135, The Modern University

When I left the farm for Bowling Green State University my mother said: “I’m afraid you will love it so much that you will never graduate.” In effect, I never did, staying in school from age 18 to age 69. I love universities: the people, the complexity, the important/noble work.

I will start the following reflections with some history of higher education; then provide some data about contemporary universities in the United States; followed by some facts about a contemporary public university with regard to which I am somewhat knowledgeable — San Diego State University. Finally, I will indulge myself by expressing some personal opinions.

Let’s begin with some history. If we define universities simply as “places of learning” then they date back way beyond our species itself. We have recorded instances of apes passing on learned culture to their offspring. Culture is not a trait unique to humans. By studying orangutan populations, researchers have demonstrated that great apes also have the ability to learn socially and to pass those lessons down through generations.

That would suggest we need a better definition of universities than just “places of learning” or even “passing on culture”.

Once humans came along, we had story-tellers, poets, and bards gathering people around campfires — still not quite universities, but closer. Then there grew up a tradition of sages and their students: Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, Confucianism in China, Nalanda in India. These bring us closer to what might be called a university, but we are still not there. Despite his brilliance, Neil deGrasse Tyson does not a university make.

The first institution in Europe to earn the name “university” was Bologna, founded in 1088; Oxford followed in 1096; the University of Salamanca in 1134; Paris was founded approximately in 1150; Padua in 1222, etc.

These early universities were primarily small guilds of learned scholars (called “masters”) with students attached. There were no residence halls, (They didn’t appear in Europe until the 13th century — though India had them in the 5th to 6th century.), no book stores, no football teams, not even a Rec. Center!!! If they had a library at all it was typically a couple dozen books kept under lock and key.

As associations of learned men, (no women at this time), they were free to move. Rents too high? Beer too expensive at the local pub? Let’s move on to the next town. But here, with the precursor of what we could reasonably call a “faculty”, you have the beginnings of the modern university. Note: not a single story-teller or sage, but a collection of scholars with different views and expertise.

The typical medieval university had four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. The Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest, as students had to graduate there in order to be admitted to one of the higher faculties.

What did they teach? The lower division, “Trivium”, (Literally “place where three roads meet), was made up of grammar, logic and rhetoric. The upper division, the “Quadrivium”, studied Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy and Music. (Think “music of the spheres”.)

The title of “Dean” as designating the head of a faculty, came into use by 1268 in the faculties of law and medicine, and by 1296 in the faculty of theology. At first deans were simply the oldest masters.

Let me now shift our gaze to America. The first university to be founded in America, (before it was the “United States”), was Harvard in 1636, (Think John Adams.); followed shortly thereafter by William and Mary in 1693, (Think Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe.); Yale joined the club in 1701, but did not produce its first president until William Howard Taft. Princeton was founded in 1746. (Think James Madison.)

These were church affiliated colleges, dedicated primarily to producing clergy. Harvard produced Congregationalists and Unitarians; William and Mary sent forth Anglicans; Yale produced still more Congregationalists; Princeton gave us Presbyterians. They were largely upper-class institutions, typically serving sons of the wealthy.

But as the world moved forward, (think industrial revolution and increasing complexity of farming and animal husbandry), it needed more than just educated clergy. Enter the Morrill Act signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862. Its formal title was: “An Act donating Public Lands to the several States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts.” We know it as the primary source of our public “land-grant” universities.

The Morrill Act went on to specify its purpose as: “…to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” Note: no longer just clergy and sons of the wealthy, but rather “the industrial classes”, i.e. pretty much the rest of us. Note also: this was 1862: the civil war was underway, and yet we had time/resources/foresight to provide for education.

In the next fifty years, public education in the US expanded further with mandatory high school; soon teachers were expected to have degrees. Many, now comprehensive state universities, such as SDSU and UCLA, were founded as “Normal Schools” or teachers’ colleges.

SDSU was founded in 1897; UCLA in 1919.

So how are US colleges and universities doing now? There are 4583 institutions of higher education in the US. — — slightly down from a high of 4726 in 2012. Together they enroll @20.4M students — an increase of about 5.1 million since fall 2000.

Approx. 1700 of those institutions of higher education are Community colleges; 3000 are four-year colleges and universities.

About 5.5 million students are enrolled in private colleges and 14.5 million in public colleges. The ratio of public to private college enrollment has increased slightly with public colleges making up 67 percent in 1965 and 72 percent now.

69% of high school graduates attend a public college or university immediately after graduating from HS. But only 1/3 of Americans now hold a bachelor’s degree. Most recent high school graduates attend full-time.

Females account for @56% of college and university students.

Approx. three million students are presently pursuing post-baccalaureate degrees.

