What Does It Mean to Be A Good University?

Most of the first twelve years of my life were spent in Storrs, where my father was a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Connecticut.  So I've always had a soft spot for UConn, rooting for their great men's and women's basketball teams and generally trying to keep an eye on how things are going. Thus, I read with interest this article in the Times about how things have apparently improved.  I don't normally do this -- in fact, I don't think I ever have before -- but for reasons that I hope will become clear I'm going to reprint most of it here and comment in italics along the way. I'm searching for three words--can you guess what they are?

Shedding the ‘Safe’ Label

By MORGAN McGINLEY
Storrs

MICHAEL J. HOGAN arrived at the University of Connecticut last September as its 14th president knowing he was inheriting a school vastly improved from a decade ago. Once a “safety school” with deteriorating facilities, the university now boasts rising test scores among entering freshmen and spruced-up academic facilities, thanks to a nearly $2 billion taxpayer-funded construction investment.

UConn is "vastly improved, we are told. Evidence: higher scoring students are enrolled, and the buildings are nicer. 

Dr. Hogan’s predecessor, Philip E. Austin, oversaw the largest expansion in the school’s history when the governor and state legislators committed to improving the state university system. After 10 years at the helm, Dr. Austin stepped down in 2007, saying it was time for someone else to lead.

The university’s 33-member search committee selected Dr. Hogan as its unanimous choice after a nationwide search. Now that Connecticut has been transformed into a modern campus with sparkling new buildings and programs that attract more of Connecticut’s best students, who once fled the state for higher education, university officials said they wanted Dr. Hogan to take the university up another level.

Why are the higher-scoring students enrolling? Because the buildings are nicer. 

“A decade ago, the university did not have the campus to support a great academic program,” said Dr. John W. Rowe, president of the university’s board of trustees. “The university has gone from being a safety school to much more selective. But we have a long way to go to be in the ranks of leading universities such as Michigan, California and North Carolina.”

Nice buildings are really important, although they could be nicer still, which would attract even higher-scoring students.  

Dr. Hogan came from the University of Iowa, where he was executive vice president and provost. He was inaugurated in April, and as he looks toward his second academic year here, he must contend with the implications of a state budget deficit and a looming recession. He also inherits a $315 million endowment, smaller than those of many other public universities.

Dr. Hogan knows that if he is to make the school among the nation’s best universities, he must improve several areas, but most important is its financial health.

“We’re the only public university among the top 25 that does not have a $1 billion endowment fund,” Dr. Hogan said. “We need to work our way into that club.”

To that end, the university also will soon announce a $450 million fund-raising drive, he said.

Nice buildings are expensive, and the legislature is unreliable. Therefore priority one is to raise a bunch of money, some of which will be spent on more nice buildings, and some of which will be stashed in the bank, because the more money in the bank the better the university looks. 

U.S. News & World Report rates Connecticut the best public university in New England, and has Connecticut, Purdue University and Iowa tied for 24th in the nation. Dr. Hogan said that a major goal is to break into the magazine’s list of top 20 public universities.

“We’re supremely good among public universities and we’re on a track to get better,” Dr. Hogan said.

Raising a bunch of money has the added benefit of increasing the university's U.S. News ranking, which is a "major goal." Nonetheless, UConn is "supremely good." Supremely!

Dr. Hogan, 63, said he will work to raise academic standards, especially in the graduate schools. A handful already receive high marks in national rankings, like the Neag School of Education, ranked 12th among public universities and 21st among all universities by U.S. News & World Report, and the dental school, which consistently places its graduates in top-flight residencies. But many more are far down in the pack. A strategic plan for academic success, a chief focus of Dr. Hogan’s, is due in September. He is optimistic.

“The quality of the applicant pool gets better every single year, and it’s more diverse,” he said.

"Academic standards" and "academic success" are defined exclusively in terms of U.S. News rankings and the number of high-scoring students, which one attracts by raising a lot of money and spending it on nice buildings, which all works together strategically in that high rankings are mostly a function of how many high-scoring students you attract and how much money you raise. 

The average SAT score for incoming freshmen rose to about 1200 from 1192, more than 150 high school valedictorians and salutatorians are enrolling and 20 percent of the freshman class will be minority students, a fact Dr. Hogan points to with pride. The proportion of freshman minority students has increased more than 100 percent since 1995.

The state’s investment in new buildings at Storrs and branches statewide, as well as the excitement generated by its nationally ranked basketball and football teams, drew more applicants this year to the university, officials said, so they decided to expand the entering class by 250 to a total of 3,400.

Spending the money on the nice buildings--and really, I think we get the point about that--is complimented by spending money on successful basketball and football teams, which draws more applicants from which more high-scoring students can be drawn. Diversity, defined in terms of the percent of minority student who enroll as freshmen, is also a plus. 

Now we skip a few grafs...

Ryan McHardy, 25, the president of the student government, praised Dr. Hogan for his strong interest in improving academics and campus life for students. Mr. McHardy said Dr. Hogan has toured the campus with student leaders at night to discuss safety and other aspects of student activity.

Dr. Hogan, who specializes in American diplomatic history, holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Northern Iowa and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in history from the University of Iowa.

He held several positions at Ohio State University before going to University of Iowa, where he worked on university fund-raising efforts, student recruitment and programs to boost academic and research quality.

Dr. David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, was president of the University of Iowa when he hired Dr. Hogan as executive vice president and provost in 2006.

“The main criterion for the faculty was someone who was a scholar and appreciated the role of faculty in higher education. He had a national reputation as an outstanding scholar,” Mr. Skorton said. “He is a humanist. He’s a historian. Many universities have a heavy emphasis on bioscience, life sciences. Mike was as good with those faculties as he was with the liberal arts faculties. It’s hard to do, and Mike did it well.”

Dr. Hogan is committed to increasing the minority faculty, which is 11 percent. He plans a dedicated fund so that the school can offer larger salaries when competing for minority scholars.

He also wants to increase the size of the faculty, now at about 1,400, by 125 positions. He believes the university could double its research grants, which currently are $190 million. The University of Connecticut Health Center’s plan for a large new hospital has caused a furor among major hospitals in the Hartford region, which fear competition. Dr. Hogan seeks a collaboration so that the school and other medical facilities benefit mutually. He said doing otherwise would duplicate resources and risk the loss of large science grants.

Research grants and economic development also make the university look good, while taking some of the money you raise (the part not spent on nice buildings, presumably) and giving it to the faculty keeps everyone happy. Dr. Hogan's been around the track a few times so he understands how this works. 

So, what are the missing words? Anyone? 

Teaching

Learning

Graduation

They don't appear anywhere in the piece. And there's a reason for that: Teaching, learning and graduation don't matter in higher education when it comes to defining university success. Cut out this article, fold it up and put it in your wallet (or bookmark it or save it on your Kindle or whatever the appropriate 2008 action is). Everything you need to know about why colleges and universities do what they do, and don't do what they don't do, is there. UConn is being perfectly rational here, and everything Dr. Hogan is doing makes sense, given the rules of the game as it's currently played. It doesn't matter how well you teach. It doesn't matter how much your students learn, or how likely they are of graduating. What matters is how much money you have and how many "good" students you convince to enroll. Everything else is gravy. And until we do something to change that, until the essential questions about quality are different when the presidential search committee fans out and the New York Times comes calling, college students won't learn as much as they need to learn, too many won't graduate, and college will cost more than it should.