英语访谈节目:公立大学该如何应对日益增强的压力

JEFFREY BROWN:Well, let me ask Gordon Gee.

I mean, one of the issues here that's always raised is, should universities, especially public ones, be run more like businesses, just more on a sort of corporate model? Can you see yourself—well, how do you see yourself? Are you a CEO of a major corporation, or what would that mean?

GORDON GEE:No, you know, the issue for universities is the fact that we are now in a moment in time in which we're really going to have to think very aggressively about change.

At the same time, we have to understand that our business is the business of ideas. And so ideas are sometimes messy. Sometimes, they're difficult to put your arms around. But, in my view, what we're about is we're about returning to the core.

In my own instance, in my own institution, we are focusing on teaching and learning and research and ideas and faculty, staff, and students, and 11 million Ohioans. And if that is—and if what we're doing at the university is not central to that core, then we will do something differently. We have just privatized our parking, as an example, as an ability—now giving us an ability to be able to invest, clearly, in the central core of the institution.

And often I hear this notion about we're privatizing, therefore, we're corporatizing. That just is nonsense. What we're about is we're about really developing a new strategy for the funding and the structure and the dynamics of higher education. And you can do it in an inclusive manner, but you have to move forward. There's a real urgency about what we need to do in higher education.

JEFFREY BROWN:Anne Neal, one thing that comes—another thing that comes up is the question of dropping departments or dropping parts of what the academy, various universities do, unsuccessful or uNPRoductive ones, however one would define that. Would you advocate looking at that as things that universities need to do?

ANNE NEAL: Well, I think we're going to have to look very broadly at a whole range of activities on our college campuses.

Effective and efficient use of our academy focused on academic excellence doesn't take a corporate raider to do it. And I think this is in fact what has been raised very effectively at the University of Virginia, that there have been many, many topics that, quite frankly, haven't really been on the table, looking at the budget for '12-'13, questions of faculty teaching loads, can they teach more and go back to the standards, for instance, of the 1980s, where they taught nearly one more than they do now?

Can we find ways to reduce administrative bloat, which has really ramped up across the country at institutions elsewhere? Can we do something about the proliferation of classes? For instance, we looked at the University of Virginia and we found there were 71 classes where there were 10 or fewer graduates.

And these are the kinds of issues, the kinds of questions that should be on the table. I don't think we necessarily need to dictate the outcome, but the fact is, unless we have that robust discussion, and now, it really will be a model of ever adding, ever adding that we just simply can't deal with anymore.

I think it's interesting that since the G.I. Bill, it really has been a growth model. And Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School in his book "Innovative University" has talked very much to trustees and other communities that the growth model doesn't work and here is an opportunity now for universities to really focus on what they do well.

JEFFREY BROWN:All right, let me ask George Cohen to react to what you just heard, specifically using a business model, taking hard choices.

GEORGE COHEN: Well, I agree that there are hard choices that need to be made.

I think we need to keep in mind, also, the value of a liberal arts education, which is that if you have people who are trained to reason well, write well, speak well, do effective research, we don't know where the jobs of the future are going to be. And we need to be flexible in the way we educate our students, because we don't know which languages will be the most important ones and, in 20 years, which technologies will be the most important ones.

You need people who are able to adapt and respond to changing circumstances. And there is a value in being able to offer a portfolio of courses and subjects that can help students be trained to be adaptive.

JEFFREY BROWN:Gordon Gee, do you want to weigh...

ANNE NEAL:Jeff, I...

JEFFREY BROWN:Let me ask Gordon Gee to weigh in on this.

GORDON GEE:Well, obviously, I think that the process of change—I describe universities, American universities, this way. I think that we're elephants. I think we have to become ballerinas, or else we're going to become dinosaurs.

And we have to take charge of our own ability to be able to make those changes. Otherwise, they are going to be imposed from other places. We have to work very collectively. We have to work with our boards, but we have to move forward because we have no choice.

I think that we also have to understand the American university is not broken. We still are at the pinnacle of higher education worldwide. But we also are greatly threatened if we do not make the kinds of changes that I believe are necessary in order to be able to be successful.

JEFFREY BROWN:All right, we are going to have to leave it there, a very interesting subject which we will return to.

Gordon Gee, Anne Neal and George Cohen, thank you, all three, very much.

GEORGE COHEN:Thank you.

GORDON GEE:Thank you.