Robert Litan: Wichita State plays key role in city’s future
Wichita can only have a bright future if the ambitious plans for Wichita State University spearheaded by president John Bardo are successful.
WSU was behind the formation of multiple working groups, with input from many city leaders and the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, which produced a Blueprint for Regional Economic Growth (BREG) last year. The blueprint highlighted how eight of our leading industries can work together to accelerate their growth.
Ironically, the one “industry” BREG left out, perhaps out of the university’s undue modesty, is higher education itself, especially WSU’s central role in this city’s future.
Two of BREG’s recommendations cut across almost all of the industry sectors: further collaboration on innovation and training of their workforces. WSU is at the heart of both suggestions. It is ramping up its efforts to attract federal research dollars at its testing facilities, and it is an ideal neutral body to facilitate the sharing of ideas.
The university’s coming merger with the Wichita Area Technical College, meanwhile, will strengthen the precise skills that employers in each of the industry segments are demanding. One early example: WSU’s new “coding academy” will be teaching people of all ages how to code software, a skill much in demand.
WSU’s Innovation Campus, now under construction, will ultimately house entities employing more than 1,000 individuals, provide numerous internships for WSU students, and lead to jobs for WSU graduates. The new campus eventually will also include a hotel, apartments, retail establishments and restaurants, and will be attractive for faculty members, retirees and active workers to live in and for others to frequent. All this will happen as WSU is expanding into Old Town, reinforcing downtown developments spearheaded by Jeff Fluhr and his staff at the Wichita Downtown Development Corp.
The multiple Bardo initiatives are critical for attracting many more full-time, residential students from outside Wichita, raising enrollment from the current 15,000 to Bardo’s goal of 22,000 in seven years. University in-state tuition is now available for Tulsa and Oklahoma City residents, a program WSU wants to expand to Dallas and Kansas City, Mo.
This “I-35 strategy” will bring in new blood to our city, some of whom will stay here after graduation to work and hopefully start new businesses here. As that happens, Wichita students who otherwise would never consider staying here for college or returning from schools elsewhere after graduation will reconsider. They may begin saying to themselves: “If kids from elsewhere are moving here, then maybe I should stay here.”
Economic research shows that a city’s fortunes are tied to how well it attracts and retains young college graduates. Wichita historically has been able to do well with a below-national average fraction of its population with college degrees because of plentiful skilled, good jobs for high school graduates in the aircraft industry. But we cannot count on that to be true in the 21st century, where the best jobs will require a college degree.
One of the best ways to begin bumping up our share of college grads is for all of WSU’s bold initiatives to be successful.
Robert Litan of Wichita is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the President’s Council at Wichita State University.
This story was originally published January 28, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Robert Litan: Wichita State plays key role in city’s future."