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Rhode Island needs an engaged Land Grant university. The term dates back to the Morrill Act of July 2, 1862. Congress gave funds to each state for "the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life." The funds were a grant of federal lands, which the states sold; hence, "Land Grant." Brown University was made Rhode Island's Land Grant in 1863, and in part the funds were used to build the engineering department. However, there was little to show by way of educating sons or daughters from the agricultural communities of the state. The politically powerful agricultural granges persuaded the legislature to transfer the Land Grant to Kingston's new School of Agriculture and its Agricultural Experiment Station in 1892. The Experiment Station came from the Hatch Act of 1887, which gave more funds to add research to the mission of the Land Grants. To extend Land Grant teaching and research beyond campus, President Kenyon Butterfield created an office of Director of Extension Services in 1904; ten years later, the Smith-Lever Act created a national Cooperative Extension Service. Thus, early in the last century the tri part mission of what became URI was defined as practical education, research, and extension. URI today continues to bear the Land Grant title in Rhode Island; the Land Grant philosophy thus should remain relevant and central to URI's mission. But does it?
In the beginning, agriculture and engineering were the School's focus, but over the years things have evolved at URI. Certainly, the curriculum has diversified and modernized, and the campus has grown to cover the Kingston hillside. But more importantly, the tight relation between the institution and the State has changed greatly, and not for the better. In the 1950's and 60's, State funds made up more than half of URI's budget; today state funds make up less than a fifth. The per capita State support for University research in Rhode Island is last in the nation. State funds for Land Grant research and extension are also among the lowest in the country. Over time, Rhode Island has been letting go of its University.
Today's University of Rhode Island must seek revenue in highly competitive marketplaces. No longer tightly obligated by State allocations, it finds itself competing for funds semi-autonomously, as part of a nationwide educational industry. URI competes with over 4000 higher education institutions for students, grants, state funds, and private donations.
Higher education—even "public" higher education—has become a market enterprise, creating products for buyers. URI competes for students, marketing not only an education—complete with degree to certify accomplishment—but also dormitory amenities (cable t. v. and high speed internet are expected parts of all modern dorm rooms, for example) and sports and campus entertainment. URI competes for federal grants, marketing its buildings, equipment, and brainpower against the research capacities of many great universities. URI competes for a share of the state budget: Legislators trust that the University will produce graduates whose skills and knowledge will help RI prosper in the competitive global economy; they regard the State University as a reservoir of problem-solving intellect, a resource capable of addressing many of the problems of the State; and they expect benefits from University research in health, social interactions, the arts, energy, the environment, and commerce. URI also competes for private donations, marketing promises to carry on good work into the future, made possible and in part directed by the generosity of donors.
In each of these four marketplaces, the University faces great competition and an unsure future. State appropriations (inflation adjusted) have declined for three decades, and now cover only 18% of annual expenditures. Grants have had no real inflation-adjusted growth in two decades; federal agencies favor better equipped and well-staffed research universities, such as are usually built on state or private funds and sustained by huge university endowments. URI's endowment simultaneously needs to grow even as it faces great demands to meet needs, and it cannot do both at once. Tuition and fees rise faster than inflation. Students take too long to graduate, and many accumulate major debt; too many others fail to graduate at all. A few buildings are renovated; most deteriorate as maintenance is deferred indefinitely; URI allocates 1% of its budget to renovations, one-quarter of the average percentage. Is URI in a healthy fiscal state? It doesn't look that way.
In competing for resources, URI follows two strategies, one built on reputation and another on prestige (Brewer et al., 2004. In Pursuit of Prestige.) URI seeks prestige, for example, with a large athletic program—recently capped by the Mackel field house and Ryan Center—and by erecting new alumni and foundation buildings. URI also adds to its prestige by supporting Robert Ballard with a new marine exploration center at the Bay campus. Prestige helps to impress prospective students that URI is in a league with institutions with similar recent investments in physical plant, and it helps to maintain donations from sports boosters. Prestige attracts students, helps to build endowments, influences grant competitions, and it returns a sense of pride to state legislatures. But it also costs a great deal to develop, and failure to increase prestige may leave an institution worse off, saddled with debt but without benefits. Early impressions from the Ryan Center are mixed, for example: The facility looks impressive to all who visit, but still it fails to draw sufficient revenues to meet debt requirements, creating an extra burden on students who must now pay a larger fee.
