Higher education.

• Position: Industry Outlook - Interview - Company overview

Utah's higher education system faces difficult challenges, from excelling with reduced funding to meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse population. The state's education leaders weigh in on those challenges and describe how they would make the greatest impact with a limited investment.

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We'd like to give a special thank you to Vicki Varela of Vicki Varela Strategic Communications for moderating the discussion, and to Holland & Hart for hosting the event.

How is higher education innovating in the way we teach our young people and adults?

HOWE: Institutions of higher education really have to look at personalized education. In our dynamic environment, new professions are being invented every month. Professions that didn't exist just six months ago are now available. So institutions have to be very, very nimble, be able to adapt very quickly to these new challenges and demands. And that includes technology--being able to adapt the way we deliver our education.

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One of the challenges that we have at University of Phoenix is that we have Boomers, we have Generation X, and we have the Millennial--and they all have different learning styles. We have to adapt to that and be nimble at delivering modalities that fit each of their learning styles.

We've done virtual simulations, online education, simulations in the classroom--anything that we can to meet these different needs. We look at education now not only as degree completion but as a lifelong venture.

JENKINS: Down at BYU, looking at innovation, one of the things we can capitalize on is the language ability of our students here in Utah. I know 70 percent of our students at BYU come speaking a second language fluently.

This has given us a real opportunity if you're looking at outreach and innovation. We now have business classes that are taught in 11 languages. We teach 55 at any one time, and that's allowed us to really collaborate.

We have a Chinese flagship center, we have a Middle East language research center, and then we have an international business outreach education center. That's a skill that our students come to us with. We just need to be innovative in how we use that and make sure they have the opportunities.

BIOTEAU: The ways that higher education and business complement each other are really experiencing a cultural disruption. If we speak to Clayton Christensen's and Thomas Friedman's work, higher education can no longer do business as we did in an agricultural age, where we took summers off and had isolated silos of discipline.

If we look at the workforce development needs and then project five years ahead, we see a convergence of disciplines and needs, not only for our learners but the businesses that we are supplying a workforce to. That is very different than what we saw in higher ed even five years ago.

The innovations that we're all grappling with are those where we look at specific competencies needed in the workforce and--whether we use UCAT or public education or non-credit education, industry certifications--build upon those competencies so that a person comes in wherever they are in their lifeline and can build upon not only their workforce experience, but where they want to go in the future. They don't start way back from scratch in an isolated discipline; they build the competencies that then allow them to create an associate's degree and then, with articulation, a baccalaureate degree through the partnerships of anytime, online and on-site education.

And so we're the seeing convergence of everything: How we bundle education, how we provide it, how we even create learning experiences.

MILLNER: One of the things that brought together the Department of Workforce Services, the Governor's Office of Economic Development, the Utah System of Higher Education, UCAT and others is to focus on the economic development cluster projects.

How do we build the talent in this state in order to be able to support that cluster growth? We began that kind of work with the aerospace cluster in northern Utah, pulling in the key players--ATK, L-3, Hill Air Force Base and others--bringing them to the table with higher education and saying, "What do you need in terms of a workforce, thinking out the next three to five years?"

None of us are going to do all of this work ourselves. We're the conveners as institutions, pulling together the business community, the education community.

ROY: Innovation is a team sport it's not the lone garage inventor anymore. It's kind of this intersection between ideas and industry. Higher education is set up to continue to move those ideas forward into industry. With USTAR, for instance, it's really about bringing entrepreneurs into the university setting, working with the universities for some intellectual property, and then taking that outside, commercializing it, and growing businesses.

The other piece is industry-sponsored research where industries say, "We have a real problem in this area. You have some expertise within the university--help us solve this problem." It's the perfect playground for universities, colleges and the industries, especially in Utah.

How has USTAR impacted education and the community?

ROY: USTAR was built on the backs of all the educators that were here for years before. We focused on areas that we already had a competitive advantage, like digital media. That was the key piece--that there was already a great strength.

What USTAR did is three basic programs: Some buildings that would help draw more university professors of world class to research universities; and then those researchers bring us more intellectual property, more opportunities. The last part is the outreach to the rest of the state.

In all three areas, according to the prospectus that was put in place in 2006, we're ahead of the game. We're stealing world-class researchers from universities all over the world: We've got somebody from Australia, we've got Harvard professors. We're really doing a good job at the two research universities of bringing in topnotch, quality researchers.

In outreach, over 40 companies are building prototypes based on our technology commercialization grants. Salt Lake Community College, Utah Valley, Weber State, Dixie--all across the state, entrepreneurs are finding opportunities to collaborate.

If you look at the actual statistics, we're 180 to 190 percent ahead of each one.

PERSHING: We actually want to hire 34 new faculty from all across the country, in some cases across the world, into new USTAR positions. There's no way we would have been able to do anything like that. The building is going to open this fall, and we're very excited about it. So it has been transformative in terms of what it's done--but I wouldn't want to leave the impression that it's just the people we hire.

One of the great advantages of USTAR is that people we hire come in and collaborate with our existing stars in very positive ways, and...