Our University – Sticker Price

High quality at low cost is the desire of every organization known, even in communist and socialist societies.  The willingness to take the action to keep costs low and quality high is rare. 

Capitalism’s inelastic bedrock is simply this: people vote with their feet.

Many universities are running on fumes.  Great university leadership blossomed nationally after World War II.  Dorothy Morris intimated to me one day that her husband and former president of SIU Delyte Morris had few challenges.  “Delyte had it easy; it was different then, and money grew on trees”.  Too modest for the vision and ability this dynamic duo possessed, but the observation contains some truth. 

Our university charged what it cost to provide a first-rate education.

This is sticker price. 

That price was offset by, among other things, vouchers from the taxpayers in the hands of motivated GIs. They voted with their feet, and a back pocket appropriately stuffed with government funds.  Initially, the 1944 GI Bill paid universities directly for the cost of tuition and fees for veterans.   A few university bureaucrats artificially inflated fees to get a bigger government handout so the 1952 version of the GI Bill gave funds directly to the GIs.  The GIs did what people do and got the most “bang for the buck”, and they put a man on the moon too! 

Sticker price is the cost of attending a university.  Less than twenty percent of students pay it.  Sticker price is subsidized, or discounted depending on your perspective, by the GI Bill, loans, federal and state grants, student work opportunities, academic and athletic scholarships, assistantships, MAP funding in Illinois and a bucket-full of other mechanisms to bring the price in line with ability to pay. 

Many universities continue to give pay raises to faculty and staff, stuck in the vice of not wanting to increase fees for the political costs, and simultaneously wanting to give all university employees pay increases for the political benefits.  That vice puts a squeeze on the system.  The first victim in the jaws of that vice is quality. Nothing will reduce demand more quickly than reducing quality: another piece of inelastic bedrock, impossible to explain away or spin politically, on which capitalism is constructed.

In order to meet the demand for quality, a University of California study group recommended a 32 percent fee hike.  People were not happy.

“Our fees have risen 160 percent since 2001,” said Victor Sanchez, president of the UC Students Association. “When will enough be enough?”

One blogger pointed out that “even with the 32% fee hike, UC Berkeley, UCLA and really all the UCs are still a total bargain. For example, UC Berkeley is ranked in the top 25 universities in the U.S. Guess how much the fees are at the other 24 universities? The average is around $35k per year. How much is UC Berkeley? Around $8k per year. So the tuition will increase above $10k? That still looks like quite a bargain to me!”(sic)

Dave Frohnmayer, the recently retired president of the University of Oregon, suggested that universities be made into public corporations  and be responsible for specific performance, graduation rates, retention and other indicators of success, but also grant institutions the authority to do what they know how to do.

Universities need leadership with vision and ideas, people who are willing to take risks and test concepts in a free market environment.

At our universities, quality is at stake, and the cost of its dismissal is one nobody wants to pay.

A sticker price too high – with or without subsidies and discounts.

Our University – Budget Challenges

Universities all over the United States are wrestling with budget challenges unequaled since the early eighties.  There is a tendency in times like these to say, ‘What can we do differently?” or “How can we stay afloat?” Answers outside the response, “Focus on fundamental mission” are wrong, misguided, and short- sighted.

Never change mission as a response to a crisis.  It is weakness, not strength. Change mission as a heartfelt response to sense of purpose, not an empty checkbook.  One response is leadership, the other laziness.  Rather, focus every ounce of determination and commitment of the institution on primary mission.

Universities and other post-secondary educational institutions should be shedding activities that do not support primary mission, not holding on to them as misguided public service.  The pinnacle of public service is excellence.  That will create more jobs, and provide a greater return-on-investment than anything else a research university can do.  

In tough economies the value of devotion to mission is elevated, not diminished. 

