Editor’s Note: These articles are the kickoff of a New England Futures Project aimed at identifying 21st century challenges facing the six-state region. Citizen reaction and participation, leading to a shared regional agenda, are key to the project. Comments are welcome at www.newenglandfutures.org. Journalists Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson have reported for newspapers on unique strategic issues facing two dozen metropolitan regions nationwide. Peirce is a syndicated columnist (Washington Post Writers Group) who has written two books on New England. Johnson is a public policy analyst and former community college president and Minnesota government official. They are co-authors of the book “Citistates.”

For centuries, New England’s six states have been holding aces in higher education. The powerful cachet of “a New England education” has drawn generations of America’s keenest young minds. The region’s premier universities more recently have attracted tens of thousands of students from abroad, seeking degrees in science and engineering, medicine and computer technology.

In this dawning century of the intellect, what’s to worry about?

A lot, we found – an education machine wracked by inflating costs, slow to adjust to global online competition and hampered by a lack of New England students competent in the 21st century’s high-demand areas of math and science.

In this article we’ll recommend a classic “disruptive technology” – a totally new, six-state operation that enables students to focus on their needs and life prospects rather than simply responding to preset college curriculums. We’ll call it Opportunity New England, nicknamed, of course, ONE.

ONE would be the truly ONE-stop shop often talked about but never done. A place online and in person to find out about career choices and preparation needed, counsel on how to combine the best courses from multiple institutions, help getting enrolled, a hand finding financial aid. At completion, ONE becomes a placement agency and sticks with a graduate’s career development.

Nothing as ambitious exists in the United States today. It could be a historic New England first.

But why such a radical new departure? What has come on the scene that justifies it?

Take your pick:

. Competition. Higher education is a bigger part of New England’s economy than anywhere else in the U.S.: 270 colleges and universities, 860,000 students, 250,000-plus employees, $20 billion in yearly operating costs. But the region’s edge is slipping as new first-tier universities pop up across the U.S. and the world. The region’s share of national college enrollment is declining. In the ’90s, bachelor’s degrees granted across the country rose 18 percent, but in New England, just 2 percent.

. Cost and class. Combined tuition, room and board costs at many of New England’s private colleges have soared to $40,000, in some cases close to $45,000. Academia seems unable to control its costs. Unless blessed with rich parents, even academically brilliant middle-class students can’t afford private colleges. Public colleges also are becoming more expensive, as state governments cut support and campuses respond by raising fees. Stratospheric tuitions aren’t likely to deter demand for the Harvards, Dartmouths, MITs and Yales. But the economics may turn perilous for the less famous of the region’s 170 private, independent colleges and universities; though it has not happened yet, the demise of many, with big blows to their local economies, is a distinct possibility.

. Critical labor shortages. The danger is growing that New England won’t have enough scientists, engineers, information technology and health care professionals to keep its economy stable, much less growing. The enrollments of foreign students that swelled New England graduate student rolls in the ’90s are falling fast, partly because Sept. 11 led to tightened visa policies, partly because universities in Europe, Australia, Singapore, China and India have become bigger and better. With their home economies gathering steam, fewer of the foreign students who still come will be tempted to stay and enrich New England’s economy.

. Looming skills deficit. Not nearly enough New England youths are being motivated to take the challenging math and science courses they need to qualify for the economy’s most promising jobs. The problem is serious at all income levels, exacerbated by the fact that the total number of students graduating from New England high schools is projected to decline by 11,000, or 7 percent, between now and 2018.

The math-science skill deficit is especially alarming among students of color, an ever-growing portion of New England’s students. Only 4 percent of black and 7 percent of Hispanic Math 1 SAT test takers in New England score in the top fifth of the math score distribution, a threshold for advanced study in science, engineering and computer technology.

. Degree dearth. A high school diploma no longer assures a decent income; the new minimum, to qualify for more than routine labor jobs, is a two-year associate degree, normally from a community college. Notwithstanding a few bright spots, New England has a weak community college system. Nationwide, associate degrees grew 25 percent in the ’90s; in New England they declined 7 percent.

Education experts say there’s a huge disconnect between today’s high schools and colleges. The sectors operate in separate orbits, don’t talk, don’t collaborate.

The results show. Overwhelming percentages of high school students say they’re aiming for college. But take 100 New England ninth-graders and ask what actually happens to them. There’s not a state in the region in which more than 77 graduate from high school four years later, 52 actually enter college, 40 are still enrolled for a second year, or 29 graduate with either an associate or bachelor’s degree.

Some states’ scores – Rhode Island and Vermont in particular – are much worse. The late Frank Newman, longtime head of the Education Commission of the States, lamented that New England has “a hole in the bucket. … There’s a ton [of students] coming in and a trickle making it through.”

. The online revolution. Today’s students, notes Blenda Wilson of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, start out as “wired little people,” with phones on their belts, earphones, Bluetooths, iPods. But schools are painstakingly slow to adopt computer training methods (notwithstanding breakthroughs such as Maine’s issuance of laptops to seventh-graders, at the suggestion of then-Gov. Angus King).

“For the next generation, the Web is oxygen, community is virtual, perspective is global, and the career expectation is to reinvent oneself several times over,” University of Phoenix President Laura Palmer Noone told a rather astounded group of New England educators meeting in Woodstock, Vt., last year.

