Analysis: State of the System

Friday, Nov. 18, 2005 | 8:09 a.m.

Accountability, efficiency, progress over process.

Chancellor Jim Rogers' promises of streamlining the Nevada System of Higher Education, of uniting corporate and public interests toward the common good, of improving the culture and economy of the state through higher education, sound well and good.

Perhaps too good for some.

In his second annual State of the System address Thursday night before about 100 people at the Nicholas J. Horn Theatre at the Community College of Southern Nevada's Cheyenne campus, Rogers laid out an ambitious vision, calling for improving the higher education system by partnering with and acting more like private business.

"I pledge to you that as long as I am chancellor, every dime will be spent to support students and teachers," he said. "We will reduce the endless administrative meetings, the unproductive debating of issues, and we will get things done rather than just talk about getting things done."

He called for doubling the amount of research money coming into the system in the next five years by having private individuals and industry assist in bringing in world-class faculty.

It's a tall order that immediately raises questions and concerns.

While other higher education officials were hesitant to call Rogers' wishes a pipe dream, they noted that his goals will require a tremendous amount of money, an intense collaboration between lawmakers, businesses and university system officials that has yet to be seen, and an ideological shift in the way higher education operates.

Rogers talks of students as customers and degrees as products, encouraging college leaders and professors to pursue outside money and partnerships with corporations wherever they can, and to come out of their offices and engage more in the larger community.

His corporate vision is counter to the centuries' old model of higher education where professors fiercely defended their independence as a means of the free pursuit of knowledge that would shape and critique the culture.

The corporate vision of education is gaining in popularity across the country as lawmakers demand that universities measurably demonstrate they are setting and meeting educational goals and as donors demand more bang for their buck.

Rogers knows that he will face resistance. Professors are sure to be rankled because behind most of Rogers' statements is a push to impose corporate culture on academic culture, a push that may end up being the nail in the coffin for Rogers' vision.

"I have no problem using sound business practices to manage the university affairs and the system as a whole," Regent Howard Rosenberg, a UNR professor, said. "However, education is not a business. We are not stamping out light bulbs. People are different."

Regent Doug Hill, in rare agreement with Rosenberg, stressed that reducing education to a consumer product with a profit number at the end misses the "beauty and importance of education."

"What is the profit value in poetry?" Hill said. "... We need to make certain that an education enhances the soul as well as enhances the pocketbook."

Professors stressed that the corporate culture does not always acknowledge the social profit or effect of an action. There are some pursuits of a university -- such as discovering new knowledge, critiquing society and teaching students to think critically and to be good citizens -- that are not financially profitable or even measurable.

Craig Walton, a professor emeritus at UNLV and president of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, called the idea of labeling a student as a customer "scary." The message coming down in higher education is for professors to "pursue the areas where there is money to be found rather than what needs to studied," he said.

UNLV social work professor William M. Epstein said when a researcher "works for a business, there is always an interest in making a profit and that may play against the independence of the research."

That can be seen at UNLV's Harrah College of Hotel Administration's gaming institute, he said.

Epstein said that while the institute functions as a means of improving the industry, there's no money to look critically at gaming's effect on society. That kind of work could result in a loss of funding if the data offended gaming donors. A university, Epstein said, "should be invested in these kinds of explorations."

Rogers also could face trouble trying to institute a top-down corporate governing model because it does not always translate to higher education, which shares governance among the Board of Regents, the administration and the faculty.

Professors and administrators say because they ultimately control what students learn, it is imperative that they have a say in how the institution operates -- and that often means that things move slower than in the business world.

"As a tenured faculty member, if I think something is wrong, I have the responsibility to stand up and scream about it," said Darren Divine, CCSN Faculty Senate chairman. "You can't take that away from academia."

Rogers insists he is not trying to take away their input -- he just wants to get that input faster.

"My greatest sense of anxiety in dealing with academics is that there is never any sense of urgency. Never. They never think in timelines," Rogers said in an interview with the Sun.

Rogers said he also understands that there are some benefits to higher education that are beyond measurement. But he does not want that to be an impediment to trying.

"I understand that you can't measure this as you can how many television sets got finished in your production line," Rogers said. "But I think we can do more and we can do better."

Christina Littlefield can be reached at 259-8813 or at clittle@lasvegassun.com.