[The Montana Professor 23.1, Fall 2012 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
I feel we are very fortunate in Montana to have amazingly dedicated faculty, staff, students, and supporters of higher education. As a Regent, I was very proud of great things the Montana University System accomplished under the leadership of Commissioner Sheila Stearns and the Board of Regents in recent years. The Regents want to maintain our progress and momentum toward our system strategic goals. I share that interest. On a personal level, I think the lure of the position boils down to the honor and privilege of working hard for Montana students and families, and for our talented faculty and staff who tirelessly serve our students in so many ways. It is a great feeling to begin each day knowing that I can have an effect on the educational attainment of nearly 48,000 students.
In my view, everything we strive toward and deliver should focus on access to an affordable, high-quality education. The three pressing challenges are access, affordability, and quality. We need to reach students where they are, not price them or their families out of educational opportunities. This Board of Regents, by comparison to other states, has done a lot to slow the trend of increasing tuition. But we still have a challenge in Montana in that we are priced above the regional average in relation to our state's per capita income. That said, we simply cannot place the entire burden on the backs of the faculty and staff who provide tremendously high quality education and service to our students. In a nutshell, that balancing point illustrates our immediate challenge.
Fair question, but one that is not completely unique to Montana as universities and systems start looking at credentials outside the traditional academic path. Academics are clearly the backbone of our institutions. However, the system is a complex business organization. I think throughout my career I have demonstrated an ability to provide effective leadership and advocacy to these types of organizations. I believe I have shown the same skill set while on the Board of Regents. As chairman, I helped lead the way for historic faculty pay raises during a state government pay freeze. I also helped lead the low tuition growth over the last six years, one of the lowest in the country, while the Montana University System produced nationally recognized growth in educational attainment. I think those results and experiences were good for faculty, for students, and for our institutions. Ultimately, I would hope individuals evaluate me on my performance as a leader and how well I deploy my experiences toward meeting the needs of our institutions. In other words, I like to focus on what I can do. I don't want us to let what we cannot do interfere with what we can do. Lastly, I think a good leader assembles the members of an organization in a way that everyone's skill sets complement each other. Wherever it may be said that I lack experience, I intend to ensure the talent is in place within the commissioner's office.
Yes, it is no secret that our faculty salaries have been comparatively low for many years. That is especially the case at the rank of full professor. The comparisons vary by rank, by academic discipline, and by type of institution. Montana's economic and political dynamics have not produced a higher-education funding stream to change our salary ranking substantially. It seems to me there are at least a couple strategies that we should consider. First, we need to continue advocating for faculty salaries as a whole and for adequate pay legislation every two years to fund certain across-the-board needs. If we succeed on getting an adequate pay plan, then we can look at the second phase of the strategy. I view the second phase as addressing needs that might be campus specific. For example, on one campus, the most urgent priority might be addressing inversion or compression problems. On another campus, maybe the highest priority is in working together on a funded merit pay system that we've never been able to fund in the past. Our failure to meet these important needs gets to the heart of your question, which is our ability to recruit and retain high-quality faculty who provide an excellent education to Montanans. We have had incredibly good fortune in attracting tremendously talented faculty, even with relatively low salaries, but it would be a mistake and short-sighted for Montana to try to press that good fortune too far. There is no higher priority on my agenda.
Many states can trace their difficulties in funding higher education back to a couple decades' worth of rising Medicaid costs, other human service program costs, correctional and public safety costs, and constitutional obligations for K-12 public school funding. Montana needs to keep the funding of higher education a high priority, because when we don't, students and families end up paying in tuition what the Legislature cannot fund. We appreciate the tough job that legislators must do. They have to pass a state budget to serve countless needs of diverse citizens. My role in dealing with this challenge is to lead our system efforts to show what a great investment the Montana University System is for our state. We can show that for every $1 in state funding that Montanans invest in higher education, the state receives nearly $3 in return in the form of tax revenue. My job is to make sure legislators can see that when Montana invests in higher education, our economy prospers.
I see the purpose of a state higher education system as a key catalyst and source for knowledge, skills, abilities, competencies, development, growth, and enlightenment for the Montana citizenry as a whole. That means a lot of things to me. Yes, a skilled workforce for Montana employers is hugely important. But I see so many other purposes for higher education. World-class research and high-tech entrepreneurialism are already part of our Montana tradition and should continue to thrive and grow. A comprehensive and fulfilling liberal arts opportunity for Montana students is also part of our college and university heritage. An educated citizenry is a special part of the fabric of Montana communities and our nation. I believe that a well-rounded campus-based college experience is essential to that fabric and our higher education system.
Dual enrollment is not intended to short-cut an educational experience. However, I do believe dual enrollment provides high school students with a challenging curriculum to keep them engaged academically and keep them college bound. I believe the concept also reduces the potential need for costly remediation in college caused by disengagement in students' final years of high school. Dual enrollment is certainly one tool in the challenge of access and affordability. As we look for ways to avoid placing too much of the affordability burden on the backs of faculty, I think we need to be open-minded that "time to degree" is a huge issue for Montana families. Any effort to shorten the time to degree will pay dividends for the students, the state, and ultimately our institutions. In the end, it is up to all of us to see that educational quality and substance are not compromised, regardless of the delivery method.
The short-term priorities include maintaining the stability and continuity that we need to keep making progress on our system strategic goals. As you know, we are experiencing a lot of exciting leadership changes at the campus level and the Board level. We have been very fortunate to attract high-quality presidents and chancellors to replace some long-time leaders in the Montana University System. With administrative "turnover" and new Regents joining the Board, my short-term priority is to ensure that our Board and administrators and faculty and staff are continuing to collaborate for the success of the system.
The medium-term priorities include a number of ongoing initiatives and some that we are still developing. I view these as within a time-frame of two to six years out. Examples include our ongoing initiatives for faculty and staff support, two-year education and workforce development, graduate education and research, a system-wide integrated information system, accelerated degree programs, etc. The complete list with explanations is on the Board of Regents website (mus.edu). But these give you an idea of the mid-term priorities. The initiative for faculty and staff support, as you would expect, is also a short-term and long-term commitment.
My highest long-term priority is for the system to increase the educational attainment of the Montana citizenry through affordable access to high-quality education. Overwhelming data suggest that Montana's and the nation's future will call for a much greater proportion of our citizenry to hold some form of postsecondary credential or degree. Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal was recently in the state doing an article on great progress Montana has made in recent years in educational attainment. We can be proud of that progress, but we can't stop there. I know the Montana University System and the incredible talent within it are up to the challenge of improving the lives of the students we serve and the economy we bolster through an educated citizenry.
I just finished reading Boomerang by Michael Lewis. Next on my list is a book by the Harvard professor whose name I kind of like, Clayton Christensen. I was at an educational conference recently where he was keynoting. He piqued my interest by referencing The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education.
[The Montana Professor 23.1, Fall 2012 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]