[inaudible conversations] welcome to the concluding day of the symposium on the future of Public Research universities. Before i introduce the panel, just remind you all as you may see, we are being filmed for cspan. When we get to the q a portion today, it is important to use the microphone and he will do better than i will. I should turn it up. Thank you for your interest. I would like to introduce the topic that we will focus on this morning. Then i will turn it over to a discussion with our panelists and get you involved. We are talking right now about Research Scholarships and the arts. At the public universities. In essence, what we are talking about, it is the faculty. The faculty and who they are, as well as the teacher faculty, including the graduate students. I would argue that we are in a time of huge challenge in the ability of public universities to recruit the best and retain the best and to sustain the kind of conditions that create outstanding scholarships, as well as teaching. It is little remembered today, and i find that when i speak to audiences in the public, 50 years ago it was not a given that the best programs or finance programs were private institutions. From much of the history, the very best would be in the public. People have heard it say that the berkeley physics department, although now, every year, people talk about whether it is in decline, think about the programs like history at the university of wisconsin from the social sciences in michigan, you have all sorts of areas where the very best did not necessarily teach and do their research. Today we are at a period of significant disadvantage for public universities in attracting and keeping faculty. So there will be some figures on salaries. The average fulltime faculty member at a private Research University this year is earning a little bit more than 162,000. The average salary for an assistant professor at private Research Universities is 89,000, which is greater than the average for an associate professor at public universities, which is 82,000. It used to be that if you look at great Research Universities, dealing with the same cost of living, that many times the public paid more, or was at least equal. If you look at stanford and berkeley, stanford is paying on average 40,000 per year more to their professors. Duke is more than chapel hill. Chapel here professors earn less on average than those at wellesley college. Here is vermont. Im looking at the data, and middlebury case more on average than the university of vermont for every faculty range. You look at the figures for assistant professors, talking about the future talents, you have a situation where there are nine universities in the country where new professors earn sixfigure salaries. Eight of them are private and the one that is public is a medical institution on its own pay scale. The future here very much favors private on retaining talent. Many choose their fields not because they want to get rich, but because there is a calling. It is beyond that. I spoke to a Research University president of a public aau institutions here and we are talking about calendar offers that his institution has to make. He said that when he was lucky, he could raise enough money somewhere to match many salaries. But what he could not match with the conditions of the buildings and the ability to reduce the number of graduate students desired and to work with them and he also couldnt match a course reduction, where is a private Research President can offer amazing packages that is very hard for many publics to match. As a result, we see excellence in scholarship and research. You see a lot of soulsearching going on in public Higher Education. Trying to think about how private they can become. So many institutions have given up on the state. As i was reminded this morning, there are institutions like the university of vermont that have for years straddled a public and private relationship and have some characteristics in both. But there is no such history and talk of becoming more independent. It can be very controversial and upsetting to very many people. Yet, too many leaders of public universities, if they dont talk about that, they feel that their excellence is in danger. See that there is a debate on giving up all state funds. The debate at the university of wisconsin madison for a chancellor tried to become more independent and perhaps that is not a president that is no longer in madison, wisconsin. These are very difficult issues to deal with. We have a panel of people who have been trying to deal with these issues. Very briefly starting at the end on my right, we have time sullivan, who is the President University of vermont and he was peacefully the Senior Vice President at the university of minnesota. We have the university of michigan and trying to grapple with the future of Research Universities and Public Research universities. To my left we have domenico grasso, who is dean of the college here at the university of vermont and we have william dabars, who is a Research Fellow for the university of design in the office of the president of Arizona State university. They have answered a number of questions in advance that i will draw from. When you ask about scholarship and research at Public Research universities today, should there be a different aspiration for public and private great universities, or is it the same . Well, i think the answer has to be a definite no, there should not be a difference. I think the public, when they are supporting, regardless of what level, Public Institutions need to know that they will be of the highest quality and first rate and compete on the global stage for talent and faculty and also students. I think it is