North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has named the members of a newly formed higher education task force. Charged with studying the state’s higher education governance structure, the task force is expected to present findings to the state legislature in 2019 (1). Governor Burgum will lead the task force, which consists of 15 members including himself (1). The task force membership was selected from a pool of 233 applicants (2). Notably, chair of the North Dakota State Board of Education was named a member of the task force after the Board requested representation (3). In a newspaper editorial, Governor Burgum states the purpose of the task force is to “Identify best practices for higher education governance, evaluate whether the current system operates at its highest potential to best serve the growing and changing educational and workforce needs in the 21st century, [and] recommend strategic governance improvements to the 2019 Legislature” (4).
In this editorial Burgum also states, “we must all recognize our system is being challenged by powerful economic forces enabled by rapid technological advancements, which in turn is driving competition through new education business models powered by massive, free, high-quality content – new delivery methods – lower-cost credentialing alternatives – changing cultural attitudes and rising student debt and more” (4).
These statements and the formation of this task force have relevance to the following NCTE policies:
https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CC/0223-mar2013/CC0223PolicyBrief.pdf
https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/Chron1107ResearchBrief.pdf
https://ncte.org/statement/21stcentdefinition/
Sources
(1) http://www.wday.com/news/4377881-gov-burgum-names-members-nd-higher-education-task-force