Business Editor's Notebook: SNHU president says higher education needs to put 'Students First'

Jan. 23—DURING A recent trip to Venice, Fla., a casual conversation with our rental car agent led to a discussion of Southern New Hampshire University, where the young management trainee was earning a degree.

Like thousands of other SNHU students, he had studied exclusively online — at his own pace.

Since Paul LeBlanc took over as president of SNHU 18 years ago, the school has grown from 2,800 students to 170,000 and is the largest nonprofit provider of online education in the country.

It's also the first to have a full competency-based degree program that is not based on credit hours.

SNHU tries to give students more options on how they get their degrees, says LeBlanc, who recently published a book that explores how SNHU and other schools have been reinventing higher ed.

"Students First" was published in October by Harvard Education Press. It evolved from an interview with LeBlanc conducted by Bridget Terry Long, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, for a podcast.

"It was a labor of love in many ways," LeBlanc said by phone recently. "Things that I've been thinking about and writing about and speaking about. In some ways it's a distillation of what we have learned along the way."

LeBlanc stays true to the book's title: He begins the first chapter with the story of a student.

When LeBlanc met Marian, the Boston resident was a single-mom living in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Because her 10-year-old daughter suffered from respiratory problems, Marian had trouble keeping up with classes. Her transcripts were littered with Fs and Ws (for "withdrawal").

"Every time her little girl got sick, she would miss class," LeBlanc said. "When we were able to put her in a program where she controlled the time, she flourished. She raced her way to a degree."

Traditional higher education often leaves many people behind, those whose lives don't mesh with rigid structures that often benefit the institution more than the students they serve.

"When I met (Marian) I thought maybe she wasn't a good fit for higher ed, but in reality higher ed wasn't a good fit for her," LeBlanc said. "We hadn't given her an option that would work better."

LeBlanc, whose family immigrated from the Canadian Maritimes in 1960 to Waltham, Mass., was the first in his family to attend college. He worked construction jobs during the summer and had a work-study job during the school year, which enabled him to graduate with little debt.

Skyrocketing tuition costs makes that scenario impossible to emulate now at traditional four-year colleges, especially for people living on the margins. And they encounter a system that doesn't suit their needs.

"We have based a whole industry on the credit hour. The credit hour is a very problematic thing," LeBlanc said. "The biggest problem is that it ties education to structures of time."

"And for low-income people time is a privilege. They have less of it. Things that you and I take for granted — like if you don't have a washer or dryer in your apartment it takes longer to get clean clothes. If you don't have a car, it takes longer to get groceries."

Work schedules for people juggling part-time jobs also make it more difficult for them to enroll in traditional degree programs.

"If you are working in a fast-food industry job or retail, one of the issues for a lot of those folks is they don't know what their schedule is two weeks from now," LeBlanc said.

LeBlanc devotes a chapter each to designing competency programs and how to rethink financial aid — which is also tied to a credit-hour system.

Creating programs that measure competency rather than how much time a student has spent learning can lead to better outcomes both for students and their future employers.

"It doesn't mean you can't teach humanities or philosophy," LeBlanc said. "It just means that you're going to be very, very clear about what students know and what they can do with what they know."

Up early to write

With his travel schedule and social life suspended during the pandemic, LeBlanc had more time to work on the book, mostly early in the morning and on weekends. He weathered the roller-coaster ride writers face.

"When the writing was going well I would write maybe all day for nine or 10 hours and literally not leave my desk," he said. "My wife would come up with a power bar and a cup of tea at lunch. And those were the good days, when you're in the flow.

"And then there are other days, and she'd come and say, 'How's it going?' And I'd say, 'Well, I've been here four hours. Take a look.' And there'd be a blank screen."

LeBlanc will talk about "Students First" at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 16 at Bookery Manchester, 844 Elm St., during an interview with bookstore co-founder Liz Hitchcock. Visit bookerymht.com to register.

Mike Cote is senior editor for news and business. Contact him at mcote@unionleader.com or (603) 206-7724.

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