Ep. 5 - Talking with Ryan Fewins-Bliss of MCAN on Higher Education Messages, Engaging Communities, and Dreaming Big
Transcript
Hi and welcome to First Gen FM, a podcast for educators who want to learn more about serving, working with, celebrating first generation college bound and college students. Today, it is my pleasure to interview Ryan Fewens Bliss, who is the Executive Director of the Michigan College Access Network, where he has been since 2019 in that, in that particular role.
He is in charge of MCAN's policy work and their partnerships and reaching their goal of 60 for 30, which is having 60% of the students in Michigan go on to post secondary education. So a fantastic goal. He's worked in education and the nonprofit field for nearly 20 years, both in K through 12 in higher education and in community organizations like Campus Compact.
So helping the Michigan colleges and universities with their community service work. Welcome Ryan. I'm really excited to have you here today. And I've done, you know, I did, I did that introduction, but I think it's always good if you share a little bit about yourself and what's the spark that got you.
Doing what you're doing now and and in education. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. Ryan Fewens Bliss, Executive Director of Michigan College Access Network. We're a statewide nonprofit in Michigan trying to increase the number of students who get into college, stay there and ultimately finish. So that our population attainment rate will be 60% by the year 2030.
I have been in education my entire career in non profits. I worked on some college campuses, worked for some non profits before I came to MCAN, but I've been at MCAN now for 10 years. A whole quarter of my life, I've been at the organization. I had some realization when I hit my 10 year anniversary earlier this spring but it doesn't feel like it's been 10 years because it feels like this problem and opportunity evolves over time and we're constantly trying to be creative.
So I would say the spark that has got me into this and keeps me in this is college was transformative for me. I went to a regional institution about 90 minutes from where I grew up. And, you know, I'm white, I was middle class. I sort of waltzed into college with very few barriers and looked around and was like, where, where's my classmates?
Where's everybody else? Why didn't we all go to college and learned about. You know, my own privilege and that it wasn't so easy for everybody else. And, and college transformed me even with all of that privilege. So I just thought like, boy, if college can transform me as someone who was born, you know, with ahead of the game, what could it do for everybody else?
What does it do for everybody else? And so it became my calling to make sure everybody at least had that opportunity to figure it out. So I love, I love the 60 at 30 60 by 30, 60 by 30. 60 by 30. Yeah, I just, I think that's such a, such a, it's so memorable. So is it 60% post secondary, 60% with a college degree?
Yeah, 60% with a post secondary certificate or degree. Okay. Okay. That's great. And you serve students all over Michigan. So what are some trends you're seeing in Michigan? And maybe what are some trends that you're just seeing nationally that are going to influence who's going to college, how they're going to college?
Well, let me correct you on that. We don't actually serve students at MCAN. We serve the institutions, the adults, the systems that serve students or an intermediary organization. And I only say that in particular, because it means that the trends that we're seeing, what we're you know, the challenges that we're seeing are really coming from the system.
We have learned, I think a while ago that. The problem isn't students. We've talked about the problem being students for so long. Black students, Hispanic students, first gen students, low income students. If we could just change them, boy, would we have something going for us. Right. Well, lo and behold, no, it's the systems.
It's the adults. It's the institutions that need to change. For a long time, MCAN used to say the system is broken, but what we have realized is the system is actually working exactly how it was designed to keep a certain segment out of higher education. It isn't broken. It's working really well to do what it was meant to do.
So we have to tear the system down and rebuild it from the ground up. In a more inclusive way with different end results in our mind. So that's a lot of what we see is the systems in an institution sort of waking up to that realization. There was a recent publication called student friendly institutions, student friendly colleges.
And we think about that and talk about that a lot. What can we do as colleges, institutions, high schools, communities, to shift the conversation around college, shift our mindset about who it's for and where it's going and then implement those changes. We've seen a lot of positives there, but there's still a long way to go.
One of the trends we've seen most recently is sort of a, a, Backing up of that progression digression, regression, if you will that folks, especially here in Michigan, you know, we built cars, we invented cars, we built cars, everybody's family is connected to cars in some way. It's tough for a state that has manufacturing in its DNA to realize that we're a knowledge based economy now.
And that doesn't mean we're not going to build cars anymore, but we're going to build smart batteries and EV cars, and we're still going to have manufacturing, but those people on the manufacturing line are going to have certificates and degrees because they're operating robotics. They're doing high tech sort of clean manufacturing.
