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Steve Shank spoke on the need for innovation in higher education

MINNEAPOLIS, May 16, 2011 – Steve Shank, founder of Capella Education Company (NASDAQ: CPLA), a provider of online post-secondary education through its wholly owned subsidiary Capella University (www.capella.edu), gave a keynote speech today to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW) forum on Degrees of Change: Private Sector Innovations Transforming Higher Education. The ICW is the education and workforce nonprofit, nonpartisan affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It promotes the rigorous educational standards and effective job training systems needed to preserve the strength of our country's workforce.

Shank's speech focused on the need for substantive change in how higher education is offered, and how private sector innovations are helping to increase productivity in higher education. The Obama administration has made college affordability and completion a priority, and the president set a national goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Private sector innovations in higher education are a critical component in achieving that goal.

Highlights of Shank's speech:

• Today higher education has major gaps in the value we deliver to our students and our society.  The two principal issues are:

• System-wide inefficiency and unsustainable cost inflation is making higher education unaffordable for too many Americans.
• We're failing to deliver the educational outcomes we need: Unacceptable graduation rates; too many students shut out; and growing questions about whether graduates are getting the right preparation for the right job opportunities.

• We need a new cycle of game-changing innovation. I believe we're poised to see this happen.  Sophia is one example of this creativity. It's an online, social teaching and learning platform that offers bite-size tutorials. Sophia gives teachers a do-it-yourself media capability, and connects teachers with students who need deeper learning on a particular topic. The platform at Sophia.org is a highly innovative educational "mashup" of Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube (Capella Education Company is an investor with Sophia).

• Regulation can either support healthy innovation or it can kill it by reinforcing the old paradigm.

• With relevant, comparable and risk adjusted accountability data, policy makers can address the questions that are critical to postsecondary innovation and improvement.

• Effective regulation must be based on meaningful information about schools: the student population served; completion rates; learning and career outcomes, "apples to apples" data on educational costs and affordability, and debt metrics. We need data that is comparable across sectors and accessible both to policy makers and the public.  

• The critical performance gaps of affordability and inadequate student outcomes are not just for profit issues; these problems cross all of higher education. These issues require a coherent approach to public policy, which applies to all schools. 

In addition to Shank, additional speakers will include Anthony Wilder Miller, deputy secretary, U.S. Department of Education; and Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and president of the Forum for Policy Innovation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

About Capella University

Founded in 1991, Capella Education Company is a national leader in online education and parent company of Capella University, a regionally accredited online university*. Capella students are currently enrolled in master's, specialist, or doctoral degree programs in business, counseling, education, health administration, human resource management, human services, information technology, nonprofit management and leadership, nursing, psychology, public administration, public health, public safety, and social work. Capella also offers bachelor's degree programs in business, information technology, nursing, psychology, public administration, and public safety. These academic programs are designed to meet the needs of working adults, combining high quality, competency-based curricula with the convenience and flexibility of an online learning format. Currently, Capella University offers 44 graduate and undergraduate degree programs with 136 specializations. Nearly 40,000 learners were enrolled as of March 31, 2011. For more information about Capella Education Company, please visit http://www.capellaeducation.com. For more information about Capella University, please visit http://www.capella.edu or call 1.888.CAPELLA (227.3552).

* Capella University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), www.ncahlc.org.
Capella University, Capella Tower, 225 South Sixth Street, Ninth Floor, Minneapolis, MN 55402, 1.888.CAPELLA (227.3552), www.capella.edu.

Learn more about earning an online degree:

• online education (http://www.capella.edu/online_education.aspx)
• online degree (http://www.capella.edu)
• accredited online university (http://www.capella.edu/about_capella/accreditation.aspx)
• online college (http://www.capella.edu/online_college_degree_programs.aspx)