Matthew Holland was on sabbatical at the University of Oxford last summer when he was asked to speak to members of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster about how to bridge the divide between vocational education and the traditional four-year degree.
It’s a hot issue on both sides of the pond, as policy makers push apprenticeships and other alternatives to college degrees amid worries about a dearth of skilled workers. But Holland, as president of Utah Valley University since 2009, knows vocational and liberal educations can coexist.
The fast-growing Utah Valley, which enrolls 37,000 students, became a university a decade ago, having previously been a technical and community college. It began issuing four-year degrees in 1993 and master’s degrees in 2008, a year before Holland became the university’s president.
Such conversions often are accompanied by worries about "credential creep," where the ambition of an institution’s leaders outpaces demand for advanced degrees and leads to neglect of technical programs.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/16/utah-valley-university-thrives-being-both-community-college-and-university