URI also competes for resources on the basis of reputation. Students who meet a successful and happy recent graduate may be heavily influenced to enroll in that graduate's program. Grant competitions rely heavily on the reputations of scientists. Private donors frequently target specific programs on the basis of favorable reputation of the programs. And the legislature certainly considers the reputation of the institution in deciding its annual allocations. Compared to prestige, reputation can be built over a relatively shorter time, as may happen to a program that makes a major research discovery, or to a department that can point to the success of its graduates in landing high-end jobs. Certainly, URI has reasons for great pride in the reputation earned by the faculty for their devotion to students and their hard work in research. Unfortunately, reputation can also be lost quickly, as may occur if the football or basketball teams have a series of loosing seasons; academically, loss of a few highly regarded professors, or failure to keep up with contemporary computer or scientific technology may quickly lead to a deteriorating reputation, reflected in lost student recruitment, declines in grants or private donations, and even in erosion of legislative support.
In their 2004 book, The Future of Higher Education, authors Frank Newman, Lara Couturier, and Jamie Scurry comment on the rhetoric, reality, and risks of the academic marketplaces, pointing out that competition is likely to increase. Public universities face new pressures to increase access for low-income and first-generation immigrant students, and more demands to increase the percentage of students who complete their degrees on time and with skills valued by employers. These pressures, they concluded, will drive up costs unsustainably. Growth of private for-profit institutions will also increase competition for grants and students. Conversely, public universities will increase competition with private institutions for endowments funds.
Intensified competitive pressures in the higher education market, suggested Newman, require "skilled leadership and organizational mastery of change" within the institution and on governing boards, and greater than normal leadership development within the institution. The institution also needs a strategic plan that is "clear and specific enough that it can be implemented and visionary enough that it will matter if it is implemented." "Most plans are too vague and general," said Newman. "What is too often missing is a strategy that spells out in understandable terms how the institution will move forward, develop its unique character, and attract its clientele." "Strategic plans, claimed Newman, "must amplify and clarify the mission, making it specific and realistic" without tending toward vague generalities that tend to end up meaning "sort of like everyone else."
The University's 465 word mission statement contains only 13 words that distinguish it within the State, the two phrases "principal public research and graduate institution" and "land grant, sea grant, and urban grant institution," and nothing else to distinguish it from other universities. The University's vision statement is similar. If one removes the two phrases and "Rhode Island", the mission and vision statements do indeed end up making URI "sort of like everyone else."
If the University's vision and mission were more easily distinguishable from other Rhode Island universities, there might be considerable market advantages, initially within the market for state appropriations and private donations. A Land Grant philosophy in teaching, research, and extension may be the critical distinguishing element, if the University could in fact rediscover and embrace that philosophy. But what would that require?
Teaching. Reembracing the Land Grant philosophy in teaching would focus URI on practical education for the industrial classes. Currently, the University is focused on two conflicting goals in its efforts to attract students. It is using part of its funds for scholarships to attract higher achieving freshmen in an effort to raise admission standards, as measured by SAT scores, etc. This increase in standards increases the University's prestige, contributing to a critical marketing strategy. At the same time, it is responding to pressures to increase access for minorities and students from families with no previous college graduates—a response to a societal goal of improving the lower class. It is also driven to increase overall enrollment; as a practical fiscal necessity, the institution depends on steadily increasing tuition revenues. The current 3-year plan for the University calls for increasing enrollment by 1000 (and faculty size by only 20). In a recent conversation with Town of South Kingstown managers, the President spoke of increasing enrollment to 22,000 within the decade, a huge relative increase.
Recently, the University has been criticized for its low graduation rate, which is 55.8% for 6 years. This is the lowest rate of the six New England public universities (UNH is the best, with 72.6%), and below the national average (56.9%). The director of Education Trust, the national group that compiled these data, calls such low rates "immoral" and a "waste" of human capital. The graduation rates for blacks at URI is 35.6%, and for latinos 43.7%, both below national averages. While recent focus is on the percentage graduating, there should be equal concern about the use of 6 years as an acceptable duration, as anything above 4 (or even 3) years is also a waste of potential workplace productivity; and to the extent that the institution is capable of affecting the speed of graduation, this too may be considered "immoral." (If the University were able to achieve a shorter time to graduation, it would be able to increase the number of graduates without necessarily increasing the on-campus or in-town population.) Nationally, graduation rate is related to income, as 60% of students from families making more than $75,000 graduate, but only 7 percent of students in families making less than $25,000 annually complete their degrees (Providence Journal, articles on March 6 and 7, 2005). Questions of morality aside, the more that University scholarship funds are used to compete for a "better" undergraduate class, offering financial incentives for high-SAT-scoring students to enroll regardless of financial need, the less the University is able to provide financial assistance to those who need it most to graduate.
