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Jackson State University
National Alumni Association, Inc.
E Pluribus Unum
President’s Weekly Update
October 11-18, 2009
October is JSU History Month
(October 23, 1877--)
“Anybody, Anytime, Anywhere”
JSU Goes Global With Online Degree Programs!
See Wednesday’s Logue
PREAMBLE
In the face of drastic reductions in state funding, JSU has decided to not only survive but also thrive! Sounds familiar?
PROLOGUE
New Approach on Black Colleges
“We need to shift from how to survive to how to thrive."
John Silvanus Wilson Jr.
July 21, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Asked at the end of his first day in office to compare his agenda to those of his predecessors, John Silvanus Wilson Jr. declines to do so. But the Obama administration's director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities is very clear in an interview that he's looking for a new approach to talking about black colleges.
The standard "against great odds" narrative, he said, needs to be replaced. It suggests a focus on "survival and maybe victimization," said Wilson. "Black colleges will never be as strong as they can be unless that narrative changes.... We need to shift from how to survive to how to thrive."
Wilson, formerly an administrator at George Washington University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, turned to film soundtracks as a metaphor. When black colleges "go out and seek support, the soundtrack that philanthropists and prospects hear is dominated by violins, and we need to go out and seek support where the soundtrack is trumpets. I helped raise a lot of money at MIT, and we never played the violin. The trumpet is about greatness and the violin is about pity. We don't need support that comes from pity, but investment that comes from a belief in what we can do."
And while Wilson wouldn't talk about the previous focus of the White House black college office, asked about its work trying to help black colleges win more federal grants, he said, "the challenge has got to expand beyond working with 32 federal agencies."
While Wilson's career has been at predominantly white institutions, he has been deeply involved with black colleges, too. He has worked on several foundation efforts to help build the fund raising capacity of black colleges. He is a trustee of Spelman College. His mother went to Morgan State University and his father to Virginia Union. Wilson is a Morehouse College graduate (with a Harvard University doctorate) who takes seriously the ethos of the Morehouse Man.
"Going to Morehouse was very special for me, because the culture on the campus was one of high achievement. They expected us to do well there at Morehouse and beyond, to go out and make a mark," said Wilson.
Unlike many alumni (of all kinds of colleges), Wilson doesn't appear to view his alma mater through rose-colored glasses. When this reporter made a reference to Morehouse doing quite well, Wilson said, "I'm going to push back there." He explained: "I think Morehouse is doing quite well relative to other black colleges, but not quite well to the best of the industry, and I will insist on looking at Morehouse and other black colleges relative to the best in the industry," he said. "We should not be trying to be the best black institutions, but the best institutions."
Many black colleges are facing a series of common problems, Wilson said: "low faculty salaries, insufficient financial aid, often poor facilities." And "the common denominator is capital impairment." He said that even the wealthiest black colleges have a fraction of the funds found at leading American colleges and universities.
The only way more funds will be found, he said, is "to look at the value proposition of black colleges," which at most institutions "has been minimally addressed for a long time."
A focus on the value proposition may be especially important, he said, for those colleges that are struggling right now. Paul Quinn College is facing the threat of losing its accreditation. Clark Atlanta University this year dismissed 70 faculty members, including tenured professors. Shaw University's president quit in May, amid mounting debt and student and faculty criticism.
Asked about these colleges, Wilson said: "I'm concerned about their survival, just as I am concerned about the survival of any institution that is doing good things. This is about America, and therefore any institution, black or white, that is helping Americans to get an education and contribute more to society and get us out of this hole needs to not only to survive, but needs to thrive."
He added: "The issue, even for those institutions that are struggling not to go under, is the value proposition. What is it, even at this fiscal point, that they can say to the wealthiest individuals in America, what can they say that they have been doing to cause those wealthy individuals to pull out their checkbooks, and pull them back from death row, and position them to thrive? If they can't answer that question, then it's going to be a difficult road ahead. That's precisely why we need to force the question of our value proposition."
Another part of that question needs to be graduation rates, he said, echoing President Obama's statements about the importance of completion rates for all students. "Low graduation rates go to the heart of value proposition because you can't make a very good case for yourself if 85 percent of the people who start in a freshman class are gone by senior year," he said.
Wilson praised the efforts of Philander Smith College and its president, Walter Kimbrough, to adopt a series of new policies and programs to raise the graduation rates of black male students. "I think the crisis of attrition is noteworthy, but what is as, if not more, noteworthy is the fact that he is creatively instituting a program that addresses that problem and he's going after it, and making it a priority," Wilson said. "There are a lot of institutions that have not had a creative response to some of the more difficult problems on their campuses, and that's not just HBCU's. That's what leadership and governance require."
While the discussion ahead may be challenging, Wilson stressed that financial stability -- and eventual financial strength -- won't happen without this discussion. "I don't think a stronger financial base is remotely possible in the absence of a review of the value proposition issue, a fundamental overhaul of the value proposition."
— Scott Jaschik
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The Impossible Dream Lyrics
[1974 JSU Yearbook Dedication]
Lyrics by Joe Darion
To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...
