Cspans washington journal recently conducted interviews with president s at universities in the big ten conference. Challenges facing Higher Education. Its about 50 minutes. This week, we continue our month long series of interviews with University President s in conjunction with the cspan buss Big Ten College tour. This morning, cspan bus is on the campus of penn state and University Park in pennsylvania. And joining us from the bus is penn states president eric barron. Good morning, sir. Good morning. To start with, being an educator yourself and overseeing a university, what would you say are the greatest challenges that you see when it comes to the topic of Higher Education . I think there are a lot of them. No one specific topic. Access and affordability. In making sure that students fully utilize the opportunities that are presented by a campus further their success in life. I think we have challenges and innovation after years of flatter, declining budgets, there are a lot of different challenges. Lets start with the topic of access. W does how would you define the problems with it. . I think there are a lot of good signs we can be proud of. The number of first and family i students at penn state is growing. 530 million in the last capitale campaign. We have a below averagesylv for pennsylvania and for the nation. Student default rates, all thoso are good signs if you dig a little bit deeper, you see thata there are really two problems that i think have an enormous impact. One of thoseth is that we have t many students going years five and six, and in going years five and six, theyre borrowing money to do it. So theyre not completing as fast as they can. A large number of them are students that are not as well off financially. And what they end up doing is creating the cycle of working too many hours, taking fewer classes, perhaps not doing quite as well as their talent would allow because theyre working. And thenorwa they go forward an take more time to graduate. Some of them give up. This is the group of people t t thatie, for which i believe we have too many people that dont complete. And then in years five and six, theyre borrowing more moneyrow because thats whats it takes that degree if they are going to complete. Those things say that total cost of a degree, which is, i think, unfortunately reflective of a year five and six. And this notion thatn you can quite afford it so, you dont graduate at the same high rate or you take you take longer. I think if we can beat back those problems w, well drive dn student debt numbers. R stud well make our students more successful. If you think about it, a lot off people talk about that tuition increase. Okay. And, you know, what are they doing . Why do they keep increasing eepn tuition . But the biggest tuition increasd of all is to go a fifth year and a sixth year . And notut only you pay your tuin housing, but youre not in the job market. So id say s a lot of good st s storistorieser but good universities have to dig a little bit deeper. Weve got specific issues that were going to target. As a person who oversees the university then, what are some ways you can decrease the numbers that go on to year five and six. Theres a lot of things. Theres everything from advising and being able to create a map for a student. And if they fall off and miss ae course and that costs them an extra year because that course is a prerequisite and not offered to the next year. That you knock on their door and say, did you do that on purpose . Did you realize thats going tot cost you another years if you continue on with that major . So theres parts that are like that. Components like that that you can address. But also, for a needbased student, can we use our world campus to give essentially an cd online semester scholarship . Where in the summer you take t a nine credits and we make sure that student in taking those kio credits doesnt have to take on debt . Different kindo of scholarships the way to think about it. Th and then, we make we make up for the fact that they didnt take as many credits during the year. I also like the idea of lookingu at a student and saying, okay, i youre going to work 20 hours a week. Andbu at minimum wage job. But we dont want you to work more than 20 hours a week. You work 20 hours a week and then we look at what your famil, contribution is and the scholarships and the loans. And if theres a gap, theres an unmet need, can we deliver a kind of penn state promise that well fill that gap . So for all the pennsylvania lara students, additional scholarships on the order of 30 million. And we could look every single one of those students in the eye dont work more than 20 hours a asweek. N youll do better in the classroom, youll finish in f r four, you wont take on that extra debt, and were going to help you were going to help you fulfill that College Education. And my bet is well watch the Graduation Rates otifon the needbased students go up. And well see the loan rates go down. 2025853880. For educator, if you want to ask our guests of an academic nature, especially in the college experience, d by pen 2025853882. For pennsylvania residents, 2025853883. Were joined by eric barron, joining us on our cspan bus as it continues to travel to big ten universities. Can we ask about the Jerry Sandusky case . Give us a status report about what the university is doing in . Light of what happened two years ago about the molestation of these boys. Where is the university right now . Okay. Well, of course thats an incredible tragedy. And out of that has come a u university that probably has tht strongest compliance and Ethics Program of any university in the count country. We dont look at were followinh the rules, we look at whether were doing the right thing. We h and we pulled together an incredible team. Weve looked at over 100 different topics for which we felt we could do improvements and create a greater sense oeafn control. And this is a model institution. And i believe that especially in the athletics arena of ethics and