Higher education is rapidly becoming more diverse:

In the year 2000: 2016 Hispanic 9.9%, Black 11.7% White 70.8% 56.9%.

In 2016: Hispanic, 18.2%, Black 13.7%, White 56.9%

From 1965 to 2015 total higher education enrollment increased by roughly 240%.

Some of you may remember that Peter Drucker wrote in Forbes magazine, in 1997: “Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive.” That was 20 years ago; our numbers continue to climb.

Why the increase? Primarily for two reasons: there are more college-age Americans — — up @15% just since 2000; and a higher percentage of young people are attending college — — up 5% since 2000.

Last year, charges for tuition and required fees averaged $6,613 at public institutions, $31,411 at private nonprofit institutions. That is perhaps surprising, certainly less than you typically hear. Why? Because there are some nightmare, beyond-the-pale instances of high cost that work their way into the press. But also because these alarming figures typically include room and board. (Last time I looked young people tend to eat whether or not they are enrolled in universities.)

During the 2017–18 school year, American colleges and universities are expected to award: __ 1.0 million associate’s degrees; __ 1.9 million bachelor’s degrees; __ 790,000 master’s degrees; __ and 183,000 doctor’s degrees.

US universities are typically regarded as the best in the world. Five of the top 10 are ours.

Moreover, American universities are among our most successful “exports”. More than a million international students studied in the US last year. 149K of them in CA — more than in any other state. Those international students contributed more than $35 billion to the US economy last year, including more than $5 billion to California.

In just the last decade, the number of international students enrolled in America has gone up 85%. The presence of these international students in our midst is a good thing, a strength of our state and nation. Whenever young people experience other cultures and pursue their education we should all applaud. BUT the presence of international students is not without consequences for our universities– some of which I will discuss in a moment.

So, in the context of higher education in the US, what does San Diego State look like?

We, (Forgive my lingering “we”.), enroll approximately 35,000 students. (The average four-year public university enrolls about 5,000.)

SDSU employs approximately 5,000 people; @6,200 when you include auxiliary enterprises like the book store, food service and resident halls; plus another 1533 student assistants.

SDSU’s total, all-in budget is $894.2M. The university operating Budget, (state appropriation plus tuition and fees), is $415M. Of that, state support, (i.e. your tax dollars), is $190.5M. When I first came to SDSU in 1996 state support was $139M or 67% of our operating budget. When I left in 2011 it was 39%.

SDSU awards $266M in financial aid (grants, loans, andscholarships) annually.

Our annual economic impact is $5.7 billion.

SDSU received 84,570 undergraduate applications last year, 9th in the country. Of those, 26,780 were admitted. 8,964 enrolled. These are highly qualified students: __ average SAT: 1195 __ average HS GPA: 3.71

For fall, 2018 SDSU has received over 93,600 undergraduate applications. When you add in graduate applications, SDSU is now over 101,000 applications.

How well does San Diego State serve these students? In the (latest available) 2011 cohort the six-year graduation rate at SDSU was an impressive 75.3% vs. 59% nationally.

Students of color make up 54% of SDSU’s enrollment vs. a national average of approximately 40%.

There are 2,123 International students enrolled at SDSU. Over 3,000 SDSU students had an international experience last year — ranking it 8th among US colleges and universities.

Our work in encouraging student growth and development is well-known. It involves assignments, lectures, perhaps laboratories or studios, and testing. But a fundamental part of what you pay us to do is to push back the darkness of our collective ignorance, to make new discoveries, to produce research to guide our economy, to invent new drugs and deliveries. Last year SDSU earned more than $134M in grants and contracts.

Almost all modern technologies, medical breakthroughs, and engineering wonders began in universities. Universities are more than just the “places of learning”. A better definition is that universities are engaged in the work of human growth and development, both individually and as a species. Our human condition is no more fixed and static than is our individual one.

Universities are, major drivers of contemporary society. As noted above [?], they pass down culture, but they also invent it and drive it forward.

The work of a university is not only about its students. It is about the greater human quest to grow and learn, to conquer new heights, to overcome greater challenges. “Human growth and development” means not just the growth of our students, but also the growth of the human condition itself. That is the work we do. It is both a great pleasure and an awesome responsibility.

Finally, allow me to express some personal opinions (in no particular order).

Is higher education too expensive?

Yes and no. Higher education ought to be free in the United States as it is in Germany and Norway. As a species whose distinguishing feature is intelligence, we ought to be investing more in our education rather than less. As a country with pretensions to world leadership in an increasingly complex and technological age, we ought to be investing more as a society and less as individuals.

