A Vision Remembered, A Vision Renewed

A Call for Educational Leadership in a New Century

For more than a century and a half, there have been Minnesotans who envisioned a future in which higher education would enrich our lives and fuel the growth of our state. It was a vision in which higher education—and the benefits it brought to all—would become increasingly accessible to its citizens: accessible to those who founded our state, to the immigrants that followed, to the sons of farmers and later to their daughters too. And as time passed, it would expand to meet the needs of veterans returning from a second World War to a nation racing toward modernization—and then, at the dawn of the age of information, to their sons and daughters as well. Said simply, at mileposts stretching over more than a century, Minnesota’s leaders have seen— and met—crucial challenges to educating a people for a changing future.

Today, we are rapidly approaching yet another historical marker, another historical challenge to higher education. As before, it means envisioning a future with strikingly new demands—and once again finding both the means and the collective will to broaden access to our colleges and universities to meet those demands. Once again, we must anticipate a wave of change — an enormous and rapid shift to science, technology and global competition in the marketplace. And again, we must find a way to empower, more than ever before, a new generation of Minnesotans to meet the approaching need.

As demographic trends bring us closer to a perilous disparity between a dwindling number of college graduates and a rapidly increasing demand for a college educated workforce, our mission is to ensure that demographics do not become destiny. Our mission is to work toward the development of solutions which, regardless of self-interest and in the spirit of leadership, will ensure that the educational needs of Minnesota will be met. We believe that working together, individual, community, and business partners can bring the challenges we face to the foreground of public debate—and awareness. We believe that through this exchange we can begin to confront the challenges and engage the public and its political leadership in the search for and implementation of effective solutions.

We believe that success will mean an environment in which the entire higher education enterprise, public and private, is better aligned with the state’s needs in meeting future economic and workforce demands. Ultimately, we envision creation of innovative state policies and programs that better prepare and inspire students to pursue higher education, and target funding to allow aspiring and capable students access to the colleges and universities that best suit their needs and their potential. In this spirit and to these ends we are asking that community leaders join in common cause to help enjoin an urgent public discourse — and to lead the pursuit of a new vision for higher education, a contemporary vision in a long tradition of innovation.

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