Higher Education in a Global Context: Ron Turner (Panelist)
March 29, 2005
There is a growing gap between public understanding of the value of the university and its true value to the State's educational, economic and cultural advancement. This gap is evidenced by the fact that state support for the University eroded by more than $158 million in core cuts and withholdings between FY01 and FY04. While these millions in public funds were being withheld or eliminated, the public received mixed messages about the impact.
In 2002, I recall talking with friends of the University about the depth of state funding cuts. After about 15 seconds, their eyes glazed over. These were our friends. These were not people who didn't care about the University; they did care, they just preferred to believe that everything was OK.
I wondered how they could think everything was OK while our budget was being cut; then it dawned on me. Everywhere we looked we saw new buildings under construction, student enrollment was higher than ever, ACT scores for entering Freshmen were at all time highs, federal research grants and contracts were at record levels, private gifts were growing to new heights. Friends of the University were thinking, “How can there be a problem when everything seems to be going so well?”
Of course, the problem was that capital budgets, private gifts and grants could not offset the loss in state funds the University needed to fulfill its historic land-grant mission of research, teaching and service to the people of Missouri. The problem was that student fee increases of more than 40% between FY02 and FY04 could not go on forever. The problem was that we were unable to recruit or retain many outstanding faculty needed to carry out our mission.
Why did the public not perceive the long-term damage to the University that resulted from declining state support? I believe their perception was clouded somewhat by our ability to manage through the budget crisis. Classes continued to meet; research continued; public service continued. All the while, public higher education slipped lower and lower on the state's priority list.
Missouri was not alone, as indicated by a recent study by The Futures Project reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education (October 15, 2004, p. B-6). It said, “…Americans believe that we have the best postsecondary-education system in the world. Yet a dangerous gap is growing between what the public needs from higher education and how colleges and universities are serving those needs.”
The study asserts that, “Colleges have been focusing their energies on a form of competition based not on improving graduates' skills and knowledge but on institutional prestige and revenues.”
The following quotes come from another study published in 2004 by The Futures Project entitled: Correcting the Course: How We Can Restore the Ideals of Public Higher Education in a Market-Driven Era:
“Increasingly, state policies have come to favor an open market that has the potential to create...unhealthy competition that does not necessarily lead to increased access, better instruction, lower costs, or greater efficiency.” p. 1
The report cites an eroding public commitment to higher education, and it points to “…a great erosion of higher education's long standing commitment to advance public priorities…While higher education's capacity to fulfill its public purposes has begun to erode, and while policymakers have done little to shore it up, colleges and universities still have many of the material and human resources needed to meet their public commitments, and they still have the ability to restore much that has been lost…. The question is whether they have the will—and whether policymakers have a deep enough understanding of academe's core purposes—to reverse this erosion and to do so immediately.” p. 5
This report is found at www.futuresproject.org.
Clearly, there is a need for a new compact between the public and higher education, but how can we create a compact to replace the one that was broken in FY02 and remains broken to this day?
I have my own ideas on how to do so, but I would be interested in the ideas of the faculty, alumni, students, and the many advisory groups and friends of the University. I would also be interested in the ideas of community leaders, elected officials and private sector leaders across Missouri. There is no single best answer, but the dialogue is long over due; it must begin now; and it must be sustained in the months and years to come. Most importantly, it must engage the owners of the University, the people of Missouri. It must answer the question similar to the one Dr. Seuss asked in The Lorax, “Who will speak for the trees?” My question is: Who will speak for higher education? For me, the people of Missouri must speak for higher education, and we must help prepare them to do so. This is a difficult and daunting task, which might explain why it has not been done before. But we must begin the process; if we don't, I don't know who will.
This dialogue must be ongoing; short-term strategies will not do the job. We must find ways to think openly and strategically about the longer term. This University must provide the leadership for the dialogue to begin and continue to engage a broad cross section of Missourians who share a vision for the advancement of the state and the University's role in making that vision a reality. This is not a time for public relations gimmicks, advertising campaigns, or publicity stunts. It is a time for genuine dialogue about the future of Missouri and the role higher education can play in that future.
It is also a time for cooperation among our colleges and universities both public and private, two year and four year and with the K-12 sector. In fact, the time for cooperation is overdue. It must be real, and it must put the public interest ahead of institutional interests. A policy of cooperation designed to link university strengths with public priorities would be of enormous benefit to future generations of Missourians. We are eager to compete; we seem less eager to cooperate. The impulses that impede cooperation must be overcome, and institutional policy that emphasizes the benefits of cooperation must be developed.
I offer four policy questions for further consideration:
- How can Missouri 's advancement be accelerated by public higher education?
- How can public benefit derived from higher education be expanded?
- How can the link between public priorities and the unique and powerful resources of public higher education be strengthened and sustained through new avenues of communication and dialogue for the good of the state as a whole.
- How can new alliances and cooperation among the education sectors and institutions be created and sustained in new and fundamentally unifying ways?
I will end by quoting my favorite sentence from The Glion Declaration, a statement drafted in 1999 by 10 American and 10 European university presidents as they tried to create a vision for the university of the 21st Century. They wrote:
“In its institutional life and its professional activities, the university must reaffirm that integrity is the requirement, excellence the standard, rationality the means, community the context, civility the attitude, openness the relationship and responsibility the obligation upon which its own existence and the existence of knowledge itself depend.” The Glion Declaration, 1999, p. 10.