Editor’s Note: Dr. Harl is a Distinguished Professor in Agriculture; Professor of Economics, Iowa State University and is the Director of the Center for International Agriculture Finance. He also serves as member of the Research Advisory Committee for the Cattlemen’s Competitive Market Project (CCMP). This is Part II of a continuing series.
What is to blame?
How did we end up in such a state? Where did we take the wrong turn in the academic road – a wrong turn that was apparent to some nearly two decades ago?
Desire for a higher ranking. There are many contributing factors but prominent among them is the cacophony of pronouncements, often uttered more for political gain than from a genuine desire to excel on the national stage, that a particular institution was striving to be the best – or one of the best – land grant universities in the country. Five colleges (the University of Arizona, Purdue University, the University of Nebraska, Ohio State University and Texas A&M University) as of 2000 stated in their mission statement that part of their mission was to become the premier agricultural college in the United States.
Thus, the mantra has been to become the best (or one of the best) land grant universities without specifying the criteria as to what is "best." Some statements by administrators (and some interpretations of the goal by faculty and others) have taken that to mean that "best" is defined by the respective disciplines which literally means that only research is counted. Moreover, the research is weighted in terms of publications in the most highly ranked journals (which, in turn, are ranked by the respective disciplines in terms of a premium being placed on theoretical as opposed to applied research and are read mostly by those in that discipline). Thus, teaching is not considered (even though many administrators, from time to time, have stated that teaching is the number one goal on the campus), extension activity is given no weight (even though occasionally statements are made by administrators that extension is an important function of any land grant university and certainly represents an important constituency of the land grant university), and applied or mission-oriented research is ranked less highly than theoretical research.
The reward system reflects the institutional priorities. As Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University, has stated, "…rewards for excellent research far exceed those available for excellent teaching." All of this tends to skew the evaluation system and the reward system as well as the search for replacement faculty. In some departments in colleges and universities, this distortion has reached such a state that it is virtually impossible to hire for a tenure track position for an extension or teaching position. In many searches, those functions do not count at all even though lip service is given to non-research components. Indeed, it is difficult to hire someone with a strong interest in applied or mission-oriented research even with no teaching or extension component to their job description.
It is critically important that university goals be stated clearly in terms of how performance is to be evaluated. Over time, a singular emphasis on theoretical research makes it difficult, if not impossible, to carry out applied or mission-oriented research and is a barrier to a quality teaching program as well. It is my view that a land grant university should be evaluated on the basis to which all three traditional functions are carried out with none rated above the others. I believe that it is possible for a university to excel in all three areas and they should. We have fallen victim to the mentality, emanating from the non-land grant institutions, to narrow the criteria as to what is "best" by looking at the research programs and performance.
We need a substantial reorientation of effort—not to downgrade theoretical research, but to lift up a model of excellence in terms of a comprehensive approach to evaluating and rewarding all program dimensions, ranging from theoretical research to mission-oriented research to extension and teaching. Anything less is intellectually dishonest and a betrayal of the great land grant tradition. To give lip service to the importance of all three functions but to recognize only one is intellectually dishonest.
Fiscal pressures on universities.
A second reason for skewed priorities has been the enormous fiscal pressure brought on, in part, by the decline in public support. The assumption of three or four decades ago that 70 percent to 80 percent of the cost of higher education should come from public support has declined to 25 percent or even less. As Mark Yudof, Chancellor of the University of Texas System, has stated, higher education’s share of state spending in the United States
fell by 14 percent just from 1986 to 1996. The result has been sharply higher tuition, fewer services, aggressive patenting, the outsourcing of everything from dining hall food to janitorial services, a push for more distance education, the sale of rare campus treasures (the sale of the university-owned television station, WOI-TV and the sale of the Iowa State University Press, as examples.
Where will this lead?NH
To be continued... |