particularly important for public universities to ready those expectations and aspirations for quality and excellence and our students and constituency should not expect anything once. Now, there is a cost as you suggested in your comments. There is a substantial cost to that. And i think that we simply have to make a better case than we have been making to our political and public constituents it is critical if this country is going to be in the forefront in the big global issues of today. It has always been, as you suggested in your questions, that it has been a big, Public Research universities that have led this country in breakthrough innovation and research. We simply cannot lose that investment. We have to make a better case with our constituents. Higher education in america is intensely competitive and we compete for faculty and we compete for students and we compete for philanthropy and some of us also can heat on the football field. We seek the very best. We are different though and character. That difference is in recruiting faculty and students, particularly when we look at how we are supported, it can be a challenge. Let me tell you a story that tries to illustrate this. Back in the days when i was just learning how to be a university administrator, i had an opportunity to spend an afternoon with derek bakke. He then went on to say that institutions like michigan had one advantage over very private things that stood us apart. That advantage was a combination of intellectual span and capacity, they gave us the capacity to take risks and try new things in a way that many were not able to do. He noted that if harvard tried an experiment and it fails, everything was in jeopardy. A place like michigan, we can watch very significant activities. If we fall in on our faces, we pick ourselves back. We started to launch one of the major programs in human gene therapy. We built Clinical Trials phase and we found ourselves 20 to 30 years ahead of the time. On the other hand, during the late 1980s, we were asked by several federal agencies to build a relationship in a project with their scientists, and that became the internet. In a sense, it is the excitement of large public universities and their capacity to take risks and in some cases change the world that gives us a certain edge in attracting attracting talent or perhaps well be private, even the vp salaries, may not have. Scott, i think that you ask a very important question regarding publics and privates. But i would like to extend the contextual information about that. We are competing on a global scale. I think that the public has a sense of social responsibility that finds its roots in the land grant that many of the privates did not. I think that the publics may not be as well resource. And president James Duderstadt made a good point about the fact that we are not trying to privatize, but we are trying to become selfsufficient on the privatization on the public side of the academic structure here. But i think what the bottom line is is that the public have because of their social responsibility to land grants and other state appropriations and connections, a sense of responsibility to serve a greater part of the population. And i think that its not just the application do what they decide to pursue in terms of their research, but also how big they pursue it. The Research Issue is certainly going to be something that plays out across the academic culture. It will reach across the globe. Public Research Universities produce Something Like 85 of undergraduates in the nation. The majority of the graduate students have Something Like 60 of research. It has been pointed out that the entire undergraduate student body of all the ivy leagues of the public universities, i think it is important for the public to realize that teaching is only i mean this is pointing out the obvious, but teaching is only one fifth of the Discovery Mission of the public universities and has a transformational impact on the quality of life and the standard of living. The list of discoveries that are coming out of our Research Universities, it is something that most people are not aware of. From lasers, magnetic resonance, the algorithm for google searches, Breakthrough Technologies that we take for granted come out of our Public Impact of Research Universities. So you all seem generally optimistic about the ambitions of public universities can have and i would like to push back a little bit. When i read the headlines and i am searching for news, i see Public Research universities are talking about selective excellence or cure the university of vermont, the aspire program. The idea that universities, they need to focus on a few areas and sacrifice what one might find at the top private universities. Michigan could be an exception to the rule. I am wondering, does that limit where you can have Research Breakthroughs . Does that say that we will only have it in some areas . I think the question has to be one of balance. And the right proportion that one finds in history and current circumstances. I think your question suggests the importance of differentiation and where we have great strengths and comparative advantage. Obviously, that is where the investment should take place. There could be things that we dont have high quality or protective particular distinctiveness. Perhaps we have to declare in a public way that given the constraining budgets that we live with, that we simply cant do certain things anymore. But i think that that is strategic and it also permits us then to go out and make the investments where we have our strengths. And where we have competitive advantages. Perhaps, engage much more in the collaborative, Research Infrastructure by many of our