The United States, at a time of tighter budgets and stronger international competition, may not be able to afford its current crop of research universities, the head of their chief lobby group said Thursday.
The nation may need “fewer but better” when it comes to top research universities, Robert M. Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities, said in an interview with The Chronicle. “It’s a very serious question that the nation needs to ask itself.”
Mr. Berdahl’s association represents 60 American universities that together award more than half of all doctoral degrees and 55 percent of science and engineering degrees in the country.
The association isn’t making any specific recommendations regarding such a reduction and instead has asked the National Academies to study the question. It also hasn’t said how deeply the number of American research universities would be reduced, though Mr. Berdahl suggested federal spending decisions could play a role.
Mr. Berdahl made the suggestion in a letter in February to Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee and former U.S. education secretary. In the letter, which was provided to the The Chronicle, Mr. Berdahl asked a series of questions that included: “How many research universities does the United States realistically require in order to maintain its agenda of innovation and advanced training?”
He also noted in the letter the trouble universities are facing because of the economy, and said that private universities “have seen their endowments seriously eroded” and public universities have been hurt by state budget cuts.
Partly in response to the letter, Senator Alexander joined this week with three other lawmakers from both parties and both chambers of Congress in asking the National Academies to study and report on the “top 10 actions” that the government and research universities could take to maintain the quality of the universities and ensure the nation’s economic growth.
Mr. Berdahl told The Chronicle that the decentralization of the American system of higher education could make it hard to plan a reduction in the number of research universities.
He suggested, however, that at least for public universities, states could be asked to identify priorities for which research universities should be preserved and how that could be accomplished, with a possible federal role “in incentivizing that.”
Resistance Expected
The recommendation to reduce the number of research universities may face some opposing forces on both the state and federal levels.
The Obama administration has emphasized its belief that the nation’s economic woes can be alleviated by more spending on scientific research.
And in Texas, state officials are overseeing a competition among seven universities for at least some of them to be designated as top-tier research universities. The 2010-11 state budget includes $50-million for the seven universities, on top of their normal appropriations, to expand research and recruit faculty members. The allocation reflects Texas lawmakers’ goal of making the state’s system of research universities competitive with systems in California and New York.
California, however, is facing the possibility of severe budget cuts. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has proposed cutting state support for his state university system by nearly 20 percent in the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Mr. Berdahl, who served as chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley from 1997 to 2004, said he believes the nation’s economic prosperity depends on its investments in scientific research. Those investments, however, need to be targeted as wisely as possible, he said.
California, as an example, might need to free its universities to act more independently in order to save them from their state budget turmoil, through steps that could include creating differentiated fee structures for different universities, and opening enrollment to larger numbers of out-of-state students, Mr. Berdahl said.