Welcome to Mile Markers, a bimonthly newsletter about rural higher education. I’m Nick Fouriezos, an Open Campus national reporter who grew up at the crossroads of suburban Atlanta and the foothills of Appalachia.

Today’s Roadmap

01: Postcards: Learnings from the 2025 Aspen Prize winner

01: Postcards

Two years ago, nearing the end of the spring semester at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, Cynde Larsen brought together her faculty and delivered news that could have broken them. 

It was the time of year when administrators and instructors alike could be forgiven for wanting to get through exams and then take a summer breather.However, Larsen and her team wanted to energize them and make changes.

They had just looked deeper into their graduation outcomes, and identified a number of programs that were consistently sending students into low wage jobs with minimal long-term opportunity.

As much as it pained them to imagine dropping longstanding programs, including agriculture and early childhood education, they felt like it was time to draw a line in the sand.

They decided to make a new promise to themselves and their students: “Never graduate anyone into poverty. Faculty would need to rework those programs to improve outcomes within one year, or the programs would be cut. 

“It was scary for us, and it was scary for our faculty members,” says Larsen, the chief academic officer and executive dean.

Despite those fears, that decision would lead them to unexpected discoveries … and to being named the winner of this year’s 2025 Aspen Prize (if you’re not already familiar, former President Barack Obama once called it the “Oscars for community colleges”).

A radical reimagining

Rather than cause panic, the ultimatum sparked innovation.

Despite being a cornerstone in the rural 2,764-person community, graduates of the agriculture program weren’t earning living wages. So the college met with local employers to find out what skills could make the difference.

The answer? Drone certification and pesticide applicator training.

Modern farms use sensors from drones to gather data on crop health, soil conditions, and other critical information — and farmers were willing to promise a significant pay bump for those who knew how to use them.

The college updated its curriculum to include a precision agronomy course this fall, teaching students how to utilize technology and data to maximize crop production while optimizing water, pesticide, and fertilizer management.

The college also added an eight-week pesticide applicator course to help students earn more in the meantime — a certification that typically increases pay by $1-$2 per hour.

Other low-wage programs found similar changes that could allow their graduates to increase their potential incomes.

Despite working with a limited budget, the college was able to start shifting its manufacturing program toward advanced automation technologies, after securing commitments from employers to fund new equipment.

In some cases, college administrators were blunt, telling businesses that they could not graduate students into poverty — and that they either needed to raise wages or provide other support, or risk having their industry’s feeder programs at the college cut entirely.

That’s led to some creative solutions, with employers funding some students’ tuitions or providing other supports, seeing it as an investment in their future talent pipeline.

When curriculum shifts weren’t enough

For programs where technical additions couldn't solve the wage problem, the college found another path.

Faculty in the early childhood education and human services programs realized that a certificate or two-year program wasn’t enough to secure higher wages — however, they also knew that a bachelor’s degree in those fields would command a livable wage.

For those programs, the college expanded transfer agreements with four-year universities.

That alone wouldn’t be enough, without extensive career planning support. Which is why Southwest Tech also launched a comprehensive student-success  initiative.

Starting with a career assessment, the plan includes a personalized academic map showing not just required classes but exactly which campus resources — from tutoring to mental health counseling to emergency financial aid — will help them succeed.

Every student now completes a detailed financial plan covering not just tuition and fees, but housing, transportation, and daily living expenses. When gaps appear between their resources and needs, the college's foundation steps in with targeted scholarships.

Certain programs ultimately were cut.

But new high-wage programs are also being added, such as precision agronomy and radiography, which can leading to in-demand medical jobs like MRI and CT tech.

While in earlier stages, Southwest Tech is hoping to offer AI data analytics, cybersecurity, and respiratory therapy in the future.

"The sophistication of this model at a 1,300-student college is astonishing. One might think it's easier with fewer students, but colleges of this size simply don't do this sort of thing," says Josh Wyner, founder and executive director of the College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute.

Better outcomes

Southwest Tech’s decision to look at its graduation outcomes more closely back in 2023 was prompted by a call with the Aspen Institute and the Community College Research Center, as part of their “Unlocking Opportunities” cohort.

“While it was scary, the faculty members were just incredible. They leaned on each other, and on their local employers,” Larsen says.

The college has seen promising results since taking drastic action.

• The average graduate earns nearly $14,000 more annually, compared to all new hires in its service area.

• About 58% of its students graduate or transfer to a four-year university, compared to the national rate of 39%.

• Nationally, just 29% of Pell-eligible students graduate, but 55% of them do at Southwest Tech.

That last figure is particularly impressive to Wyner, as it shows that the college is improving the lives of low-income students in particular — and underscores how others can learn from their example.

“There is a radical sense of accountability for student success that is rarely seen at any college level, and especially at a small, rural community college,” he says.

Southwest Tech will receive $700,000 of the $1 million Aspen Prize, with the remaining money split between three other colleges (the prize is funded by the Joyce Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, the Kresge Foundation, and Ascendium, which sponsors this newsletter — you can read our editorial independence policy here).

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