Ingram's October 2022

Multi-Million Makeover | UMKC has unveiled a $100 million upgrade to its Health Sciences Complex on Hospital Hill overlooking Downtown Kansas City.

Regional executives are responding to a new urgency within higher education. Campus Innovation: Universities at an Inflection Point

C ongressional bills. Think-tank white papers. Web sites. Books. Advocacy group position papers. You don’t have to look very far in this country to understand the breadth of calls for change on America’s college cam puses, especially those funded with public dollars. To which college administrators in the Kansas City region might wryly reply: “You don’t say?” Administrators at American univer sities—trying to maneuver institutions often perceived as too slow to embrace radical change that reflects the real world of the 21st century (21 percent of which is already in the history books)—are now ordering their crews to assume full speed ahead some radical transformat- ions. The incentives for change are many. They come from business demands for better-qualified workers, parents sweating the costs of a college education, legislatures constantly under pressure to find more higher-ed dollars, even students dis-satisfied with the college experience and its value proposition.

KC Street Car On theother side, he says, different groups in the U.S. traditionally have not been as in volved in higher ed, but are starting to do that now: Groups from rural areas, under-served minorities, first-generation-to-college stu dents. All of those will need a little extra help, since college is all new to them, to traverse it and have successful outcomes. “We need to do this in a hurry,” Agrawal says. “We don’t have time like we used to think we did.” Much is riding on the outcome of those next moves in Missouri and Kansas. Agrawal’s boss, MU system president Mun Choi, cited a recent report by Tripp Um bach of Kansas City, noting that the four-cam pus system has a $6.5 billion impact on the “The world is changing around us, get ting more specialized and highly educated,” declares UMKC Chancellor Mauli Agrawal. “We have real competition now as a nation.” The pressure, he says, is building on one side with issues like computer-chip produc tion, the focus of the recent debate in Wash ington over the CHIPS Act, which Agrawal says “will definitely require more post-high school education and for some jobs, a four year degree at minimum.”

state economy. “At a time of declining enroll ment at other universities, we’ve seen years of increases,” Choi said, noting some gathering rain clouds that could drive enrollment na tionwide down further starting in 2026. But at MU, he said, “these outcomes are results of intentional effort. Through ambitious investments in research, edu- cation and outreach—we continue con necting the work we do in labs to hands-on experiences that benefit stu-dents and improve our state.” At the University of Kansas in Law rence, Provost Barb Bichelmeyer shares Chancellor Doug Girod’s concerns about the need for change innovation—now. “We know things are changing,” she says. “We need innovation and we need an edu cated citizenry. That is something higher ed does, but we’re not telling that story very well. We have to talk differently, yes, but some of it means we have to do things differently. We have to clarify our value proposition.” A major change-driver, administra-tors say, is the conflict between the demand for a qualified work force and the time needed to produce a labor pool with those skills—which

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October 2022