Diversity in higher education
Though borne out of vastly different geopolitical experiences, the following two narratives echo one another in striking fashion:
"My backstory starts in south Georgia where I grew up. In my high school class of 250 students, I was one of only 68 who graduated. An awareness that something was inherently broken ignited my passion for finding a way to empower students to take their futures into their own hands through higher education” said Melvin Hines, the Founder and CEO of Upswing, a technology platform that increases school retention rates by providing personalized support to the college students who most need it.
"As a refugee of Idi Amin's Uganda, my life was transformed by having access to world-class education", explained Sanjeev Khagram, Dean of the Thunderbird School of Management of Arizona State University, at the launch of a bold new program he is spearheading which seeks to give access at no cost to business-school level education to at least 100 million students worldwide by 2030. "The Najafi Thunderbird Global Initiative is educational inclusion, innovation and impact at a worldwide scale," Khagram rightly asserted in a recent interview.
Two very different, yet entirely parallel, personal experiences catalyzed innovations that address the same issue, one that is central to the fight for equity in any society: the radically disparate 'geographies of opportunity' that continue to create untraversable chasms to the access of higher education for a majority of people on this planet.
I conduct research on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in corporate America, and that is the topic I normally address in this column. Today, however, I would like to step outside the corporation and into the classroom to talk about the one thing that can bring more people out of poverty and toward true equity, inclusion and the fulfillment of their human potential, and that is access to quality higher education.
To this end, I have discovered two 'education entrepreneurs', kindred spirits, one whose for-profit company is on a mission to help 'non-traditional' college students here in the US stay in school and graduate, and the other whose ambitious aim is to educate at no cost millions around the world in university classes online.
Melvin Hines grew up in tiny Albany, Georgia surrounded by poverty, unfulfilled potential and broken dreams. “I had friends who got pregnant, friends who died, friends who went to jail. By the time graduation came around, there were 68 of us who actually made it,” he said. As one of the 27% of students who managed to graduate from Albany High School in 2002, Melvin went on to complete his undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia and a JD/MBA from Duke. He explains that even as he finished grad school and worked as a consultant, he kept as his “north star” the attrition problems that he first encountered in high school. He began to volunteer in community mentorship programs and eventually became a law professor at North Carolina Central University, a Historically Black College in Durham, North Carolina. In 2013, he founded Upswing to help solve the problem of college attrition and “keep online students and adult learners on a path toward graduation.” Realizing that first-generation and nontraditional students often lack the “cultural capital and background” to keep up with their peers, they fight to stay in college with “one hand tied behind their back.”
Upswing has developed into an online student support platform that is now used in over 100 colleges and has served hundreds of thousands of undergraduates. When students log in, they might be reminded of an exam they have that week, and are asked if they would like to sign up for tutoring. Perhaps they are struggling with mental health challenges; they are steered to the best resources on their campus to provide support. Or if they are having a hard time understanding financial aid rules and application deadlines, Upswing can help with that, too. The idea is to provide resources and advice around all the challenges students may have—logistical, emotional, financial—to do everything possible to help them stay in school and eventually graduate. According to the company website, “persistence rates for students connected to the Upswing platform typically increase between 10% and 15%. Grades go up too. And institutions receive data that can’t be found anywhere else — data that shows you which students are at greatest risk of dropping out, allowing you to focus your limited resources to help them persist — and succeed.”
Sanjeev Khagram began his tenure as Dean of the Thunderbird School of Management at the Arizona State University in 2018 with a vision to “take the lead in educating students from around the world” in three main areas: the global and transnational nature of the world; the cross-sectoral nature of the world; and the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation to comprehensive economic advancement.” Born into a prominent entrepreneurial family of Asian Indian heritage, Khagram was 6 years old when his family became refugees from Idi Amin’s Uganda. They immigrated to the United States in 1973, via refugee camps in Italy. The young Sanjeev’s first entrepreneurial venture was in New Jersey, at age 13, when he began setting up gift shops in local hotels. Even while pursuing his Ph.D. at Stanford University, Khagram exercised his entrepreneurial inventiveness by forming a chain of convenience stores in the Bay Area and bringing family members to manage them.
His flagship new program, funded by a $25 million gift from Francis and Dionne Najafi, will “translate into 40 languages and put online the materials for five business courses, with the aim of reaching students in every corner of the globe. The program will use machine learning and artificial intelligence to teach and grade. The courses will confer academic credit as well as lead to a global management and entrepreneurship certificate.” Credits can be transferred to most schools and can also be used toward a degree at ASU. The program’s ultimate goal is to educate at least 100 million students by 2030 and, as with Melvin Hines’s Upswing, the success of the program will be measured by how many students make it through to graduation, diploma in hand.
As Melvin Hines says, the three biggest factors that lift people into the middle class and allow them to reach their potential are wealth, health and education. These two visionary and dedicated men are doing their best to see to it that more people, here at home and around the world, have access to education and to a better future for themselves and the communities they inhabit. This is true inclusive leadership in action, and more power to them.
