By Patricia Alex
27 February 2009

HACKENSACK, N.J.—Many of New Jersey’s public colleges and universities are ramping up continuing and professional education programs, banking on the money-making offerings to offset shrinking state aid and endowments.

"We have to address the fact that universities have to get very serious about generating revenue," said Bernadette Tiernan, director of continuing and professional education at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. "We’re more reactive to market forces."

Community colleges have long offered workforce training and non-credit bearing programs that respond to consumer demands. Bergen Community College, for instance, last week announced a new certificate program in wedding planning.

But now four-year schools, some of which had shied away from using revenue as a criterion for their offerings, are much less reticent about acknowledging they are in the "business" of education," Tiernan and others said.

Rutgers now has 50,000 students enrolled in non-credit programming throughout the state — including satellite locations as far south as Cape May County, said Ray Caprio, vice president for continuous education and outreach. And he said the state university hopes to increase that number by several thousand in the next few years.

"The overall strategy is that we all must become more entrepreneurial," said Caprio.

Ramapo College instituted its first programs for pre-college teens this summer, offered its first online winter session, and is working on more certificate and professional development programs including those for returning veterans, said Provost Beth Barnett.

"It’s a big change for us," she said.

The college is going with academic strengths in offering professional development, said Barnett. Ramapo has an established nursing program, for instance, and will offer professional development programs for nurses this summer in its state-of the art nursing lab.

Similarly, William Paterson University, which has a huge education department, offers a wide variety of continuing education programs for teachers.

Continuing education is a "12-month operation," Tiernan said, "without the down cycles in traditional academia."

The university has robust summer and winter sessions. It also hosted nearly 500 pre-college students at enrichment camps this summer, including its popular jazz camp and has reached out to the business community to see what kind of courses they need and want.

"We’re in the business of providing high quality education to those not necessarily seeking degrees," she said. "The brand is the university."

William Paterson also rents out its facilities more often, making use of a new students center and dorms to host outside conventions and conferences, Tiernan said.

The demand for professional development and retraining is only expected to increase with an economy in flux, experts say.

The emphasis is a response to changing realities, said Caprio, of Rutgers. He said today’s college graduates are likely to engage in as much as seven years of post graduate professional learning as their careers progress.

"The business model we all matured with is evolving," said Caprio.

Rutgers this year plans to develop more off-campus programming that could serve "several thousand students in areas now underserved by public higher education," Caprio said.

And the state university wants to try to interest some of its 300,000 living alumni in new online offerings.

"If we get even 1 percent of alumni, it turns into reasonable money," he said. "The cheapest customers to get are the ones you’ve got."
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