An Interview with Roy Romer

Pat Callan: I was sitting out in your office reading the book Middle Class Dreams, by Stanley Greenberg. He talks about America after World War II. The middle class, he says, were busy tending to their dreams, which by that time included cars and yards and college. Is the college part still a realistic aspiration for most Americans, given the financial and other pressures that states, the federal government and society are facing?

Roy Romer: The need for a college education is even more important now than it was before, but I think that the increased costs are a very severe obstacle to access. It is an American dream, and I think that one of our challenges is to find a way to make that available.

I think we have to focus upon the efficiency of the delivery of the learning experience. And the learning experience needs to be reexamined also. It's not just going to a classroom with 300 (students), sitting in the back and having somebody lecture at you.

With technology, for example, we may be able to increase the efficiency of information transfer and skill-level transfer, saving what is most expensive about college-faculty time-while providing more one-on-one or small-group contact.

I think that what we've been doing in four years might well be done in three. And no matter how many years it takes, we may be able to do it more efficiently and at less cost.

PC: Do you see technology as a big piece of the puzzle?

RR: Yes. Education is much deeper than these technological machines and software, but I think technology is going to be a very large part of the system. Let's take flight simulation as an example. If you're trying to train a pilot, you can simulate almost the whole course. You don't have to get in an airplane until late in the process. With lab courses, we may be able to simulate a lot of that and reduce costs. Interactive computers and software will, I think, provide a less costly method of doing some kinds of inquiry, in knowledge acquisition and even reasoning and interaction.

The person-to-person, master/student relationship can never be fully replaced, nor should it. But we may be able to find a way to get more for our dollar by doing business in different ways.

PC: So, productivity is an issue on the forefront, and technology is one of the ways of addressing it.

RR: Productivity is going to be a critical issue. And it's not just about getting more time for professors in the classroom. It involves reexamining the learning experience and restructuring faculty and the use of faculty time.

PC: It sounds like you are also talking about student time, to some extent.

RR: That's correct.

PC: Do you see this technology and productivity agenda moving forward in higher education and in the states the way it should be? Are we about where we should be? Are we behind the curve?

RR: We can do better in higher education. And it is more than just technology. It's also an attitude on the part of faculty. We need to think through how we can produce a better quality product at less cost.

PC: Why is the pace of change in higher education not faster?

RR: I think it's resistance to change, the attitude that, "we've been doing it this way for a long while, why don't we continue to do it?" All of us have that tendency. But in the free market system, you're forced to change. You know, IBM was almost knocked out of the box by other types of computer software and manufacturing. Higher education is shielded because you don't have so much competitive pressure.

PC: What will it take in states like Colorado and California, where higher education isn't in a free market, it's mostly in the public sector?

RR: I think the big force is going to be consumer buying power. Parents are going to really protest when they say, "We can't afford the price you're charging. We want to get a better product and at less cost." It's my hope that we can get better information into the hands of consumers, so that they will begin to vote with their feet. And they'll go to places that are delivering a better product.

PC: Do you see greater consumer sophistication about this?

RR: Yes, I do.

PC: Another similarity between Colorado and California and most western and southern states is that they face large increases in the numbers of kids coming out of high school in the next ten or 15 years. And few states appear to be able to sustain an expansion in higher education at the current costs, because of all the other pressures on state budgets. Is that a fair assessment?

RR: That is true. Enrollment in Colorado is expected to expand about 25 percent in seven years. It's very difficult to find those additional funds. Therefore, I think you're probably going to have increased pressure on tuition.

It's also going to drive more productivity change, because those who provide public funds, and those who spend private funds, on the consumer end, are going to say to the institution, "You've got to help us out here. The rate of tuition increases has been higher than that of inflation, and we demand to know why. We want to have you help hold down that expense, or justify the increases."

PC: Our public opinion polling in California shows enormous concern about access and affordability. Do you think, as those costs go up and those concerns go up, that governors and legislatures will start to hear about this more?

RR: Absolutely.

PC: Are they going to call here (the governor's office) first?

RR: Sure. When there's a public benefit or service that people can't afford or can't get access to, one of the most immediate responses is to call their governor, their legislator, and say, "Help me out."

PC: I've heard you mention that you don't feel that this issue is really on the radar screen of a lot of governors and other political figures in the country yet.

RR: Well, I think it's not yet on the radar screen; it will necessarily become more so. Right now, what's on the governors' agenda is prisons, welfare reform, balancing the budget, and wondering what costs and responsibilities the federal government is going to unload on the states. And, obviously, politics, because we're entering a national election year.

I do not believe that higher education is high on their agenda. I think it should be, because it's going to have one heck of a lot to do with the quality of every state economy.

PC: You have been traveling to a lot of places for the past year, talking to educators and others about higher education issues. What have you learned, and are you optimistic or pessimistic on the basis of whatever you have learned?

RR: I've learned personally a good bit about the possible restructuring of faculty assignments. But what I've learned in terms of the "climate" of higher education is that it's very slow to change, is often disconnected from the public agenda, and often ineffective in addressing real needs. It has an institutional self protectiveness, or tradition-whichever way you want to describe it.

The result is that many governors don't feel comfortable tinkering with higher education. Many schools take their tax dollars and never look back. But people are increasingly skeptical about the role of the institution and about the added value of a traditional degree.

I think this is because we have not done enough hard thinking about how people learn. Businesses, because they often buy continuing education, have focused probably more effectively on how people learn. I've been told the Army does a pretty good job.

I have observed private and proprietary colleges, like the University of Phoenix, and the market they serve. And I found it intriguing the way in which they are trying to deliver the product, with more accountability, for a price. One of the things that we're all struggling with is how to judge the quality of the value-added experience of an educational course or year. I don't think it's impossible to do that, but it's difficult.

PC: It seems to me that there's another problem: This is an enterprise that really has equated high levels of expenditure with high quality.

RR: Well, it's obvious that we need to give people another criterion for judging quality, and just high price or restrictive admission is not necessarily the right criterion. We need to educate people. and ourselves, how to ask the questions about what quality is and how to measure it.

You can take a school like the University of Colorado, with a selective admission standard. It has a better caliber student going in, so you ought to have a better caliber coming out. But you take a four-year state college, with a broader range of admission, and what happens during those four years may be an even greater value-added educational experience. I don't know. My desire as a governor is for people to give me some tools. And that means measuring what's going in and what's coming out.

We don't have that. Right now, the only tool available might be a graduate records exam, or admissions to graduate level education, or measures of inputs like the number of books in the library, which don't tell us anything about results, like who is the best employee coming from certain programs.

PC: Is there a possibility, if higher education does not increase its capacity to respond to these concerns, that it could sort of lose control of this problem a few years down the line? If governors and legislators start getting pressure: "Why can't my kid go to...; Why isn't there enough room for my kid; Why do we have to borrow so much money?" Is this a window of opportunity for the higher education leadership?

RR: Yes, I think it is.

PC: Isn't that what you've been urging?

RR: Yes. They could make a big difference by answering their own questions. If you let it fester, there may be very much more intrusive legislative action. If it festers too long, people may just resort to the alternatives that are created in the private sector, alternatives that will meet the need.