And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...
Luther Vandross - The Impossible Dream (The ...
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LOGUE
Recession focuses colleges on efficiency Not every university needs to be all things to all people
Editorial: Greenwood Commonwealth Photo: Central Carolina Community College
For all the pain inflicted by an economic recession, there is at least one bright side. It forces institutions -- public and private -- to examine closely whether there are more efficient ways to operate.
When the revenue is rolling in, people don’t tend to worry as much about cost controls, in part because instituting them can be uncomfortable. Cutting staff or eliminating programs are not anyone’s idea of fun.
When there are no other options because the money flow has slowed, however, institutions do what they should have done before their hands were forced.
Such is the case with Mississippi’s higher education system.
Earlier this month, the state’s eight public universities received the first warning shot when Gov. Haley Barbour cut their budgets by 5 percent in response to sluggish tax collections. This is not likely to be the last bad news. Higher Education Commissioner Hank Bounds has said that he expects another 5 percent slice in state funding next year, followed by a 10 percent cut the year after that when federal stimulus money runs out.
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Bounds and his bosses on the College Board have decided to be proactive in preparing for the funding reductions. They have directed the university presidents to come up with cost-saving suggestions. Some of the recommendations are likely to be back-shop efforts, such as doing more group purchasing and consolidating the administration of insurance and retirement plans, that the public is unlikely to much notice. Other ideas, though, are going to meet with resistance -- such as eliminating and consolidating academic programs -- since they mean faculty cuts and fewer majors at some universities.
Such an overhaul of academic offerings, though, would be a good idea even if there weren’t a revenue pinch. At some schools, there are just not enough students in certain majors to justify their continuation. There is also too much costly duplication of programs within the higher education system as a whole.
For decades, Mississippi has talked about being more individualized in the missions of each university, particularly as it pertains to the more specialized programs.
For instance, Mississippi operates three engineering schools -- at Mississippi State University, the University of Mississippi and Jackson State University. Engineering schools require a heavy investment in staffing and facilities. In a state as small as Mississippi, could it get by with two?
Closer to home, Mississippi has two full-fledged journalism programs -- Ole Miss and the University of Southern Mississippi -- plus quasi-journalism programs (mass communications) at the other six universities of varying quality. If Mississippi were to cut in half the number of places where you could study journalism or communications, not only would it save money, but the overall quality of instruction would improve by better concentrating the faculty and other resources.
There are bound of be lots of other similar examples of expensive and counterproductive duplication. It’s just a matter of commanding the will to do something about them.
Not every university needs to be all things to all people. Let each concentrate on what it does best. Not only would that save money, but it could reduce the differences in educational quality that presently exist between the schools themselves.
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Lesson: History rules university alignment
By Charlie Mitchell
Vicksburg Post
VICKSBURG -- Mississippi has one state-supported medical school, one state-supported law school, one state-supported college of veterinary medicine.
State residents seeking professional degrees in those fields either go to the single source the state provides or go out-of-state or to private institutions.
That’s not true for other academic fields. There are up to eight main campuses in Mississippi where students can earn doctorates in English or mathematics or education administration or history. The eight also overlap greatly in the bachelor’s, masters and doctoral degrees they offer.
In an era of pinching pennies, how much sense does that make?
The honest answer is not a lot.
But higher education in this state -- and in many other states -- plays out against the backdrop of history, specifically racial history, so the university system will continue to be less efficient than if it were being designed from scratch today.
Merely hinting at the need to consolidate to save money gives rise to suspicion that the motive is to get rid of smaller universities such as Mississippi Valley State University at Itta Bena and Alcorn State University at Lorman, both of which were created to maintain racial segregation and have since evolved to the point that their racial identity has become a special, protected status. Despite court orders and financial incentives to diversify, Valley and Alcorn continue to have nearly all-black enrollment.
Same for the smallest school in the state, Mississippi University for Women, created when it was stylish to have a university enclave where women could be gender-independent. Although excluding men was deemed illegal 27 years ago, The W remains in fact and by reputation a women’s college with a few men in the student body.
Each university, small and large, has a protective constituency of alumni and supporters.
“I’m not for consolidating if it’s going to take away from Valley,” state Rep. Willie Bailey, D-Greenville, told Shelia Byrd of The Associated Press. See? The first question is not whether it makes financial sense to streamline. Tradition is the trump card. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just the way it is.
Members of the state College Board have authority to set the missions of the state’s eight comprehensive universities. In tight times past and again today, noises have been made about reducing duplication. “Visiting experts” are talking about a better way. But College Board members don’t have rocking the boat, at least in any radical way, on their agenda.
By the numbers, the national recession has pushed up both community college and university enrollment. The university preliminary total is 73,699 students, up 3.5 percent. The largest gain in percentage terms was Jackson State, up 4.9 percent. The largest university remains Mississippi State, with 18,601 enrolled in its programs, followed closely by the University of Mississippi which, with its Jackson medical programs included, enrolls 18,345.
The only schools showing declines were both in the northwest part of the state -- Valley was down 110 students or 3.8 percent and Delta State University was down 33 students or .8 percent.