BUT, if you ask “is the cost of higher education worth it?” Is the expense worth its return? On average it clearly is. SDSU’s current annual tuition is approximately $5,750. Multiply that by the six years the feds use to calculate graduation rates and you get an investment of $34,500 with an average return of an additional $1M of life-time income. That’s almost a 3000% return on investment. But, of course, you cannot calculate the R.O.I. just on individual gain. Think more broadly: workforce development, research, an educated electorate, etc.

Who is the fairest of them all?

When I was a young philosopher I knew that philosophy was the center of the university; when I became a Dean of Arts and Sciences I knew that Arts and Sciences was the center of the university; when I became a Chief Academic Officer I knew that Academic Affairs was the center of the university. BUT when I became a university president and “saw the whole board”, I came to understand that universities are complex, full-of-wonders places that require all of us (faculty, staff, students, alumni, community members), if we are to accomplish our mission of human growth and development. Disciplinary chauvinism is understandable, but it is beneath us.

By the way, to complete my earlier list, when I became a university president I also learned that universities require the support of our broader community/society. Our work is vital, but we are not cheap dates.

Community relations

Universities cannot be ivory towers. Universities are better when involved, engaged, responsive. E.g. SDSU’s work with public health in the South Bay, or our work with the schools in City Heights, or our attention to work force production, or responsiveness to local issues/needs: such as providing support for veterans or our “Compact for Success” in the South Bay.

I said the universities are made better by these partnerships. How so? Let me cite one of many examples.

About 20 years ago an alumnus named Bob Payne, with some help from Patti Rosco and the hospitality industry funded a “startup” hospitality program at SDSU.Tourism is San Diego’s third largest economic sector, (behind the military and high-tech). To give you a sense of tourism’s importance to San Diego: the city’s Transit Occupancy Tax yields $221M annually; the county’s an additional $289M.

Thanks to Bob’s vision and this partnership with the tourism industry, SDSU now has 450 students enrolled in its highly acclaimed hospitality program. SDSU provides not only the workforce but most of the research that drives the industry (and San Diego) forward.This is good for our community, good for SDSU and good for our students. — a classic town/gown partnership.

By the way, the SDSU Hospitality program’s employment rate for graduating seniors is 99%.

Fundraising

Thanks to a lot of hard work by hundreds of people, SDSU has just completed a hugely successful comprehensive fundraising campaign in which it raised $815M. I believe that much of the success of that campaign is due to SDSU’s engagement in our community. The key is serving the community first, then receiving its support. People care about and support San Diego State because it cares about and supports them.

Tenure

When I was a young, hot-shot philosopher, (well, maybe “lukewarm-shot” philosopher), at the University of Maine I was opposed to tenure. “I don’t need no stinking tenure!”

But then I was designated the Arts and Sciences’ liaison to the College of Engineering. The Engineering Dean taught me the real value of tenure. His engineers did not need job security; there were no threats to their free speech. Each of those engineers could easily double or triple his or her salary on the open market. Why did they not? Because the university gave them the freedom to pursue the research they cared about. They could teach as they liked.

For those of you who do not like tenure I would say, you cannot have it both ways. I.e. you cannot get engineering, business, health, bio-sciences, computing faculty, etc. without tenure UNLESS you are willing to pay them their going rate on the open market.

There are now solid societal guarantees of free speech, (much more so than when the AAUP was formed about 100 years ago). Tenure is much more about intellectual freedom. Faculty give up a lot of money to enjoy those freedoms.

International students

I mentioned earlier that there has been an 85% increase in international students studying in this country in just the past decade. Why? Because the future is still being invented here, in our colleges and universities. Most modern technologies, medical breakthroughs, and engineering wonders began in US universities. But for how long will our universities be dominant??? For how long will they attract the world’s “best and brightest”?

A 2017 report published by the National Foundation for American Policy found that: 81 percent of full-time graduate students in electrical and petroleum engineering programs at U.S. universities are international students, and 79 percent in computer science are. Importantly the report goes on to argue that: at many U.S. universities “both majors and graduate programs could not be maintained without international students.”

Young people are “opportunity seeking missiles” 40 years ago most graduate degrees in STEM disciplines were earned by Americans. 20 years ago, most were earned by international students — who then stayed in our country and contributed to our workforce. Now most of those students, especially from China and India, return to their own countries. Why? Because that is where the opportunity is. Already those exported Ph.D’s are building better and stronger universities on their home turf.

My point is not that we have too many international students; indeed, we need/want more of them. My point is that we also need/want more of our own.

We cannot and should not assume that American universities are forever destined to be the best. They will be the best only if we improve our K-12 schools and invest in our young people. Otherwise our own “opportunity seeking missiles” will soon be heading abroad. That is neither good nor bad in itself; education is education. Get the best you can where you can. But it will not be good for the United States or its universities.