So we're not moving wholly away from that as a state, but what
jobs to get project, excuse me, progression in your career looks a little bit different. So, we're really battling this sort of I call it sort of a weird culture ness where folks are now telling students, you don't need to go to college anymore, there's no return on investment, you'll have a million dollars in debt.
You know, you see it on CNN, you see talking heads, and it's always like, you know, rich white dudes who went to Notre Dame, whose kids are, you know, at Northeastern, or at Michigan State, and U of M. Telling everybody else that their kids probably don't need college and should go somewhere else and boy, it's almost a relief for first gen families to hear that message because they've been panicking all along about how they're going to do it, how are we going to pay for it, how are we going to get there, how are we going to stay there, how are we going to be successful?
But boy, and this person who, you know, is respectable is on CNN is telling me this, that I don't have to go, that my kid doesn't have to go whoosh, right? Don't send it to the workforce and they'll be okay. But all of the data, all of the data says that they probably be okay. They've got to get some training.
They've got to get some, and we use college in a broad sense and can do include certificates, associates, bachelors, and beyond. You've got to get some college to be able to do that. Otherwise you won't be able to build wealth and assets and be able to survive in this in this world. So that was a long winded way of telling you what we're seeing, but.
We're seeing it fast, and I have a real panic about it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I think you're so, so right that the message out there is college isn't worth it. And yet, all the research says... that college is worth it. It's just how you think about college again in its broadest way and not just how do you get to an Ivy League school.
It's so much broader than that. I was just saying I was at a conference last week and a member of the panel up on the stage said we're moving away from degrees. We're moving to skills. Skills are what's important. Demonstrate skills. And, you know, like a skills transcript is what we need now, something to document your skills.
I would argue that's what a college degree is, but they were really, really, I would say, anti college at this conference and really wanted to talk about these skills and skills transcript. When I look the guy up, he has two degrees, one from University of Chicago, the other from DePaul. He doesn't have a skills transcript.
He's got two real highfalutin degrees that are getting him to the stage. Where he's making, no doubt, six figures in his suit, telling everybody else they should get a skills transcript. I'm not saying skills aren't the way to go. You know, there isn't a place in the conversation for that. But, students hear that.
Low income people hear that. People of color hear that. And they take that, what I would call, bad advice from well meaning adults into their brain, and they process that. And then they make their life's decisions based on that. And if we gotta, we gotta think about like the lives we have in our hands here.
Someone who has, you know, a master's degree and also has a good job and is paid well and, you know, has white privilege. These, these folks lives are in our hands. And if we're going to give them bad advice and walk away and never see them again, never think about them again. I think we have to take that much more seriously, and I think we have to do data based advice and nothing else.
Otherwise, we're doing the exact harm that we're preaching others not to do. Do you think this is a result of the pandemic, that this message is coming out more? Do you think this has been a long time coming, and people are just promoting that you don't need college more, just more and more as a part of, part for the course?
Yeah, my experience is in Michigan and I would say it is a long time coming. I've been at this work for 10 years. I've been with the organization one way or another. For 13 since its inception and slowly but surely that sort of slow rolling beast has been coming at us. And then I think the pandemic threw gas on the flames.
Suddenly people could sort of be like, look, we said all along this is what was happening. And oh, you know, the world changed and your lives changed and you want different things out of life. And maybe it's not working hard at the corporate culture all the time. Again, I think that all isn't bad if we're then going to tell students not to go to college because that's really bad advice.
I think it's not informed by data. It's like sexy. It's cool. It gets you on TV. It gets you on, you know, in news stories because it feels counterculture. Like, you know, I'm giving the real behind the scenes advice to people. And I just think it's gross. It's really gross. I want these folks nowhere near my children.
Yeah. Yeah, and I think, I think it's up to the institutions, the colleges to kind of counteract some of that, especially around financial aid and paying for college. So, so what kinds of things do you do to try to help counter MCAN? Well, one of the problems that we've seen is that when institutions try to counter this message, they are seen as self serving.
Of course they're saying these things. They just want more, you know, people to come in and pay them ungodly amounts of tuition. And, I won't argue, it's not un self serving. It is, but I don't, they're... I don't think it's fair to just say that they're in it for the money. I, you know, most people are not getting rich by working in college.
So I do believe in like the democratic underpinnings of higher education. And I think for the most part, it's the untrue. But I think institutions have to engage communities much different, much differently, engage high schools much differently, students and parents much differently, how they talk about things, what they talk about, and really play up the opportunities for accessibility and support.
The financial aid programs and again affordability support things obviously are at the forefront of people's mind but people are right now thinking about am I gonna have a high paying job by not going to college? I get to stay at home save money. It's less work. It's not as hard and that's the question that they're asking so colleges have to answer that better than Come to us for two or four years, you know, get a liberal arts degree, which I have and really support in general.
