A Master Plan for Higher Education in the Midwest: A Roadmap to the Future of the Nation's Heartland

To achieve prosperity and security in a hypercompetitive global, knowledge-driven economy, the American Midwest faces the challenge of transforming what was once the farming and manufacturing center of the world economy into what could become its knowledge center. Put another way, while the Midwest region once provided the industrial muscle that powered the twentieth century, now it must make the commitment and the investments necessary to become the brains of the twenty-first century knowledge economy. What role should the region’s colleges and universities play in this effort? Here one is tempted to emulate the spirit of the California Master Plan, developed during a period of extraordinary economic and demographic change in 1960. Yet today one must broaden considerations to include all stages of education—K-12, higher education, workplace training, lifelong learning—indeed, “cradle to grave” learning needs, opportunities, and experiences. Furthermore, such a study must encompass all of the missions of the contemporary university—education, scholarship, engagement, health care, economic development, innovation, entrepreneurial activities, and, of course, traditional roles, such as preserving and transmitting culture and serving as a social critic. Finally, while the California Master Plan was an extraordinary success, setting simple yet challenging and compelling goals that would guide public higher education in the state for decades, today it is likely that a “strategic process” that can be sustained over many years will be more important than a “strategic plan” that might quickly sink beneath the waves. This report adopts a common planning technique from high-tech industry, strategic roadmapping, to develop such a contemporary “master plan” for the region. It should be viewed as one effort to develop not only a vision and plan to utilize the Midwest’s rather considerable higher education assets to enable the region’s transformation into a learning and innovation society, but as well to suggest both tactics and a process required to sustain this effort for the long haul.