The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded $100,000 to the Midwestern Higher Education Compact to explore the creation of a multi-state credential repository to reduce student time to degree and promote the completion of degrees in progress or on hold. The initiative, titled the Midwest Credential Repository for Education, Skills, and Training, or Midwest-CREST, would provide citizens with an opportunity to use a web-based platform to bank or store the college credits they have earned and to document learning they have achieved through workplace training, community education, and other formalized experiences.

 

Incorporating elements of e-portfolios, the "deposits” made to Midwest-CREST would be documented and organized into standard "transcripts,” which would then be made available to colleges and universities to assess and "bid” for the opportunity to facilitate the completion of a degree. Students could receive bids from multiple institutions offering degree completion through a variety of modalities, including classroom-based and online courses, competency assessments, credit by examination, residencies, etc. Students would then be able to evaluate the multiple offers and choose one based on whatever combination factors are important to them (cost, flexibility, accessibility, number of courses required, etc.).

 

The proposal is grounded in the belief that increased portability of credit and improved translation of learning into meaningful credentials can improve the employment prospects of Midwestern citizens and promote economic development through facilitating the interstate mobility of human capital. MHEC’s partners in the initiative are the Institute for Academic Alliances at Kansas State University and the Brookings Institution’s Great Lakes Economic Initiative. While the grant runs through December 31, 2010, recommendations will be presented to the MHEC commission at its annual meeting November 16-17, 2010.

 

The Midwestern Higher Education Compact and the Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange at the University of Oklahoma have entered into a new agreement to provide a special membership package to institutions within the MHEC states that join and participate in the Consortium.
 
Improving student retention and using data to support strategic decisions are two of the top five critical campus issues, according to a survey of higher education executives conducted by Eduventures. Given the increased focus placed on measures of student success by accreditation commissions, the U.S. Department of Education, and external stakeholders, these issues remain a top concern for MHEC constituents as well.
 
Institutions within the Midwestern Higher Education Compact region will be able to take advantage of a special MHEC-CSRDE membership package which is not available to other institutions. Benefits include increased access to reports and additional continuing education opportunities.  The new membership fee of $100 will be waived for MHEC institutions that join by November 19, 2010.  For more details including the data sharing requirements for participation and sample survey materials please contact the University of Oklahoma CSRDE office at 405-325-2158 or csrde@ou.edu and speak with Sandra Whalen, program manager. Please inform the CSRDE office of the institution's eligibility for the MHEC-CSRDE membership package.  For more details, please visit the CSRDE website at http://csrde.ou.edu/web/index.html. For information about other MHEC cost saving programs visit www.mhec.org.

 

E2W began with a Policy Summit held in St. Paul, Minnesota on October 27-29, 2005. Over 125 delegates from the 13 project states heard from experts on Midwestern demographics, the economy, global contexts, education systems, and workforce development, and exchanged ideas and shared information in intrastate and interstate teams.

 

The second phase of E2W was a state roundtable series intended to build on the momentum established at the policy summit. Each of the participating states continued the dialogue on a local level by organizing gatherings involving a representative group of leaders and stakeholders from government, education, and business. The objective was to develop action plans for moving the E2W agenda forward through policy recommendations, draft legislation, programmatic initiatives, and other strategies. The states developed individual action plans given their unique economic, social, political, and cultural contexts.

 

The third phase of E2W was a policy report series. This will include a series of publications describing the roundtable process and outcomes for each state; data on workforce trends, employment projections; and economic indicators; and descriptions of "best practices” or model programs in the states.