But the people that society has sort of moved beyond those things, we have to find better ways to cater to these students and their families to give them better. Give them data to show the full pathway for them. What can they do while they're in high school to prepare, maybe even earn some credits and then what do they do?
Where do they go next? How do they stay there? How do we get them to complete? And how does that lead ultimately to the career that they want to get all while our business friends are saying that the jobs that these students are going to take. Don't even exist yet. So how do you find the message to communicate that to folks?
Like you should take this pathway because it'll have you in the right direction. And, you know, five, 10 years down the road when these jobs, you know, these new creative, these new technical. Things are available. You'll be ready to take it. It's a hard message. It's not very tangible. Yeah, right, right. And, and it's, it's very difficult to say that college and learning and continuing your education.
is a lifelong process, just continuing education, because you're going to have to pivot many times as you go down the road, because there's no such thing, generally speaking, as you go to a career, you stay there, you know, at one place, one corporation, one institution for 35, 40 years, and then you retire.
It's your move, especially now, you know, there's a lot of movement and so many jobs coming. And if, I mean, I always feel if I didn't have a college degree, I would not have been able to. continue to learn like I learned because I learned how to learn through my liberal arts program. Yeah. And I think the unspokenness of what, you know, I, if we were being more honest with people, folks who don't go to college more often are using their bodies to do work, not their minds.
I'm not saying they're doing mindless work, but they're using hands. They're using their full bodies and they're more apt to get hurt. They're more apt to have to retire early because they just physically can't do it anymore. And, you know, I don't think that is so far away. From the history of slavery, right?
We've said another population, the other group of people to do the physical hard labor for us who don't have to do that. I, I just think there's a through line to that. And when we're encouraging students of color, low income students, first gen students to take this other path. Again, I think it has an ugly underbelly.
I'm not saying people intend that, but you have to look at history in its whole and how we have treated these populations. Historically, to say that we've moved beyond that, I think is real naive. Yeah, yeah, the inequity certainly still exists and it's the same populations that it has been in the past.
What are some things that are keeping you up at night as you try to help move organizations and colleges and high schools 60 by 30. Well, keeping up is this messaging issue, you know, we're a small nonprofit state in a large country. We're trying to get the message out that college is affordable when we do it right.
College is attainable in colleges for everyone. We don't have the budget of a CNN or Fox News or. You know, the manufacturing association, you know, we just, we didn't don't have that kind of budget. And so to fight against that message has been incredibly hard. And ultimately we're saying you should pay a lot of money and do a lot of hard work, right?
Our, our message is real hard to get across for people to be like, yeah, that sounds like the way I'll go. Maybe I'll go this way where those folks are telling me. It's easier, it's quicker, and I make more money, I get it, I get it. But ultimately it's bad advice. So I think how we, my team thinks a lot about how do we get the message across us?
How do we show the truth of what's happening? How do we pop that bubble of this get rich quick scheme because you're going into welding. It just doesn't bear out with the data. Yeah, right. We're, we're trying to get people to eat broccoli is basically what it is. And, and they're all saying, no, like there's chocolate and there's potato chips and there's cake.
And it's like, no, no, you want the broccoli. Yes, that is a great way to describe it. That's a, it's a, it's a shame. I like broccoli. So maybe That's a vegetarian. I'm the number one person to say that broccoli is great. Right. Broccoli is awesome. At least we're not trying to get them to eat kale. That would be way too hard.
listeners, you know, you're out there, you're in, you're in high school or you're in college. What would you tell them, Ryan, that there's some things that maybe we could do that, that they could do right now to, to help with that messaging? I think raising your voice, especially to a first gen student.
Students who graduate, students of color who graduate, low income students who graduate, going back to their community and talking about the truth about the job opportunities, the promotion opportunities, the entrepreneurial opportunities they've been able to get from this pathway. You know, it's easy for me, again, as a privileged white guy, to say these are the things that happen.
That's not everyone's pathway. So we need folks that have been able to be successful at this, that has been life changing, to, to raise their voice in the media, in their community, on their campuses. wherever they can to tell their stories. Yeah. I think that I love that. I love that because it's, if everybody did a little bit, it would be a lighter lift and it would be a critical mass of people to counter the, you know, the CNNs, the Fox news that are, that are sort of automatically reaching more people.
