[Correction appended below.]
Work on a long-awaited National Academies study on the future of American research universities will probably end soon, with the institutions being warned that they need to make fundamental improvements before they can even begin to hope for any substantial increase in federal financial support.
“Asking for major investments is unlikely to gain traction” in Congress, given growing public anxiety about the cost and relative value of college, James J. Duderstadt, a member of the National Academies panel that is doing the study, said at a conference this week at Rice University. Mr. Duderstadt is also a former president of the University of Michigan.
The need for improvement is most urgent at the undergraduate level, where faculty and administrators have been notoriously resistant to change, said higher-education strategists here. The aim of the two-day conference was to assess the future of research universities.
Several presentations described innovative approaches for exposing undergraduate students to hands-on research and engaging them in the kind of one-on-one and group discussions that are widely seen as critical to meaningful learning. In “interactive” classrooms at the University of Michigan, for instance, students critique one anothers’ work, while “flipped” classes at Duke University let students take turns teaching on a weekly rotation.
But such innovative approaches are rare, conference participants said. Far more common are large and impersonal classes for freshmen and sophomores that sap students’ motivation and leave many pursuing bottom-line tactics aimed at getting the grades they need to show a first employer.
The National Academies formed the panel on research universities in June 2010 at the request of Congress, which in turn was prodded by the Association of American Universities and other higher-education groups.
The panel was asked to identify the top 10 actions that state and federal governments, the universities, and private entities could take to ensure the long-term excellence of American research universities.
AAU leaders held out hope that, among other things, the panel would lead the federal government to pick up the slack left by drastic cuts in state support for higher education. Hunter R. Rawlings, the AAU president, noted at the conference that 41 states had reduced their support for colleges in the past year alone—by as much as 41 percent.
At earlier stages of its deliberations, the panel spoke of meeting the AAU vision in potentially grand terms. The panel’s chairman, Charles Holliday, a retired chief executive of DuPont, mused about sparking a movement for a “third big thing,” to build on the creation of land-grant universities in 1862 and the start of federal investment in university research in the 1940s.
Mr. Duderstadt told the conference that while he couldn’t reveal details of the panel’s recommendations, its report should not be expected to press hard for major new federal investment. He said the panel would outline a 10-year strategy that begins with university-led improvements in the early years, followed by a suggestion—but only a suggestion—of substantially more federal money in later years.
As the conference opened here Monday, President Obama hosted the nation’s governors at the White House and pressed them for more spending on their colleges. “All of you have a role to play by making higher education a higher priority in your budgets,” the president told the governors.
Mr. Duderstadt warned those attending the conference not to expect help from state governments, which aren’t likely to reverse their continuing cuts in higher education spending. “Most states will have neither the capacity nor the will to do anything about this,” he said.
Along with Mr. Holliday and Mr. Duderstadt, the 21-member National Academies panel includes other current and former leaders of corporations and universities. While the panel may recommend internal changes ahead of new federal support, the president of the National Academy of Engineering, Charles M. Vest, made clear he’s still hoping Congress understands the cost of failing to sufficiently invest in research.
“We are No. 1,” said Mr. Vest, a former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, citing a familiar refrain he says he hears from lawmakers. But then he displayed a slide showing how the United States ranks globally in high-school and college completion rates, students’ math scores, life expectancy, and other key categories. “Except,” he said, “when we are 6, 11, 16, 22, 24, 27 and 48.”
The president of Rice University, David W. Leebron, opened the conference by citing a series of forces closing in on universities that are likely to produce increasingly dramatic changes in how they operate. Those forces include government regulatory intervention, diminished financial resources, and doubts about the value college provides to students.
Yet as Rice celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, Mr. Leebron made clear that universities are an institution known for resilience. Of the 70 institutions worldwide that are still in existence since the Reformation, he said, 66 of them are colleges or universities.
Correction (3/1/2012): The original version of this article misreported that Mr. Duderstadt had said that states now provide only about 4 percent of the budget of the average public university. He did not say that.
