By Alannah Fehrenbach, Jonathon Farrell, Maryam Razaz and Shivani Sharma.
Economics
1. If you wish to improve or increase the involvement of technology in Wagner College, what would that entail and how much of your budget would you be willing to spend on it?
2. What are some of the largest expenses in running a college?
3. What area of higher education, do you believe, can use the most cuts?
4. How can rising student debt affect the landscape of current higher education?
5. Will students still choose to go to expensive private schools, or will public colleges become of greater demand?
6. What percentage of your budget is funded by endowments? What percentage is funded by student tuition?
7. What is the general structure of faculty at Wagner College? On average, what are the salaries of such professors and do you believe the salaries are justified?
8. The president of a University is burdened with two very separate yet important responsibilities, one is to manage the faculty and represent the university where the other is to ensure financial viability. Personally, what do you believe you spend most of your time doing?
Technology
1. Has technology been a tool for bringing people together in the college community?
2. How do you see the function of having classes where a professor is physically present changing (or not changing) with regard to the ever-growing presence of online courses and MOOCs replacing the old structure of education?
3. Do you see technology as a channel for research and development while aspiring to create economic and community development with the Port Richmond Partnership?
4. Wagner College is considered to give a “traditional education”; how does the use of technology as both a study-aid and a networking tool fit into this framework?
5. Is it important that professors be tech-saavy? Do you train professors in the newest developments of technology in the classroom?
6. Has multi-media presentation become a new forum of academic expression and educational exploration within the Wagner community? How?
PURPOSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
1. How does civic engagement affect a student’s education?
2. How does your institution attempt to foster a diverse student body?
3. Explain a little bit about The Wagner Plan for the Practical Arts. How exactly does it work and how does it change the way your students learn?
4. There are two prevailing theories of why a student should go to college: to get credentials for a career and become a functioning member of society, or to become more of a well-rounded citizen. Do you feel that Higher Education should be more of a public good or used for personal growth?
5. After college graduates go into careers, employers constantly tell colleges that students lack many of the critical thinking skills necessary for being productive members of the work force. How do you propose colleges go about preparing students to be critical thinkers?
6. Earlier in America’s history, high school graduates had employment options that didn’t require a college degree, such as factory jobs and trade professions. Yet with the advent of technology and the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, a college degree is becoming increasingly more important to secure any form of employment, despite the fact that there are many students who are ill-prepared by the K-12 educational system for college. With jobs that place a large focus on education and a K-12 system that doesn’t adequately prepare some students, how do you propose we deal with those students who aren’t adequately prepared for college?
7. Wagner College’s mission “emphasizes scholarship, achievement, leadership, and citizenship,” but what makes the college’s mission truly different from that of any other private liberal arts college?
ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION
1. Being an educator at Wagner College for almost 20 years now, who do you believe deserves to attend this college? Do you feel that the college will implement new changes in the next 10 years as higher education seems to keep changing and evolving?
2. What are the main criteria for admission into Wagner College? What type of students are you looking for?
3. Being a private institution, does Wagner College give more scholarships based on need or on merit? In your own experience as an educator, which type of scholarship brings out the most in a student?
4. During your time here, you founded the Wagner Plan for Practical Liberal Arts. In a recent article in the Huffington post, however, you mentioned the need for solutions to fix a community’s set of problems, and better yet the country’s problems. Is your plan your direct solution for emphasizing a liberal arts education and helping the community? May you talk more about more about it?
5. According to the same Huffington post article, you are a huge proponent of the liberal arts system and affordability, but the cost of tuition for Wagner College is nearly $50,000 dollars. How does the university make its higher education more accessible to its students?
6. Being a college that was founded way before CUNY was, were there any changes that Wagner made during the 1960s when affirmative action made a groundbreaking step in New York City? If there were changes, do any of them still exist today?
7. There is more and more of a desire among students to have a job-oriented education and to solely take the classes they think are needed to gain the specific set of skills they need for their future job. Thus, students have less of a focus on receiving a broad set of skills and rather study just for this class. Your plan here completely annihilates that. Students will graduate with both the broad skills and the specific set of skills needed in the work field today. May I ask how your plan came to be? Does this stem from your belief that universities should aim to provide their students with a well-rounded education? Has there been a successful rate of your graduates getting a job straight out of college?
8. Where does academic freedom apply at a private institution? Is it only present in a classroom or does it include other campus activities?