Reducing standards to attract students and pay bills should never be an option for a national research university.  Baccalaureate degrees at community colleges depart from their real purpose and are extraneous.  Jobs and local issues should prevail, not expansion of mission into areas outside the interests of taxpayers who pay the freight through tax levies.  Likewise, universities that commit unnecessary resources to college preparatory work and remediation are wading into the waters of the community colleges.

The correct path is tenacious focus.   

In states with the greatest fiscal challenges, this is not a revelation.  A recent Pew study finds California, Rhode Island, Michigan, Oregon, Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois and Wisconsin are a fiscal mess of  misappropriation, mismanagement and misplaced priorities.  Even the Terminator knows it.

The horse has been out of the barn for a long time.  Many universities have been a decade without state budgetary increases.  Resources to respond to rising labor and materials costs have been born by higher tuition and fees, although everyone rails against rising costs in higher education. 

Alert universities have initiated private fundraising efforts and research support to soften the blow of budget reductions.

We should be looking ahead, not waiting until the crisis demands what cannot be given.  Following the lead of Wall Street instead of Main Street defies logic, common sense, and prudence.  It is only astute politically and, as we see from current events, that spurious logic prevails only for a season.  Do not give what you do not have.  Make sure your priorities are squarely on target and pursue mission with dogged perseverance.

For those post-secondary institutions that stay true to purpose, there will be light at the end of the tunnel and it will not be from an oncoming train.

Focus is a challenging task in the best of times for the drift in mission as institutions scramble to be all things to all people. 

Focus is an impossible task for organizations that lack vision, leadership insight and a thoughtful, business-like exercise of responsibility. 

This is a serious commitment and it is not for the faint at heart.  It takes a passion for the long haul and big ideas in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.   Oliver Wendell Holmes accounted for it this way, “The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving”.

Our University – Adjacencies

Adjacencies in architecture are those relationships between the various parts of building that are critical to its success.  For example, the living and dining rooms in typical home design have a high degree of adjacency.  The rooms support each other and, frequently, the living room is the space to which the dining room is adjacent.  In other words, the living room is the central space that the dining room should be near so that both spaces may function in a positive way.

The lesson in architectural design is free.

So it is with various functions and parts of university life.  If there is something akin to a “living room” on a campus, that central aspect of campus life to which all others must be adjacent, it is academics.  Anything that shades academic mission, or makes it secondary, will negatively influence its power.  It does not make the other functions unimportant, but to the extent that anything imposes itself on academic excellence, a dysfunctional relationship of parts to whole is given life.

Academic excellence is perceived by some as an encumbrance to intercollegiate athletics success.  Unfortunately, examples abound where unaligned priorities cause significant problems, sometimes with long-term consequences.   A win-at-all-costs mentality for intercollegiate athletics ends up in the loss column. 

Always.  Remember SMU.

Athletics play a central role in public university life.  It is important in private universities too, but it is different.  When Columbia had a winless football program for years, it was a badge of courage of sorts.  They probably even gave the coach a raise to compensate him for the humiliation he had to suffer.  

That will not happen at a major public research university.  Athletics must be competitive, and it must be, as my dad used to say, “as clean as a whistle.”

Here are the 2009 top public universities according to U.S. News:  University of California – Berkeley, University of Virginia, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina, William and Mary, Georgia Tech, University of California – San Diego, University of Wisconsin and rounding out the list University of Illinois.  Rankings are based on many factors and it is fair to say that almost all of the considerations have to do with academic prowess.  I will not review the methodology of analysis. 

While Sports Illustrated is not an authority on academic excellence, sports enthusiasts regard it highly for identifying excellence in games.  Rankings of collegiate athletic programs based on athletic success measured in championships in all sports, bowl and tournament appearances and a range of other factors indicating athletic excellence, 6 of the top 25 schools are on the U.S. News top 10 public university lists. 

The adjacency of athletic prowess to academic excellence is clear.  It is also clear that the very best institutions recognize the primacy of academic excellence as the organizing force, never the other way around.  

In architectural terms, athletics are the dining room, not the living room.

