Since making educational opportunity available to qualified students has been the core of Temple's existence, capping or reducing enrollment should be seen as a serious reversal of policy. At the same time, Temple's origins and tradition have emphasized educational opportunities for students capable of benefiting from a Temple education. During much of the 1990s, student body credentials—measured by combined SAT scores or rank in class—were slightly lower than during most of the 1980s. In the past three years, student body credentials have increased slightly each year, even as the size of the student body has grown.

It seems to me a reasonable objective for Temple's undergraduate programs to continue to grow a little each year as long as student body credentials also continue to improve at least marginally. This enrollment growth may not occur in all of the University's programs: in programs involving high teaching intensity and with heavy reliance on technology, the University may not be able to fund the costs of program growth. At a point where the University is no longer able to educate additional undergraduate students without major capital investment, we should seriously consider limiting enrollment growth.

In other aspects, we may expect Temple to grow significantly:

• New facilities have been leased at Temple University Harrisburg (TUH) that are substantially larger than the former facilities. The Provost's Office, in making the decision to expand, has estimated that a 20 percent growth in credit hours will be necessary to meet the cost of facilities expansion. This poses a substantial issue of what program array to offer in Harrisburg and how to provide those programs. But that question is part of a much larger question about how Temple can successfully assume its announced goal to be a regional university serving at many sites, including the Health Sciences Center, the College at Ambler, Temple University Center City, and elsewhere.

• The University has also leased new, much larger facilities in Center City (TUCC). These are expected to open in the summer of 2001. Like TUH, TUCC's new facilities will accommodate substantial growth and must achieve growth of at least 20 percent in order to be financially viable. The same questions about program array that are raised at Harrisburg are also present at Center City.

• In June of last year, the Board of Trustees recognized Ambler as the 17th college of Temple University. It requested the administration to recommend a program array and faculty arrangements for the Ambler College of Temple University. Over time we may expect Ambler College to serve a growing number of part-time and adult students, and the program array there must be fashioned to meet their needs. Courses must be reliably offered on a fixed, predictable schedule, so that part-time and adult students can effectively plan course enrollments not only this year but in future years, in order to move steadily toward degree completion. At the present time, some colleges offer programs at Ambler that meet those needs. Others do not offer courses on a fixed and predictable schedule, but rather on the basis of faculty availability and the program needs of the main campus. The goal at Ambler and elsewhere must be to assure that students who enroll can rely on a regular rotation of courses that will allow degree completion in an orderly and timely way. If programs and schedules are arranged to serve students, there is some capacity for growth at Ambler College; and that capacity will increase when the new Learning Center is constructed there.

• The development of independent degree programs at the University's centers and at Ambler College must also be considered. There is, for example, a serious shortage of people trained in urban planning in metropolitan Philadelphia at a time when many smaller communities are attempting to properly manage and plan their growth in order to maintain the quality of life. The centers and Ambler might well be able to formulate degree programs to serve such specialized needs. An urban planning degree program located at Ambler is already in the advanced planning stages, for instance.

• The Medical School has made a decision to increase enrollment from 180 to 200 students per class. This responds to a growing national shortage of physicians because of the earlier retirement of doctors and the growth in health care services needed by an aging population. This growth will pose some challenges for instructional laboratory and study space which the University ought to make every effort to meet.

• The College of Podiatric Medicine has had some enrollment decline in recent years; however, it would be prepared to enroll additional students up to its former size. Its facilities are sufficient for that limited growth. The College may address part of its enrollment decline by offering programs internationally, where there is a substantial need for its programs.

It is useful also to consider the appropriate size of graduate enrollments at Temple. About 7,100 students are currently enrolled in Temple's graduate programs. Over the past two decades graduate enrollment has been as high as 9,100 students and as low as 6,900 students. The average over 21 years has been about 7,500 graduate students and the median about 7,300. Temple's graduate programs are not large by the measure of some other universities located in urban centers. Nor are they large when compared to a smaller subset of universities that may be called urban universities. The University of Pittsburgh, Arizona State University, and Wayne State University, all urban universities, enroll more graduate students than Temple.

Some of these institutions have especially developed and scheduled master's programs to serve employed students who are seeking either to advance in their careers or to change careers as the economies of their regions change. There could be substantial opportunities for similar graduate program expansion at Temple—not only at the main campus but at Ambler, TUCC and Harrisburg. I am hopeful that in serving our mission, the Provost's Office will work with the colleges and schools to identify additional opportunities to offer master's degrees and certificate programs for students pursuing career aspirations.

Temple has shown its responsiveness to some changes in the metropolitan Philadelphia economy. Examples include the creation of the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management and the development of a highly regarded quality assurance program that has been supported by the pharmaceutical industry. Creation of a School of Public Health, offering programs needed in the metropolitan area, is also under consideration. What is needed is a more systematic way of identifying these ever-changing needs. It will be useful to develop a capacity in the Provost's Office to conduct periodic reviews of educational needs in the metropolitan area and to encourage the development of programs by academic units to meet those needs.

In these comments I have emphasized the development of master's and certificate programs. I have done so deliberately. I am skeptical, quite frankly, about the expansion—and perhaps even the present size—of Ph.D. programs. Across the United States there is a massive overproduction of persons with academic doctorates. The learned societies are once again crying out against the extensive use of part-time faculty and the compensation received by them. I admit to being something of a skeptic about this controversy.

But even taking the assertions of the learned societies at face value—that there are indeed too many adjunct faculty teaching in American universities—the fundamental fact is that the increase in the number of part-time faculty is closely related to an academic market that is flooded with persons with academic doctorates or who are working toward a doctorate. I am concerned whether the great surplus of academic doctorates relates more to institutional aspirations and to the endurance of doctoral programs that the nation no longer needs than to needed educational opportunities for students.

I am hopeful, therefore, that among the issues Temple will face directly is the array and size of academic doctoral programs. Growth in these programs, unless we are sure that we offer doctoral training that will meet otherwise unmet needs in the nation or the region, is neither fair to potential graduate students nor a good use of limited institutional resources. Indeed, it may well be that we should consider closely limiting the size of doctoral programs to assure that we are preparing doctoral students who have strong prospects of entering academic life. Or perhaps we should consider alternative approaches to doctoral education, including substantial elements of training that would strongly qualify students for work outside of academe and a deliberate effort to fully advise students that careers outside university life are as likely for them as are academic appointments. However we may resolve these issues, I hope we will recognize that there are deeply rooted issues of decency and fairness for our students and the appropriate use of public resources in reviewing the size and array of academic doctoral programs.

Finally, it is important to mention enrollment that might occur through various forms of distance learning, including on-line courses. Despite much discussion and no little hype, this is still an uncharted sea. It is already apparent that no one has yet found a way for on-line learning to be economically viable. Indeed, eminent institutions, such as Columbia University, that have plunged into on-line course development and delivery are now curtailing their efforts because costs so far exceed revenues. The same doubts cannot be raised about the educational value of on-line or distance education. Many universities and some other entities have experimented with on-line and distance learning courses and found them educationally effective for some students in certain kinds of educational programs. We should assume, therefore, that distance learning, including on-line courses and perhaps on-line degrees, are in our future.

At this time, I believe Temple should advance in three directions. First, we should continue to expand the number of courses that are taught simultaneously at several locations by the use of interactive video. Comments from faculty members suggest that this will require upgrading and improved maintenance of equipment for these programs. Second, we should continue to encourage academic units to develop on-line courses and programs. The Provost's Office informs me that Temple is presently offering about 50 on-line courses each semester. Third, we should make targeted investments in a select array of on-line courses in special educational niches where Temple has unique strengths. In doing so, we should give special attention to the financial viability of the courses or programs we offer in this way. In the longer term, Temple should—and I believe most other universities also will—seek appropriate partnerships with university consortia, corporate enterprises, or others that are undertaking on-line education on a broad scale, are able to obtain the financing to do so, and will benefit from economies of scale that Temple by itself is unlikely to achieve.