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Thursday, January 11, 2007

State-controlled Universities...


... as Europe's pathetic system tells us, are almost always disasters. Universities need large degrees of autonomy, and public universities in this country, which enjoy varying amounts of taxpayer support, know that they have to monitor their complex relationships with their states in order to retain enough independence to run their schools with integrity.

Researchers need to be left alone to pursue their research in whatever direction it takes them; social critics on the faculty need the freedom to speak and write as they wish; admissions committees need to be allowed to be selective (most government controlled universities have to take pretty much anyone who applies, since governments want to be able to say that anyone who wants to can go to college); faculties need to be able to challenge presidents and trustees, just as presidents and trustees need to be able to challenge faculties; administrations need to be able to make their own budget decisions to a large degree -- to decide that this year they'd like to give a lot of funding to a particularly promising department or initiative, for instance. Hiring committees need to be able to act swiftly and flexibly to take advantage of targets of opportunity, in order to add excellence, diversity, whatever, to their faculties.

Without this combination of independence and flexibility, American universities wouldn't be the envy of the world. Which they are.



One of the reasons this blog has been particularly scathing about what's going on in Minnesota and Alabama is that (as the quotation from James Dunderstadt in the post just below this one suggests) when public universities act stupidly, they put at risk the greatest asset of America's impressive higher education system: its significant independence from state control. When presidents of public universities demonstrate that they don't know what a university is -- when their jocksniffing becomes a crippling disability -- they anger taxpayers and their representatives. They make it clear that they can't be trusted to run a public university, because they don't know what a university is. Even people who love football can do the math; they know their kids are getting dumber, not smarter, by going to football factories.

So as state legislators start circling around the University of Minnesota, introducing legislation all of which has the aim of removing one layer of autonomy after another, remember that the university brought this on itself. It had choices -- about its stadium, about its football and basketball programs -- and it fucked up. It was supposed to be protecting a set of values -- values anathema to or incomprehensible to most state legislators, because they are values peculiar to the peculiar thing we call a university -- which it betrayed; and now control from on high rather than intellectual integrity on the ground is what the students of Minnesota are likely to get.



Look at the news out of Ohio:


'Gov. Ted Strickland wants to make Ohio's chancellor of higher education part of his cabinet, under his direct control. We think it's a plan worth pursuing, given the highly unsatisfactory state of higher education in Ohio. Placing the chancellor directly under the governor's control, Strickland said yesterday, will increase his ability to foster improvements in college graduation and opportunities for getting a college education.

... Strickland's plan to bring the chancellor into his cabinet is unique among the 50 states, according to an Associated Press story citing a Harvard University expert on university leadership searches. The expert, Judith Block McLaughlin, sounded critical of Strickland's idea, noting, ''It's treating education as if it were a state agency and subjecting it to political influence'' which runs counter to the traditional balance between ''accountability to the government'' and ''intellectual independence.'' But what about Ohioans' unmet need for a decent, affordable college education? The Regents don't seem to have a grip on it and could use help.'


To be sure, regents tend to be useless and ridiculous; and no doubt Ohio's rates of graduation and rates of accessibility could be better. But this editorial doesn't see that without intellectually independent universities, Ohio's students won't get decent college educations. They'll get a chancellor micromanaged by the governor and pussywhipped by his athletic directors.