Without listing the universities that mistakenly confuse the adjacency, suffice to say, they are not strong academically.  SMU was a rare exception, and it made a rare mistake.  Conventional wisdom would suggest that there are athletic powerhouses that are not on the academic list.  This is misguided.  Every one of the schools on the Sports Illustrated athletic excellence list is an academically competitive university, even if not among the top ten or twenty.

Correctly configured adjacencies create excellence in a building, and a university.

Our University: Retention and Graduation

 

The ultimate way to increase the retention rate – the percentage of students who return to study after the first year – is to increase admission standards. Similarly, to increase the six-year graduation rates – the national effectiveness measure for students completing baccalaureate degrees – increase admission standards.  The most heartless thing to do to is to accept students who are not ready.  The most wasteful thing a university can do is take on students who will be unsuccessful in completing their studies.  Lost opportunity costs accrue to both student and institution.

John Lombardi, Chancellor of the LSU System, told the New Orleans Times Picayune recently that low admission standards are “the primary waste in the Louisiana higher education system”, and Louisiana does not have the market cornered on sub 50% retention and graduation rates.  Some institutions in other states are near single digits on both counts.

Public universities are accepting greater numbers of unqualified students than ever before.  Budgets are shrinking and we try to serve more who can do less. 

It would be easy to be critical of the high schools.  I will not.  And there would be a long list of reasons: family life problems, poor curriculum, low teacher pay, unions that temper performance, lack of positive role models,  and a plethora of other legitimate and serious factors, but ones over which the university has little or no control. 

As Nancy Reagan said a few decades ago, regarding the drug temptations faced by so many adolescents, “Just say no!”

This is not the favored approach.  Instead, we build scaffolding for students who come unprepared: There are tutors and help sessions, support groups and academic mentoring, but while each one of these approaches has merit in a time of shrinking resources and slipping performance, the scaffolding is not working.  For motivated students, community colleges or post high school pre-university remediation can make a marked impact at a modest cost.

As long as universities interested in growing enrollment rather than quality are willing to accept unprepared students and the borrowed money they bring to help pay the bills, the burden will be carried by taxpayers and universities as quality is eroded over the struggle to accommodate under-qualified applicants, with the knowledge that a disproportionate number of students will fail.  Nobody wins.

The automobile industry was lazy with quality for decades.  We are now paying for it as GM’s world predominance in motor vehicle design and production of the fifties is now mere exhaust.  The housing industry tried the everybody-is-qualified formula in the late nineties and now, in the first decade of the 21st century, the chickens have come home to roost, and our once robust approach to home ownership is flattening out, the foundation crushed by an industry over-correcting for self-inflicted wounds.

Higher education may go the same way in the future.  American higher education has rightfully held great pride in the access/excellence/innovation formula that was, and should continue to be, the envy of the world. 

Leadership could evaporate because we cannot muster the strength to “Just say no!”

This is not about survival but excellence.  It is about a national treasure being frittered away because we are trying desperately to allow anyone, even those apathetic, uncommitted, or unable to perform at a satisfactory level, in the gate. 

These are harsh words, but the facts remain unchanged.   As our standards for admission sink, so does quality and the world-leading tradition of the greatest American enterprise.

Our nation and our universities need and deserve our unfettered best.

Our University – The Politics of Higher Education

 

The University of Illinois has been bruised by its aired clout list, but it will recover.  In fact, it will be a stronger institution for the focus this incident places on excellence and personal achievement as the measure of success, not politics. 

A university president I know quietly stood tall for excellence with a donor and a board member by simply asking for a written request for special admission consideration with insight and justification from the board member. This heightened the nature of the request and the importance of constantly interceding for quality.  No letter came.

Private institutions wrestle with the same issues. Preferential treatment is afforded the offspring of donors, or the offspring of the friends of donors, or of board members. 

Not electoral or partisan politics but politics all the same.

