At a time when higher education is being called upon in national conversations to state its value, there’s a simple question worth asking: What would our region look like without its colleges? The answer reveals why local institutions matter in ways that national debates often miss.
The national conversation about higher education’s value often centers on the largest of our institutions and their challenges. But the debate misses that colleges often succeed or fail based on how well they serve their communities. And in our region, that partnership is working, delivering measurable results for students, employers and residents.
Across the region, four colleges, SUNY Oneonta, Hartwick College, SUNY Delhi and SUNY Cobleskill Ag & Tech, are doing more than educating students. They’re addressing workforce shortages, extending health care access, creating pathways out of poverty and solving problems that government and business cannot tackle alone.
Thousands of students, faculty and professionals at our colleges are working alongside local businesses, health care providers, nonprofits and government agencies to enrich student education and serve mutual community goals, while harnessing the combined expertise and resources of an entire region.
Our collective college-community partnerships come in all shapes and sizes to expand student access to degree completion, foster civic-mindedness and address workforce and community priorities.
Some examples:
• This summer, SUNY Oneonta, SUNY Delhi and SUNY Cobleskill Ag & Tech expanded a statewide program called ACE (Advancing Completion through Engagement) to support 450 underserved students through intensive academic advisement and career counseling, as well as tuition, textbook and transportation assistance. Many of the students benefitting come from upstate regions. These programs strive to allow first-time students, rural learners and working adults to stay in the community while pursuing a college education.
• The Bassett CARES program is a workforce development partnership between Bassett Healthcare Network, Hartwick College and SUNY Oneonta that aims to retain recent graduates by offering them a job at a Bassett-affiliated hospital and a loan repayment stipend of up to $25,000. The program is open to graduates from all disciplines, not just health care, and helps address critical workforce shortages in the region.
• SUNY Delhi is partnering with Delaware County Electric Cooperative to create an advanced line-worker training program. This collaboration, supported by a recent federal $400,000 grant, aims to train hundreds of workers for both electric and telecommunications infrastructure jobs in rural New York. The program builds upon SUNY Delhi’s existing electrical construction and utility operations degree and will offer training for both new and existing line workers.
• The Institute for Rural Vitality at SUNY Cobleskill Ag & Tech serves as the Mohawk Valley Entrepreneurship Assistance Center, providing comprehensive support to area entrepreneurs across all industry sectors with business creation and growth, sales, access to financing, and job creation. Businesses served by the institute generated more than $1 million in combined revenue over the past 12 months.
• The Hartwick College Institute of Public Service is a nonprofit, nonpartisan regional political community designed to educate the next generation of public servants and inspire legal professionals and government officials to meaningfully engage in our democracy through three key areas: local and state government, civic engagement and legal education.
Our colleges and communities share a mutually beneficial relationship. Forming partnerships within our communities is essential to making undergraduate education relevant, equitable and impactful. At the same time, these partnerships can provide our region with much-needed solutions for industry hiring shortages and the development of an educated workforce to attract more economic development.
Do you want further evidence of college students earning real-life learning experiences and career preparation? Look no further than SUNY Oneonta elementary education majors student-teaching in area classrooms, Hartwick College and SUNY Delhi nursing students providing patient care at Bassett Healthcare clinics or SUNY Cobleskill Ag & Tech culinary art students partnering with local farms and food suppliers for farm-to-table learning.
Colleges and universities cannot operate in isolation. We must work with all in the region to meet our goal of delivering a high-quality education to our students, connecting our learners with employment options and helping the communities we reside in to thrive.
When we do this, colleges gain resources and relevance, and our community gains innovation, talent and even health. Education remains one of the most powerful social determinants of health and economic mobility. In 2019, college graduates in the United States had a life expectancy of 84 years on average, while those without a high school diploma had a life expectancy of only 73.5 years, a gap of 10.7 years that has widened from an 8.2-year difference in 2000.
The intentional, reciprocal collaborations between our schools and Otsego, Delaware and Schoharie counties allow us all to succeed as we meet the evolving needs of students and society.