Washington College Magazine
O'Keefe Heads MHEC
Kevin O'Keefe '74, an emeritus trustee and a member of Washington College's Marketing Task Force, has been appointed Chairman of the Maryland Higher Education Commission. Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. made the announcement in September.
Kevin O'Keefe '74 is heading the state commission that oversees higher education in Maryland.
The Washington College grad has been a member of the Commission—which sets Maryland's higher education policy—since March 2004. "I am pleased to designate Kevin O'Keefe to this important position," said Ehrlich. "He shares my commitment to improving every Marylander's access to a college education."
Issues of access and affordability are at the top of MHEC's policy agenda. The Commission is grappling with an expected surge in enrollments, with an anticipated 50,000 additional students projected to enroll in Maryland colleges and universities in the coming decade. "What campuses will be able to accommodate the increase, and how do we prioritize and direct the growth?" O'Keefe asked.
"Additionally, a significant number of these new students will be non-traditional and many will be minorities. Colleges need to prepare to serve both constituencies even better than they have in the past." Other trends reshaping higher education are the growth in for-profit institutions and the proliferation of learning institutions that are not accredited by traditional agencies such as the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
Still, one of the most critical tasks facing Maryland higher education policymakers today, according to O'Keefe, has its roots in the past, when black and white institutions existed in parallel universes. "Maryland had a dual system of higher education until the late 1950s, and we're still dealing with the legacy of that," he says. "More than 50 years later, we're still working to ensure that all negative consequences of a dual system are redressed."
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