BY MICHAEL GILLAN
One is hard pressed to name a nonurban setting as rich in higher education options as is Westchester: with our ubiquitous, access-focused community college, traditional residential campuses, research-intensive graduate study and convenient, executive-style career advancement opportunities ”” undergraduate, professional or nondegree.
The evolution of the sector in the last 40 years has been dramatic with the development of high-quality, market-sensitive programs at both the “indigenous” institutions and at the branch campuses established by major New York City universities as they began to look north in the 1970s ”” a phenomenon with mixed reactions at first (not to mention mixed results), but clearly one that has energized all the players and markedly enhanced the overall resources available to Westchester learners.
And, as is usually the case with healthy competition and the concomitant development of mutual respect and trust as these enterprises mature, interinstitutional cooperation and joint activities are taking root. Most prominent among them are the initiatives based in the Higher Education Committee of The Westchester County Association (the WCA itself, of course, having evolved from a networking, chamber-type organization to one that is committed to helping shape the county”™s future). Consider the now-annual Recruit Westchester event bringing together employers and students/alumni from all of the participating schools, as well as the periodic briefings and roundtable exchanges between sector-specific business/industry leaders and college/university representatives.
A number of the schools are also involved in the WCA”™s Blueprint and Accelerator initiatives, and participate together to advance the important goals of dynamic organizations such as the Westchester/Putnam Workforce Investment Board.
Prospectively, cooperative action and the explicit acknowledgment of shared purpose has become so evident as to bring into view the possibility of even further evolution: from the resource-rich environment that Westchester has become, to what might be described as an integrated system of interinstitutional and intersector relationships.
A Westchester (or Hudson Valley) Higher Education Consortium might be envisioned ”” not to homogenize institutions, compromise their special missions or erode their independence and distinctive characteristics but rather to create a complementary new entity greater than the sum of its parts. Consider the benefits of sector-tailored educational, training and retraining programs, employer-informed in development and delivery, combining the strengths and experience of several providers rather than relying upon one. Consider the lowered risk and startup costs of new program development for any single institution. Consider the multiple points of access that would result without the need to build new facilities. Such a consortium would surely hold promise for serving the needs and aspirations of individual learners, organizational entities and the region in a newly creative and efficient way.
But whether such a development is in the near or long term, it is without question that the state of higher education in the county is far stronger than it was a few decades ago, the ability of our young people and adults to access high-quality education opportunities close to home has never been better and the prospects of the sector as a whole are enviably strong. As the mixed-use communities envisioned for the Platinum Mile and elsewhere become a reality in the coming years, Westchester”™s higher education sector is well prepared to enable them to become the live/work/play/learn environments that will best serve our residents and the region.
Michael Gillan was named founding provost of Long Island University”™s Westchester campus in 1979 and served in that capacity for almost a decade before moving on to a Bronx/ Manhattan deanship at Fordham University. He returned to university administration in the county in 2009 as Fordham”™s associate vice president for Westchester, the position from which he retired in June.
