Competition and collaboration: Challenges in the global transformation of the public research university

2.22.11

(The following address was prepared for delivery by Chancellor Katehi. It was delivered by Provost Ralph Hexter in a meeting of the Association of International Education Administrators on her behalf.)

Thank you.

I am honored by the opportunity to speak today, and I take special pleasure in welcoming you to California.

Challenges of globalization of the land-grant university: Lessons from the California experiment

A state with legendary past

I recognize that this state, for all its complexity and diversity, hardly needs to be introduced-- its hold on the world’s imagination is legendary. But I do want to introduce elements of its history as a way of framing my remarks this afternoon.

The Master Plan

A little more than fifty years ago, California unveiled a Master Plan for public higher education, creating a three-tiered system that set priorities for the University of California, California State University and the community colleges.

The promise of this master plan, which still retains “mythic status” in the words of one recent commentator, was simple and profound: there would be a place in college for anyone who wanted it.

The promise to the people and the contract with the public

For decades, the people of California backed this promise in full. 

In fact, between 1950 and 1967, California invested 22 percent of all state spending in public services and public infrastructure.

That investment created one of the world’s great public higher education systems.

I need not state the achievements of its public universities; instead, I wish to emphasize that their eminence is no accident.

It is the fruit of generations of sacrifice, investment, and commitment to the public good.

Breaking the contract

California’s recent history, however, tells a very different story.

From 1990 to 2010, the University of California saw its funding per student cut by 50 percent. 

In 2010 alone, total state funding for California fell by 20 percent.

And Gov. Brown’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year will slash an additional 16.4 percent. If that budget is enacted, state funding for UC Davis will have fallen by almost 40 percent in four years.

And California, once the model of public investment in its future, must admit that in its more recent history it has been the model of disinvestment.

From state to national: same trends

California is like the rest of America

Wallace Stegner, one of this state’s most gifted writers, once remarked that California was like the rest of America—only more so.

His remark is certainly true when applied to the crises facing public research universities across the United States.

Other states have walked the same paths or are just following

In one state after another, governors and legislatures facing budget deficits ranging from the imposing to the nearly-impossible have resorted to Draconian cuts of their funding for higher education.

But in those states, too, the current drastic reductions follow hard on the heels of years of systematic disinvestment in higher education.

The Master Plan and the choices of the public

Committing to the public good

The Master Plan was a progressive and contemporary extension of the Morrill Act, both made with the vision to improve quality of life for all.

The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1863 was signed into law in the midst of the chaos, horror and sacrifice of the American Civil War. The G.I. Bill of 1944, the National Defense Act of 1958 and the National Facilities Act of 1963 were all testaments to the nation’s belief that higher education was central to American economic advancement and its determination to promise access to higher education as a fundamental right.

Choosing private over public

It was California’s famous Proposition 13, approved by an overwhelming majority of voters that rolled back property values to earlier pre-inflation levels and mandated that actual property taxes could not exceed more than 1 percent of a property’s cash value.

And it is California that has long led the nation in its number of gated communities that provide their own public services, exemplifying a view of government services as a private choice.

Lost in this privatized version of government is the sense of communal belonging, of obligation to any social entity larger than the self and of any responsibility to future generations.

Also, lost is the promise of democratic access to higher education promised in the United States by a series of legislative acts responding both to immediate economic needs and to far-sighted understanding of future priorities.

From national to global: similar trends

My personal story: living the Master Plan

My stake in this promise is intensely personal.

I grew up in a working-class town on a small Greek island in the 1950s. 

At that time, all Greek institutions of higher education were private.

The notion of going to college lay far beyond our wildest dreams.

These institutions charged more for a single quarter of classes than my father earned in a year.

In the 1960s, however, not long after California’s creation of its Master Plan, the Greek government created its own Master Plan and made colleges public and tuition-free.

Only then was I able to pursue my dreams. I earned an engineering degree in Greece, my ambitions fired in part by the flickering television images of American astronauts setting foot on the moon.

I then came to the United States for graduate training at UCLA, made possible by public as well as private philanthropic support.

I can tell you, therefore, that I know first-hand the value of public higher education, and the importance of a public investment in this public good.

Public education as a driver of economic development

Educating the citizens and creating the workforce

What is also lost in the model of privatized government, as current economic problems in the United States demonstrate all too vividly, is economic self-interest.

At stake, in part, is the promise of an education that prepares students appropriately.

Almost every nation now recognizes and responds to see changes produced in the last few decades by the development of a global economy, which has rewritten the rules for prosperity.

Industry follows the workforce

In the global workplace, where the sites of production and distribution shift constantly, employers demand technologically literate workers without regard to geographical boundaries.

The ability to create and use knowledge, rather than traditional products, is increasingly prized; meanwhile, technology itself advances at a dizzying pace.

As a consequence, the workforce of the present and the future must be adaptable, capable of learning on the fly and on the job.

And it is the work of public higher education to provide the excellence in education that will prepare students to meet the demand for flexibility and a dedication to life-long learning.

