Structural University Challenges & Workforce Readiness

Meredith Woo explores the evolving roles and challenges of private colleges — particularly small liberal arts institutions — within the broader landscape of American higher education. She reflects on the diversity of institutional missions and how resource disparities between public and private universities shape their capacity to serve students and communities. Woo underscores that while publics often lament reduced state funding, they still benefit from significant state support that privates do not receive. As external pressures intensify, she argues that institutions—public and private alike—must shift from insular thinking to prioritizing learners and societal needs.

You know, the beauty of [the] American higher education system is that it is very complex. And the system holds all kinds of different structures. There's something for somebody, something for everyone. And I think that that kind of diversity is what makes the system really robust. You know, there are some women who would do exceedingly well in a small woman's college, single gender. Well for those women, there is a place. Right, and so. I think that especially for small places, you know, and very specific colleges, there is a place and there's a role. You know, one size does not fit all not. All universities are the same, under the public rubric and not all are the same under, you know, whatever rubric that they're under. I think each group face very different kind of challenges. When I was running a small liberal arts college without a big endowment and with, well, I want to say tuition dependency, but we weren't big enough to be dependent on tuition and had a lot of issues. You know, I always wondered, well for all these years in [a] public institution complaining about how terrible, no goodnick state was, you know that to have the support of [the] state in some ways is and was a really good thing. So I think that in many ways state universities are in much better shape and much better situation because the states will support them in more ways than state universities say that they're being helped. For instance, you know, I talked about this very specious number and percentage that public universities use to show that they are in dire strait[s]. But what they also don't mention is that states will build buildings for you, right? It's not just that they help the budget by giving you support in tuition for students, but you know, depending on the needs, you know, every now and then buildings drop from the sky like mana from heaven for state universities, which is never the case with private institutions. You could have whole-person education, like Jesuit education, and focus on developing discernment, whatever that means, right? And also provide skills and credentials that can be useful for acquiring a pretty good profession, going forward. At the same time, schools that only focus on discernment, whole-person education, liberal arts, doesn't mean that they provide those things overnight or even over [a] four-year period. I think that much of that takes place in high school, actually, and probably much of it at home, and much of it maybe in your personality, and your DNA. And so I think it's very difficult to say one way or the other, you know, whether universities succeed in training [a] particular kind of people for [a] particular kind of purposes, but I think I can say, or we can say, that there are some very affluent schools with students that are from affluent background[s]. Well, since Harvard just said that they're going to provide free tuition for anybody from a family with [less than] $200,000 a year income, well, for a lot of Americans, that's a lot of money, right? So, you know, I think that depending on the type of students and type of universities, there might be universities that are not so keen on providing education that gets you ready like this for jobs, right? Harvard isn't going to be very interested in providing sports medicine or jobs-oriented or education overnight. But once again, there are all kinds of different schools in America. I think that parents are looking for it. I think that students are looking for it. I think probably the bigger problem is that the workplace is changing very much. [The] labor market is changing very much, and it's very hard to pivot to try to put your child in an advantageous position. You know in this country the parents are trying to figure out, students are trying to figure out which direction the wind is blowing in terms of [the] labor market. There are countries where the state can actively intervene to decide which direction the wind is blowing because they are the ones that are blowing the wind, right? So, in the People's Republic of China, the government can say, well, you know, we have too many people majoring in civil engineering, and that's not where the future is. So instead of civil engineering, we'll do software engineering or you know try to focus more on AI and then move the population to students in [a] particular kind of direction. But we're not that kind of society. Although it could very well be that we're moving in that direction of trying to be much more attuned to what the state wants.