Indeed, with 228,000 students, facilities in 34 states, 17,000 faculty (full-time working people in their professions), and an overwhelmingly online operation, the University of Phoenix seems the antithesis of New England’s small, intimate, college green life.

Internationally, reports New England education expert Joe Cronin, the University of Phoenix is competing with such megaproviders as Britain’s Open University and India’s Punjab Technical University.

So what about New England? The region has more online than first looks show. MIT was a leader in online course material. UMass Online has 17,000 students. Connecticut has a model Distance Learning Consortium, serving students in 49 member institutions. But the initiatives are growing in the vintage New England way – each effort in its own contented silo, wary of collaboration across lines.

But can New England really exercise its powerful education brand shuffling disjointedly, state by state, into the online age?

The answer is no; instead, one observer told us, its institutions collectively resemble “a centipede with MS.” But is paralysis inevitable? No, says Evan Dobelle, president of the New England Board of Higher Education, asking: “Why not assemble our resources and have a unified New England Online?”

Indeed, why not? Such things did happen once. In the 1950s, New England stepped crisply ahead of other American regions by agreeing to a visionary New England Higher Education Compact and creation of a New England Board of Higher Education, or NEBHE. Farsighted governors of the time – among them Maine’s Edmund Muskie, Massachusetts’ Christian Herter and Connecticut’s Abraham Ribicoff – led the way.

And they didn’t stop there. Next came a Regional Student Program, administered by NEBHE, giving New England residents a substantial tuition break when they choose a major offered in another New England state but not their own. The program lives on, close to a half-century old, a smashing success.

The Five Colleges consortium in the Pioneer Valley – UMass Amherst and four private colleges – suggests New England colleges can, with compelling vision and steady leadership, actually work together. Steven Reno, chancellor of the University of New Hampshire System, speaks eloquently of making a seamless web of the public colleges in his state; a Web site and call center opened this fall to help students plan courses of study leading to an assured degree from one of the state colleges.

The Opportunity New England program we propose – potentially the world’s most student-oriented gateway to higher learning – builds off and expands on that idea. Chartered or run directly by NEBHE, it would have four arms:

. First, “the Gateway.” Today’s high school students, even adults looking for advanced training, often are obliged to start blind, thrashing through stacks of course catalogs. The Gateway would create a “high-tech, high-touch” solution to the maze. The tech side would present software chock full of answers on courses, costs, and program conditions at colleges and universities across New England, matched to data on real-world emerging job needs. The high-touch side would be staffed by advisers to discuss students’ thoughts and ideas, interests and ambition, and suggest a workable course of study, mix or match between colleges, online and on campus.

. Second, the Negotiation Center would take the student’s preferences and negotiate a plan with one or more colleges and universities. ONE handles the registration and helps the student apply for any grants or loans. It could assemble the costs and hand the student one simple invoice.

. Third, the Coaching Center. Once enrolled in college (or community college), students all too often face difficulties – academic, financial, social – that lead many to drop out. ONE would be available to counsel on how to stay enrolled, or make a smart transfer. That advice could start cutting back on today’s alarming rates of college dropouts.

. Finally, a Career Center. Working closely with businesses on employment needs, ONE would be available to act as career counselor and placement agent. Armed with the graduate’s credentials, the career center could be an ongoing job broker.

Building on knowledge of the best-instructed courses across the region, ONE would be the clear choice to create an online New England service, guiding students across the region and across the globe to the region’s superior academic offerings.

But its special magic – setting it apart from such existing leaders in computerized college information services as the College Foundation of North Carolina and the Southern Regional Education Board – would be its active, continuing role as broker for the student.

We predict the consumer-oriented, online age soon will produce a service like ONE in some region of America. Shouldn’t the region whose very name reflects education be the “one”?

What about turf issues? Would New England’s colleges and universities want to ante up and be a player?

Most of the information to be gathered is already public. The Web site alone would represent: consumer power. Sure, ONE would be making judgments, but if it succeeded in forging degree plans with high standards of academic integrity and career sensibility, in channeling qualified students to New England’s colleges and universities, in embellishing the New England education brand and reality, it’s a safe bet turf jealousies and protections would fall away.

How would ONE be funded? A first likely source would be New England’s largest employers – the likes of Bank of America, Northeast Utilities, Raytheon, Fidelity, Mass Mutual, The Hartford and United Technologies – figuring their seed money is a prudent investment in a future worker supply. Each state, in proportion to its population, could be called on to match that capital. Later, modest credit cardlike fees could be implemented.

Would ONE, on its own, solve New England education problems? Of course not. But by quality guiding and brokering of students, sticking with them past hard spots, creating a flow of graduates for New England businesses, it would symbolize a new New England – online and campus-based, as modern as the latest software, fully career-oriented, and more than competitive by global standards.

In a nation that’s short on college and university space and New England with a surplus capacity in its colleges, ONE could attract thousands more students to the region and pep up the economy. As Robert Woodbury, former Maine chancellor, comments, ONE could offer “online advantages like the University of Phoenix with the campus ambience of historic New England colleges.” More college-going, more sticking in college, a better-educated work force would result.

The sponsoring Partnership for New England includes the Vermont-based Institute for Sustainable Communities (which will coordinate follow-up public debates across the region), the New England Council, the New England Initiative at UMass Lowell, Mount Auburn Associates, the New England Association of Regional Councils and the Orton Family Foundation. Financial backing comes from community foundations in all six states, the Bank of America Foundation and others (full list at the Web site).