Redefining Access: The Power of Proximity

“As a postsecondary institution, I think it’s our job not just to be proud of the accolades…but to be conscious of ‘Who are we missing? Who wants a better life but can’t figure out how to get there?’” – Gregory A. Haile, President, Broward College

Gregory Haile, then-president of Broward College, called for reimagining higher education access through a collaborative, replicable and disruptive model in the 2021 Dallas Herring Lecture. Haile emphasized that community colleges were designed to magnify access, particularly for the most challenged among us.

Haile asked attendees to consider the implications of education attainment on a trio of troubles — economic disruption, racial reckoning and the pandemic.

When considering proximity, Haile pinpointed three different challenges: physical geography (whether students can easily travel to a college); social proximity (whether students feel they belong at a college); and financial proximity, which extends beyond tuition to all basic needs students might have, including housing and childcare.

Haile shared his own powerful story to illustrate the impact of limited proximity to higher education.

“I was that sixth grader in elementary school in 1989 who was hearing about college for the first time. My high school teacher told me that if I made it to college, I would never survive. I was in the top 15% of my high school class with a 2.7 GPA, and not a single community college ever reached out to me.”

This personal experience underscores the importance of proximity in educational access. Haile later introduced Broward College’s Broward UP initiative as a model for addressing proximity challenges, bringing college to underserved communities.

Summary provided by Nation Hahn, Managing Director, John M. Belk Endowment, and Joshua Perrin, Founder, Sound and Sense Communications