Mark Hopkins

President John Garfield famously said: “The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.” This is quite a “log” American higher education has built. However, education is not, and has never been about a campus and its physical plant, (important as that is). As noted above, education is primarily a dialogue between faculty members and students — i.e. the folks balanced on the ends of the log.

It is also important to understand that Mark Hopkins is not the only other person on that log. Students learn a lot from one another. (That’s why a diverse student body is such an asset.)

It is also important to recognize that not all learning takes place in a classroom. Some comes from study abroad, some from ROTC, some from athletics — — and some in the back seats of cars. (That’s a reference for us “old folks”.)

University Governance

When someone would call me, “the guy who runs SDSU” or some such thing. I took pleasure in responding, “Nobody runs it; it’s a university.” There is a lot of truth in that.

Universities were originally run by their faculties and they still are more or less — not the everyday stuff for which they hire less talented folk such as myself, but for the important things.

If an administrator gets seriously out of line faculty will vote “no confidence” which means, in effect, something has to change — usually the administrator looks for another post.

While administrators might make budgetary decisions as to how many new faculty positions will be available next year and how to deploy them, (more about that in a moment), it is faculty who hire their own colleagues. And so it should be. How could any university president determine the best chemist? historian? engineer? or anthropologist? Or what the curriculum ought to be in psychology or computer science?

Faculty, primarily in the context of departments, are the keepers of the curriculum and stewards of their own ranks, not only in hiring, but also for promotion and tenure. Beyond that, they are responsible for interpreting their discipline to students and colleagues.

For the most part administrators are referees in the process, making sure procedures are followed, policing against bias or discrimination — both of which are rare.

University governance matters. It is the major reason why universities are among the oldest, longest persevering, most responsive organizations in western civilization.

But, of course, someone has to decide how this precious resource of professional talent is deployed. For the most part that is the business not of facilty or administrators, but rather of students. Yes, students.

I would like to teach a seminar on Thomas Aquinas’ De Ente et Essentia. BUT if no students sign up for the course. I will be teaching something else. The curriculum is largely self-correcting via course registration. The curriculum expands in areas of growing student interest and contracts in those of waning interest.

People often ask why universities are no longer teaching Greek and Latin. In fact, they are, but the answer as to why some courses are no-longer being taught is probably that students have stopped signing up for them. There was a time when only classical languages were taught; not so much so now. There was a time, (when I was a young faculty member), when there was little or no computer science in the curriculum. Students (and potential employers) drove those changes. Faculty will have ideas as to interesting/valuable courses, but it is students who decide whether those courses will live or die.

University Presidents

So, then, if the faculty take care of themselves. And the students decide what will be taught, what does the university president do? Largely what needs to be done in that time at that place.

Digression: when I arrived to begin my work as a virgin philosopher at the University of Maine, my department chair took me aside and said, “Steve, we look on you as a blank check.” By which he meant that I would teach what needed teaching, (after my elders had selected the courses they wished to teach), and that I would be assigned to committees as needed. I ended my academic career with the same job description: “Do what needs to be done.”

I was fond of reminding my administrative colleagues that our word “administration” comes from the Latin “ad ministrari”, meaning “to minister to”. It might just as well be translated as “Do what needs to be done.”

Most generally, a university president is the voice of the university. It is her privilege to “tell the story”, to interpret this complex collection of talent, these young students, this huge public investment, to the world. Put another way, she is a translator, listening carefully both to colleagues and to external voices, (which she hears by being involved in the greater community), interpreting each to the other, perhaps being a bridge to facilitate synergies between the two.

The university president is also a cheerleader, seeing what is possible, having confidence that it can be attained.

As part of her role as “public face” of the university she occasionally has to do damage control. Sometimes she has to urge a bigger picture, summon our “better angels”. Always she has to remember that the university is its people: faculty, students, staff, alumni, taxpayers, etc. The university is not its president.

Perhaps the most recognizable role of a university president is in fund-raising. When a major donor wants assurances that his or her gift will be used as intended, only the university president is in a position to give that assurance and accept (or reject) the gift.

Fund-raising has become increasingly important as state budgets continue to contract. In my personal view, our society has pulled back from investing in itself: in research, in infrastructure, and most of all in rising generations. Again, in 1996 tuition at San Diego State was $1100 per year; now it is $5,750. Is that because we cannot control costs? Because salaries are out of control? No, it is primarily a shift of funding from the state to students. That is both sad and short-sighted.

I appreciate your interest. As you will perhaps agree, American colleges and universities are full-of-wonders places. Modern Universities, Higher education