2 min read February 2023 — Invest: caught up with William Austin, president of Warren County Community College, to discuss how the institution has bucked national enrollment declines with a passion for student success and a keen embrace of innovation and technology. “At the end of the day, if higher education is going to succeed, it has to be more practical and applicable in the real world,” he said.
What are your key takeaways over the past year?
We’re essentially back to normal in terms of academic schedule and are responding to market demand accordingly. Our enrollment got back on track in 2021 but went up in 2022 which was especially great given the struggles many colleges across the country have had in this regard. I attribute this to the fact that we got back on campus early after the pandemic, giving us time to recuperate and regain our baseline student population.
More broadly, there is a real risk that technology might make colleges obsolete if adoption isn’t accelerated. Students can access an AI platform now for homework assistance with the potential in the next five years for an entire essay with sources to be created within seconds. How colleges keep up with that is the big question, and I think we’ll see massive changes by the end of the decade with virtual reality leading the way in education.
What is your assessment of student enrollment in 2023?
There’s a strange phenomenon going on right now because of the bifurcation of student expectations. On one hand, there are students who’ve come out of the pandemic with more perspective and opinions on what their college experience and levels of service should entail. On the other hand, many students have been so disengaged from the impacts of the pandemic and having to learn from home for years that they really don’t have any expectations. We need to be very mindful of defining what those expectations might be right from the outset. To that end, we’ve enhanced our orientation programming to get students right out of high school into the right mindset to start college. Access to guidance counselors over the pandemic was a very real challenge for students, so many coming into WCCC are starting from square one. The pandemic was so disruptive that we’ve kept it as a core tenet to meet students where they are individually and push them forward collectively to their degree.
How is Warren County Community College embracing innovation in the curriculum?
We’ve established a full robotics assembly lab with grant funding and to be frank, to find a comparable one you’d probably have to go to Carnegie Mellon or MIT. It’s an incredible lab because regardless of the industry or purpose of the robotics, it has the tools and equipment to make repairs. It can also save companies thousands of dollars by having their robots fixed here as opposed to some third party. On top of that, it’s a great professional experience for students who are able to put theory and academics into practice. We’ve also added precision agriculture to our drone program thanks to a $750,000 congressional appropriation. We’re also hosting the Federal Aviation Administration’s drone technology conference on Drone Safety Day in 2023. Establishing these partnerships enhances what these students can do with their education. It’s not just about getting grades but learning that vital job experience that can get them ahead in the workforce. At the end of the day, if higher education is going to succeed, it has to be more practical and applicable in the real world.
What are the challenges you see for higher education over the next few years?
The downside of all this rapid innovation in AI is we won’t need as many people in the workforce in the future and it’s not being discussed enough. By the end of this decade, there will be 60% to 70% automation in some industries and with the labor market being what it is, executives are looking for automated options if workers aren’t coming back. We’re preparing for a workforce that will be drastically reduced because machines will do the work. These aren’t just low-skilled jobs, but more complicated work too. Drones can replace engineers to do building assessments, for example. Highly educated positions will be replaced and it will shock many people. The biggest challenge we face as educators and society will be to balance automation with purpose and meaning in people’s lives and work.
Programs and curriculum are also generally very outdated. I honestly believe that everyone in higher education should get a graduate recertification every 10 years or else get out of the business. It’s because things are changing so rapidly, and we can’t rely on tired, stagnant models. We need to constantly ask the question of why people should invest in college right now and if we’re giving them a decent return on investment.
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