The Garden Isle

Dobelle: Kauaians shouldn't have to leave home for four-year degree
By PAUL C. CURTIS - TGI Staff Writer

KALAPAKI BEACH - Family is a good reason for not pursuing degrees in higher education, said the president of the University of Hawaii.

Geography is not, said Dr. Evan S. Dobelle, 12th president of UH.

“People shouldn’t have to leave home to get a four-year degree,” Dobelle said while addressing the annual general membership meeting of the Kaua‘i Chamber of Commerce at the Kauai Marriott Resort & Beach Club here.

A fan of distance learning, and of using computers and other telecommunications devices to bring upper-level undergraduate classes to UH campuses like Kauai Community College in Puhi, Dobelle said making higher education more accessible to everyone in Hawai‘i regardless of where they chose to live will have at least two positive outcomes.

First, it will encourage borderline students to enroll in college and continue their education. Second, it will help keep educated people in the islands, he said.

A Kaua‘i student should not have to leave the island to get a four-year degree, said Dobelle. The current system, which virtually mandates at least commuting to O'ahu to get a bachelor's degree in a chosen discipline, penalizes some students simply because of where they were born, or choose to live, he added.

He is on a mission to unify the 10-campus UH system for the good of the state, and he has some believers when he says that in a few years the research and other programs at UH-Manoa will be mentioned in the same breath as the University of North Carolina, University of Michigan, University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford University.

What he wants to do to the UH system sounds much like what Mayor Bryan Baptiste wants to do to the Kaua‘i community: unite it.

For Dobelle, an important step is getting rid of KCC, at least the name, and if approval from the UH Board of Regents comes later this month, KCC will officially become the University of Hawaii at Kauai.

It is part of a massive system restructuring that includes everything from staffing to funding priorities to a single university logo to replace the 150 different ones in use now, he said before a crowd of nearly 500 people here.

The idea is to create a UH system that recognizes the interdependence that was the root of the Native Hawaiian culture long before other races arrived in the islands, he said.

“We are a family. We are an ‘ohana. And we will not play favorites,” he continued.