While the field of higher education is full of talented and innovative people, it’s rare to meet someone who comes up with something completely new in the arena of higher ed itself.
Make no mistake, we in higher education love our traditions. The academy can be slow to change for good reasons – we’ve learned a lot over the centuries about how to discover and transmit knowledge at the university level, about how to preserve academic freedom and shared governance, and about how to use advances in knowledge to benefit society and our world. Yet even as we preserve this foundation, our campuses are also fast-moving machines that are constantly evolving to incorporate new technologies, advance new approaches to learning, and invest in emerging areas of inquiry.
And within this environment, every once in a great while, someone comes up with a new idea so transformational that it completely turns higher education on its head and fundamentally changes how people access and use higher learning.
One of my favorite examples: Back in the 19th century, President Abraham Lincoln saw the need for a whole new class of public colleges – land-grant institutions – that would serve the children of the working class. Until then, higher education had been almost exclusively the province of the wealthy and privileged, but President Lincoln realized that a growing nation, reeling from the Civil War, would need a vastly more educated populace to flourish. That’s how state universities like CSU came into being – and eventually came to educate a significant portion of American students.
Land-grant universities were firmly established as part of the educational landscape when Dr. Becky Hiromi Takeda-Tinker came to work for the Colorado State University System. But she used that foundation to set about building something completely new…and revolutionary: CSU Global, the first fully online, fully accredited, public university in the United States. And she did it without state funding.
CSU Global was designed to offer a public university option in what had previously been a private, for-profit space. And while campuses like CSU and CU had long offered distance and online learning options, we had never been able to provide students the option of earning their degrees 100% online, from start to finish.
Becky changed that. She built CSU Global from scratch, with the strong support of the CSU System Board of Governors, driven by her entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to serving learners no matter where in the world they were located. Soldiers on active duty in the Middle East. Parents returning to the workforce after the birth of their children. Employed people who were trying to build the skills needed for a better job and salary. Folks striving to return to the labor market after a layoff. These were the people Becky wanted to serve with her new university. She recognized before most of us that online higher education wasn’t a trend, it was the future.
In 2022, 54% of undergraduate students were enrolled in at least one distance education course – and 26% were exclusively enrolled in online learning. Only 4.5% of colleges offer courses primarily online – which means that of those exclusively learning online, the vast majority are still enrolled at private, for-profit institutions. But CSU Global opened the door to a different path.
And in its first decade, CSU Global awarded more than 20,000 degrees to highly motivated, hard-working learners around the globe – the majority of whom are now working in their fields of study. And within 3-5 years of degree completion, CSU Global degree holders saw a median salary increase of $31,500 for undergraduates and $39,000 for graduate students.
I don’t know anyone besides Becky who could have gotten it done, especially with the resources and timeframe she was given. With a background in private equity and technology, and leadership experience in both industry and government, she brought a unique focus and vision to a project that easily could have stalled along the way. She recognized early on the importance of industry partnerships to align educational offerings with workforce needs, and she was a stickler for accountability, collaborative decision-making, taking educated risks, and delivering on promises. The outstanding staff that carries on her legacy at CSU Global is a reflection of her belief in people and what can be accomplished with a good idea and a high-achieving team.
Becky died May 8, at the age of 63. I still can’t type these words without the emotions piling on. She was more than her resume. She was a champion of ideas and people. She never stopped seeking out new ways to serve and mentor. She was a great friend and colleague. At her retirement party the week before she passed, she was comforting, thanking, and honoring others, even when we were all there to honor her.
She leaves behind a world and a Colorado community that are better because she was here, and sadder and less sure without her. But that sadness is balanced in knowing that Becky always moved on to greater things. And what she built here in her too-short lifetime has transformed and enriched thousands of lives. How many of us can claim that?
Lincoln would be proud of her. I imagine them discussing education over dinner. I wish I could hear it.
– tony
Tony Frank, Chancellor
CSU System
In memory: Becky Hiromi Takeda-Tinker. Read her recent Q&A.