The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents discussed Thursday the national and state higher education climate in relation to economic development—a topic that Board of Regents President Brent Smith said will be brought up in many upcoming board meetings.
The board streamed a video conference with Anthony Carnevale, research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, who spoke about the nation’s increasing skills gap.
According to Carnevale, while technology-based, post-secondary skills are becoming increasingly necessary to get a job, access to higher education is becoming less attainable.
Carnevale said he predicts this inconsistency will continue and may prevent economic improvement, saying access to the middle class is becoming more and more dependent on access to post-secondary education.
“In our capitalist system where inequality is inherent for a variety of reasons … education becomes in a sense the balance wheel between that system and our democratic impulses,” Carnevale said.
Regent David Walsh said he believes Wisconsin has come to realize the importance of education but is still unconvinced of the necessity of investing more in it.
Carnevale said there is no simple answer to this problem, but rather a solution must be reached to compromise between what would make people better off and current resource restraints.
UW System President Kevin Reilly also reported new data on productivity within Wisconsin schools.
According to the results, the largest number of degrees received by students at UW system institutions were in business and management, a fact which Reilly says Wisconsin business leaders are unaware of.
The board also passed a new framework for accountability reporting for Division I UW system athletics institutions, as discussed in their October meeting.
