1780 – The Official Blog of Transylvania University

1780 | The Official Blog of Transylvania University

Transylvania vice president featured in report on the value proposition of college tuition

Transylvania Vice President for Enrollment and Student Life Holly Sheilley was recently featured by The Lane Report in its cover article on the value of a college education. Sheilley, along with higher education leaders from some of Kentucky’s public and private colleges, responded to a series of questions about what students attending college can expect as a return on their investment. According to The Lane Report, “For most prospective Kentucky college students today, affordability remains a top concern, but they are more willing to pay for postsecondary education if they know they will receive a high return on that investment. Namely, a job in their career field soon after they toss their mortar boards into the sky on graduation day.” At Transylvania, that success rate – placement in a job or graduate school – is 95% within six months of graduation. The Q&A below is excerpted from original article. To read the full article, visit The Lane Report online. Are today’s students more “transactional” in their choice of postsecondary education institutions, prioritizing acquisition of marketable skills in exchange for their tuition dollars? Holly Sheilley: Absolutely. In today’s digital environment, information is more transparent and readily available for prospective students than ever before. This access empowers students to handpick institutions that are most likely to help them develop marketable skills and deliver post-graduation success. For example, at Transylvania, we have an abundance of interest in pre-health and pre-law, primarily because of

How Transy prepared tech entrepreneur Mike Finley for “what might come”

Mike Finley ’90 doesn’t wait for the next big thing to happen. He’s too busy anticipating, inventing, marketing and selling it. Have you used an automated gas pump lately? That’s Finley. Wish you had sunglasses that offered polarized peripheral vision? His patent. These are two of what he calls the “less esoteric” of his 14 patents. These days, his primary focus is on artificial intelligence—the biggest technological shift he’s witnessed in his 30-year career. He operates with the knowledge that “in a commercially interesting timeframe, companies will be hiring software as if it were a knowledge worker.” Finley, who balances invention and viable enterprise in the full scale of his work, is able to recognize the need and opportunity, develop the tools to meet it, communicate and market the results and embrace the changes in what’s to come. He creates the vision and has the tools to carry it out. A scientist, innovator of technology, co-founder of companies, author and a volunteer who is committed to education, Finley easily traces the multiple facets of his success to Transylvania: learning to think, innovate, write and communicate, and having the freedom to follow his interests by taking a wide array of classes. The world of technology has changed profoundly since Finley graduated from Transylvania in 1990, yet, three decades later, he continues to thrive, ever on the cutting edge, finding his own tailwind, as he describes it, the difference between leading with