Justin Morrill's Land Grant philosophy has a social goal of practical education for the industrial classes. This is highly congruent with University goals of promoting access and success (i.e., to completing the education). The nation and its states would benefit, Congress thought, from preparing a larger number of average people with the science and technology training for a higher level of performance in agriculture or engineering. Applying that philosophy today would involve a broader spectrum of possible forms of socially useful work, as all fields of science and engineering have broadened—as the focus of modern Land Grants has broadened into social sciences as well—but the emphasis would continue to be on practical education for working people.
In addition to the imperative for public universities to broaden access and success, the Land Grant philosophy would have us go one step further in the teaching mission of the University. The purpose of Congress under the Morrill Act was to advance the national interest by promoting individual educational attainment. The goal was education to enable individuals to succeed in "the several pursuits and professions of life," thereby realizing a national collective goal of scientific and technological advancement. This strongly implies that it is also imperative to examine success beyond graduation, that is, to be able to demonstrate the relevance of an education to meeting society's collective needs. The critical question is, from the individual's perspective, did graduation from the University really mean the acquisition of the vital practical knowledge and skills necessary to contribute to society, and did graduation in fact create new opportunity for the individual. From society's perspective, the critical question is were the graduates prepared with the knowledge and skills needed in leading sectors of the economy, both public and private. A more contemporary version of this comes from The National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education, which recently (March 10, 2005) advised "that state policy makers, such as governors, legislators, and member of higher-education boards, should establish clear goals for higher education based on state needs and priorities [emphasis added]. The goals should focus on improving college-going and retention rates, educating students for the state's workforce, and encouraging economic development."
As an member of a competitive education industry, in fulfilling its teaching mission the University needs to be able to answer "how good is our product?" to a number of relevant stakeholders. Students (and parents who buy the University's education) need to know that the product of their education is more than a ticket to a job interview: they need to know that they are prepared with relevant skills and understanding to enter into and contribute to the advancement of the economy, in diverse pursuits and professions. Education needs to create more than certification; it also needs to create opportunity. Parents in particular will want to know that their graduating offspring now have an opportunity to enter not only a job market for which their sons and daughters are now highly qualified by their education, but also that the job markets are local, so that graduates are not forced to move away from their parents by a local lack of employment opportunities. The University thus needs to be charged to not only prepare future employees for leading edge jobs, but also to produce a cadre of entrepreneurs with the skills needed to create new forms of employment. For their part, employers (who are also taxpayers) need to know that University graduates are a "good buy," bringing the best possible balance of knowledge and practical skills to the job. Government needs to know that its use of taxpayer dollars is producing not only the maximum possible number of graduates—from all economic strata of the industrial class—but also the best possible quality of graduates, measured by standards of a globally competitive economy. Thus, rededication to the original intent of the Land Grant philosophy is fully congruent with contemporary national concerns for access, success, and relevance in the teaching mission of public higher education. Reasserting the Land Grant philosophy as a foundational principle of the University's teaching mission will ultimately enhance the institution's reputation, as students come to understand that a URI education means genuine opportunity in the local economy. As much as the University has a moral imperative to provide access and success to its students, so too must it have a philosophical commitment to make relevance a guiding principle. This notion is inherent in the Land Grant philosophy.
Research. The Land Grant commitment to research began with the same focus as the Morrill commitment to learning. The Hatch Act of 1877 established and funded within each Land Grant institution "a department to be known and designed as an 'agricultural experiment station'," whose purpose would be "to aid in acquiring and diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects connect with agriculture, and to promote scientific investigation and experiment respecting the principles and applications of agricultural science." Just as the Land Grant teaching mission broadened as it evolved, so too the research mission has expanded and modernized. By 1977, for example, the National Agricultural Research, Extension and Teaching Policy Act set forth a Land Grant agenda that included alternatives to fossil fuels, human nutrition and food consumption, environmental problems, aquaculture, renewable resources, home economics, energy conservation, forestry, climate, needs of farmers and their families on small farms, animal diseases, crop improvement, food processing, and marketing. More recent modifications of Land Grant federal programs have focused on an increasingly urban agenda dealing with problems of children, youth, and families.
