 Inside Higher Education and The Chronicle of Higher Education
have detailed disagreements among members of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education—disputations essentially over the tone of the report
and its preamble, with some jousting over the report’s recommendations and their relative priority. These developments—intriguing to all of
us—are not discussed elsewhere, in large measure due to the fact that very few outside higher education have expressed serious interest in the Commission’s
work.
In a broader sense, for the nearly six years of President Bush’s administration, higher education has not been a priority. As mid-term elections
approach with the President’s low approval ratings exceeded only by the dismal regard accorded the Congress, but a few devotees expect the Commission’s
report to impact the Congressional agenda. Given the panoply of public concerns—the unending costs and casualties in Iraq, the rapidly diminishing
prospects for peace in the Mideast and its companion crusade for democracy, belligerence in North Korea and Iran, uncontrolled illegal immigration, federal
deficits, health care costs, disappearing pensions, and the struggle between scientific research and righteous religiosity, how much attention will Congress
accord to the future of higher education? Not much, I suspect.
Yet we who are part of higher education dissect every sentence of the report, applauding every laudatory comment and carping about language critical of
our work. We seem to be more concerned with tone than recommendations.
While the Commission’s recommendations have engendered some criticism from the independent sector, most of us engaged with higher education’s
important work view the draft recommendations as solid and worthy of support. I specifically make reference to the following recommendations:
1. The call for the nation to commit to “an unprecedented effort to expand college access and success . . .” providing significant
aid to low-income students, improving student preparation, and addressing non-academic barriers to college.
2. An overhauling of the entire student financial aid system and focusing on meeting student needs and national priorities.
3. Urging that we “develop . . . new and innovative means to control costs, improve productivity, as well as measurements that report meaningful
student learning outcomes”—especially value-added measurements.
4. The “development of a national strategy for lifelong learning to keep our citizens and the nation in the forefront of the knowledge revolution
economy.”
5. “The creation of a robust culture of accountability and transparency throughout higher education,” and
6. Increasing federal investment in areas critical to the nation’s global competitiveness and to attract the best and brightest minds from here
and abroad.
These are excellent recommendations—good for higher education and society. Yet, we in higher education should be more concerned with the message conveyed
by and through the work of the Commission. Irrespective of whether the Congress addresses the Commission report, there is much we in and at the periphery
of higher education can do. To me the Commission’s essential message is that the public’s support for higher education is neither automatic
nor without conditions. That message conveys that while the public values higher education, higher education must demonstrate that it values the public.
To respond to this message we should reaffirm our fidelity to the goals of access and affordability, and our service to public education and to the social
progress and economic prosperity of our fellow citizens. As recipients of the taxpayers’ largesse, we need as well to make manifest our commitments
to efficiency, effectiveness and the transparency of our transactions.
We miss the point if we become fixated on specific recommendations or the tone of the report. We need to focus on understanding and explicating what the
public trust entails.
Last year the honor was bestowed on me to present the David Dodds Henry Lecture at the University of Illinois. I was flattered that your president, Paul
Lingenfelter, distributed copies of that address, which some of you may recall was entitled, “Public Higher Education: Is the Public Lost?”
In that address I discussed the fiscal difficulties confronting higher education nationwide and questioned the fascination with privatization embraced by
a few of our public university colleagues. I argued that public higher education needed to recommit itself to its historic purpose of serving the public.
We were, we are, and we need to remain “places of public purpose.”
In the fifteen months that have transpired since the lecture, the outlook for higher education is rosier. State coffers, with a few notable exceptions (particularly
New Jersey) have been replenished. Appropriations for higher education have stabilized nearly everywhere, with true improvements in many states, and with
a few states (Alabama, New York, Maryland, California, Oklahoma and New Mexico) having significantly boosted higher education spending. Doomsday prophets
have been muted and optimism has regained a foothold in funding outlooks. Yet underlying concerns remain. We need to reassess our historic ties to society.
Effectively communicating to our citizenry the public purposes our universities fulfill is an essential ingredient in sustaining public support for higher
education. We must reaffirm our long-standing commitments to access and affordability, recognizing that merit-aid programs in many states have come at the
expense of need-based aid. We must heed the public’s major—and growing—concern over tuition costs, thinking not of ways to convince the
public that personal debt is good and warranted (an argument which has not proven persuasive), but rather thinking of ways to contain tuition costs both
through strengthened appropriations and greater internal efficiencies.
Public institutions, as stewards of place, must become actively engaged with the communities and regions they serve, providing leadership and expertise
to address the myriad problems confronting public education—especially inner city and remote rural schools. Higher education is a necessary part of
any state’s response to free trade policies and globalization realities, which in tandem have transfigured economic opportunities and left many of
our citizens bereft of rewarding employment and lasting careers. When President Bush speaks of national competitiveness, all of us know full well that achieving
this goal will result less from legislation passed in Washington, and more from individual decisions made in thousands of settings throughout America—and
especially in academic settings.
Public universities have an ongoing responsibility to promote scientific research both pure and applied—to encourage innovation and product development,
to aid homeland security, and given the near-pathetic levels of engagement of our students and recent graduates in the civic life of our country, to encourage
citizenship education, promoting the values and responsibilities embedded in our democracy. In short, our campuses are places of public purpose and our
work should be buoyed by the public responsibilities we undertake.
