Robert Zemsky is director of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Research in Higher Education and convener of the Pew Higher Education Roundtable. In 1993, the Roundtable, under Zemsky's leadership, initiated a process of campus discussions addressing major issues of reform and restructuring facing colleges and universities. From a pilot phase involving 30 institutions, the Roundtable has subsequently expanded to 160 institutions. Zemsky also serves as senior editor of Policy Perspectives, a national quarterly that has come to play an increasingly central role in defining the nation's higher education agenda.
This interview was conducted by Patrick M. Callan, executive director of the California Higher Education Policy Center.
Robert Zemsky: Although there is great diversity among institutions, what we've discovered is an amazing commonalty of issues. First and foremost are faculty attitudes, what faculty expect, what they expect to do with their lives, how much they are prepared to change.
Every Roundtable has dealt with this notion of changing faculty roles, responsibilities, rewards. Some campuses really have to figure out what to do when they don't have enough money. And more and more campuses, if they're public institutions, are facing reduced appropriations. Many private institutions are facing structural deficits; each year they spend a little bit more than they take in, so they have to cheat on things like deferred maintenance and the like.
And then a third issue, increasingly, is the real focus on technology. A lot of higher education has tried to pretend that they know how to use PCs and the Internet, so they don't have to deal with technology. But a few of them are really coming to understand that the technology is going to change the way people learn, and they're beginning to deal with that.
PC: What are the faculty expectations and attitudes and views of change that emerge in the Roundtable conversations?
RZ: We're learning that faculty in their 50s and above are kind of asking the question, "How much is this place going to change before I have to retire?" So you've got an abnormal focus on early retirements. More than a few faculty have come to the conclusion, "I know the enterprise has got to change, but I'm too old. Let me out of here."
PC: What are the changes that raise that level of anxiety?
RZ: One is technology, that it really will make teaching different. Two, that the students who need to be taught are different than the kinds of students they're prepared to teach. Three, they see a revival of what they portray as vocationalism--I would say it's more job anxiety on the part of students--and that makes most faculty uncomfortable. It's just a world that they did not anticipate when they went into academic life.
Yet we have also found some enthusiasm for change. Sometimes the campus conversations are really inventive. We've worked with a number of institutions that are making fundamental decisions to redesign the curriculum, make it different, more responsive and less costly.
PC: Are the financial pressures stimulating change or is the view that there will be a return to a kind of normalcy?
RZ: I think there are two different answers to that question. The first answer is that in three out of every four institutions looking seriously at change, they do so in large part because they have a financial problem, they just can't continue doing business as usual. And there's just no question that if you relieve the financial pressures for change, you will have less change.
The other side of that is: How long is the pressure going to continue? Certainly the states are going to have more money, but they're also going to have more responsibilities. So I don't see the demands on state treasuries abating at all.
PC: California and almost half the states are facing significant increases in enrollments over the next ten to 15 years. How does this fit into the future for public and private institutions?
RZ: For the privates, it may be their salvation--there simply will be more demand. So the increase in high school graduates will be important for the private sector, provided that the increase isn't all in terms of students who need significant remedial work. And as every private institution has learned, remediation is very expensive, in large part because the faculty you have are not trained to be remedial instructors.
On the public side, these tidal waves are going to force the institutions to change the basic ways that they serve the citizens of their state. I believe ultimately the solution in a lot of your twenty states facing significant enrollment increases is a redesigned three-year baccalaureate curriculum that doesn't take a four-year degree and squeeze it into three, but really says, "We've got enough funds to teach well for three years. What do we want these students to learn in three years, what do they need to learn to be prepared, to be work-ready?"
PC: How are some of the colleges and universities addressing technology, and what do you think it will take to move that agenda beyond where most of American higher education is today?
RZ: Let me start with what it will take to accelerate the agenda. I think it will take a serious bid by a non-higher education provider, a Microsoft. The institutions that we're working with are making a very important discovery: Technology is inherently expensive. Technology is not going to save them lots of money; technology is going to cost them money. And they're going to have to essentially change the way they do business to take advantage of the technology.
PC: Who should make the investment in this technology? Is this going to be financed through reallocation or some sort of substitution?
RZ: In classic terms, the percent of the budget spent on people is going to go down. The investment and the payoff in technology derive from colleges and universities becoming less labor intensive, more able to make significant investments and then make them again. In order to be agile, it's essential to have a lot less fixed cost in your institution. The trouble with colleges and universities is that they've spent 99.9 percent of the year's budget, committed it, before the year ever begins. You can't run a show like that.
PC: A recurring theme in your work is "moving learning to the center."
RZ: We've argued all along that the way to judge an institution is not by how many people it hires but by how well its students learn. And if you really change the discussion to what makes for a good student learner, you would probably end up with a much better mix of technology and permanent faculty than we've got.
PC: Another theme in your work is the need for the restructuring of institutions of higher education.
RZ: Restructuring means looking at the services you provide, the way that you provide them, figuring out how to do the tasks simpler and with fewer people. It's essentially a kind of re-engineering of the basic processes of the institution. I know that people don't like the term, "restructuring." There are lots of other "R" words that you can use. It's really about renewal; it's about redesign; it's about reshaping. But it's essentially saying that business-as-usual just doesn't work. We have got to figure out different ways of getting student learning accomplished.
PC: So restructuring in this context isn't just about administration and business operations.
RZ: No. I'm a believer in the Willie Sutton principle: You've got to look where the money is. Willie Sutton robbed banks because that's where the money was. The money in these institutions is in the academic side of the house. It has always been there.
PC: There's one point of view in higher education that says all of the things you're talking about as big parts of our future--technology, becoming less labor intensive, etc.--add up to a sure formula for a diminution of quality.
RZ: I know people say that. I've never understood why. I look at a lot of colleges and universities that have not rethought basic issues in 35 years. They've added here, they've sometimes trimmed there. They are a collection of odd entitlements without much rationalization. I think redesign with real quality in mind would both save money and produce better learning communities.
PC: What are the prospects that higher education is going to play as vital a role in American society in the first part of the 21st century as it has in the last 50 years?
RZ: I'm an optimist. I think that higher education is just one of a set of institutions under assault. And I believe with a little bit of luck and a lot of deligence, we can actually be the leaders in the recasting of American institutions. So while I'm often one who says, "This is what I think is wrong," I believe in the enterprise and I think it can play a leadership role provided that it doesn't get frozen in the past.