You see it in contractual negotiations, and deal-making to appoint faculty, deans, provosts, chancellors and presidents.  It can become the nature of the beast without dogged attention to academic issues.

Higher education has become more political in recent years for many reasons, but prime among them is that the university is being seen first as providing a public benefit to the locality and state.

And Tip O’Neil was right – “All politics are local”.

If we saw universities first as an opportunity to promote intellectual and moral development of individuals committed to the cause of the betterment of a nation rather than an organization committed to the cause of betterment of the nation by improving the lot of individuals, we would all be better served. 

Slight but significant wordplay.

Intellectual and moral development is a personal matter.  It may take a village to raise a child, but a university is built one student at a time by the commitment of individual students to attain excellence.  Any public benefit derived from personal advancement and development is lagniappe when priorities are proper. 

When the university becomes a public good with public responsibility as job one, the nature of the organization changes, it becomes political not academic.

A society will become stronger when its citizens seek higher levels of moral insight and intellectual ability.   A knowledgeable electorate will power a republic more forcefully.  There is no substitute.

If the university is seen as a tool of the state, or a public agency, like the department of corrections or the state highway department, quality will suffer.  A political view may see the university as a job bank, or an opportunity for back-scratching. The legitimate fear at the University of Illinois was that a degradation of quality would evolve as influence superseded ability. 

When any university puts any need above the student; any goal above individually attained excellence; any priority above scholarly work that brings distinction; and any vision where academic quality is sacrificed even with the best intentions – say of providing jobs – that university will be compromised in the attainment of its purpose. 

The University of Illinois reinforced publicly the primacy of attending to academic excellence.  A board of trustees should protect excellence and mission, not pilfer for personal profit or political gain. These admissions were never going to ruin the quality of the institution; it is too high for so few to make too much impact. 

But something more important to the university was headed out the window. 

Integrity trumps even excellence, as without the former, the latter is a damaged good.

Even politics can’t fix that.

Our University – Fresh Ideas

Nothing is more important to the lifeblood of a university than fresh ideas.  These valuable nuggets, like gold, come from panning and searching.  They are the results of diligent effort on the part of faculty and students. You can’t buy them, they must be mined. 

Some might argue fresh ideas come from graduate students engaged in research with leading faculty members.  True to some extent.  However, the institutions that produce the preponderance of fresh ideas cherish excellent undergraduate education as the foundation for creative, critical, insightful, and penetrating thought.

Undergraduate acceptance rates are the lowest at universities that generate fresh ideas.  The names you know, the Ivy League schools and excellent publics such as Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, and Texas, are on the list. 

Acceptance rates in single digits at a few institutions, as low as 7 out of 100 students are recorded at the best public and private universities.  Students applying have strong records; the competition is fierce.  The best of the best. Not everyone gets a chance at the place where they want one.  They must have performed in one or more ways.   

There are two possibilities.

On the one hand, the best students gravitate towards the universities that have the best reputation, and those are always the universities that produce the fresh ideas measured in faculty publications, research expenditures, patents, critically acclaimed artistic endeavor, and other indicators of high levels of intellectual activity directed towards innovation and excellence. 

On the other hand, it is possible that by bringing in excellent freshmen, those students with good records in high school achievement, strong records on standardized exams, and demonstrated leadership ability, a culture of ideas and mental sharpness is developed.

Most assuredly, a combination of forces is at work.  Faculty stimulate a rich environment, but freshmen, who are eager to learn and have demonstrated some level of success, help create a milieu of inquisitiveness that leads to greater achievement for all. Good students infect a place, as do poor ones. 

Freshmen help lead the faculty.  Every worthy professor knows it.

Excellence breeds excellence.  

If a good university wants to be a better university, shrinking the aperture through which the freshmen must pass, and raising the bar of qualification is needed.  This is counterintuitive for some, but increased reputation will always follow.  It takes courage and a vision for quality to implement.

