THE FUTURE OF HI SCHOOLS LARGE AND SMALL
innovated to deal with the pandemic. How will they fare in the future? And do small schools have a valuable niche to fill? From the March 30, 2021, program “Mary Marcy and Lande Ajose: The Future of Higher Education.” Dr. MARY MARCY, Ph.D., President, Dominican University of California; Board Member, The Commonwealth Club; Author, The Small College Imperative: Models for Sustainable Futures In Conversation with Dr. LANDE AJOSE, Ph.D., Senior Policy Advisor for Higher Education to Governor Gavin Newsom LANDE AJOSE: I’m wondering if you could just share with our viewers what inspired you to write this book? MARY MARCY: We were trying to do this before the pandemic hit. The book was like one of those perfect bits of timing related to the pandemic; it actually was released on, I think March 9 or something last year. Perhaps there was a little bit of a noise in the system besides what was going on with The Small College Imperative. But what’s interesting, and I think what’s important in thinking about it now, is that the questions [about higher education] are continuing to be relevant and perhaps even more relevant as we come through the pandemic. Issues around financial sustainability, access to college, increasing diversity of students—those are crucial issues for every family, every community, all over the state and all over the nation. I really thought about the book as a way to understand, embrace and think about how higher education is changing and needs to change, to respond to some pretty significant shifts in the larger ecosystem, in the larger environment. [I’m] specifically talking about small colleges, because I think one of the great strengths of American higher education, and certainly a California higher education, is its diversity. In this case, I mean diversity of types of institutions. So you have a great community college system, a great state college system. We’ve got the UC system, lots of specialized institutions and some really strong independent institutions. The ecosystem matters. The idea is that there are great options for all students. The challenge is if part of that ecosystem is under great stress or falls apart, we lose the opportunity for higher education to do what it does best, which provides an avenue for personal and social transformation. I’m at an independent college, a small college. I know that arena well. A lot of institutions were under stress. I wanted to say what can make us successful, and how can we serve students and families and our missions more effectively. So that was really the genesis for the book. I would say, like many things as we come out of the pandemic, the questions that I had going in are probably more rather than less relevant today.
