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The U's Big Balancing Act
11/15/2002

By Burl Gilyard

In early September, an outsized want ad appeared in the pages of the Minneapolis-based StarTribune. The job? President, University of Minnesota—a post vacated in July by Mark Yudof. With classic Midwest understatement, the ad noted, "The role of the President of the University is very complex."

That’s one way of explaining the business of heading an institution with an annual budget of $2.3 billion and nearly 63,000 students attending four geographically scattered campuses that offer degrees in more than 370 areas of study. The ad succinctly outlined the dual roles of the University: "It is both the state land-grant university, with a strong tradition of education and public service, and a major research institution, with scholars of national and international reputation." The shorthand? Access and excellence.

The real or imagined tension between those two distinct charges—and how to pay for them—has been a flash point in modern debates about the direction of the University. Everyone, it seems—academics, alumni, politicians, administrators, students, pundits, and business leaders—has an idea about what should or shouldn’t be the University’s mission. In 2001, the Minnesota Legislature created the Commission on University of Minnesota Excellence to examine the U’s role and national status. The commission’s September report affirms the U’s broad mission and challenges it to become recognized as one of the five best in research and 10 best in undergraduate education among public institutions. "The unique scope of the University’s mission is at the same time challenging and appropriate," the report reads. "In outstanding universities, the research, teaching, and outreach missions are mutually supportive."

In many other states, the land-grant and research universities are entirely separate institutions, but Minnesota’s dichotomy was set long ago, during the formative years of the modern University, in the 1860s. James Gray’s history The University of Minnesota 1851–1951 chronicles University benefactor John Pillsbury’s resistance to efforts to separate agricultural (land-grant) and classical education: "Minnesota, he had decided, must not try to support two weak schools. The university must have the field to itself." So it was, and so it is at University of Minnesota.

As the University prepares to select another president, the consensus among observers inside and outside the University community is that the U has been moving in the right direction given the challenges of its structure. Measures of excellence have been improving while admission has only become marginally more difficult.

Professor Marvin Marshak, former U senior vice president for academic affairs, believes that the depth and breadth of the University’s somewhat unique mission is an asset, rather than cause for an identity crisis. "What is hard to achieve is what the University of Minnesota has tried to achieve, and in my view needs to achieve—and that is relatively high excellence for a relatively high number of students," says Marshak. "The relevant standard is not Harvard or Cal-Tech, because we’re not that kind of institution. We’ve never wanted to be that kind of institution."

For the better part of a century, the multifaceted mission of the University of Minnesota, one that aligned neatly with the state’s staunchly populist politics, didn’t seem to be the source of any hand-wringing angst. According to University historian Ann Pflaum (Ph.D. ’75), that began to change in the late 1970s and early ’80s for one fundamental reason: money. As the University suffered deep financial cuts, "we had to set some priorities," observes Pflaum.

In 1985, then–Interim President Ken Keller recognized that the landscape of higher education was changing. Keller outlined an ambitious plan, "A Commitment to Focus," with the goal of making the University one of the top five public universities in the nation.

Keller’s plans called for toughening entrance standards, bolstering graduate education and research, reducing undergraduate rolls, and recognizing the emerging role of state colleges, which were already beginning to educate a growing percentage of the state’s undergraduate students. "Perhaps the most important notion was not trying to be all things to all people," recalls Keller. From the beginning, he saw "access versus excellence" as a flawed debate. "It made little sense to set this up as a false dichotomy—quality or access—because access without quality is access to nothing," says Keller.

Keller’s ideas initially enjoyed strong support within the University community, and he became permanent president later in 1985. But Keller soon ran into a political buzz saw. Although enrollment was already in decline due to post–baby boom demographic trends, the popular perception was that the University would begin turning away thousands of young Minnesotans. Keller’s plan was seen as elitist, an affront to the University’s vaunted tradition of access.

As other controversies flared, Keller resigned in 1988, his work unfinished. The history books tell us that Keller’s Commitment to Focus was cast aside. But today the University has come to look increasingly like the institution that Keller envisioned.

Today, the University is trying to do a better job of serving fewer students while gradually boosting its standards for enrollment. The University is collaborating more than ever before with Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU) while working diligently to boost its national research reputation. Many of Keller’s fundamental ideas have been implemented by his successors.

"I was very much in favor of the basic ideas of Commitment to Focus," says former President Nils Hasselmo, now president of the Washington, D.C.–based Association of American Universities. For Hasselmo, adjusting the University’s mission was and is more a matter of refinement than overhaul: "I think that the mission should remain unchanged. It’s a matter of concentrating resources within that particular mission." Hasselmo recalls that during his tenure (1989–97) undergraduate enrollment was trimmed and the Twin Cities campus ceased offering undergraduate teaching degrees, in recognition of the programs offered by other schools.