The best public and private research university students and families vote with their report cards and test scores.  Students selecting good state universities vote with entrance accessibility and their checkbook to inform their selection, and look at quality too.  Community college students vote with their checkbook and driving time.  It does not mean there is low value or limited opportunity at any institutional type.  A good community college is better for all than a poor university is for anyone.

If a university wants fresh ideas as a response to the social mandate for excellence, that institution must always vote for quality first, and with excellent leadership and management, growth of reputation and success will follow.  There is an old proverb that suggests that between two lemonade stands, side by side, one with a sign proclaiming “Free Lemonade” and the other with a sign stating “Lemonade – 25 cents”, the long line will be at the latter, not the former. 

Parents and students correctly believe that quality comes at a price and that value is part of the equation… and they like fresh ideas as much as our university does.

Our University – Underdogs

Cub fans, lookout!  Talk about underdogs and a passion for the position that marks a ball club.  Like the Amazin’ Mets, or Joe Namath’s Jets.  People gravitate towards underdogs.  There is beauty and passion in it.  Some students don’t hit a stride until they are in their sophomore or junior year of college.

While not popular to say, some never do.  They do not seem to have the ability or interest.

We do find students who by all measures are not ready, lack the course preparation, ACT scores, or the grade point average.  They visit the campus, we see something that we like: spark, determination, passion, whatever it might be, and we say, let’s take a chance.

This is productive for the individual and for the institution.  Productive for the individual because it breathes life into hope.  From one perspective a university education is all about hope.  But such chance taking is good for the institution too.  Some of these hopeful students become loyal supporters who testify, “This University changed my life!”

And they are right.

Who decides who the underdogs should be and how? Leaders and leadership are the answers.

Most universities run away from this kind of leadership.  Too much risk.

However, those who really are anxious for a chance, and seem to have the drive to make it work are the underdogs we can help.  We should run towards them.  Even with a good history a student can enter the university and fail.  Sorry to use that four letter word.  We see that all the time. 

Frequently we see students, who, by all indicators, should not be here, and they are frustrated, debt-burdened and unhappy with a series of choices that now have become part of the university experience. 

There is little pride in offering an opportunity to a student who graduates in the top ten percent of her class, comes to our university, and then excels.  We expect that.  I had a friend who used to say about good students, “I am doing all I can to stay out of the way, this one is a skyrocket.” 

Some people don’t appear to be ready to make the commitment but something tells us they are.  We take a chance, like a two dollar long shot.  And sometimes the bet pays off.  The student becomes energized, takes to the work and excels. 

Sometimes they become class leaders and we brim with pride.

In order for the university to make such decisions, we are forced to rely on human wisdom and insight, leadership, rather than a process of decision-making based on a mindlessly applied process that is “fair”.

We kill opportunity for students who are underdogs by not allowing university leadership, faculty and staff, to make mistakes. Retention rate, that number that indicates what percentage of students stay after the freshman year to start the sophomore year is dismally low at many institutions anyway, even with hyper-standardized completely consistent admission decision-making apparatus.

I wish we could put responsibility in the hands of local decision-makers and not have to protect ourselves against charges of unfairness or prejudice.  However, the outcomes of such localized decision making usually drift to telling everyone yes, and that does not work. 

The most selective universities have the best retention rates.  That is not a surprise.  However, the very best universities find a way to override admission processes and give people a chance.  The challenge is that you can’t let everyone in.

And remember, the community college is always available as a way for a student to re-establish an academic record in a very cost-effective way.

Our University – Free Inquiry

Universities work best in the difficult, contentious, unfettered mode that allows free inquiry. Mysterious from within and without.  It is their nature.

When faculty members are critical of administration, students are rambunctious, and complex discourse erupts on campus, all is uncomfortably well in the academy. These are not distractions to free inquiry.  Systematic suspicion and scrutiny are the rugged but stable bedrock on which free inquiry is constructed. 

The best universities are American according to respected world rankings by the Times Higher Education Supplement.  Of the top twenty in the world, fourteen are U.S. institutions, Michigan the only public. 

