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Ticket to Ride
Boom times cause post-secondary schools to re-examine mission
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Business New Haven
8/7/2000
By: Michael Gomez
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Long gone are the days when knowledge was meal enough for the hungry mind, when the liberal arts were the course of study for sating intellectual tastebuds.
Perhaps soon after the Baby Boomers began swarming over college campuses in the 1960s, the purpose of structured learning clearly became economic betterment. And its goal was a shiny credential to pave the way to richer opportunities.
That goal hasn't changed much a generation later amid the longest sustained period of prosperity that the U.S. has ever experienced. High school graduates and other adults continue to look at schooling as a ticket to ride the economic boom.
Still, our cruise-control economy does affect the variety of educational and vocational options that are available to inquiring minds. Here's how.
College vs. Work
“Traditionally, a strong economy means smaller enrollment,” says Margaret Bauer, dean of Gateway Community Technical College. That makes sense. A muscular economy requires workers to stoke the engine, and well-paying, easy-to-find jobs often seduce young people into the workforce upon high school graduation. College is postponed or forgotten in the blush of a fat paycheck.
That truism doesn't apply today, Bauer explains. Gateway's enrollment has been up three to four percent for each of the past two semesters. Total enrollment at the state-supported Gateway is 4,151 students, with the vast majority of them part-time scholars who take to the classroom before or after their work shift.
Bauer pegs the enrollment boost to business's continuing love affair with technology. “Rapid changes in technology are creating the need for students to keep up so they can be competitive for jobs,” she says.
With technology putting the byte on ever more jobs, Gateway is responding with more courses in navigating technology and computer sciences - keyboarding and programming for mastery of office technology, and computer-aided design classes for budding engineers. The state has smoothed the way for students to further their education after Gateway by transferring their course credits to the state's universities.
Many of those students end up at Southern Connecticut State, which also is experiencing increasing enrollments.
Eyeing Professions, Business Studies
“This is a great time to be a director of admissions,” crows SCSU's Sharon Brennan. Demographics helps, with the pool of 18- to 22-year-olds mushrooming 27 percent over the next seven years. Yet Southern also is attracting transfer students, many of who are eager to live on campus.
Campus housing deposits are up by 250, Brennan says. “We haven't seen this in years.” She attributes students' interest in the university to “a renewed confidence in public institutions in Connecticut,” following lean times in the early 1990s.
Southern is in the midst of a $300 million building campaign, and the school is adding 75 new faculty members.
Rose Cretella, SCSU's coordinator of academic advisement, notes that incoming students still most often choose the school's traditionally popular teacher-preparation track or public health and nursing courses. But Cretella is finding that “pre-business” course work - accounting, economics, management, marketing - has grown steadily in recent years.
“Students are asking, 'How marketable am I?'” Cretella offers. “I find that encouraging. Students who are asking what they can do with their degree means they're making sure they get the best education they can afford.”
Joan Isaac-Mohr, vice president of admissions at Quinnipiac University, agrees that incoming students are choosing courses of study that are related to careers. With the market clamoring for more teachers and nurses, Quinnipiac is finding students flocking to those majors. Enrollments at the Hamden university top 7,000, up from 5,200 in 1995.
Skills Training vs. Book Learning
Not all high school graduates have the interest, time, academic grounding, or pocketbook to continue their education at an accredited two- or four-year college or university. Many opt for job-focused training schools, some of which are experiencing down times in the economic boom.
“The strong economy hurts us,” claims Janet Arena, president of Hamden's Stone academy, a business school that's been training secretaries since 1865. “When the economy is strong, schools get lower enrollments,” Arena adds.
Conversely, when times are tough, enrollments swell. She recalls the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990-91. “We were filled.” But now? Enrollments are off by almost 50 percent, with Stone claiming between 400 and 500 students. “With many more jobs available, and at higher wages than usual, students think only about the short-term.”
Arena offers an anecdote to illustrate her point, citing a Meriden restaurant that advertised for a pizza-delivery person to be paid $10 per hour with reimbursement for personal car mileage. A course of study at Stone Academy, where one can learn how to be a court reporter, medical assistant or other jobs, has a hard time competing with the immediate gratification of the pizza delivery job.
The dearth of workers is the main culprit in Stone Academy's lower enrollments. But the number of similar skills training schools active in the New Haven area also hurts, since they all are chasing the same potential market. Plus, “This is a population [Stone's student body averages 24-35 years of age] that's not growing. These young people are leaving the state.”
Officials at Branford Hall Career Institute, for 35 years a competitor to Stone Academy, agree with Arena that their schools are subject to cyclical ups and downs. “When the economy is weak and unemployment is high, more people are interested in this type of training,” says Gary Camp, president and CEO.
Yet Branford Hall is flourishing in this economy, student population doubling to 1,000 since 1998. “We're not waiting for the economy to change. Instead, we've adjusted to the economy and enhanced ourselves” to appeal to students' self worth.
“We all need pride, dignity and self-respect, whatever we do,” says Camp. “Sure, our students can get $8 per hour at McDonald's, and if they need a job they can be working by this afternoon. So we don't offer jobs. We offer careers.”
Branford Hall students, like Stone Academy's, are working scholars. “They're interested in upgrading their skills,” explains Camp. Evening courses are packed, with enrollments running 50 percent ahead of just one year ago.
Boom times usually mean a strong real estate market. So it's no surprise that the New Haven Real Estate School is experiencing higher enrollments, says administrator Ted Mansfield.
The school, run by the Greater New Haven Association of Realtors, teaches wannabe Realtors the prerequisites in real estate practices. This summer's entry-level course attracted some 40 students - twice as many as 1999's summer course.
New Connections, New Careers
Interest in masters-level courses of study also remains high, despite the economy's vigor. Yale University's School of Management, for example, boasts a 29-percent increase in applications this year over 1999, according to Karin Nobile, SOM's director of media relations.
Bill Glasby, Class of 2001 MBA candidate, left a good job as a business analysts at a Washington state consumer bank to come east to Yale.
“I came to a point in my career where I had to make a decision, whether to move into management along a slower path or jump over a lot of that through business school. I feel I'm cut out for upper management, and my undergraduate preparation wouldn't get me there as soon as I wanted.” Glasby is a graduate of Western Washington University.
He is one of six SOM interns active in the school's Entrepreneurial Network, an intense, ten-week project in which teams of two students create business plans to help launch local high-tech companies. His team was attempting to attract venture capital interest for a Web-based company founded by a New Haven woman.
“I came here because of the name recognition of Yale,” Glasby explains. “I decided that if I'm going to take two years off from work, then let's do it right.” He extols the SOM's intellectual rigor and the Old Blue network that promises to grease the skids for his business future.
“My heart's still back in the Northwest,” Glasby says. “But I'm recognizing more each day how valuable Yale connections are.”
Heeeeeeere's…E-Media
The New Economy has piqued Quinnipiac University's interest. Its respected mass communications program has added a new master's degree in electronic media. It is a Friday and Saturday program to be held at the state-of-the-art Ed McMahon Center for Mass Communications that will be launched this fall with some 15-20 students. They'll study Web design and other Internet technologies in the region's first graduate program in electronic media. BNH
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