I am of course delighted to receive a letter from President Barak Obama on the 100th Anniversary of The College of Westchester. To quote from the August 5 letter that I received on behalf of CW today; (begin quote)
The White House
Washington
I am pleased to join in celebrating your school's 100th anniversary.
America's schools serve as gateways to opportunity and engines for our nation's progress. Inspiring students to be the best version of themselves and equipping them with the tools to thrive, our halls of learning can instill in our next generation the fundamental belief that with hard work nothing is beyond reach.
Since your school's founding, faculty and staff have prepared students to meet the challenges of their time. And by cultivating passion for learning, schools like yours help ensure the doors of opportunity continue to open wide for all who are willing to dream big.
I hope your community takes pride in the ways your school has touched lives. As you celebrate in this special milestone, I wish you all the best for the years ahead.
Barak Obama
(end quote)
I am stunned and pleased that we have received this, as a stellar proprietary college. There is an an effort by The US Department of Education to get rid of bad actors in our sector. I am glad that we have been recognized for the good work which we have, in fact, been doing, for 100 years, since 1915. Thank you, Mr. President, for recognizing us today.
Val Chmerkovskiy and Rumer Willis won the 2015 Dancing With The Stars contest here in the US. Dancing has always intrigued and entertained people. Many years ago, one of the first duos to capture the hearts of people all over the world were Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. One of Ginger Rogers' most famous quotes was; "I do everything Fred does, but backwards on high heels". That became an iconic statement for women everywhere, and now, for anytime an individual or group meets the same or better standards as another, but with an inherent or imposed deficit.
Interestingly, to me, I find that being involved with a proprietary college is like dancing backwards on high heels. The regulations that we are complying with are imposed only on this one sector of colleges, the proprietary, or "for-profit" colleges. There are many fine for-profit colleges. CW is one of those colleges. We are entering our second hundred years of existence, this year, 2015.
As The College of Westchester celebrates our centennial serving many wonderful students and looking back at thousands of successful graduates, we find that the standards imposed upon us are different than the ones on all other colleges, such as private not-for-profit colleges, state and community colleges.
Here is a taste of one of the measures imposed on proprietary colleges. It is worth the 4.40 minutes to educate yourself:
I truly believe that there are fine colleges throughout the four sectors of higher education. While agree with the US Department of Education's (ED's) goals for the GE rule from the outset, I believe that the regulation as is does not achieve the goals it has set to accomplish.
What would work? How about the continued monitoring of student loan default rates across all 4 sectors of higher education? Maybe giving proprietary college graduates more than 18-30 months to become successful and monetarily rewarded in their work would be more realistic. I believe that bad schools should go away. Good schools should be allowed to continue to exist, regardless of their tax designation.
What do you think? Right now, for us at CW, it is backwards on high heels.
I have been with The College of Westchester since 1982. I have been the President of CW since November 2014, and have always loved working at the college and helping the thousands of students who start classes with us and graduate and go on to bright futures.
Recently, I have been disturbed with discussions about for-profit education and the need to serve shareholders. Let me tell you a little bit about CW, and how we differ from publicly traded for-profit educational institutions.
We are small, privately held, and do not answer to shareholders. We answer to our board of trustees. We are regionally accredited by Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the same commission that oversees higher educational excellence for all of our sister schools in the states of Washington, DC, Delaware, Florida, US Virgin Islands, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania. We also have a double layer of oversight through the New York State Education Department and the New York State Board of Regents, a gold standard for educational excellence. All programs and our ability to continue to operate depend on New York approving our continued programs and educational excellence. It is a rigorous process but we accept it as only excellent colleges survive in New York. We are different than trade and technical schools in New York. They exist through a different licensing process.
We offer associate and bachelors degrees. We are not huge. Typically, we have about 1000 students and graduate about 400, a 43% graduation rate based on our associate degree rate. Most of our students are students of need, and we graduate students at about four times that of the local community college. Read a bit about us on the National Center for Education Statistic website.
I hear so many varied ideas of what a "for-profit" college does, and who it serves, and what it "spends its money on". What makes us different from not-for-profit and public institutions is that we do not have an endowment. We do not draw down on an endowment to meet our budget. We do not have any direct federal or state funding. Our college is sustained solely by tuition.
Our students who are eligible for state and federal grants can choose to attend our college, if they meet standards of progress through maintaining their grades. We also give most of our students our own grants through the college. Many of our students are students of need. When I say that students have need, there are students with profound financial need, and many others who need a leg up financially. We financially support almost every single student through scholarships, through our small CW Charitable Foundation, and in many other non-financial ways. This is how we "spend our money".
At CW, you will find that 100% of our students declare a major before entering college. If we do not have the program of study that a student wants, they choose another college. There are no undeclared students at CW. CW does not promise employment in field to any student, but we place the vast majority of students in jobs in their field of study within 0-12 months of graduation. Many students get snatched up while they are still in college, during their internships. Many CW grads continue their studies and many stay within the New York area.
Every single major is constructed with the assistance not only of expert faculty, and with direct input from experts within the industries, companies and organizations who will then employ our graduates.
CW Programs have changed over the years as the job market changes. We have a traditional campus that most of our students attend, as well as a small, strong online division.
CW has a 100 year history of excellence. We are 100 years old this year, 2015.
As the president of this small but excellent institution, I believe I speak for our faculty and staff as I say we embrace the next 100 years of serving students. It is that simple. Let one of our graduates, who I personally met in his high school classroom when he was a high school sophomore, tell you a bit more.