Campuses, especially the publics, are becoming vast bureaucracies, with a political look and feel focused on form and process rather than teaching and learning, in short, political organizations. 

Clout reigns high in political organizations.  In universities all over the nation, boards and leadership are being identified not because they understand learning organizations but because they know somebody, and frequently have contributed something to that somebody, or some other somebody whom the “somebody” appreciates. It is a longstanding national trend.

Political ideology crushes free inquiry.  Protections are required.  No news here – protections were needed to mediate between the potentially conflicting forces of church doctrine and free inquiry 500 years ago.  Now protections are needed not from the ecclesiastical perspective of the founding body, but the body politic. 

Americans value higher education, always have.  After the pilgrims arrived, Harvard was established as towns were being built.  Within a few decades the concentration of people with advanced education in New England was the highest in the world… in this infant colony.

Harvard was Massachusetts’s University, not really private, and not really public.  Peopled viewed it as “their” university, a public good with a public benefit, even though there was no state funding.  This belief was so strong that it hampered the development of public higher education in the state, and it is fair to say that Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, and Columbia had a similar impact on higher education in their states.

Public good means greater access, a good thing for sure, especially from a political perspective.  In some cases open access is a hurdle in the pursuit of excellence.  The City College of New York and the University of Paris (The Sorbonne) are two examples of open admissions nearly devastating once great institutions.  Thankfully, the return of common sense led to a resurgence of academic quality driven by free inquiry. 

We need not look so far from home.  What positive academic impact can preferred political admissions have on free inquiry and intellectual acumen at the University of Illinois?  And look what is at stake.  According to world rankings by the Times, Illinois ranks 71 on the list overall and 20 in the prestigious tally of Engineering and Information Technology – wedged between Harvard and the University of Tokyo. 

Learning organizations that transform into political organizations become poor manifestations of both.  Universities will be hobbled if they sacrifice the high and right minded concept of seeking truth in academic endeavors at the altar of expediency of any type. 

Phil Baty of the London Times reports that, “Anglo-American dominance of the international student market could be challenged by the emergence of new global power blocks in higher education.”  I would argue that these power blocks are being built on the model of higher learning based on free inquiry, the Anglo-American model, which may be disappearing. 

Other pundits have suggested in the past decade that privatizing state research universities could solve the problem.  Put state appropriations into scholarships based on combinations of merit and need. Really? 

In a learning organization free inquiry is king even when consternation and discomfort abound.  These are simultaneously the cost and benefit of free inquiry. 

And as American as apple pie.

Our University – Numbness and Hoarseness

Trade unionism is an old concept and unions exist for very good reasons.  In work environments where the safety of workers is tenuous and the motivation for profit is high, coal mines or steel mills for example, unions create an essential set of checks and balances that mediate the sometimes competing forces of individual rights and protections of many, against the profit motive of a few.  I am not sure these forces always compete detrimentally but, most assuredly, sometimes they do. 

Likewise, in environments where mass production is the goal and standardization the key to success, unions protect from mandated, slavish dedication to repetitive tasks injurious to workers either physically or emotionally.  Unions make great sense there too.  For example, in the clothing manufacturing industries on- and off-shore, where something like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory calamity of March 25, 1911, might repeat itself, trade unionism will thrive. 

And it should.  

Combating deleterious greed by profit-motivated individuals who care little or nothing for the people who work for them is a battle that needs to be fought.

There are tasks on a university campus where the goals of human safety and standardization of result are important.

There is one task on campus where standardization is categorically opposed to the work at hand and threat of injury slight – it is the role of the professor.

Passion prevails over process and protection in professing. 

The only safety hazards are numbness in the legs from too much sitting and hoarseness in the throat from too much talking.  I know because I have been plagued by both from time to time.

If a research university graduates 100 students and any two of those students end up as duplicates, the university has completely failed at least one of them, possibly both. There is risk in education: It may not work, or take, but standardization is undesirable and antithetical.

