Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 5, 1993 TAG: 9312100280
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: J. WADE GILLEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
What has happened to undermine government support of our public colleges and universities?
The public clearly recognizes the importance of colleges and college education. Parents have a keen interest in securing a college education for their children, and students are willing to go deep in debt to finance their education. They know it is their best hope.
Yet across America, and in Virginia, government support for our most sucessful public enterprise has been slipping for almost a decade, with no end in sight. Why is America's most publicly sought-after product - nationally and internationally - less worthy of government support today than just a few years ago?
In a new knowledge-based economy, the academy is central to a productive and competitive nation. At the same time, however, state governments are finding their priority lists for funding overcrowded by the schools, health-care mandates and responses to rising crime rates. With all of these pressures, states have found, at least until now, that they could cut allocations to colleges and universities, which could then pass at least part of the cuts on to the students. Student-loan programs have exploded and students have been able to finance their tuition, in part, only by going deeper into debt.
Now it is crunch time. The funding appetite of mandated state programs is increasing geometrically. At the same time, resistance to tuition increases is stiffening. Caught in the crunch are both political leaders and university administrators and faculty.
Resistance to further cuts by colleges has resulted in finger pointing and, perhaps most unfortunately, attacks on university faculty. In an uneasy economy it is easy to criticize someone else's productivity - especially if one uses industrial-economy standards of the 1930s.
The truth is, we in higher education must do a better job of clarifying the important multiple functions that 21st-century faculty are asked to perform. Further, we must all recognize that the present cohort of faculty is the largest in history, but will decline sharply near the end of the 1990s. This decline will occur because of reduced production of new doctorates in past decades and large numbers of retirements. Now is simply not the time to attack a precious national resource - faculty.
College and university administrators must also do a better job of articulating what their institutions are doing and why. There is a clear disconnection between those running state governments all across the land and those leading our public colleges and universities.
For example, the recent series of articles in Virginia newspapers distorted what faculty do and why they do it. In the case of Virginia's only Nobel laureate, James Buchanan, there was a clear distortion at worst, or lack of adequate explanation at best - which illustrates the need to be precise when we discuss what faculty do and who wants them to do it.
Buchanan has devoted his life to helping build Virginia's highly regarded system of colleges and universities, serving at Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and George Mason University. Though at age 73 he teaches only one course, it is important to know that he attracts to George Mason private and corporate funds amounting to several times what the university spends on his salary. Surely, a professor who pays his own way several-fold and still teaches is no drain on either his institution or the commonwealth.
From the millions of dollars Buchanan has attracted to Virginia over the years, scores of graduate students have benefited and are benefiting from fellowhips. Dozens of junior faculty benefit by having their research financed as they develop their expertise to make the commonwealth a richer and more worthy place. Do we want to ridicule international scholars who bring millions of external dollars and bright young people from all over the world to our institutions? I think not!
College and university administators, however, must share some of the responsibility for the state of affairs. There has been a reluctance to recast institutional strategies in clear and relevant language that builds the case for a strong system of colleges and universities. There has been a reluctance to streamline administrative functions because, among other things, many administrative activities are the result of a generation of unfunded mandates handed down to institutions by government at all levels.
And there has been an inability to articulate the changing roles of the faculty in the new economy. Faculty have multiple roles that vary from individual to individual and institution to institution, making it difficult to explain exactly what faculty do with their time. Finally, there has been a simple reluctance to weed out nonproductive administrators and faculty.
The signs of the current dilemma have been on the horizon for some time, but college and university administrators have failed to deal with reality until it is now very late.
In a 1986 monograph, I reported a growing rift between governors and legislators on one hand, and college and university presidents on the other. There already was clear evidence then, from a survey of 32 governors, that no shared vision existed on the role of higher education in the post-industrial economy. Governors were starting to view institutions of higher eucation as just another, sometimes irritating, special interest.
Since 1986, things have gone downhill. Now we need to ask ourselves: Where are we going to find the leadership to create an environment to change direction and formulate a shared vision for America's colleges and universities?
In the newly emerging (we are still in transition) information- or knowledge-based economy, those with the best-educated and -trained people, those with the new ideas and new products, and those with the new ways of doing things will be the nations, states and regions that will flourish. This means that institutions of higher learning as we know them must be central to shaping a new and productive America.
Where do we start to rebuild support and confidence in the academy? First, we dare not allow highly productive faculty such as James Buchanan to be cast as the villains. Second, we must streamline administrative functions and redirect resources to students. Then, our role and mission in the new economy must be clearly articulated so the people - the taxpayers - and their elected representatives can again fully appreciate the functioning and value of our institutions.
But perhaps most important, we must remember what we want others to remember - that our 3,500 American colleges and universities are the envy of the world and must be used as a resource to shape a more productive, competitive and just America in the new economy and the new century.
\ J. Wade Gilley, president of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va., is former senior vice president of George Mason University and was Virginia secretary of education in the gubernatorial administration of the late John Dalton.
by CNB