of the country (90% to 88%). As well, New Jersey can boast a higher number of people educated at the bachelor’s degree level or above when compared to the rest of the country (40% to 32%), and it has a safe lead on regional neighbors New York and Pennsylvania in this metric.

Although data specific to the South Jersey region as a whole is hard to come by, a cross-section of individual schools provides an idea of what majors are popular, with business and health-related majors both having a strong showing: at Rutgers University – Camden, registered nursing, business administration, psychology and criminal justice are all popular; at Rowan University in Glassboro, business, management, marketing, psychology and engineering reign supreme; and at Camden County College, the top majors are the liberal arts and sciences, health professions and related programs and business management.

Rowan University, in fact, is a sterling model of what a university can do in this age to stay viable and relevant. For two consecutive years, it has been named the fourth-fastest growing public institution in the country, with an enrollment that has doubled since 2008. In that time, Rowan opened a new medical school, integrated a second and was a key player in a $426 million development project that helped revitalize the community. Added to these successes, the school has $1.2 billion in facilities completed, being constructed, or in the design and planning phase. With 30% of New Jersey’s students going to school out of state, Rowan President Ali Houshmand realized the opportunity was rife to retail students: the market was there, but the options were not enough. Houshmand realized that Rowan would have to grow and become more accessible, but not at the expense of quality. By reducing costs and establishing targeted public-private ( )