Oregon higher ed has reason to get its Irish up



Oregon higher ed has reason to get its Irish up

by David Sarasohn, The Oregonian

Tuesday September 16, 2008, 1:25 PM

Nike World Headquarters, built on the power of statistics and the idea that effort equals success, may have been the ideal place to set up the charts. At the Tiger Woods Center Monday, a large poster loomed over the roomful of higher education executives:

In 1991, Ireland spent $8,360 in U.S. dollars per student in public higher education, while Oregon spent $7,086. By 2006, in inflation-adjusted dollars, Ireland was spending nearly twice as much per student, $15,457, while Oregon was spending more than a third less, $4,615.

That's part of why people call the Irish economy the Celtic Tiger. And why hardly anybody calls Oregon's economy the Soggy Tiger.

The occasion was the fourth meeting of IA HERO, the Irish American Higher Education Research Organization. After gatherings in Dublin, Washington and Galway, this year it's made it to Portland, allowing for a comparison of two places about the same size (Ireland, pop. 4.2 million; Oregon, pop. 3.7 million).

Several years ago, Ireland ended college tuition fees. Over the past decades, the country has had a massive increase in its college attendance and graduation rate. Other numbers on display this week showed that 41.8 percent of Irish over 25 have a bachelor's degree, while Oregon's number is 27.5 percent - and as Jim Francesconi of the state Board of Higher Education pointed out, it's only that high because of educated emigres from other states moving in here.

And our numbers are going in the wrong direction.

"At most OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, mostly Europe plus North America, Australia and New Zealand) countries, levels of education are rising, in some cases rapidly," Oregon's higher education George Pernsteiner said Monday. "Oregon is one of two states in which the education of younger people is lower than their parents, in some cases lower than their grandparents, reversing a thousand-year trend."

It always makes you nervous when Oregon educational trends make you think of Stonehenge.

There are a range of buts involved: Ireland has been emphasizing access over research, and Oregon is still a better place to get an advanced degree. Oregon's college enrollment has also been rising, especially very recently, and through tuition, philanthropy and federal aid, Oregon's universities are a lot better than just their state support would suggest.

Still, there are reasons why Irish eyes -- and lots of other European eyes -- are smiling.

"There is a very high consensus in Ireland," said Tom Boland, CEO of Ireland's Higher Education Authority, "right across social and economic divisions, about the importance of education, especially higher education."

If this could be exported, it could be way more popular than Guinness.

And it does indeed turn out that if you make college education available, people will show up for it. Offer it and they will come.

For Ireland, that has meant a college enrollment virtually doubling since 1990, and a considerable increase from populations not previously well represented in higher education.

As Boland said of the sharp increase, "I'm not sure Ireland did it intentionally;" the system just responded to the turnout. Or, as Philip Nolan, vice president for academic affairs at Trinity College Dublin, explained, working off the culture of the corporate host, "It wasn't that we just did it; it just happened."

And elected leadership can put up more than checks. "Government can never provide enough money for higher education," said Ned Costello of Ireland's Higher Education Authority, "but it can provide certainty."

Which would be the single element most consistently missing from Oregon higher education planning. For 20 years, the state system has been on a Salem-centered roller coaster, occasionally inching up only to hurtle down, making it difficult for institutions to plan and for students to believe.

But it turns out, from Irish evidence, that making higher education consistently available will cause students to show up, and that the next people to show up will be companies looking to hire them. And when the supporters of higher education are told, as they always are in Salem, that it's not that good an investment, there's now an obvious response:

Put a Cork in it.

--David Sarasohn; davidsarasohn@news..

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