Faculty members must have complete freedom to express themselves in their areas of expertise without fear of retribution so students can grow.  That is what tenure is for, and it works like a charm.  Nothing else is needed.

Unions exist to make sure that everyone is treated in a safe and like manner, and that the work process/product is consistent.  In other words, there is routinization that impacts the very nature of what is produced. 

Routinization dulls distinctiveness.  It can be no other way.

Nothing will take the breath out of a university faster than an effort to treat everyone equally, regardless of result.  This is true for students and faculty.  If we treat any two the same we mistreat at least one.  

Fairness and equality are not equivalent save for simpleminded views of each.  Fairness requires we treat each differently based on personal need, circumstance, experience, aspiration and achievement.  Equality allows none of that.  These opposing forces must be mediated by wisdom. 

If the provision of a safety net ensures some milquetoast definition of success and defines quality in such a way that everyone meets it, there is no university.  If the purpose of the university is to assist students in fully realizing their unique potential, the liberty to sink or soar must be real, cannot be understated, and cannot be bargained out of the process for anyone under any circumstance.   

No sure thing here, guarantees are non-existent.  

At our university we must seek, above all else, excellence in human achievement with the accompanying risk…even if it leads to occasional numbness and hoarseness.

Our University – A Monastery

My friend goes to Jamaica for vacation every few years.  Jamaica is a poor island nation, the third most populous nation in North America after the United States and Canada.  Bob Marley may be its most famous native son.

When he and his wife go to Jamaica, they stay at a fancy destination resort hotel.  They never leave the grounds of the place.  Essentially he goes to a monastery although the focus is not faith; it is the comfort, entertainment, and enjoyment of guests.  This goal consumes everyone’s energy.

This singleness of purpose allows for focused rest. 

Great universities function in essentially the same way.  They are monasteries.  Monastery comes from the Greek “monasterion”, from the root “monos” or alone, and the suffix “-terion” a place for doing something. 

Don’t look too hard at this or over-think it…squint at the idea and tell me that is not what the fundamental purpose of a university is.  To set a person apart and allow them to do something and discover purpose in their life. Create the opportunity for intellectual and emotional focus and growth.

Change.

Like going to Jamaica; but for the university it is about life-work.  A profession.  A reason for being. A way to live.  Don’t confuse a university with a trade school or a community college where access and a skill acquisition are king and queen.

Many excellent universities are set apart.  Harvard is in Cambridge, not Boston.  Texas A&M University is in College Station, not Bryan. Berkeley was founded across the great bay from San Francisco, a half day to get there, now ten minutes on the Bay Bridge.  Michigan calls Ann Arbor home, not Detroit, and the examples go on and on.  In every case the effort was made to separate the university from the daily flow of commerce and distraction and allow a place for students, without interruption, to focus.

Sounds like Jamaica again.  Or a monastery.

In Southern Illinois, we need to recognize the fact that the separation we own from an urban area is not a cause for concern but for celebration.  Southern Illinois helps provide a strain of educational experience that marks the best universities. 

Positive isolation from the day-to-day is not something to apologize for, but rather something to herald as a means for a more powerful educational experience.  Our pastoral setting with small communities and hamlets supports reflection and introspection, better and more students.

Our job is to give our students the opportunity to change the way they think, and that requires reflection.

This is not about natural beauty, although in Southern Illinois we are bestowed with more than our fair share. It is not about centrality, although at the confluence of rivers and highways, railroads and bus routes, we have that too.  Rather it is about separation and focus and, in this dimension, we have a special setting for a research university in our time, if we realize and exploit it.

Our distinctiveness is that we are a real place, not the no-place of a suburb of a major metropolitan area, or the energy of being downtown. 

Our set-apartness is one of our greatest strengths and we need never apologize for it, nor see it as a burden.  It is a liberating force for the purpose of reflection and focus.

As Kingman Brewster said “Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure.”

Just like a monastery.