The Ax Comes to Academia

Today's award for Valor Under Fire goes to a Task Force at the University of Iowa which set out to evaluate which graduate programs were first-rate, which were so-so and which could be scrubbed without damage to that state's intellectual reputation. The Task Force's report is just in and is a fascinating document, both for what it says and for where it fears to tread. 

First, the Task Force produced its report in about a year -- licketysplit by the standards of academia, where no issue is so trivial that it can't be debated to death. A similar report at the University of Idaho marinated for four years.

Second, the Task Force raised the bar for academic euphemisms. The report, which is meant to identify bad programs, was entitled "Selective Excellence." Of the 111 programs studied, 14 programs were first called "weak." But the authors decided that "weak" was too strong and wrote instead that these programs "require additional evaluation." Overall, it said, Iowa's graduate programs "are doing a very good job." Actually, the rankings themselves rated only 60 programs, about 55 percent, as better than average. 

Now, the hard part begins -- getting rid of the poorer programs, by closing them down or merging them into other programs. Professors battling for their disciplines -- and not incidentally, their jobs -- will take to the barricades. According to the Chronicle on Higher Education, one faculty member has already sent emails saying that proposed cutbacks in a program on China was motivated by racism, not by the fact that few students were signing up for the course.

When it comes to sacrifices for the greater good, most university faculties make the U.S. Senate look as collegial as the Three Musketeers. 

The task force, at Iowa and other schools, came into being, of course, for economic reasons. State funding for universities, in Iowa and elsewhere, is being cut back, because state governments are strapped for cash. As every parent knows, tuitions already are through the roof. Universities are rattling the tin cup at alumni and scrapping for every corporate contract and government grant they can get.

But still there's barely enough money to pay for even the truly valuable graduate programs, let alone those that have lost relevance, or can't attract students, or duplicate other programs, or take forever to award degrees, or just aren't very distinguished. This problem isn't going to go away. What's happening now at Iowa, Idaho and other schools will be repeated at universities across the nation -- especially across the Midwest, because here's where the economy is weakest and the money pressures greatest.

The 14 weakest programs at Iowa are in American studies, Asian civilizations, comparative literature, comparative literature (translation), film studies, German, linguistics, educational policy and leadership studies (educational administration), educational policy and leadership studies (social foundations of education), health and sports studies, teach and learn (elementary education), stomatology (a branch of dentistry), integrative physiology and exercise science (!).

Of these 14, eleven are in liberal arts or social sciences. (By contrast, nine of the 16 programs that got the top "exemplary" rating are in the hard sciences.) This highlights the sad fact that, in this science-obsessed age, the softer sciences, like literature or languages, are the first to go.

There's a real dilemma here. Midwestern universities really do need to concentrate on mathematics, medicine, biotech, nano and the other hard sciences, especially at the graduate and research levels. This region desperately needs to reinvent its economy, and university scientific research will be a major weapon in this reinvention. If this doesn't happen, Midwestern states -- and their universities -- will become ever poorer and weaker. 

But the liberal arts, from the classics to 21st-century political science, exist for a reason. No one can be considered educated without a grasp of the ideas that underpin and constitute our civilization. More practically, in the global era, only a broad social and political education will enable graduates to understand the world in which they live. Still more practically, the humanities teach some skills -- like languages -- that are no less than the tools of success.

Theoretically, universities shouldn't be based on competition and the bottom line. But they are. The big contracts these days go to scientific researchers. So do government grants. Alumni endow medical schools and MBA programs, not scholars in Mandarin. Tuition-paying parents push their children into programs with a payoff in jobs, like engineering or accounting, not philosophy. 

So until universities get a license to print money, something's got to give. Fortunately, there's a solution here. Unfortunately, that Iowa task force didn't consider it.

That solution is to admit the obvious, that no university today can do everything. Most still try, but that day is ending. Second, each Midwestern university is really good at some things, but not so good at others.

The solution, then, is to end the competition between universities in every discipline from biology to French to exercise science. It only makes sense to shut down weaker departments at, say, Iowa, and merge them with stronger departments at, say, Minnesota. When the University of Minnesota gets around to rating its graduate programs, it's going to find some weak ones that should be merged with programs in Iowa.

James Duderstadt, the former president of the University of Michigan, has noted that every Big Ten school is really good in something -- Illinois in computer technology, Minnesota in chemistry, Ohio State in materials science, Michigan State in agricultural technology, Northwestern in business, Wisconsin and Michigan in engineering, and so on. Indeed, these departments lead the world. But the same schools house some pretty shabby graduate programs in other disciplines.

Why not merge these graduate departments into three or four centers of true academic excellence that would draw scholars, students, researchers and money from all over the world? Not only would this make the Midwest an intellectual powerhouse. It would enable schools like Iowa to shed programs that "require additional evaluation," knowing that their students would get a better education in these disciplines somewhere else. Iowa then could use the money for things, like neuroscience and creative writing, where Iowa really shines.

This merging needn't be restricted to just the weakest programs. The Iowa task force rated that university's' graduate programs in music as merely "good," sort of a C grade. What's the point? The last time I looked, the titantic music program at Indiana University was producing, all by itself, enough performance majors to fill every vacant musical job in the country. This means that every other Big Ten music program is educating a generation of insurance agents.

The solution is to merge all Big Ten music schools into the one at Indiana. All the other schools certainly have enough biology students with the musical talent to field a marching band on Saturdays. These student/musicians would have fun, the serious musical students would get a first-rate education in Bloomington and the other schools could spend their money on programs that Indiana doesn't do so well.

The Iowa task force suggested merging some of its weaker graduate programs into other programs -- at Iowa. If it considered looking between the state line for potential partners, the report didn't say so. But it should have. 

