President Hernandez: Creating the College of the Future

This op-ed is by Alex Hernandez, President of Champlain College, and was first seen in VTDigger on Monday, March 25.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “roughly half of college graduates end up in jobs where their degrees aren’t needed,” raising uncomfortable questions about the value of a college education.

The report is part of a drumbeat of headlines focused on declining student enrollments, budget deficits, and changing academic programs—reflecting dramatic shifts in the higher education landscape.

If you are an Ivy League university with a $50 billion endowment, it can be business as usual, but the majority of the nation’s 3,900 higher education institutions need to evolve.

At Champlain College, we are asking: What does the college of the future look like?

If we want students to succeed in a strong first job after graduation—and realize the long-term promise of a college education—we must design institutions that give students the experiences they need to launch their careers and live meaningful lives.

The college of the future will break down the classroom walls so students can learn in the workplace, the community, and around the globe.

Through deeper partnerships with employers, students can earn academic credit and a paycheck. We can turn higher education upside-down and give students career-focused experiences the moment they start college—experiences that build confidence, humility, and curiosity.

For example, Champlain College recently announced a partnership with NuHarbor Security, a leading cybersecurity firm, to open a NuHarbor office on our Lakeside Campus in Burlington’s South End Innovation District. Beginning their first year, students will learn from faculty and industry professionals in the same space, take on paid internships, and manage their own cybersecurity business.

This unconventional approach drives results: our cybersecurity graduates have a 97% employment rate and an average starting salary of $70,000 in a fast-growing industry.

However, meaningful work is about more than just a paycheck. We need to set students up for long-term fulfillment and success.

President Hernandez chats with alumni and current students interning and working at NuHarbor Security in Colchester, Vermont. NuHarbor will soon co-locate at our Lakeside campus, where our Leahy Center for Digital Forensics & Cybersecurity is located.

The college of the future will reach across disciplines and let students combine their interests so they can be future ready.

Breakthrough technologies like artificial intelligence, digital biology, and sustainable energy are reshaping the world. Students can specialize to advance these breakthroughs, but, for every specialist we educate, we need many more students who can connect the dots across fields and help us interpret and adapt to the changes these technologies bring.

At Champlain College, we imagine a team of students majoring in psychology, computer science, creative media, and criminal justice working with the state of Vermont to combat the fentanyl crisis. In the future, students from different majors will share more courses and experiences to better understand the forces shaping our world. This is how students learn to collaborate, build products and services, and tackle social challenges.

Imagine an entrepreneurship student interning for a sustainable food startup, combining their interests in biology and marketing to help the company launch its product. In the future, students will have more flexibility to customize their education to pursue emerging opportunities.