A New Community College for Marines and Sailors

Last month, after six years as president of Reed College and a year of teaching at Harvard, I took a new job, as the first ever chief learning officer for the United States Navy and Marine Corps. One of my first tasks is to create a brand-new online community college for enlisted marines and sailors. This week, we will begin a search (to be listed in Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education) for a president and provost to lead this exciting effort. As we open the search, I want to share our hopes for this brand-new community college.

Every year, thousands of young women and men enlist in the navy and marine corps. They receive world-class training, often in valuable technical fields, but most do not have an opportunity to take high-quality college-level courses and pursue their education. This is a major lost opportunity both for them and for our armed forces. Our idea is to create a community college just for our enlisted team members -- the United States Naval Community College -- so they can develop intellectually while they serve their country. Offering world-class enlisted education will make our force more capable, and it will give these young men and women an educational foundation for the rest of their lives and careers. It will also support our recruiting efforts in an era in which free community college is rapidly becoming a civilian norm.

So here’s our basic plan. Whenever a new sailor or marine enlists, they will be automatically enrolled in our new community college. As they attend and complete military training schools, they will be granted appropriate college credit, as determined by ACE, on their community college transcript. Once they have completed the training required for their military job, they will be able to take courses through the community college at no cost, leading to intermediate certificates and, ultimately, an associate’s degree.

Our community college will offer degrees in a small number of fields in high demand in the navy and marine corps and valuable in the civilian world as well, including cyber, information technology, management, data analytics and computer science. We will also offer at least one liberal arts degree, perhaps in history, for folks who are not technically inclined. These degree programs will foster the development of technical skills, critical thinking, reading, numeracy and communication capabilities. Our community college will create a small number of “navalized” general education courses, but the vast majority of course work will be offered through very high-quality civilian education partners with successful track records delivering college degrees online. Because sailors and marines face many time constraints associated with service needs, our partners will be required to offer courses in a variety of flexible formats -- synchronous, asynchronous and self-paced -- so rigorous naval education is available to our entire team, no matter where and how they are deployed across the globe.

The USNCC will ultimately be a fully accredited institution. Initially, however, degrees will be issued by already accredited partner institutions. We hope to enter into articulation agreements with all partners to ensure that the course work completed by sailors and marines will be eligible for transfer to civilian degree programs, providing a base from which our students can continue formal education tor the remainder of their careers, whether in uniform or as civilians.

So, here’s how folks in the higher education world can get involved. First, as I mentioned, we are starting our search for a founding president and provost to create and lead this new college. This is a tremendous opportunity: the chance to build, from scratch, a community college for over 400,000 students, with the financial backing of the federal government to make sure it is properly resourced. We hope to attract a great applicant pool, so if you are interested, please apply, and if you have friends who might want to join us, please let them know about this opportunity.

Second, we are looking to identify potential partners to offer degree programs through our community college. A few weeks ago, we put out a request for information letting people know about our plans and asking for their thoughts about how their institutions might meet our needs. If you work for an institution that offers high-quality online degrees and want to be involved in educating the men and women of the marine corps and navy, please reach out to us.

Finally, advice. This is a new undertaking, and we hope to learn from all the higher education professionals already working in this space. So if you have thoughts about how we should move forward, let us know. We’d love your help!