Severe economic pressures have created a defining moment for colleges and universities, which must fundamentally reinvent themselves to survive, E. Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, said on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education.
“While giving deference to our proud history, our challenge today is radical reformation,” Mr. Gee said here during the keynote address, called the Robert H. Atwell Lecture. “The choice, it seems to me, is this: reinvention or extinction.”
To avoid “slouching into irrelevance,” he said, universities must structure themselves horizontally, rather than vertically, change the way they reward faculty and staff members, and learn to better collaborate with each other. While partnerships with business, elementary and secondary schools, and governments are crucial, he said, perhaps the most important links are between universities.
“We must see one another as allies, not opponents,” said Mr. Gee. “Sharp elbows and zero-sum thinking are utterly useless in the work to fuel our country’s resurgence.”
He pointed in particular to the need for deeper relationships between community colleges and four-year institutions. As an example, Mr. Gee described a program, announced Sunday, in which Ohio State will partner with Columbus State Community College to create a pipeline for underrepresented students to enroll in medical school. He said it will be the nation’s first such collaboration.
To achieve a horizontal approach, he said, universities must move beyond the “old, worn-out notion of interdisciplinary academic work” and totally rethink the way they look at research and teaching. Research centers should be “transinstitutional” and involve multiple departments and external partners.
He also asserted that recognition and reward structures on campuses are out of date. With the reach of academic journals fading, he said, new forms of scholarship must be rewarded. And colleges should look beyond “centuries-old promotion and tenure models” to find nontraditional professors and leaders. For example, he cited the incoming dean of Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business, Christine A. Poon, who is a former health-care-products executive rather than an academic.
Mr. Gee said he had weathered previous economic downturns during the many stops of his three decades as a college president, joking that “each time I’ve changed jobs, we’ve gone into a recession.” But he said this period is unprecedented in both its challenges and opportunities for higher education.
“We have now an act-or-lose opportunity,” said Mr. Gee. “We should all approach each day with an urgency of purpose—one we all share as keepers of this remarkable legacy.”