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Publié par
Date de parution
29 juin 2012
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781438444949
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
29 juin 2012
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781438444949
Langue
English
Precipice Or Crossroads?
Where America's Great Public Universities Stand and Where They Are Going Midway through Their Second Century
Edited by
Daniel Mark Fogel
&
Elizabeth Malson-Huddle
Photograph of Morrill Hall at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York taken by Deborah Schmidle.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2012 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Precipice or crossroads? : where America's great public universities stand and where they are going midway through their second century / Edited by Daniel Mark Fogel and Elizabeth Malson-Huddle.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4492-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-4493-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. State universities and colleges—United States—History. 2. Education, Higher—United States—History. I. Fogel, Daniel Mark, 1948– II. Malson-Huddle, Elizabeth.
LB2329.5.P74 2012
378'.053—dc23
2012003677
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To colleagues—faculty, staff, and administration—at Louisiana State University and the University of Vermont still fighting the good fight
A Note on References
We have limited endnotes in Precipice or Crossroads? to those that include comments by the chapter authors, and these are appended to each chapter. All other citations are parenthetic references in the text tied to a single list of References at the end of the volume, a procedure that seemed to make sense both with respect to the ease and convenience of readers and to the simple fact that many of our authors draw on common sources. Full bibliographical details on all cited works are provided in the References listed at the end of the volume, including the World Wide Web addresses of Web-based publications and resources.
Foreword
All those who care about the vitality and well-being of the United States must be concerned with the current challenges facing the nation's public higher education sector, and how to maintain its long-term strength. Our public colleges and universities have been of vital importance to the making of the nation, particularly since President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-grant Act 150 years ago. The Morrill Act in many ways established the model that all of public higher education would follow in its triple mission of teaching, research, and service. That model was particularly important for the development of the public research universities that became, in the twentieth century, America's single largest engine of human capital production and of research and innovation.
Readers will find many distinctive voices in the essays in Precipice or Crossroads? —the voices, by and large, of university presidents, ranging from leaders of the enormous state-wide university systems in New York and California to campus presidents in a variety of settings, from gargantuan Arizona State to the comparatively diminutive Lincoln University (Missouri), one of our fine historically black colleges. But they tell a single, sustained story about the indispensable role of public higher education in supporting American democracy and prosperity, and about the enormous challenges our public universities face today.
As much as the essays that follow demonstrate the value of public higher education both to individuals and to society at large, the authors focus even more intensely on the challenges faced today by land-grant and public universities. The title Precipice or Crossroads? poses a question. While I understand those who fear that our public universities are coming dangerously close to falling off an edge beyond which institutional viability would be in grave doubt, my own answer to the question is that we are not on the verge of the abyss but at a crossroads that presents us with opportunities for change and adaptation that we must seize. I agree that the problems are daunting, but I also think the universities must and will find a way to continue to make their incalculably valuable contributions to students and society.
One can only be impressed by the ways that land-grants and publics historically have addressed society's problems and met new challenges. A founding concept of the land-grants was to open up higher education to nonelites. From their beginnings, the education offered by the land-grant colleges included scientific agriculture and mechanical arts (or what we today call engineering) as well as humanities. Soon these institutions saw their role as going beyond teaching to the creation of knowledge and its distribution and application beyond the campus. The approach seems obvious now, but the early history of the great experiment in higher education inaugurated by the Morrill Act is about the struggle—and struggle it was—to create new models and to sustain the needed public financial support.
The challenges of change and of resource scarcity have continued generation after generation. Public colleges and universities, for example, were at the forefront in support of the GI Bill after World War II because of their foundational commitment to education for nonelites, but the influx of new students almost overwhelmed them. Many institutions doubled in size in five years. Thereafter, many public universities became research powerhouses, with all the changes that involved. Public universities have for decades undertaken about two-thirds of the academic research funded by the federal government. I mention here only some of the more dramatic changes over the generations. Sustained status quo has largely been a mirage. In fact, most land-grants and publics have adjusted remarkably over time, sometimes quite rapidly.
We must adjust rapidly again. We do not have a choice.
Society needs to educate more students. A few argue that the economic return for the investment in a college degree is not enough. This is a rather silly position given the alternative of generally low pay or unemployment. And if we need to educate more students today, project out ten to twenty years in this progressively more technologically demanding and complex society. Most parents apparently agree with me. The real question must be how to provide a high quality education at a reasonable cost and to persuade the public to help pay more of the cost for a growing number of students. Higher education is a public good—an investment in society's future—not just a private good.
There can be no argument for the status quo for public universities. Most need to find less expensive delivery models for some of their educational programs. For example, universities probably need to make more use of self-paced computer courses that students undertake individually or of hybrid classes, combining Web-based, solitary work with live interaction with teachers and fellow students. Universities must simultaneously drive quality improvement and cost containment, as has been successfully done by other sectors in the economy.
Land-grant and public universities have often been able to provide an elite education for the nonelite as well as others, and we must find a way for them to continue to do so for an even larger number of increasingly diverse students. Member institutions of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) include all the land-grants and nearly all the other public research universities in the country, and together they have 3.5 million students. The country needs those institutions to continue to provide quality education for increasing numbers of students because there is nowhere else that this can be done. In fact, student numbers at APLU institutions have been growing. Community colleges and for-profits have their roles, but they are not going to substitute for what the public universities are, and for what they must do. Public universities and society must find a way, or we will fail our history and the future.
Land-grant and public universities must continue their contributions to research, innovation, development, and problem solving. It is estimated that at least half of the advances in the gross domestic product of the United States since 1945 have come from technical discovery from all U.S. universities. Public universities have a critical role for future increases in income and standard of living for the American people, not to mention for maintaining our competitive position in the world. Our contributions must be in a panorama of areas, including health, national security (not only traditional areas of national defense but also food systems and safety and bio-security), and environment (including climate change and water supply).
The role of U.S. public universities in problem solving is critical not just for the United States but also for the whole world. For example, without the help of our public universities, particularly the land-grants that helped to spur the global “Green Revolution,” it is very unlikely that the world will be able to find a way to double food production by 2050. Almost everyone agrees that doing so is absolutely necessary. Without progr