Editor’s Note: Penn State President Eric J. Barron’s interview has been edited for clarity and length.
In this second part of a three-part Q&A series with retiring President Eric J. Barron, he discusses the importance of access and affordability, transformative experiences for Penn State students, diversity and inclusion efforts at the University, and the value of athletics.
Early in your tenure as president, you made access and affordability a priority for the University. Why is access so important?
When I was in high school in Atlanta, I rode the bus to the inner city and taught kids whose moms or dads would bring them into this community center. Those kids were so incredibly eager to learn, but they just didn’t have the opportunity. You see that over and over again. I realized that an awful lot of human outcome has nothing to do with capability and potential. It has to do with whether you’ve had the opportunity and experiences.
How did that experience inform your efforts in making the opportunity to earn a Penn State degree more accessible?
I said during the pandemic, “We will meet you where you are” because we wanted people to be successful. A student can come to University Park or attend a graduate program online or attend a Commonwealth Campus and stay home and save money in the process. There is no singular way to study at our University. But it is still one degree, one powerful Penn State degree.
Talk about the other side of the coin, affordability. Why is that so critical?
A contributing factor of student debt is how long it takes to get your degree. I really started to think about it when I realized how much debt is added to a student by going years five and six — it is the biggest difference of any of the factors. So what we’ve done is try to remove the barriers students may face along the way, so they can earn their degrees on time and minimize educational debt. We’ve placed all of these programs and efforts like Pathway to Success, Smart Track, and Complete Penn State under the umbrella of Achieve Penn State.
You talk about the importance of “transformative experiences” at Penn State. What do you mean by this?
I thought for a long time that internships made a difference. A company looks at you. You look at a company. You see what the real world is like and it’s a ticket to a job. Internships are still important, but when I ask Penn Staters about their experience, they talk about their study abroad experience or the work they did volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. I came to the conclusion that these transformative experiences made life richer, and people felt their Penn State experience was richer.
What is the effect that these transformative experiences have on students?
I started to look at this in a bit more detail — if I examine the population of people who have transformative experiences, what does their grade point look like? It’s higher. You go to all those extracurricular things that are related to the classroom and outside the classroom and your grades are higher. People seem happier.
What kind of influence do transformative experiences have after graduation?
I got invited to dinner from a person at Gallup who specializes in higher education. He said, “We have gotten a database for a whole university to do a survey. We asked them how many engagement activities they did.” They had a list — study abroad, undergraduate research, internships, etc. Then they asked them these questions about lifestyle, family, income — all of these different things.
He said it was astounding — the more engagement activities you had, the happier you were for the rest of your life, regardless of family income. People who had three engagement activities are happier than those who had one engagement activity. He said, “I’ve never seen such a clear correlation in my life between activities in college and what it meant for the rest of your life.”
How did that realization inform what you’ve done for the student experience?
I decided this is an obligation, not an extra. It’s an obligation for universities to deliver transformative experiences. I looked at Penn State and realized that we would brag about the number of people going to do study abroad, but as a percentage, we were not good compared to the Big Ten. We have lots and lots of activities at Penn State, but how do we make this easier for the students to find? It eventually led to the creation of the Student Engagement Network.
Another important aspect of your presidency has involved efforts around diversity and inclusion. Why is that work so vital?
I’ve felt for a very long time that this is an imperative. If you’re a land-grant institution, you need to serve the citizens of society, which includes educating all citizens. In my experiences, when you meet somebody different and you get to know them, you have a richer experience in college. As an institution, we’ve made substantial progress in a lot of areas around diversity and inclusion, but there is much more work to do and many more changes to be made. We have made it a real priority to foster learning, cultivate engagement and promote new levels of understanding across our entire campus community. These are very, very critical efforts for Penn State.
How are shifts in state and national demographics influencing Penn State’s efforts around diversity and inclusion?
The world is changing. This University is rapidly moving to having the majority population not be the majority population. Our business model demands that if we’re going to do well as a University and attract people, we better be welcoming and inclusive. It is a moral imperative, a business imperative and an environmental richness imperative. That’s the way I see it.
Shifting to athletics, the Nittany Lions athletics program has been a point of pride for you. What have you valued in the opportunity to oversee a Division I sports enterprise like that of Penn State?
An awful lot of people say sports is in some ways the front door to your institution. They help bring the alumni back, and these things are true.
This is an institution where the word “student-athlete” actually means student-athlete. Every time they put up the graduation success rate that’s 91%, 92%, you know you’re in an environment of the way athletics should be. Hopefully we don’t have someone coming who just wants to advance into a pro sport. These are students with different levels of gifts. They’re gifted in soccer, they’re gifted in swimming or diving or some other sport. We provide an opportunity for them to excel in those gifts with coaches, in the same way we help them excel in the classroom. That’s another thing that makes me proud.