The Future of Flagship Universities

The Future of Flagship Universities

Texas A&M University
Convocation
October 5, 1998

http://chancellor.berkeley.edu/chancellors/berdahl/speeches/future-of-flagship-universities

The Future of Flagship Universities

By Robert M. Berdahl
Chancellor,
University of California, Berkeley

I appreciate very much the invitation to share in this convocation. Knowing, as I do, the sometimes intense rivalry between the Longhorns and the Aggies, especially during this time of the year, I recognize that the invitation represents a remarkable generosity of spirit and a tolerance for me, a former Longhorn or "tea sipper", as I believe we are referred to here. Many people ask me about the differences between my life at Berkeley and at Austin. A primary difference is that I have much less indigestion at Thanksgiving! The gracious welcome that you have extended to me and to my wife Peg is much appreciated. We are especially pleased to return to Texas, to see once again many of the people of whom we became very fond while we were living here. President Bowen and I worked closely together on many matters of interest to the University of Texas and Texas A&M; he is an academic leader respected all over the United States. You are fortunate to have him. So, I'm delighted to be on your campus once again.

Among the many issues that confront higher education in Texas and California alike, the one which attracts the most attention is the fact that, after Hopwood in Texas and the passage of Proposition 209 in California, we are both struggling with the aftermath of the end of Affirmative Action in university admissions. You might have expected that I would have chosen to talk about that, drawing some comparisons based upon my rather unique experience of having been an academic administrator both in Texas and California. But, vital as that issue is, it is not what I wish to talk about here tonight.

The issue I want to talk about tonight is the future of "flagship" universities, institutions like the University of Texas at Austin, or Texas A&M at College Station, or the University of California, Berkeley. This is not an easy topic to talk about for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that those of us in "systems" of higher education are frequently actively discouraged from using the term "flagship" to refer to our campuses because it is seen as hurtful to the self-esteem of colleagues at other institutions in our systems. The use of the term is seen by some as elitist and boastful. It is viewed by many, in the context of the politics of higher education, as "politically incorrect." I remember vividly being chastised by the Chancellor of the System of Higher Education in Oregon when, as Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon, I referred in testimony in the legislature to the University of Oregon as the "flagship" campus. I had similar experiences at the University of Illinois, at Texas, and at Berkeley. (You might wonder why I haven't learned by this time!) Only in the safe company of alumni is one permitted to use the term.

So why talk about flagship universities? Because they are vitally important. And because I believe they are in peril.

What do we mean by the term "flagship" universities? The term applies, in all the cases I can think of, to the fully mature public universities serving most of states. In most cases, these institutions were the first public universities to be established in their states. Many of what we now call the flagship campuses were established in the extraordinary period of university building that took place in the United States in the roughly three decades from the mid-1850s to the mid-1880s. Many came into being after the Morrill Act of 1863 provided the federal grants of land to the states to establish public universities. Some states built two institutions, a land-grant college focused on agriculture and the "mechanical arts" as well as general education, and another more directed at classical education and the other professions. For example, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Washington, and Texas, among others, built separate institutions, while Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, and California combined the land-grant and liberal arts function on a single campus. These institutions formed the core of the public systems of higher education in their respective states. State teachers colleges, later evolving into regional state colleges or universities, formed the rest of the higher education institutions in most states.

But it was always clear that the one or two institutions that were the original land-grant or public universities in the states were the flagships--the leaders--even though they may not have been referred to as such. They became the centers for research and graduate education and they developed an array of professional schools that added to their size, scope, and pre-eminence.

The term "flagship" universities came to be associated with these institutions primarily after the Second World War, largely in the 1960s, when the country underwent its second enormous expansion of higher education. During this period two things happened. First, in many states, branch campuses of the primary universities were established in the cities. The original university builders had been suspicious of the cities, with their sinful distractions, so most early university campuses were located in rural, bucolic settings. They were, for the most part, built in places like Iowa City; Columbia, Missouri; Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; West Lafayette or Bloomington, Indiana; or Ann Arbor, Michigan or College Station. Some were built in the state capitals: Austin, Madison, Lincoln, St. Paul, or East Lansing. In any event, by the 1960s, it was clear that major cities did not have public universities to serve their rapidly expanding populations so branch campuses were built in Chicago, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Boston, and elsewhere.

Second, during the 1960s, various institutions were grouped together into "systems." The creation of systems was impelled by three primary forces. First, and this drove the other two forces, was simply the enormous expansion of the college-age and the college-seeking population. Colleges were growing rapidly, new colleges were springing up closer to population centers, and states were investing heavily in this remarkable expansion of educational opportunity. Consider these numbers: In 1960, there were 2 million students enrolled in all of the public post-secondary institutions in the United States 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges and universities. In the following two decades, that had grown to 9.5 million; today, nearly 40 years later, it is approaching 13 million, more than a six-fold increase in four decades. This onslaught in enrollment was matched by the expansion of colleges. The number of public colleges and universities more than doubled in that same time period, from 700 in 1960 to 1,576 in 1994. The number of doctoral institutions increased by 50 percent in that same period, from 109 to 152.