compliance, were going to see a lot of universitiespe cop what penn state has done because its such a fine program. Pl as far as specifics, what has the university put in place to make sure these instances dont happen again . Well, just as an example, compliance and ethics is outside of athletics. Its not within thatit i chain e command. Its its a completely independent operation, independent authority and that makes a substantial impact as an you might imagine to make sure that you have individuals that feel free and know they have the backing to do whats right. But, therescall a dramatically different hr system. Theres considerably c more compliance, focus and training l associated with all youth programs, for example. Ho its extremely comprehensive. One of the issues was, people who passed on information and what was done with that information and, you know, how do youfo you how have you be the system where theres more communication if theres an incident reported to one person and make sure it gets to the proper authorities . Re i of theres a full page of different ways in which individuals can report. Report anonymously or through a particular process. Very hard for something to slip through the cracks at this point. How much money has the university spent on this . Money i dont. Sign i have notif added up the amoun of money, but it is significant. For those, the legal fees, for paying settlements, does that come out of the general budget . Ome port student tuition . Where does that money come from . Well, some portion of it is covered by insurance. Ad some portion of it is covered by athletics. At the myre predecessor made a promise that there were going to be no tuition dollarsn of in there. President eric barron of penn state joining us to talk about issues otof academics and education as part of cspans Big Ten College bus tour. Our first call from you comes from bob. Bob, youre on. Go ahead with your statement ork comment. Morning, thanks for taking my call. I am actually a grandparent. And im concerned about my grand kids. I recently was laid off from my job, and im actually 63 years old now. But i was trying to get some help witi h reeducation. And i was focused on one the on particular thing, gun smithing, actually. And the only way i was going to get it was, the cy wanted me to take in a bunch of fillin courses to get so many credits. One of them was literature, nothing to do with gunsmithing. And it seems like theyre just trying to sell a lot of these n extra courses. If a person is focused on something that may be machine shop or Something Like that, se. Its kind of a waste for them to spend their time and moneyon on courses like literature theyre never going to use. Bob, thanks. President barron, go ahead. Yes, of course, the education that comes out of any university has a particular stamp on it from the faculty that suggests that if you have a degree from our institution, you have a breadth of critical communication skills and road n Critical Thinking skills and understanding of a broad number of issues and that not only do you have depth but you have breadth. And this signals a degree from an institution like penn state. P one of the wonderful things about penn state is also that we have multiple entry points for that allows individuals to be successful youre at home, youre not mobile. You canaree youre in a care you have opportunities through the world campus. Youre residential in the state of pennsylvania. You would like to live at home. We have Commonwealth Campuses that have lower tuition on the order of 8,000 a year less than the University Park campus. Youre interested in a particular area that is more technical. Theres penn college. And the penn College Education is considerably more focused. So really, this is also a matter of having you pick a university that matches up to what youre interested in. Sure and so, you really should seek out those opportunities to make sure that your interest and your objectives match with particular programs. Because, obviously a penn state degree signals to everybody a certain scope of activity, a eph certain depth of activity. And so, i would encourage you to look carefully at those programl that are more focused on a erese particular skill set that your interested in. James is a student from georgia. Go ahead. Good morning. Id like to hear your comments on the fact that professors generally get paid more if they are good researchers or good writers as opposed to being good teachers. I found that some of the best teachers i have are the are at the bottom of the Department Head and dont do as Much Research or publishing as some of the teachers who spend less time with the students. Is that going to change any time soon, do you think . Okay. Well, i would say that this was true in many universities uni a may be true in some universities today. But true in many universities that were Major Research universities. If you go back quite a while in time. But today, teaching skills are highly valued. And you dont get tenure. You dont get promoted if youre not very good in the classroom and youre not interacting well with students. And, in fact, weve moved from c model where we made a decision, okay, this person was a Great Researcher, were going to w were going to reward that individual to one in which we want it all for you to get tenure and promotion. At the same time, were also recognizing thatake we need to e advantage of the strengths and skills of different individuals. So youre watching a lot of universities move to a point where they also have faculty that are what i would call mission faculty. So they are superb teachers, and we put them in the classroom, and their function and their Job Description is basically to bes in that classroom and be superb teachers and work on the oposal scholarship of teaching while s theyre doing it. They may be writing proposals o. How to improve the delivery of the curriculum. And also other faculty that areo more oriented towards research. B and i think what you discover is probably i the