For more information on education issues in the Midwest, visit the In the News section of the Global Midwest Web site.

Comments

[Aaron M. Renn]

This is a fantastic post. I'll have to check out that report.

[Ohio Prof]

Richard, the ax is falling at a lot of universities. There surely are some underperforming programs which can be cut with little impact on the university as a whole, though I happen to teach in one that many people think is expendable, and I hate to see any line of inquiry cut because of funding.

But when I read your recommendations to "supersize" Midwestern universities, I wondered if you forgot that the diversity and physical proximity of a wide array of talent is the real strength of a university. Consolidating departments at one campus would undermine the integrity of entire institutions. Would business majors at Northwestern have no opportunity to study music? Worse yet, someone at Illinois studying computing have nothing, or next to nothing available in anything related to materials science?

The interdisciplinary structure of a university is what creates knowledge. Having one enormous school of anything at a single university would leave others impoverished for that knowledge. Besides, I would think that managing it would be near impossible.

Are there any major institutions that currently do what you are suggesting?

[John Morris]

I think there's some logic in your thinking and it might play a role, especially since core disciplines can be related. Film, obviously relates well to music, and literature. However cross pollination is critical and hard to predict and control. Pittsburgh is finding a weird niche in event lighting technologies and musical robots.

Even more important is cross pollination between universities themselves and the wider world. It seems there's a very strong link between a university's value and where it's located-- and by the way it's a lot cheaper. NYU, is by far the most applied to school now and yet it's got a pretty wack set of facilities, no fancy campus and no major sports programs. Clearly, the selling point is the city itself. Almost all, NY schools work that way and even those that once were more campus oriented and cloistered like Fordham and ST Johns have put satellite buildings in the city. For profit colleges like the Art Institutes always work like that because they have no intention of spending/wasting big bucks on useless amenities, a viable city provides for free.

Norman, Oklahoma; Lawrence, Kansas; State College, PA; Bloomington, Indiana? What's the logic here? Either these places must scale up and become big cities or the bulk of their schools should be broken up and sited in the most logical urban area--preferably mixed in to the city.

[Ckloote]

I can see the advantages of this idea, but you'd have to come up with some cost-sharing arrangement. If you combine all the Big 10 CS programs at Illinois, that's going to hurt a bright student in Indiana who wants to study computer science but can't afford out of state tuition.

That said, living in Indiana I've thought for awhile that Purdue and IU should think more about how to combine programs. Both schools have a good CS program, but if they combined the best faculty from both schools in a unified program at IUPUI they'd have a great one.

[Richard Longworth]

Ckloote is right that new financial arrangements are necessary. John Austin at Brookings has suggested reciprocal in-state tuition rates at all Midwestern universities. Some cost-sharing would have to be worked out. In-state tuitions are based on the idea that each state university can provide everything that students from that state need. As universities cooperate or merge programs across state lines, they will become more Midwestern schools, not so much state schools, and their financing must change accordingly. As we've pointed out, this is already happening. States now provide only a sliver of the financing for the universities that bear their name. Universities are having to look elsewhere for financing, and focusing their efforts on the disciplines they do best is one way to achieve this.

[Matvey]

Don't the schools in the Southeast have reciprocal in-state tuition if no schools in your state offer a program in what you want to study?

[bcbloke]

While I would agree with the gist of your column, I would point out that the study of certain foreign languages (such as Mandarin-- esp. Mandarin, actually, but also perhaps Urdu, Farsi, Arabic, and Russian) and cultures are essential to maintaining American national security footing in terms of intelligence gathering and formulating geopolitical strategies.

[Richard Longworth]

Bcbloke gets no argument from me on the importance of foreign languages or the obligation of Midwestern universities to teach these languages -- not only Mandarin but Urdu, various Turkic languages, Swahili, etc. -- and for the reasons he cites. But these languages must be taught as well as possible, and not every college or university can do this. Iowa, for instance, does a good job teaching Spanish and Portuguese, but a bad job teaching German. It can invest money in improving its German program (money that could be better used to teach, say, Farsi) or it can shut down its German program and encourage young Iowa Germanophiles to go to some other university that shines in the Teutonic tongues. At the same time, fledgling Portuguese speakers from other Midwestern states will find their way to Iowa City, where they belong. The point is to teach as many students to speak other languages well, not to provide full employment in every university for teachers of each and every language. As another commenter noted, this sharing of strengths will require Midwestern universities to offer in-state tuition to students from other states. Fair enough. As universities begin to merge programs, the current balkanization of Midwestern universities into state-based fiefdoms will have to break down.

[John Morris]

I guess my point about moving more college assets into cities didn't interest anyone. I'm not surprised since this region is famous for the Big Ten/ Big Twelve mega college in a corn field.

On the face of it, it looks pretty weird.

Here's a quote from a recentl college graduate blogger in Cleveland.

"Every year US News & World Report releases their rankings of "best colleges". When I was a senior in high school, people memorized this list; they could tell you where any school landed. College counselors encouraged us to shoot for the top. What almost no one told us was to think about colleges geographically. Sure, many teenagers want to go to college "far away from home" to get away from their parents or live in a warmer climate; but that's more of an "anywhere but here" approach than anything else. Colleges in urban centers inherently offer access to now crucial internships at companies in those cities, regardless of how they shake out on the ranking lists. Colleges in rural areas and some suburbs simply do not, leaving their students to duke it out for overly competitive summer internships. As a college senior, it's frustrating to hear corporate recruiters admit that they any shred resume with an out-of-town address on it. Many college graduates look forward to relocating, often to a big city; but if you aren't already in one, you're not doing yourself any favors."

http://blog.robpitingolo.org/

If the midwest is to have a future it will start in it's cities. Colleges must become relevant integrated institutions again.