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By FRANK H.T. RHODES

National and world leaders are promoting competitiveness as a key to prosperity and security, many of them noting that competitiveness needs a strong foundation of science and technology. But fewer have recognized the central role of the nation's research universities in creating that foundation — by graduating the bulk of the nation's professional scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, as well as a large proportion of science teachers; conducting most of the nation's basic scientific and engineering research; and creating innovations that have translated into economic growth and improvements in our quality of life.

So it is with the Spellings commission report. One of its key recommendations is that our country "ensure the capacity of its universities to achieve global leadership in key strategic areas such as science, engineering, medicine, and other knowledge-intensive professions." But it says little or nothing about how to provide those universities with the necessary resources to do so.

Unfortunately, a severe loss of financial support for public research universities is a quiet crisis in the making. Our nation cannot remain competitive unless we confront that looming crisis.

In the past two decades, public colleges and universities have felt the pinch of state budget cuts, and the greatest burden has fallen on the public research universities — especially the flagships. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, for example, now derives only about 7 percent of its total operating revenue from the state; the University of California at Los Angeles, 15 percent; and the University of Colorado at Boulder, 8 percent. The result has been significant increases in student tuition and fees, difficulties in recruiting talented faculty and staff members, and constraints on educational and research capacity. Although overall state spending has improved in the past year, the long-term trend remains a serious issue.

What can be done? The commission report urges "states to continue their historic and necessary commitment to the support of public higher education." But sustained, major increases in state support for public research universities, while desirable, are unlikely, as the report also acknowledges. Exchanging "expensive" scientific, medical, or engineering programs for "less expensive" programs in other areas, or replacing in-state students with out-of-state students who pay higher tuitions (thus creating a national game of academic musical chairs), would be short-sighted.

Instead, if states can no longer provide the resources to maintain the quality of their public research universities, they must give those institutions the freedom to manage their own affairs, then hold them accountable for the results. Public universities should have more autonomy and more responsibility in return for their commitment to certain goals and targets within a broad public agenda. Such an approach would be consistent with other recommendations of the Spellings commission, which call on colleges and universities to be more innovative and entrepreneurial in reaching their goals and more accountable for their performance. It might involve reducing political control of appointments to governing boards, giving colleges and universities greater flexibility in the management of resources, and allowing institutions to determine their own enrollment levels, tuition charges, student mix, and financial aid. Such a model, with appropriate agreements and targets, is now being used in Virginia.

The chief objection to that approach is likely to be that it would undermine the long tradition of access for less-wealthy students, which public universities have provided through their low tuition levels. But the facts suggest that the real beneficiaries of low public tuition are middle- and upper-income families. The four-year institutions of the State University of New York, for example, enroll a smaller percentage of students whose families earn less than $40,000 a year and a larger percentage of those whose families earn more than $80,000 a year than do independent four-year colleges and universities — where higher tuition is offset by more financial aid for the needy.

The great public universities, with their independent sister institutions, are the ultimate key, not only to the nation's global economic competitiveness, but also to our security, health, and well-being as a people. It is time to give public research universities the freedom to play their fullest roles. Only then can we hope to create what the Spellings Commission describes as "an improved and revitalized postsecondary system that is better tailored to the demands, as well as the opportunities, of a new century."

Frank H.T. Rhodes is president emeritus of Cornell University.