So I love that. I love that. Let me ask you this. First, is there anything that you, That you just want educators in high schools and colleges to know, like any just words of advice besides go get your message out there, help. You know, for me, it would be help my students go back to their communities and say, this is what college is doing for me.
This is how it's transformative to me. These are the careers that have opened up to me. This is how I can help my family through these experiences. Are there, is there other advice you'd like to share? Yeah, I think, you know, in the all American way, I would say that folks should still dream big. What is it you want to do?
Where do you want to go? What do you want for your children? And let's make it happen. Let's not settle. Let's not settle for what other people are telling us are the best for our children or the top that our children can get to. Let's continue that American historical big dream for ourselves and our communities and make it happen.
And institutions need to challenge people to dream big. Communities need to talk about dreaming big. Organizations can't find. Funding and opportunities for folks to dream big, to lift that up. I just think it's who wants to be the person who tells other people to settle? Who wants to be the person that tells other people not to dream big, that they can't achieve their dreams.
That's not why I don't want to be that. I don't want to be that nonprofit executive. I don't want to be that community member. I think we have to return to the days of dreaming big and finding ways that. Folks can get along that pathway. Even if they never get to that big dream, maybe they will land somewhere else, you know?
It might not be the Michael Jordan, but boy, they might be the coach. They might be the director of, you know, Beth. Right. You know, within the infrastructure in that type of career that is meaningful to them. Which is really important and, you know, well paid as well. Right. Yeah, I do think the dreaming big and the helping young people keep that it's not even idealism because they're very realistic, but it's that that feeling of I can change the world.
And, like, letting them run with that and not putting that flame out, I, I think is, is something really vital that we can all do for, for, for young people, no matter what age they are, but I love how you put it as like, keep dreaming big. And that very much is the American way. I think that's fantastic. Yeah.
And dreaming big might be the community college and that's great. Yeah. Community colleges are essential to our communities and to our states and to the country. So everyone's dream and everyone's big is gonna look different. Mm-hmm. . And that's great. That's what makes us a diverse, robust, democratic society.
Yeah. So I don't mean everyone has to be toy Harvard or even a four year degree is gonna dream big for you, to get you where you wanna go. Yeah, yeah, that that alignment with what your dream is, what you have to do to get there. And then how can organizations like and can, you know, like, like all of the people who are listening to this help those students get there.
So, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. This has been this has been wonderful. I appreciate, like, all that MCAN is doing. I'm very familiar with the The college access network, college attainment network, all the things that are going on with MCAN and MCAN, where can people connect with you? What, what are some ways that if they wanted to reach out and say like, Oh, you know, I'm in Michigan, like, what can I find out, you know, more about MCAN?
Yeah. Visit our website, www. micollegeaccess. com. MI college access.org. And that'll take you to our grants. That'll take you to our scholarships, that'll take you to our programs. We have things for high schools, we have things for school districts. We have programs for colleges, universities. We have grant programs for communities who want to attack this together.
We have robust national service programs with AmeriCorps both in high schools and in community college campuses. So there's opportunities to serve and be involved there. We're starting a new workforce strategy, how we make sure this work is tied to the workforce. We're going to be talking more about adult students a bunch coming up here.
So that's the type of stuff you can find at our website. And we do lots of resourcing, giving up people tools to do the work. And then certainly call us up 5 1 7 3 and ask for me or any of our team members and. I'd love to talk to you. We just, sort of those cold calls out of nowhere that I heard you on a podcast, or I read about you in the news, we love that.
We've got something for everyone, and so we'd love to reach out and talk to people. And if you're in a different state and you're thinking of How could I build an MCAN or is there an MCAN in my state? We're really well connected nationally. Would love to talk to those people too. We have no intellectual property.
We don't trademark anything. We would much rather give it all away, thanks to the taxpayers and the funders of Michigan, so that other states can do this as well. Nobody wins by keeping other people down. No, absolutely. We all, yeah, we all rise together. So I think that's great. And I will, I will link the phone number and the website all in the show notes so that if you're looking to contact Ryan, you know exactly where to find him.
Thank you again for taking the time to come and join me today. I know that folks are walking away, maybe rethinking some things and thinking about how they can serve their communities and their institutions better and even, you know, help students get the word out. that words out about the experiences they're having with higher education or just education in general.
Thank you so much, Ryan. And I hope you're all inspired to have some great conversations around this. And you can all, as always, you can reach me at firstgen, at firstgenfm. com. That's firstgenfm. com. And if you need to contact me, there's a contact form there. And you can sign up for my newsletter, and I'd be happy to share with you what's coming next and who our guests are going forward. Thank you and we will see you next week. Bye now.