Land Grant research produces practical findings based on applied and basic research. A recent trend is toward outcome-oriented funding, in which research products, patents, or publications (outputs) are less important than the benefits realized when someone actually uses the research (outcomes). This requires researchers to consider target audiences who will use the research, and under some programs to actually involve stakeholders in the design, execution, and implementation of practical research. As Congress demands more pervasive accountability, the USDA and other federal funding agencies (including the National Science Foundation) may shift more grant programs to outcome funding.
Outcome-based funding is an alternative to simple curiosity-driven research supported by the institution or by an external grant. At its most extreme, curiosity-driven research creates a mind set of aversion to application; one colleague once told me "When I start to think of an application for my research, I change to a new question." Scientists who feel this way place a high priority on "basic" research, free from contaminating influences of possible uses for the research. The opposite extreme is research for commercialization, in which the scientist is driven to create commodities for sale, including new products or uses for ideas. The heavy involvement of Universities in biotechnology, photonics, nanotechnology, materials science, and information technology—all appropriate in and of themselves—is often seen less as a way to create a public good, and more as a means to generate large potential profits from patents and licenses, putting money into the hands of both the individual faculty member and into the coffers of the institution and, with the support of mostly government-funded commercialization centers, into the state and local economy as well.
There is nothing inherently wrong about University research that is curiosity-driven, in the narrow sense given here; all research requires curiosity, after all. Nor is there anything misplaced in research that has commercial potential; there is nothing wrong with making money, at least not in today's western society. However, public universities need to have in place a particular dedication to conscientiously responding to public needs, returning public goods for public investment. Public university research needs to be based on much more than self-indulgent intellectual titillation. Its primary motivation has to be much more than getting rich, either as an individual or an institution. This is not to deny or denigrate the fact that there are enormous pressures to advance a personal career through maximum output of papers and funded research grants (pressures inherent in higher education as a system). And one cannot overlook the huge attraction of private riches as a solution to personal or institutional financial crises through commercial success of a research product. Nevertheless, public Universities need to remember their research roots, returning public goods for public investments.
Public Universities have a particularly strong responsibility for non-profit forms of health research (e.g., human behavior, environmental pathogens, disease vectors) and for finding means to feed a hungry planet. URI's biological control laboratory, for example, works with a regional and global network of collaborators, persistently introducing natural enemies of pest insects and weeds, with a particular focus on crops of lesser commercial value and on natural ecosystems. This creates a huge return on public investment, but neither the scientists doing the work nor the institution itself realize any direct income; there is no profit-centered private sector equivalent to this work. Similarly, society depends on public university research to understand local, regional, and planetary environments. Land Grant research is our primary source of knowledge for conservation of endangered species and habitats. Public university research, particularly through the Sea Grant program, leads to technologies for stewardship of watersheds, estuaries, and the open ocean. Strong support for targeted research within the Land and Sea Grant institutions is critical to the national health of people and the species over which we are stewards, and for the long-term stability and conservation of global ecosystems and natural resources. As our planet gets more crowded with human beings, public universities need to lead critical local, regional, and global efforts to feed, house, transport, and recreate people. More immediately, we also need to engage our intellect and the youthful energies and talents of our campus communities to take on the daunting problems of children, youth, and families, and to contribute to order, equity, and opportunity in all of our communities. These are unique and irreplaceable research obligations in our land and sea grant institutions.
Historically, research was added to the educational mission of the Land Grant institutions, which were established as learning centers. Research continues to be a vital component of the mission. The autonomous learning that is possible for students who learn through participation in research is a core of the graduate student experience in modern universities, the primary vehicle for education at the masters and doctoral level. It is a misperception that teaching is a more important mission than research, or that over-attention to research is to the detriment of learning, especially in the research universities. The April 1998 "Boyer Commission" report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching made it clear that "Research universities are distinctly different from small colleges, and they need to offer an experience that is a clear alternative to the college experience.” That is, the strength and importance of the Research Institutions was upheld by that famous Commission, not challenged, as is commonly believed, so long as there is also undergraduate access to learning through participation in the Research University. Research is not the antithesis of teaching; at the leading edge of science and technology, teaching and research are symbionts, creating synergies leading to great discoveries and to great learning.
