News & Views item - July 2006

 

 

Saving the Soul of the US' Public Research Universities. (July 20, 2006)

    Joseph Burke is director of the Higher Education Program at the Rockefeller Institute of Government of the State University of New York, and he is editor and co-author of Fixing the Fragmented University: Decentralization with Direction, to be published later this year.

 

In an article published in Inside Higher Education last week he asks, "Can public research universities pursue both public purpose and peer prestige? (Can the University of Virginia meet the dual directive of its Board of Visitors to raise its proportion of economically disadvantaged students and its U.S. News & World Report ranking among national universities [currently 23]? 

 

"As currently defined, achieving both goals remain an impossible dream, for public purpose is not a by-product produced automatically while pursuing peer prestige."

 

In the northern autumn of 2005 Burke in National Crosstalk published "Nine Principles serving the public good in a time of changing governance models for colleges and universities".

 

Those nine principles are summarised:

  1. Limited authority means less accountability.

  2. Deregulation is possible; autonomy is not.

  3. In accountability, more is seldom better.

  4. Public higher education is too important to society to leave its form and funding largely to private negotiations between state officials and university leaders.

  5. Public universities must demonstrate that they care more about serving the public good than raising their peer prestige.

  6. Market demands and the public good are not synonymous.

  7. The toughest accountability test for top research universities after remodelling will be support for student access and school improvement.

  8. Preserving the unity of public higher education is an educational and political necessity.

  9. Governors and legislators in most states will not allow public colleges and universities to set their own tuition.

Burke goes on to say, "Universities deliver both ends and means. They represent ends when discovering enduring ideas and insights and means when these discoveries spur innovations and

 inventions that improve our lives," and when it come to publicly funded research universities, "Academics and the public must agree on an agenda that embraces both educational and societal needs."

 

The matter of market forces then comes in for an assessment and in what could have been written with the current difficulties and differences engulfing Australia's universities and the federal government in mind, "Some leaders of government and business, and increasingly even presidents and professors, would leave prestige and purpose to the market. But market demands and the public good are not synonymous. Market demands are often short term and respond to individual wants, but public goods are usually long term and reflect collective needs."

 

What Burke doesn't discuss are the imperatives governmental leaders see as the crucial factors of immediate costings and perceived importance to vote retention and garnering.

 

On the other hand he defines peer prestige as representing "the resource and reputation model of excellence, with its trinity of student selectivity, rich resources, and faculty reputations. That model relies mostly on inputs of students, resources, and professors and says little about the public purpose of the quality and quantity of graduates or the contribution of research and services to states and society.

 

"Public purpose is the defining characteristic of all public universities, but what does it entail? A review of the external demands on state universities reveals a long and daunting list. They must become more accessible to economically and educationally disadvantaged students and enroll a racially diverse student body without setting targets. Their tuition must remain affordable despite declines in state support and inadequate need-based financial aid. They should graduate the great majority of their students — most of them in four years — and demonstrate their growth in knowledge and skills from entry to exit. Public universities should actively assist the reform of public schools and produce graduates in critical fields who are prepared mentally and ethically for work and citizenship. Their research and public service should spur the economic growth and civic development of their states and communities."

 

The aim of Burks's analysis is to find pathways to resolve the conflicts of interest between the two aims. And he states the essence of his solution in a sentence. "The answer to the current conflict is not to abandon either peer prestige or public purpose but to broaden the first to cover the public mandate of state universities and to narrow the second to public needs, not wants."

 

Interestingly, discussions of the responsibilities of America's private universities have increasingly focused on the very same issues and the appropriate balance of the objectives remains a paramount goal of the foremost private research universities in the United States as well as philanthropies such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

 

Burke goes on to discuss the matter of student selectivity and suggests that public universities have not the right to exercise the degree of selectivity allowed to private institutions.

 

Perhaps so but if a state makes available appropriate avenues of post secondary education it doesn't follow that schools should not be permitted to determine how selective the can be. And it is not just a matter of supply and demand. A dropping of standards as regards selection of students does result in a dropping of standards of university teaching and research.

 

Nevertheless, Burke's point that a "public research universities should use some of [its] places to correct poor preparation that stems from economic disadvantage" is incontestable.

 

But it is noteworthy that while Burke comments negatively on the ranking by U.S.-News that 20 private institutions are listed before the University of California, Berkeley, the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which ranks only research universities, places 9 public universities in its list of the top 20, something that ought to be noted by Australia's university vice-chancellors as well as the Minister for Education, Science and Training.