But other Hasselmo initiatives ran into the angry mob of Minnesota populism. A 1993 plan to divide undergraduate education into two divisions—one for full-time students, the other for part-timers—died after protests. A 1996 proposal to review the status of General College met a similar fate and never got off the ground. In 1991, Hasselmo announced the closing of the Waseca campus. Although the decision was met with acrimony in its community, the campus was closed.

In the past 20 years, the cost of attending the University of Minnesota has more than quadrupled. For the 1982–83 school year, University of Minnesota tuition (including required fees) stood at $1,516 a year. Two decades later, incoming full-time students of 2002–03 are paying tuition and fees of $6,280. Although still less than a third of the price of the average Minnesota private college, the cost of attending the University has climbed 314 percent since 1982, far outpacing inflation, which rose approximately 87 percent in the same period.

A key factor driving higher tuition has been the historical trend of declining state support for the University. A 2001 paper by history professor Hy Berman and Pflaum noted that in 1950, the U received 41 percent of its funding from the state. By fiscal year 1999, that had dwindled to 35 percent. The legislative commission report noted that as a percentage of personal income, state support for higher education had fallen from fourth best in the nation in 1960 to 20th in 2002.

Rising tuition has been mitigated for some with increases in financial aid, creating what is called the high-tuition, high-aid model. Berman and Pflaum note the increasing social tendency to view higher education as a private, rather than a public, benefit. The justification for charging higher tuition is that a college education results in higher lifetime earnings. Better financial aid, the idea continues, will help those who really can’t afford to pay for college. But a study released in September found that Minnesota reported the seventh sharpest decline nationally (almost 12 percent) in lower-income students attending higher education.

Retiring Minnesota Representative Peggy Leppik, past chair of the Higher Education Finance Committee in the House, laments current higher education funding trends. "I think the recent news that we have fewer lower-income students attending higher education is one of the consequences of moving toward a high-tuition, high-aid model," says Leppik. "I think it’s a very unfortunate fallout, but a very predictable one."

Minnesota State Senator Steve Kelley, a member of the Higher Education Budget Division, concedes that the percentage of state money going to higher education is declining, but notes that state costs of health care and corrections are increasing steeply. Kelley says that since the University’s political clout has long been built on the access of constituents to the U, cutting access for the sake of excellence could hamper state funding. "One of the challenges for the University in its research mission is that it’s relatively harder to find a political constituency for that," says Kelley.

With state funding increasingly tenuous, the University is seeking new sources of money. Until recently, major private fund-raising for the public university was largely unheard of. Under President Keller, the University launched its first major fund-raising campaign in 1985, which raised $365 million through 1988.

In 1996, the University of Minnesota Foundation launched Campaign Minnesota with a goal of raising $1.3 billion. Today, more than $1.4 billion has been raised, although the campaign doesn’t end until June 2003. The priorities for funds have been research, faculty support, and student scholarships. "We now have 360 endowed positions at the University, and in 1985 when we started the first campaign we had 17," says Judy Kirk, executive vice president of the foundation. "This is funding that makes a difference in the overall quality of the University and helps the University attain an overall level of excellence."

Kirk adds that private funds have now become an integral part of the University’s financial picture: "The need [for private funds], of course, will always be there," she says.

Today excellence often means research. The U’s fiscal year 2002 research grants and contracts were worth a record $526 million. Christine Maziar, the University’s executive vice president and provost, says that the growth has been strong. "It’s a very significant increase," says Maziar. "I think it’s also important for folks to know that the University of Minnesota performs 99 percent of the sponsored research that’s done by any college or university in the state. Most of those dollars are spent on salaries and supplies purchased right here in Minnesota."

But attracting more research dollars can mean, paradoxically, that more state and private money is needed to create the facilities and support for the research. And research dollars do nothing to lessen the costs of teaching. "It’s really apples and oranges," says Maziar. "We can’t use that money to fund instruction."

In 1993, the University ranked ninth among public universities and 20th overall by the National Research Council; the latter marked a drop of four slots from the ranking a decade earlier. But there are strong signs that the University is reestablishing its research reputation. In both 2001 and 2002, the University ranked as the number three public research institution in a University of Florida study, trailing only the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. Overall, Minnesota ranked 10th in the most recent Florida study. Notably, the University was by far the least selective among the top-ranked schools in admitting freshman applicants, ranking 161st on SAT college entrance exam scores.

But the University has incrementally been getting more competitive. In 1997, the Twin Cities campus accepted 79.4 percent of freshman applicants; in 2001, that figure had been trimmed to 75.6 percent. (Acceptance rates are seen as a measure of both admissions standards and a school’s desirability among prospective students; Michigan’s acceptance rate for 2002 was 49.2 percent.) A new "holistic" approach to admissions, similar to those at most comparable institutions, has just gone into effect and will give the U more flexibility in its admissions. At the same time, new credit load policies are increasing the number of students taking full-time class loads in an effort to boost graduation rates. Graduation rates are a nationally recognized measure of undergraduate program quality.

