Dr. Luis M. Proenza
University of Akron President Dr. Luis M. Proenza was invited to join more than 500 speakers, including major investors, CEOs, government officials, Nobel Prize winners, scientists, educators, philanthropists, top journalists and other experts to debate issues such as market stability, job creation, health care, energy security and education reform at the 14th Annual Milken Institute Global Conference, held in Los Angeles May 2-3.
The conference drew a capacity audience of approximately 3,000 attendees from around the world, many of whom are influential leaders in their own right.
Proenza served as a panelist addressing the topic of business models in higher education, whether or not they are broken and new ways to repair them. Titled "What is the Right Model in the 21st Century for Postsecondary Education?", the panel explored affordability and access at public universities in a time of state budgetary constraints, as well as a discussion of new models for state universities' in their ever-expanding roles in economic development and job creation.
Relevance, connectivity and productivity
"The existing business model for higher education is not really a business model at all because it is input-based and defined by exclusion, high cost and inefficiency," said Proenza. "The new model is outcome-based, and characterized by relevance, connectivity and productivity.”
Proenza also discussed how the University, through the development of A New Gold Standard for University Performance, has created The Akron Model, UA's blueprint for successful regional economic development and job creation.
"Universities, as anchor institutions which, like hospitals, aren't movable, must be engaged with the larger economic community and its regional economies by building a very synergistic and reciprocal relationship with the economy – universities feeding the economy and the economy feeding the university back," Proenza said.
Universities can drive wider job growth
"The new model for economic development that is emerging is more than just the typical model in which you perform research and create a few new companies," added Proenza. "Today it's about seeing the university as a broad-based, comprehensive and robust model for economic development – one in which we don't discount the incoming dollars from the NSF or NIH, but more about what you actually do with the output of those dollars by generating many new companies and creating a large number of jobs in the region.”
Proenza also spoke of delivering better access for students; an assessment engine independent of how learning is acquired; and improved support services, all of which would be designed to ensure universities' longer-term financial stability.
The Milken Institute Global Conference was focused on finding and sharing solutions that are grounded in sound economics, organizers said. Other key participants in the conference included Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; entrepreneur and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens; U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah; and Nobel Laureates Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California San Francisco and researcher James Watson, who, along with colleagues Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, discovered the structure of DNA.
Media contact: Laura Massie, 330-972-6476 or massie1@.uakron.edu.