A highly skilled and innovative workforce drives the economy

According to a study by the Campaign for College Opportunity, if an additional 2 percent of Californians earn associate of arts degrees and 1 percent earn bachelor degrees, the state’s economy would grow by $20 billion, state and local tax revenue would increase by $1.2 billion and 174,000 new jobs would be created.

On UC campuses, energy-related research funding has quadrupled in four years, and 27 energy companies have been founded on UC technologies through 2009.

And my own campus at UC Davis, which trails only the state government as the largest employer in its area, is a major engine of economic activity: for every two jobs at UC Davis, one more is created somewhere in the state.

An EU study showed that for every 1 percent increase in the population that has access to higher education, the economy grows by 0.7 percent.

The emergence of the new global university

A new reality and the need for a new contract

Transformed by the Master Plan, the post-World War II University of California grew into a unique system of 10 internationally recognized campuses. Six of them are in the AAU and five of them among the top 10 public research universities.

Despite this, state contributions will account for less than 10 percent of our budget if Gov. Brown’s proposed budget is adopted.

The same is true for most other states in the union.

And those of us charged with leading our institutions can hardly afford to stand in place, waiting for state and national economies to recover.

The emergence of a new university

Instead, even though we are convinced that the days of substantial state investment in higher education have passed, and that the funding levels we enjoyed through the 1980s will not return, we must move on.

We can move forward only by accepting that today’s reality brings a new day in higher education and the need for a new contract with the public.

Inevitably, my campus, and many other public universities as well, will focus on innovation and entrepreneurship to reduce costs and generate new revenue while focusing on giving access to excellence.

Like many other research universities, it will seek to be a strong economic driver as it takes its research and innovations from the laboratory and the computer to the marketplace.

It will remain true to the land-grant vision but it will adapt to the realities of the 21^st Century.

The emergence of the global research university

The greater the reach of the UC’s, the more vital they will be to national and international economies and as global resources. The same applies to other national universities such as the University of Michigan, The University of Wisconsin and so many others.

Indeed, as Nigel Thrift remarked in a recent blog for the Chronicle of Higher Education, they have already begun to assume this role:

• industrial research contracts are commonplace
• universities now routinely generate new companies, new patents and new licenses
• in models emerging in Germany and elsewhere, university research is leading to direct participation in the process of industrial development.

As Thrift also observed, innovation driven by university research has increasingly become a public and global good as the private sector curtails spending on research and development.

In the U.K. and the U.S., as well as in other nations desperate for economic stimulus and growth, the essential step; therefore, is to step up public investment in research and development.

Recognition of this need seems to have been central to the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program.

Collaboration and competition on the global arena

There are strong reasons to believe that universities will, and in fact must, collaborate as they confront pressing global problems that no single institution, and no national network of institutions, can hope to solve alone.

Our global interconnectedness is undeniable.

Those who flew to this conference, especially from other countries, have perhaps had ample opportunity to reflect once again on this truth.

As the financial crisis in Greece reached its peak, the economic consequences rippled across the European Union and the United States, and then around the world. 

When a new strain of flu virus appeared in Mexico, hundreds of people around the world died within a hundred days and the political upheaval in Northern Africa has created aftershocks spreading across the Middle East.

Collaboration to solve global social problems

This interconnectedness makes for increasing complexity in the problems we face in the 21st century:

• We must find global standards and metrics to assess climate change.
• Understand poverty, disease, and shortages of food and water.
• Learn to resolve political, ideological, cultural, and regional conflicts, which will threaten hopes for global peace and progress.

Collaboration to solve global social problems

At UC Davis, for example, I might point to the Food for Health Institute, which addresses a critical problem in our time: diet-related problems will be a leading cause of mortality.

This activity brings together multiple collaborators, including the university’s health system, its Center for Entrepreneurship, its Biophotonics Center and the Robert Mondavi Institute.

But the collaboration spreads far past campus boundaries: it collects animal and human milk samples from San Diego, the University of Nevada at Reno, the Smithsonian and Cambridge University.

It routinely collaborates with the Advanced Food Materials Network in Canada, with the Food for Health Initiative in Ireland and with the University of Piedmont in Italy; most recently, it has formed an alliance with four Danish universities. 

Further, it has a host of corporate collaborators.

Now, I’m naming only one example—I’m sure you can name other examples of international partnerships on your campus as well.

Collaboration to solve global social problems

It is true that public universities in the United States cannot afford to wait for a return of the halcyon days when state funds accounted for a significant part of their revenues.

But it is also true that university leaders—and their faculty, and their students—should never cease to call for public investment in higher education as one of the paramount public goods.

Nor should they miss the opportunity to point out the many social goods that universities provide and the many ways they better human lives.

And they should make the call for public investment in higher education for more than self-interested reasons.

Yet, even if we call for continuation of the public investment, we should not ignore the fact that the public is ready for a new agreement and a new contract: one that will recognize today’s priorities and principles.

And if we sometimes despair that the societies of our own time are conflicted about their own feelings toward higher education and the institutions that provide it, then let us redouble our efforts to educate the students who will become global citizens and global leaders willing to show that universities like the UC remain a pillar of the society that will define the future, not just for those who graduate from it, but for everyone else.

Thank you.