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On February 6, BW president Lee Fisher spoke to an audience of the City Club of Cleveland, where he shared his vision of why BW and institutions of higher education are the "secret sauce" Northeast Ohio needs to strengthen economic growth and vitality.
The live and recorded presentation, delivered to a full-room audience, brought an optimistic message of purpose in defining the important role higher education plays in "being a powerful talent ecosystem."
The presentation, which included both first-person insights garnered from Fisher's successful five-decade career and data-driven research findings, offered a multifaceted lens through which to view higher education.
He cited research he was involved with as part of CEOs for Cities, a national organization he ran for six years. The research findings indicated that more than two-thirds of a city or region's economic success, as measured by the single most important metric of economic growth — average earnings of its citizens — can be attributed to how many people with a college degree live in that city or region.
"We call that the talent dividend," said Fisher, who noted that on average, a college graduate earns $1 million more over a lifetime than a high school graduate. "But there's more. A college degree is really the tide that lifts all boats because cities with higher levels of education not only have higher incomes, they have faster rates of income growth. The implication for our region is enormous."
Fisher believes BW is ushering in a new era that builds on the foundational strengths of a college education with new approaches and career-focused initiatives that align with the needs of students, families, employers and the community.
"We owe our students an obligation to be breathtakingly relevant. That's why we make three promises to our BW students — that when they graduate, they will be Leader Ready, Career Ready and Future Ready," he explained.
"It starts with building character, finding your voice and becoming who you are. Our model is based on close-range advising and mentoring. It's the key to our high retention rate of students from year to year. Just this most recent year, from fall to spring, we had well over 92% (retention rate)," cited Fisher.
Fisher went on to articulate another factor contributing to student success — the BW Advantage Curriculum, which consists of competency-driven courses that strengthen critical analysis, quantitative reason and problem-solving, among other attributes. Fisher believes these initiatives, among others, give students important Leader Ready skills.
The second promise, Fisher said, is Career Ready. "We're one of the few colleges in the nation that actually requires that every student graduate with a minimum of 30 hours of experiential learning. But that is not a requirement, in my view. It's an opportunity," noted Fisher.
"The Talon Alliance, a collaboration among 14 member organizations like the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Destination Cleveland and Team NEO, recently released the results of a study that showed for the first time ever more than half of recent Northeast Ohio graduates chose to remain in the region after they graduated," stated Fisher.
He went on to say that the goal is to get to 55%, but notably added that BW is among institutions where more than 80% of grads remain in the region.
Contributing to a strong and stable talent pipeline is part of the third promise, which focuses on making students Future Ready. Fisher explained BW's visionary approach of educating students "for jobs that do not yet exist using technologies that have not yet been invented to solve problems that none of us in the audience today even know are problems."
BW was founded 180 years ago, said Fisher, on the idea "that education should be accessible, practical and infused with purpose to prepare people not just for their first job but for careers, for callings, and for lives of meaning and contribution and adaptability.
"And that purpose has not changed," stated Fisher. "But the context has. What is changing is how we deliver on that promise … we are choosing to meet it with urgency and innovation and optimism."
"That brings me back to what I think is truly the secret sauce of success … and that is all of us. There are between 40-60,000 jobs today in Northeast Ohio that are unfilled each year. Many of them in the healthcare and professional services and manufacturing sectors, but other sectors as well," said Fisher.
"But as important as BW is to Northeast Ohio's talent pipeline, none of us is as strong as all of us," he emphasized. "Each of Northeast Ohio's more than 25 colleges and universities plays a vital role in Cleveland and our region's economic success.
"Our region's success will not come from any one of us. It'll come acting like a system — a talent ecosystem where public and private, two-year and four-year, research universities and teacher-centered colleges all play distinct and essential roles," he stated.
View the City Club presentation:
