Plenary Panel on "The Future"

Plenary Panel on "The Future" at the 150th Annual Meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sunday, February 15, 1998

Presentation, "The World of 1848," by Fred Gregory, University of Florida Panel Moderator, Alvin Toffler Panelists: Georgia Dunston, Howard University, "Genome Science and Medicine" John Holdren, Harvard University, "Energy and Environment" Peter J. Liacouras, Temple University, "Education and the University"

"The Future for Urban-based Public Research Universities" ^* by Peter J. Liacouras ^** President of Temple University February 15, 1998

As Professor Gregory was outlining major events in 1848 as the AAAS was being formed, I was reminded that my paternal grandfather was then a 16 year-old, shoeing mules and farming grapes and olives in the southern Peloponnesus of Greece. Not very long ago, not far away. In that context and with the perspectives for the future raised by Professors Holdren and Dunston, my subject this evening will seem pedestrian.

My question is, how can the relatively youthful but critical educational institution known as the "Urban-based Public Research University" ("UPRU") reach full maturity and blossom over the next 20-25 years?

To set the stage, I will present a case study. How will the UPRU discover, gather, analyze, organize and disseminate knowledge, teach, educate and serve the persons and communities central to its mission -- where, by whom, what means, when, how - - in the face of an environment with instantaneous information-accessibility and with world-wide competition in education?

My ulterior purpose this evening is to turn the table and get free advice from the master futurist himself, moderator Alvin Toffler.

Needed is advice on the choices facing these institutions (the UPRUs), decisions that likely will either:

continue moving the UPRU forward, toward its historic mission (and the "human dignity" inherent in its mission) but in a radically altered educational marketplace; or
move the UPRU away from both its historic mission and economic viability - - because it becomes uncompetitive, spiraling downward, toward massive dislocation, middle-class forms of "welfare and workfare," institutional irrelevance, and eventually closure.

Your advice, of course, comes in the context of exciting scientific, technological and information-driven breakthroughs - - formidable challenges confronting traditional universities and the persons they serve.

I would especially appreciate panaceas - - even one panacea! - - for adjusting (if not remaking) the prevailing culture and contracts extant in universities - - and do it without conflict!

It''s a world that is

discipline-driven,
bureaucratized,
unionized.

It''s a world with tremendous brainpower, where specialization humbles the whole, where an entitlement culture resists changes that might surrender the academy's historical freedom from external pressures or threaten prerogatives such as full employment that became inherent rights of passage in the post-war period, especially since the 1960's.

Lodged in specialized cubicles, most actors in these universities do not comprehend how they will be affected by an environment unsettled as a result of the tremendous velocity of external changes in the marketplace of higher education - - changes creating both threats and opportunities for the internal human resources- the brainpower -- of these universities.

The external changes include the familiar:

tremendous new and instantaneous educational technologies;
breakthroughs in distance learning;
geometric increases in the information base;
an expanding, readily-accessible knowledge base;
a national and even world-wide educational marketplace that will mirror the emerging global marketplace in the new Information Age;
a reduction in support via governmental appropriations for the operations of public universities, driving up tuition costs higher than the middle and economically poorer families they serve can afford, and reduced government support for research;
discriminating cost-conscious consumers of higher education;
a major crisis in the educational preparedness and academic quality of a large portion of students graduating from public high schools in cities;
changing demography, and patterns of how and where students can choose to be educated;
intense competition among traditional colleges and universities, and from the aggressive, cost-cutting for-profit sector, wherever situated.

All this is occurring in a business world where "continuing" or "life-long" development and refinement of skills are becoming vital and commonplace, and as much of a "market of opportunity" as were the GI's following WWII.

The Tofflers have already taught us that institutions conducting "business-as-usual" in "The Third Wave" will commit institutional suicide. Beyond that, we'd like your advice for those UPRUs with a proud history of social diversity -- meaning those with at least 1/3 of their undergraduate students of "minority" backgrounds. These are the same institutions that, during the past decade, lost a disproportionate number of their "commuting undergraduate" enrollments from the growing suburban middle classes.

We seek advice on how to overcome the real or imagined fears that suburban families feel about the geographic location of a UPRU's "Core" campus in or near an "inner city" (with silent but real racism lurking in some hearts and minds).

We seek advice for those UPRUs a large majority of whose students have always been "commuters" traveling to the physical Core campus from work or home - - the same UPRUs whose "residential" populations of student-faculty-staff have hovered around 10%-20% of all undergraduates.

Advice for the UPRU whose presence in the "inner city" represents the major economic engine, the largest source of employment, the largest business opportunities, and just plain hope for the immediate geographical communities and the revenue-strapped city.

Advice for a UPRU that understands the crisis in K-12 public education and its interdependency, and has sought to improve the public schools. A UPRU whose faculties and College of Education have for decades worked with their historic "feeders" (the City's Public School System) - - in both "vertical" and "horizontal" collaborations (teacher training, curricular design, specific school-based programs, tutoring) - - but whose bottom line isn't pretty. The System is failing for 3 out of every 4 of its children, with basic proficiency lacking in between 70% and 93% of its students depending on the skill of reading, math, or science.

Your advice should recognize the UPRUs' intellectual understanding, if not cultural acceptance, of such revolutionary factors as:

the transformation of traditional models of "economies of scale" into "economies of scope," with flexible network organization, mass customizing, "just-in-time" production and distribution of education and services;

the fragmentation of existing markets into innumerable "functional micro-markets" that are ripe for the plucking by innovators of all sorts -- especially by low-cost, tradition-less for-profit educational players;

the emergence of new markets which traditional higher education has considered "beneath our dignity."

Your advice should also recognize that UPRUs are not willing to "bet the house" on Lewis Perelman's¹ "School''s Out!" and close their physical doors and "Core" campus. We'll keep the doors open, thank you, with a night locksmith ready to change the locks just in case more radical transformations are required sometime after the Year 2015.

Many UPRUs already operate in what, to paraphrase Duderstadt² (with whom I agree on most issues), amounts to "The UPRU, Inc." with: "(i) on-campus education, (ii) R&D, (iii) Healthcare, (iv) HMO, (v) Insurance, (vi) Knowledge Services -- continuing education, extension courses, worldwide market; and (vii) entertainment." Unquote. And we add, the beginnings of the "Virtual University."

But, Mr. Toffler, I'm really here with an even more provincial and pedestrian purpose: to seek your advice for just one of the 20 or so UPRUs -- Temple University, a university operating in the context I've been describing and which is focusing on 6 rather modest, simple strategic initiatives for the next 5-10 years.

These are six goals which Temple University's "Strategic Initiatives" seek simultaneously to achieve:

The first initiative is to move towards regional and world markets in delivering education through convenient, low-cost sites. These convenient venues will be both physical sites and "distance learning" networks. The elaborate investment plan for advanced educational technology is being made with a blink towards Strassmann's³ injunction to avoid profligateness and a wink toward traditionalists still clamoring for cavernous new library buildings.

The physical sites are being spread through the region to capture commuting students, close to home or work; corporate customers requiring "custom-tailored" courses; and so on. They''re also in foreign settings (Japan, Korea, China, Italy, Greece, Israel, soon in Korea and China) where the demands for American-style education in a convenient, lower-cost setting are bulging.

Cost-effective methods to achieve these ends include cooperation, affiliations and mergers with other institutions (public and private) -- thereby creating a coordinated, appropriately decentralized and cost-differentiated "Temple University System of Higher Education."

The System must be flexible and promptly responsive to the markets. "Profits" from lower-cost enterprises will help underwrite the more expensive graduate and professional programs that today involve nearly 40% of all Temple students - - a proportion of "high-end" students not sustainable without reaching newer, lower-cost markets of opportunity.

The second initiative is to transform the "Core" Main Campus in Philadelphia into a residential community of scholars and learners ("Temple Town").

Temple Town is a cooperative venture with neighboring communities. It is helping to revitalize the business and residential areas adjacent to the Main Campus, and to increase the quality of life and culture (Rock Hall, "Avenue of the Arts, North"), provide sports and entertainment ("The Apollo of Temple") and enhance research (new investments in science labs and technology) - - thus increasing its appeal to prospective students and families throughout the region.

Temple Town will include additional students and staff who live on and around the campus. The total of "residential students" should rise to between 33%-40% of the undergraduate population by the Year 2002.

The third initiative is to maintain the highest academic standards in every graduate and professional program, and in all undergraduate degree programs. Fewer yes, but excellent all. Also developing is an appropriate research strategy that insures excellence in selective areas of basic and applied research, consistent with internal strengths and external resources, including corporate partnerships.

Fourth is an initiative to enhance all undergraduate education, starting with better-equipped entering undergraduates who meet Temple''s expectations for college freshmen. Already well under way, this initiative entails the elimination of virtually all "remedial" programs for traditional college matriculants while maintaining the rich diversity that has distinguished Temple institutions through a wider regional outreach.

Remedial programs, as we all know, have become staples for most graduates of urban public school Systems. Those programs are appropriately the province of Community Colleges that can operate them at 1/3d of the University's costs. How this programmatic transfer is made while simultaneously insuring that some part of the loosely-knit "Temple University System" can reach that potential market (through an alternative delivery system) is a specific example of whether the UPRU will capture the "functional micro-markets" described earlier.

The fifth initiative aims at simplifying student services. This market-driven goal is continuous and, besides re-organizing functions, requires that in effect we should stand in the students' place and get what we would expect. It requires looking on the student as- - God forbid - - "our customer" whose presence and tuition make possible our doing what we like -- teaching, research and service - - and being paid adequately.

Sixth, and finally is the duty to maintain the consistent pattern of financial restraint and self-sufficiency. While continuing to restructure and re-engineer the bureaucracy, appropriately decentralizing and adopting "Just in Time" managerial skills, we''re developing a culture that blends market efficiencies with time-honored "mentoring" and other wholesome college experiences that distinguish American higher education.

Once we achieve all these initiatives, however, one may ask: Is this UPRU pursuing its historic mission? Is it serving national and human-wide goals? Is it positioned to respond effectively to a future posing even greater threats, dislocations and competition than it faced in the marketplace of 1998?

Our duty is not to "Bring Back the 1970's," as one colleague recently enjoined we do. That would be a task for "Mandrake The Magician," and even that won't do because we live in a real world.

The futurist Tofflers have greatly stimulated those of us with stewardships in universities to think broadly and boldly about the future, for which we sincerely thank them. That is why I have posed this follow-up case study for them.

So, my question to you now is: what further specific advice do you have for an institution pursuing high values and which is goal-driven; that pursues the great tradition of liberal education and aspires to social justice; that educates the talented, highly-motivated, hard-working children of the middle class and some who are economically poor; that has a sense of obligation to its employees and communities; that has seen fashions come-and-go; that while caring about, and being affected by all education and knowledge generally, feels duty-bound to preserve, protect and further this particular institution?

And, how do we insure all this occurs while preparing and positioning ourselves for the real possibility of more radical change (including "School's Out"!) - - probably sometime after a mid-term of 10-20 years - - while not now convinced that humans will soon become asocial creatures without the need for face-to-face identifications and physical contact; without strong urges to belong to specific groups, without the need to socialize with peers in residential and large group settings; all the while believing that persons will continue socializing, thrilled to walk together hand-in-hand through art galleries, engaging all their senses in an Academy of Music that is part of a social evening, cheering and groaning "together as one" at a game with the university''s colors inspiring everyone to do more and better for "God, Country and the Cherry & White"?

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* Extension of remarks
** I would like to thank Professor Kyriakos Kontopoulos for his assistance in the preparation of this paper.

1.    Lewis Perelman, "School's Out," Avon Books, 1993.
2.    James Duderstadt, "Academic Renewal at Michigan," Executive Strategies. Stanford Forum for Higher Education Futures, 1997.
3.    Paul A. Strassmann, "The Value of Computers, Information and Knowledge." 1996 (Found at http://www.strassmann.com).