Professor Dan Feeney, current chair of the Faculty Consultative Committee, compares the mission of the University to a high-stakes juggling act. "We have a number of balls in the air and we have to make sure that we keep all those balls up there: graduation rates, access, excellence," says Feeney. Yet he concludes that the rankings from the University of Florida study provide strong confirmation that the University has found the right mix. "For a state the size of Minnesota, that says that an awful lot of good stuff is going on around here," notes Feeney. "Our mission is both research and teaching, as well as service. That’s different than anybody else in the state."

Many native Minnesotans embrace the University with a stubborn, provincial pride. The state’s historically populist politics prompt many citizens to regard attending the University as something of a birthright. "It really reflects the spirit of this state," notes Marshak. "We didn’t come to this by accident."

For roughly the first 110 years of its existence as a full-fledged university, enrollment grew steadily. At the Twin Cities campus, enrollment crested at more than 47,000 students in the early 1980s as the last of the baby boomers made their way through college. Since 1980, the population of Minnesota has increased more than 20 percent, but total attendance at the U has increased only slightly.

Today, the MNSCU system educates the vast majority of higher education students in the state. In the fall of 2001, nearly 162,000 students were enrolled at MNSCU campuses. This is a comparatively recent trend; many MNSCU schools didn’t exist prior to the 1960s. MNSCU now includes seven four-year universities (such as Metro State and Winona State), and 27 two-year community and technical colleges with campuses in 46 Minnesota communities. Of MNSCU’s current $1.3 billion budget, 49 percent comes from the state of Minnesota.

Linda Kohl, associate vice chancellor for public affairs for MNSCU, says that the two systems meet different needs for different students. "I think we have distinct, but complementary missions," says Kohl. She notes all of MNSCU’s two-year colleges have open enrollment policies, meaning the only requirement for attendance is having a high school diploma or a G.E.D. Average tuition at MNSCU’s state universities is now $3,788 and $3,040 at its two-year colleges.

In January 1998, then-President Mark Yudof and then–MNSCU Chancellor Morrie Anderson signed the Minnesota Public Higher Education Compact calling for joint long-range planning between the two systems. Among the top goals of the agreement were making it easier to transfer between systems and establishing more cooperative degree programs. At the time of the agreement, the University and MNSCU already collaborated on 60 different initiatives, such as the University Center Rochester. By 2001, the two systems had nearly 170 partnership programs either up and running or in the works.

Board of Regents vice chair Robert Bergland (A.A. ’49) notes that the University continues to talk with MNSCU about more collaboration and integration. "We want [MNSCU] to be at the University standards. It’s going to take some time to do that," says Bergland, who envisions eventually steering more undergraduates toward MNSCU campuses offering high-quality undergraduate programs, reducing some of the U’s access pressure. "The plan would be that more and more people would get their basic training at another campus facility."

But former Board of Regents Chair David Lebedoff (B.A. ’60) believes that retrenchments may be necessary to make any sense out of the current system. "I think that the basic problem is that Minnesota has overbuilt its higher education structure," he says. "I think there has to be contraction and consolidation if we’re going to achieve excellence."

The overbuilding argument centers on MNSCU’s 53 campuses. In 1971, the legislature set the goal of having a campus within 35 miles of every person in the state, creating redundant programs in far-flung locations, critics say. They argue that focusing MNSCU resources where the students are—especially the Twin Cities—could ease admissions pressure on the University and allow elimination of duplicate curricula.

But Professor Feeney says that the University needs to be cautious about assuming that simply because a program also exists at MNSCU, it’s redundant at the U. "Almost everything here has some sort of a research background. The training that individuals would get might be different," says Feeney. "It’s easy to draw the conclusion that there’s history departments in both groups, but the thrust of those history departments might be very different."

Marshak agrees that cutting programs is not necessarily the secret to a better University. "When we closed the campus in Waseca, it didn’t produce that much money in reality," notes Marshak. "The idea that you can cut your way to excellence is fatally flawed."

There’s a sense both inside and outside the University that President Mark Yudof did an excellent job of finding an appropriate balance between comparatively wide access to the University and improving academic excellence, in part simply by helping faculty, staff, and students feel good about the institution. "I’m a complete convert to that," says Marshak. "The place is more attractive and our reputation is better, and all of this contributes to excellence."

In the end, most observers believe the next president must recognize that the University still needs to remain affordable and accessible, even as it becomes a gradually more selective, research-focused institution. "It’s not one or the other," adds Marshak. "If we were to go totally one way I think it would be a disaster for the state. We would not sustain the standard of living that we have now."

This article copyright 2002 by Burl Gilyard, who retains ownership and copyright of the article. No reproduction or redistribution of this article is permitted without permission from the copyright holder.
Burl Gilyard (B.A. ’92) is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer.

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