universities and colleges. We do not do that particularly well. Jim would know this from his experience. I am reminded of the Great Success in the big ten and the university of chicago. Committee on institutional cooperation. Over 50 years, those big Public Research universities have collaborated significantly infrastructure and technology and cores sharing over 250 courses are now being sure in and among those who simply have to do a lot more collaborative interaction with each other to be able to increase the field so necessary for the investments we are going to have those Safety Research opportunities that we have seen in the past. We cannot do this all along, individually, are you if you did it to her own their advantage. Steve both see character as well as cultural character. Him thought it amusing that if you contrast stanford berkeley, stanford is far and away the most public of the institutions. Because of course we have to include the tax benefits that they receive, not only for charitable contributions, but for earnings on their endowment. So in a sense, our government policy right now, does have in place of Higher Education. In much the same way that as you said, 50 years ago, the culture is also an interesting feature. Most deans are rewarded for the quality of the faculty that they were able to recruit. The tradition has long been that they recruit outstanding and junior factory and development within the institution. You generally find them making lateral appointments at the senior level by raising the Public Institutions. That kind of giveandtake tends to balance out. To balance that is the case, that while salaries, they may be somewhat higher, the survival rate is much lower. Most tenured appointments are not made through the development of young faculty, but picking up already developed factories. Those cultural and policy factors really shape the nature of the competition between these institutions. I want to followup on that issue because when reports come out, private Research University president s will issue a statement of support. I have yet to find someone willing to take the pledge. I am curious, should your private colleagues say, okay, we are not going to take advantage of this . Several years ago, i tried to broker just such a dialogue. Difficulty is the critical point of focus. They are the ones that did reward and. And an expectation has to be expected. In a sense, the quality of the private universities is heavily dependent on the public. To the to to the degree that our quality is this way, this interdependence is the issue that really has to be stressed. Whether you can have a disarmament does discussion or not, the key point is that the public and private really has to recognize that they are heavily dependent. You feel that they take advantage . Are you asking if they raise more attractive packages and do so in a way that takes advantage of the relative strength . Well, i think that if you were trying to build the best program that you could, i dont see how you would not want to do Something Like that. You would leverage or resources to take advantage of the opportunity in front of you. I would like to say that i was personally in a situation where i was at a Public University and i was made a very attractive opportunity. I eventually decided to go elsewhere, but i think that it is, if you are successful, it is not just that i want to be clear about this, its not just private in and the public, but we have upward revision in this is part of the market system for which we live. I cant imagine that he would not want to try to play the best advantage you can over this focus. I do want to go back to one of the original questions. With regard to focus research areas. I think that different schools have different capacities on different scales. I do think that some schools in the university of vermont is an example, they can have specific pieces of excellence with the best programs across the nation and world. When jim was at the university of michigan, he produced a strategic plan. He charged each of the colleges and schools there. They can continue to grow and it is something that evolves over time. You dont think that that is what theyre going to focus on for the rest of history as an institute of Higher Education. I think it is just a plan to take advantage of the resources that you have an institution and build strength and moving on to continue to do that. Even harvard cannot build across all disciplines equally and not make strategic decisions. That is what they do. Well, i think it is important to bear in mind that all public universities go through a period of fiscal crisis. The investment in education has been historic, and it was a mistake, had its legislative support reduce by the largest percentage in dollars of any Public University, this has had an enormous impact in terms of viewer focus on the faculty. The decline in the percentage of faculty has been a huge proportion. There is Something Like 75 of Instructional Staff at public universities are not contingent academics. This has a longterm impact as well. Which private universities can leverage to their advantage. May i interject . Your question had to do with faculty. I think the competition is more severe today than what we might call the arms race on facilities. Many of our universities, when the recession came in 2008, either had a hiring freeze that was substantially slowing down the competition that you were speaking out. But i am not sure that there is going to be an abatement of the increase of facilities of enormous costs, whether laboratories or other facilities , student unions, athletic facilities, and i think the real competition is in the facilities right now. High School Student