MILWAUKEE — One of the major challenges facing Wisconsin is students not attending a Wisconsin university after high school. Carroll University President and Incoming Chair of Higher Education Regional Alliance (HERA) Cindy Gnadinger told WTMJ that incoming college students in surrounding states choose to stay in their state because of increased grants, but in Wisconsin, it’s the opposite.
“[In] Wisconsin, our grants are not that large [compared to other state’s grants],” Gnadinger said. “Our students… we’re seeing them leave more because there’s not an incentive with this Wisconsin grant to stay.”
This was just one of the many topics discussed with multiple other company professionals on Monday for how to improve higher education in Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor and former founding chair of HERA Dr. Mark Mone said that partnerships with companies, colleges, and businesses can help with some of those Wisconsin higher education issues. He told WTMJ that companies should provide tuition assistance to students.
“Where there’s opportunity in STEM fields, healthcare, engineering, and so forth… you need to have an educated population,” he said. “If we have fewer students that are graduating in those areas, it’s going to be harder for companies to be retained [in Wisconsin.]”
Dr. Mone believes making higher education a central focus in a state helps create a healthy job flow and provides money for the economy while also giving people “family-sustaining jobs.” It helps everyone in the area. “The big thesis here… our economy is going to be only as strong as the education infrastructure to support it.”
He said UWM has partnerships with the 4 area technical colleges where technical college students can get all their course credits approved (60 credits) if they decide to go to UWM after graduating.
In addition to partnerships, Incoming HERA Chair Cindy Gnadinger said they’re also doing their best to lessen the gap between white American educational access and minorities’ education.
“We want to create a pipeline for students to come to our post-secondary institutions in HERA, but we also know we have to provide the resources,” she said.
Wisconsin ranks 14th in the nation in the growth of getting people associate’s degrees or higher attainment from 2010-2020 but ranks 27th in the nation in the growth of getting people bachelor’s degrees or higher attainment.
African Americans would make about $49 billion dollars more as a group if they had the same educational opportunities as their white counterparts, and Hispanics would make about $34 billion dollars more.
The decrease in higher education is due to many different factors, but one of the main ones is the lack of resources, and that is a main goal for HERA. “We’ve all come together to look at ways that we can increase the pipeline and therefore the number of students who graduate from our institutions [in Wisconsin] who are typically underrepresented… which are students of color…$40 to $50 million dollars are left on the table every year in financial aid for students in need in the nation, so it’s on companies, families, state officials, and more to help students who want higher education find the resources they need.”