Outreach. The third component of the Land Grant mission is extension, also called outreach. Originally, extension meant to extend both the laboratory (research) and the classroom (teaching) beyond the walls of the University, implying an integrated whole to a tri-part Land Grant mission. The original focus was to promote rural education. The nature and scope of extension broadened over time—following the patterns of Land Grant research and teaching. Outreach programs also began to take on a life of their own, loosening tight ties to the teaching and research missions. That is, over time extension programming, both locally and nationally, often tended to drift away from the focus of conveying the latest useful research or promoting learning in non-traditional, off-campus audiences. The return by the USDA to greater focus on outcome-funding, a deliberate result of the 1998 Farm Bill, has partially forced a return to the highly integrative conceptual philosophy of the original Smith-Lever Act, reinvolving stakeholders and target audiences in the process of setting research priorities.
The broadening of the Land Grant research and teaching agenda has, over time, stimulated similar expansions of scope for Extension. For example, ecological concerns related to farm run-offs—soil, fertilizers, animal wastes, or pesticides—stimulated greater interest in water quality, soil conservation, alternatives to pesticides, and low input "sustainable" agriculture. Economic and social concerns for rural farm families and communities spilled into programs for semi-rural, suburban, and urban children, youth, and families. The original focus on production agriculture broadened into concerns for consumption, with new programs in human nutrition and food safety. One of the more recent expansions has been a national role in programs for job preparation, especially in economically stressed neighborhoods. Again, the underlying philosophical commitment has been to make the intellectual resources of the University available to produce a public good—by direct transfer of knowledge—and the focus is outside of the university campus. Extension also provides feedback to the University, a conduit to various communities for new awareness of needs and testing of the relevance of both teaching and research; the hallmark of any quality organization is its commitment to feedback, and extension can epitomize this for the University.
Federally-funded USDA programs in Cooperative Extension, which are subject to priority-setting by Congress (using the 5-year cycles of the national Farm Bills), and University teaching "extension" schools have different origins and different missions, traditionally. Extension schools take various forms, including professional schools offering night, weekend, or summer educational programs to post-graduate audiences in such things as business administration, technical skills (web development, database analysis), or personal growth courses (art, music). Contemporary critics of higher education argue strongly that public universities need to begin addressing the needs of new learner communities, taking learning out of campus classrooms and into company training rooms, community centers, and onto the web. Web-based learning in particular creates both an immense opportunity and a significant threat to all but the top contemporary research universities, a revolutionary potential that is understood very poorly by most research university faculty and administrators. Extension schools begin to blend with Cooperative Extension at such a point, as the outreach mission (to address critical needs of non-traditional target audiences), and the teaching mission (to address the needs of a target audience that has become non-traditional) become entwined.
University extension, in both of the senses above, needs to retain a focus on underlying Land Grant philosophies. There are economic incentives to broaden extension offerings as new courses aimed at off-campus audiences can generate per-course income for faculty and the institution. Getting universities involved in technical training (e.g., a new biotechnology industry training program in Providence) also appeals to state economic development entities. Nevertheless, the University needs to remain cognizant of its special role in arenas that are not served by the private sector, and to pay special attention to the primary task of advancing the scientific and technical capacities of ordinary people, the modern industrial class. It is especially important to recognize the economic and social implications of using outreach programs to reach first-generation immigrants with educational offerings, both for the intrinsic value of the offerings themselves but also to create an awareness of the institution and the opportunities if represents for economic advancement.
While all higher education institutions share to varying degrees in the core functions of teaching, research, and outreach, the University of Rhode Island is unique within the state in being the single chartered Land Grant institution. Its mission is historically rooted in a philosophy that today can serve to uniquely define URI's mission, creating an identity that can focus and distinguish the activities of the institution. The public needs the benefits of having the University focused on practical and leading edge science and technology. The University needs to promote and continually advance its own intellectual capacities by keeping faculty at the leading edge through active involvement in research. To keep itself from drifting away from its public mission, the University needs active outreach mechanisms to keep teaching and research focused on meeting real public needs with the production of real public research goods. Outreach needs to also promote a proliferation of new approaches to meet the needs of targeted, but traditionally underserved extramural learning communities. There is a confluence of dawning awarenesses that the future of the research universities, and this includes the University of Rhode Island, depends on addressing market realities from a Land Grant perspective. By recommitting to the original Land Grant vision, and reorienting the activities of the institution to a refocused Land Grant mission, URI can better compete in all of its marketplaces.
(A Land Grant Vision | A Land Grant Mission)
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