individuals thato it all and do it all very well are the ones that will be more highly paid. 2025853880. For students, for parents, 2025853881. Educators, 2025853882, and foa residents, 2025853883. From new york, heres frank. Go ahead. Let me push the button first. Frank, good morning, go ahead. Caller whats the average salary of a professor paid . Ch and the second question, what io the salary of the head coach of your Football Teamket. Okay. So heres the way to look at it. Were driven by the market. Es clearly driven by the market. We benchmark against a set of universities that really solid e top quality universities. And we work hard to have our faculty salaries be competitive in that marketplace. Mi we work within the market. And so, you know, it is true. Uly we have a football coach that t makes millions and faculty that make quite a bit. Could quite a bit less. We could do this all very differently. I we also know that our Football Program is paying for largely all the other sports. Th and penn state is an institutiot that wants all the gifts of all of our students to be something they can hone and take advantage of and excel in. Were one of those few programs out there for which no tuition dollar, no University Dollar crosses into athletics. An so, yes, of course, that prograi is important to us and its l important to us that successful and were competing in the marketplace for talent. We work to hard to compete in the marketplace for faculty. I would like it to be different. I dont thinkk you can operater outside the marketplace in todays Higher Education. Not for faculty, no the for staff, not for athletics. Milton is a parent from philadelphia. Hi. Caller yes, id like to make this comment. I think its ae pr scandal that ncaa gave most of the privileges back to penn state in light of this sandusky scandal. What kind of message does that send to other universities down the road that may engage in to inappropriate behavior. You do something and they penalize what kind of message do we send our kids . You get a punishment, then maybe well let you off. That sends a horrible message to our college students. Ther and it also sends a horrible in message to other universities that may engage in inappropriatt behavior, but then they get to get a slap on the wrist down the line. They get rewarded for it. T thats my comment. Thank you. Yeah. You know, sandusky wasnt a sick man and he fooled a lot of people, i think. And thats rather sad. Pped and the ncaa stepped out of their process in creating penalties for penn state. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the fact that they stepped out of their process in order to do that. Personally, i think that no matter what the ncaa did, penn n state wouldve stepped up to look at, okay, this is never going to happen again. T thin were going to put in those, i dont think anybody needed to tell us. We were to put in those effortsp on utcompliance, and we wouldv put in those efforts at at a stronger, ethical background. But so what the ncaa is saying, and its really the president s s that make up the ncaa. Ha what theyre saying ist that pen state as an institution has done so many remarkable things to handle this problem, that they shouldnt punish our students any further. S. If you look carefully, they didnt give us back the money penalties that were there. What they did was say why are we punishing a student athlete . Why are we making sure that a student cant have a scholarship to come to penn state when we bl of the highest Graduation Rates of Football Players . Okay. So lets notally punish those students, especially when you see what penn state has done. T i so the penalties they removed were the penalties that punished students and student athletes. Thats what they ended. And in my view, thats entirely appropriate on many differe fronts, but primarily on the front, on the front that we are a Model Program and in many different ways, were leading the way. Ed and it is not because in my view that they realize that something happened and now that what i happened is less significant. Nk i dont believe thats the way theyre thinking at all. Ng a theyre looking at it and saying, okay, we stepped out ofs our wprocess, this was too significant an issue. More it was a national issue, penn state stepped in there, and did more than just the right thing. I and like i said, we wouldve done it anyway. E im convinced we wouldve done every single one of those things anyway because we we dont want Something Like that to happen. From pennsylvania, an educator, this is dan, go ahead. Im sorry, i am not the educator. Ons on y first, im sorry, i always forget your name, sir, but congratulations on yousirnc posn and since you just started. And also id like to congratulate you as a penn st e alum alumni, has come up the ranks. And i think because of that, you have at measure of a vested interest in what the schools about. A member of the college of medicine. A becausust like to say that lack of attention to this campuu because of its geographical suld distance from the main campus has resulted in someen things tt need attention. And i would leave it there and in your discretion. And if i might call you or in the future through your office, i would appreciate that very much. T so im not sure i that i t wonder if you could help me with the question. I wasnt sure i quite heard that at the end. He talked a little bitra abot pus an the geographical distance between main campus and other qualm puss. That may be something very e toy unique to your university and how you deal with those issuesl. It is. We have 24 locations. And a medical school, two law schools, a penn college that is more technically oriented. And University Park in the center of the state. Ok a and a lot of people look at this and say, this is very unusual, how does that function . What i look at it is it is, one, an opportunity to provide a lower cost to education to many students. So, and you can see that. In t 40 of the students in the Commonwealth Campusesst are fir in their family to g