The Good Times Stop Rolling For Universities...Maybe Not Such a Bad Thing

TW: Generally funding cuts for education I would regard as a bad thing including those for top level universities. But when I read stories like this one I think perhaps not all funding cuts will be negative. Universities seem to have fallen into an arms race of sorts whereby providing their core service- higher education at a reasonable cost to a broad spectrum of students- has lost priority. Instead universities engage in highly expensive capital projects, which will generate high maintenance costs in the future, and other projects that appear more oriented toward rankings than their core mission.

From NYT:
"When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University seven years ago, he promised to make it “The New American University,” with 100,000 students by 2020. It would break down the musty old boundaries between disciplines, encourage advanced research and entrepreneurship to drive the new economy, and draw in students from underserved sectors of the state.

He quickly made a name for himself, increasing enrollment by nearly a third to 67,000 students, luring big-name professors and starting interdisciplinary schools in areas like sustainability, projects with partners like the Mayo Clinic and Sichuan University in China, and dozens of new degree programs

But this year, Mr. Crow’s plans have crashed into new budget realities, raising questions about how many public research universities the nation needs and whether universities like Arizona State, in their drive to become prominent research institutions, have lost focus on their public mission to provide solid undergraduate education for state residents.

These days, the headlines about Arizona State describe its enormous cuts.

The university has eliminated more than 500 jobs, including deans, department chairmen and hundreds of teaching assistants. Last month, Mr. Crow announced that the university would close 48 programs, cap enrollment and move up the freshman application deadline by five months. Every employee, from Mr. Crow down, will have 10 to 15 unpaid furlough days this spring.

...Public universities everywhere are bracing for deep cuts in next year’s budgets, but the federal stimulus package, providing billions for education and billions more for research, should ease the problem somewhat.

...“It may be that the idea of a 100,000-student research university was never very sustainable,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which promotes access to higher education. “In this economy, the places that have been trying to claw their way up the ladder, the ones whose aspirations have exceeded their financial vision, are going to have the toughest time. They can’t be all things to all people.”

...His university, he said, is an inclusive institution where there are 7,000 students with no family income at all and a growing population of American Indian students. Tuition in most programs is under $6,000 a year for state residents, in part because of a State Constitution provision that it be as “nearly free” as possible, which courts have interpreted to mean that its tuition must be in the bottom third of public universities nationwide.

Mr. Crow’s record for improving quality is impressive, too. He has hired more than 600 tenured or tenure-track faculty members, and last year, for the first time, won a spot on the National Science Foundation’s list of the top 20 research universities without a medical school, along with powerhouses like M.I.T. and the University of California, Berkeley.

But not every university can be in the top 20. And in a time of shrinking state budgets, undergraduates at public universities will most likely pay the price in higher tuition, larger classes and less interaction with tenured professors. So it is a real question how many public research universities the nation can afford, and what share of resources should go to less expensive forms of education, like community colleges

“Universities aspire to prestige,” Ms. Wellman said, “and that is achieved by increasing selectivity, getting a research mission and having faculty do as little teaching as possible, not by teaching and learning, and taking students from Point A to Point B.”

Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California, laments that it has become an article of faith that every depressed area needs a research university.

“Research universities are very expensive,” Mr. Yudof said, “and you can’t have one in every county and every state. Your first obligation as a public university is to treat the undergraduates right. That’s going to need a national attitude adjustment from leadership and boards of regents...”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/us/17university.html?_r=1&scp=9&sq=U.S.%20public%20universities&st=cse'