“Dumb public policies,” like mandatory-sentencing laws that drive up states’ costs for prisons and leave less for education, may be part of the reason colleges are in such financial straits, the leader of the California State University system said at a forum here on Thursday, but that’s just a piece of the problem.
The bigger issue is that most colleges are too concerned with trying to compete for prestige rather than serve their students and their communities, said Cal State’s chancellor, Charles B. Reed. He and Arizona State University’s president, Michael M. Crow, spoke on a panel at the “Smart Leadership in Difficult Times” forum, sponsored by the TIAA-CREF Institute.
“Public higher education has done it to itself with generic state institutions” that all try to do the same thing, Mr. Crow told the gathering of 130-plus college presidents and other leaders. The duplication of expenses among so many colleges that are “insufficiently differentiated” adds to states’ costs and leaves legislators and other potential supporters with little inspiration to support colleges when they come looking for money, said Mr. Crow. “People fall asleep,” he said.
Mr. Reed noted that the racial and economic diversity of the Cal State system’s 440,000 students reflects a wave of changing student demographics across the country. Rather than worry about how they rank against their peers, he said, “public universities need to get off their campuses” and into local schools—"way down to the fifth and sixth grade"—to help ensure that young people prepare for college before it’s too late and they drop out.
The two leaders’ comments came during a panel called “What’s the New Normal?” Both Mr. Reed and Mr. Crow offered their typically blunt assessments.
“The sky is not falling. We just have less money,” said Mr. Crow.
“We’re never going to go back to the way it’s been for the last 20 years,” said Mr. Reed.
Mr. Reed said he had been criticized by faculty members for not lobbying harder in the state capital for money. “Well, you know what? There isn’t any money in Sacramento,” he said.
Instead, Cal State and the State of California will have to find money by becoming more entrepreneurial, more creative, and more efficient, he said. For example, “if people taught one more class a semester, the efficiency of that is tremendous.”
Another idea, Mr. Reed said, is to eliminate 12th grade—"the biggest waste of time” for many students—and reallocate those resources for schools and colleges. “We need a different model,” he said.
‘No State of Normal’
Mr. Crow, who has overseen changes at Arizona State that include the transformation of traditional departments into interdisciplinary ones that relate to contemporary issues, said worrying about getting back to “normal” isn’t productive. For universities, “there should be no state of normal,” he said. They should be innovating and adapting all the time.
Arizona State is doing that, he said, by seeking more support from nearby cities and from the local business community, with a new research effort called ASU Challenges.
The meeting, which continues on Friday, also featured advice from several other college leaders on managing change.
J. Michael Adams, president of Fairleigh Dickinson University, said college leaders should remember that “the real agents of change are faculty.” Wise presidents, he suggested, would do well to let the most dynamic and powerful faculty members lead new ventures if they fit within the mission of the institution.
Other techniques work, too, Mr. Adams said. “One of my mentors told me, ‘Money is the root of all excellence in higher education.’” At Fairleigh Dickinson, he said, a published policy says that if a staff member proposes a program that fits the need, fits the mission, and can generate revenue, “we’ll fund it.”
Devorah Lieberman, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Wagner College, said she had found it productive and easier to “appeal to the scholarly intellect of our faculty” to solve problems.
She has instituted monthly dinners primarily for faculty members, at which the first question is always, What have you heard? and the second is, What do you want to know?
The events have opened up communication, at times in surprising directions. “As more wine flows, the questions are shocking sometimes,” she said. But that helps to clear the air of rumors, and it keeps her plugged in: “They don’t leave until they tell me something I don’t know.”