The passage of the Morrill Act and the land-grant institutions it fostered, the normal school movement, the GI Bill, the community college movement, are
all signal events which have shaped public higher education and in toto have created a mutually beneficial covenant between American citizens and their—the
public’s—universities. Higher education’s and society’s major challenge is redefining that covenant in light of the enormous challenges
of the 21st century. Redefining and reaffirming that covenant needs to occur in every state and territory, with process and outcomes peculiar to each.
Last year AASCU, the association I head, created a Commission on Public University Renewal. The Commission, headed by President John Hitt of the University
of Central Florida, proffered that public higher education “must be reviewed and revised to ensure that the people’s universities are equipped
to meet the needs of a growing, diversifying and information-driven society.” Three strong recommendations flowed from the Commission’s work.
1. States and their universities must develop and sustain a long-term vision for higher education;
2. Campuses and systems must work collaboratively to renew their basic commitments for access and inclusion, and to public partnerships; and
3. Campuses and systems must forge a new relationship with the people’s government.
None of these three recommendations can be implemented by unilateral action, irrespective of effort or good intentions. There must be congruent planning
and action between the public’s representatives and the public’s universities. As with the covenants of yesteryear the confluence of a shared
vision, common commitment, and coordinated action will renew the public university and adapt the covenant to the challenges of the 21st century.
We do not know what tomorrow’s challenges will entail, much less those ten or twenty years hence. But we do know several of the issues which must
be addressed; namely,
1. Can public universities ensure that their graduates will be able to complete in a global labor market where fluency in the English language
is commonplace?
2. Can universities build the nation’s capacity to educate sufficient numbers of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and highly qualified teachers
for our public schools?
3. Can the playing field be made level so that all can partake of educational and economic opportunity, irrespective of ethnic origin or family income?
4. Can the flagging fortunes of rural America be renewed?
5. Will public universities be fully responsive to the continuing education needs of our workforce—irrespective of its geographic disbursement?
6. Can our public universities help address the towering social problems of urban America, especially youth found in struggling, increasingly segregated
public schools or even on the streets?
7. Can our universities prepare well their graduates for citizenship—capable of discerning fact from opinion, logical reasoning from emotional appeals,
and guided by ethical values and civic-mindedness?
There are, of course, no easy solutions to these problems. But they represent the challenge that every state and every public university face in this, the
first decade of the new century. To fulfill the essential responsibilities of public universities, to be places of public purpose, to make real the new
covenant defining service to the public, these questions must be addressed.
And addressing those and other great issues facing our states and nation will require, as the AASCU Commission detailed and discussions this morning confirmed,
new vision statements aligning state needs and priorities with institutional missions and strategic goals. There will also be the need for collaboration
and commitment born of mutual respect and trust, and inherent in the historic covenant between the people and their universities.
I asked the question, “What Can State Higher Education Officials Do to Put the ‘Public’ Back in Higher Education?” SHEEOs
with their unique perspective on both the work of the Academy and the deliberations of policy makers can be, and in many instances are, effective advocates
for renewing higher education’s covenant with the American citizenry. But you can do more than advocate. Whether as governing or coordinating entities,
SHEEOs are convenors. You define agendas and priorities. As such, you have the tools for framing statewide conversations about the role of public institutions
in promoting the public good through access, affordability, economic advancement, public education, homeland security, scientific research, and citizenship
education. It is important to note that while SHEEOs should not be held responsible for creating a shared vision, they (you) have a unique opportunity to
facilitate that process, to convene the appropriate stakeholders, to gather relevant data for assessing current realities and plotting strategic directions,
and providing a productive setting for important conversations and translating those conversations into action.
SHEEOs have the opportunity—indeed, the responsibility—to be influential voices for new approaches to access, providing incentives and to provide
political support for the pioneers and calculated risk-takers in their systems. For campus officials to commit to real access can be risky; it means taking
on the prestige- and rankings-driven “survival of the fittest” model that has developed in American higher education. But this commitment, risky
or not, is essential if the nation is to remain competitive in the global race to develop human capital for the 21st century.
In addition, systems can—and do—play a vital role in catalyzing, advocating, and measuring the impact of partnerships, and in promoting policy
that aligns colleges and universities in support of these partnerships. For some states, however, this role will necessitate a major philosophical shift
away from policies that encourage institutional competition to policies that promote collaboration.
Opportunities abound for the public’s universities to make breakthrough contributions in broadening postsecondary access, strengthening elementary
and secondary education, and transitioning to the New Economy. These and other potential contributions will be limited, however, until and unless we shift
public higher education’s regulatory culture from one of “command and control” to one of “flexibility with the accountability for
results.” As the National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education so rightly pointed out, oversight processes and relationships should be
about outcomes and results, and should have a constructive rather than punitive focus.
As we all know achieving change can be difficult. Good ideas fall upon deaf ears. Good intentions can be undercut by malevolent behavior. Progress can be
stymied by determined opposition. Yet these are times when progressive ideas responsive to societal needs can become a movement. We may be approaching such
an hour when the covenant between the public and the public’s universities is redefined and renewed. We may be at a tipping point. Better still we
may create a tipping point.
In the long run the Spellings Commission’s greatest contribution may not be reflected in what the Congress or the Administration accomplish, but in
what citizens throughout the country realize through the work of their public servants, including all of us in this room. Our most important work is before
us.
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Constantine W. Curris
President |
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