Higher education has to rebuild public trust. That much is evident, and many of the ideas to address this challenge are coming out of our country’s wealthiest and most selective institutions. By contrast, the developing conversation about trust in higher education has not yet fully included the perspectives of the regional public institutions that serve as the backbone of the American higher education system.
I lead one of those institutions. The University of Maine at Presque Isle is physically located in Aroostook County, the northernmost county in Maine, where the median household income is $56,700. For more than a century, UMPI served our communities as a primarily residential institution with deep roots in teacher education, the liberal arts and the professional preparation of first-generation students. Our mission, to provide affordable and accessible education, remains unchanged. In 2017, we built YourPace, a new pathway to deliver on it.
A competency-based online education program, YourPace is designed to be truly affordable through a fundamentally different cost structure, one built around competency demonstration rather than credit-hour accumulation, around mastery rather than seat time, around what a student can show rather than how much time they spent in a physical classroom. The financial incentive is thus aligned with the educational one: The sooner a student can demonstrate mastery, the less the degree costs.