It was a remarkable time to be in higher education. For example, I received my Ph. D. in 1965, during the most rapid growth in faculty positions ever experienced. I began my teaching career, as a historian, at the University of Massachusetts in Boston; the Massachusetts legislature approved this new branch campus in January 1965; it opened the following September. In 1967, I moved to the University of Oregon. In each of those two years, there were more jobs available for new Ph. D.s in history than there ever had been before or ever have been since.

This enormous expansion of higher education created problems of governance, the second force behind the creation of systems. To accommodate the complex issues of governance, that is, to avoid multiple boards of governors for the many new campuses, systems of institutions were developed, combining several institutions under one governing board.

And finally, the third compelling reason for the development of systems was political. The leaders of the "main" campuses of the universities, both presidents and board members, felt the need to develop political bases of support across their states, especially in the cities with concentrations of voters. This was a logical political response. At the University of Texas, the powerful regent Frank Erwin argued this case quite explicitly. The means of assuring political support for Austin was to extend the reach of the University to all parts of the state.

The creation of new universities and the expansion of higher education generally was also tremendously encouraged by the large infusion of federal funds in the post-Sputnik era. Between 1965 and 1975, federal expenditures in higher education increased by an astonishing 263 percent.

It was in the context of this massive expansion, then, that the term "flagship" came to be used to refer to the original campus of the system, the campus from which branches were developed or other institutions attached. The metaphor obviously had a naval origin; each fleet has a flagship, the largest battleship or aircraft carrier from which the admiral directs the movements of the entire fleet. Given the origins of systems, the fleet metaphor is somewhat appropriate. The fleet is intended to maximize the firepower of a navy by concentrating it and coordinating it; the fleet moves in such manner defensively to provide best protection for the flagship.

From the start, faculty on each of the flagship campuses expressed concern at the growth of peripheral campuses; they still do. They see these campuses as detracting from and draining resources away from the flagship. As early as the 1920s, when the first branch campus of the University of California was established in Los Angeles, the faculty expressed concern and a fair amount of disdain. For more than two decades, the Los Angeles branch was known merely as the "Southern Division of the University of California." Today we call this outpost UCLA. However, in the heady sixties, with vast amounts of money being poured into higher education, these concerns were easily overridden; the rising tide raised all boats and the political wisdom of systems seemed to be confirmed. Let me add my own view that the political wisdom was correct. I believe the creation of systems was the right choice. But it was the failure to define clear missions that created the problems.

Aside from the goal of providing greater access to higher education for a growing population, the creation of higher education systems was undertaken without any clearly defined educational purpose. They came into being with virtually no genuine educational planning, no clearly defined or differentiated missions, and very little thought about how, in fact, the new "fleets" of campuses related to the flagships. More often, they were the results of ambitious and effective university leaders or political compromises.

In most states, as a result, the systems are unwieldy confederations of very different kinds of institutions. In New York, for example, the state system of higher education embraces over sixty institutions, ranging from community colleges to research universities. In Oregon, where I spent nineteen years, the state system ranged from a technical college, to a regional campus with too small a population base to sustain its enrollment (but too big a political base to close it), to the research universities of the University of Oregon and Oregon State. And you are well aware of the circumstances of both the Texas A&M System and that of the University of Texas, with wide ranges of size, scope, scale, and mission within each of the systems.

There are some exceptions to this pattern, to be sure. Iowa refused to add universities during the expansion of the 1960s, choosing instead to invest in and expand its two flagship campuses, Iowa State and the University of Iowa, as well as its one teachers' college, which became the University of Northern Iowa. No public university was built in Des Moines, the largest city in the state. As a result, with a population base roughly the same as Oregon, or slightly less, it has two excellent and thriving AAU universities, while Oregon has eight underfunded, struggling institutions.

Another exception is California, whose system of higher education is deserving of some attention because it has been widely studied but rarely successfully emulated. As early as the 1930s, President Robert Gordon Sproul of the University of California recognized that the rapid growth of California posed problems for the organization of higher education in California. By 1958 UC had a total enrollment of 44,000 students. Projections, however, showed it would grow three fold, to roughly 120,000 by 1975 and that the demand for access to other post-secondary institutions were grow accordingly. A plan was needed.

In 1959, therefore, under the leadership of Clark Kerr, newly appointed President of the University of California, the legislature requested that a Liaison Committee between the University Regents and the California State Board of Education produce a long-range plan. The Master Plan for Higher Education in California was the outcome. It was approved by the Regents and the state board in 1959 and by the legislature in 1960. What was seen by its authors as a means of avoiding the worst, has in fact become the way of achieving the best.

Under the plan, only the top 12.5 percent of the high school graduates would be entitled to enroll in the University of California; in addition, sixty percent of its undergraduates would be upper division, forty percent lower division. The University of California was to be the research institution of the state, and it alone would be permitted to offer graduate education through the doctorate as well as professional education. As the sole institution with a dedicated research mission, the teaching expectations of the faculty of the University of California were adjusted accordingly and the funding formula for the University called for a lower student-faculty ratio.