First, however, allow me to report on the past year at Stanford. There was much - very much - good news.
In the lifeblood of the university - faculty recruitment - we have had a good year. Among the 91 new faculty members who joined us this academic year were, for instance, in the School of Engineering, Mary Baker, a Berkeley Ph.D., and Jennifer Widom, who came from IBM. Both hold joint appointments as assistant professors in computer science and electrical engineering. In the School of Humanities and Sciences, Rudy Busto, one of our Irvine Foundation Postdoctoral Teaching Fellows, was appointed as an assistant professor in religious studies. And at the full professor level, in my own field of constitutional law and to my great delight, we were joined by Kathleen Sullivan, who previously was at Harvard.
Although the appointment cycle for 1994-95 is still far from over, we expect another 90 to 100 newcomers. The Graduate School of Business is harvesting a very strong crop of assistant professors whose interests span political economics, strategic management, and law and policy. In the Medical School, new faculty of note include Stephanie Jeffrey, a surgeon developing innovative technology and treatment for breast cancer, and Paul Kuo, who does fundamental research relevant to organ transplantation. I also have learned that Paul Krugman, one of the world's most distinguished economists, has been recruited from MIT. Of course, this is just a sampling of the continuing renewal of our faculty, which remains perhaps the university's single most important task.
By every measure, our faculty and students continue to excel. In April, four more of our colleagues were elected to the National Academy of Sciences, bringing to 110 the number of Stanford holders of this high honor. Like last year, when Stanford's contributions markedly lowered the mean age of the academy membership, our four new members have an average age of 54. In addition, 11 Stanford faculty members recently were elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, giving us 186 total members, and two to the National Academy of Engineering, bringing our total there to 69. Three of our colleagues won Guggenheims and one was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Our students led the nation with six of the 38 Marshall Scholars, the highest single-year total in campus history, and they added two Trumans and a Churchill. And in an honor closer to home, we have selected the first Gerald J. Lieberman Fellows. These new fellowships honor our former provost by supporting graduate students who intend to pursue a career in university teaching and research, and who have demonstrated potential for leadership roles in the academic community - in other words, who intend to follow in Jerry's footsteps. Composing this first class of fellows are six current Stanford students who already have outstanding records here and five remarkable minority applicants to Ph.D. programs in the School of Humanities and Sciences who will be joining us this fall.
Our schools, departments, and centers also sustained their place at the forefront of teaching, learning, and research. For example, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center earned selection as the developer of the Asymmetric B-Factory, a new $177 million particle collider that will maintain SLAC as a world leader in high-energy physics well into the next century.
In anticipation of changes in the American health-care system that will transform all academic medicine, we are restructuring the Stanford Medical Center. We have set the 1st of September as the target start-up date for Stanford Health Services, a new entity designed to unify the patient-care operations currently conducted by the Medical School and the Hospital. This simple description belies the fundamental nature, complexity, and significance of this change. We are among the first to understand the need to modify traditional structures, and while we have a great deal of work to do, the progress so far has been very satisfying.
Of major importance was the Faculty Senate's approval in April of a new policy on conflict of interest and commitment, after excellent work by Craig Heller and the Committee on Research. I will be saying more about government issues later, but I merely note here that our action now will put us in a much better position to contribute to national deliberations about conflict of interest. In this time of many competing demands and responsibilities, the new policy has reconfirmed that we, the Stanford faculty, owe our primary commitment of time and intellectual energies to the education, research, and scholarship programs of the institution.
Another strong vital sign is the lively and continuing conversation generated in all parts of the university related to the work of the Commission on Undergraduate Education. Whatever the commission may recommend when it reports this fall, the reexamination of undergraduate education by faculty, staff, and students already has been invigorating and enlightening. I have been pleased in particular by the dedicated and constructive involvement of our students, individually, with the commission, and through the Council of Presidents and the ASSU. I especially applaud Eddie Garcia, Ying-Ying Goh, and Luz Herrera for organizing the Student Advisory Group on Undergraduate Education, which Eddie chaired. The group's information-gathering, insights, and report, issued just last week, have made a major contribution. And I commend the Stanford Daily, which has covered and contributed to this discussion in serious and substantive ways.
Even before it is ready to report on all aspects of its charge, the Commission on Undergraduate Education is producing action. On the recommendation of its technology subcommittee chaired by Professor John Bravman, today I announce the formation of a standing Commission on Technology in Teaching and Learning. I will ask the appropriate faculty and student bodies to make suggestions on membership, and will appoint a chair soon. The commission will be charged with beginning in the fall a detailed examination of the issues, leading to continuing recommendations for creative solutions. I believe we have a window of opportunity to put Stanford in a position to adapt to - indeed, to lead - innovation in educational technology, whether it be programmed computer instruction, global electronic networks, interactive multimedia, or other possibilities. Among the charges of this new commission will be advice on infrastructure investments to be made over the next few years.
Let me say that in pursuing leadership in technology, I certainly do not believe - and, even more strongly, do not hope - that Stanford will become a "virtual" university. Paradoxically, I believe the way to adapt to the technological challenge is to strengthen those aspects of the university that we have carried over from the Socratic gymnasium or the Platonic academy, that is, small-group interaction and debate. Teaching a seminar for undergraduates for the first time since coming to Stanford has reminded me of the excitement that follows from the rubbing of mind against mind in a seminar setting.
In other good news, major benefactors have again impressively supported Stanford this year. What is most striking to me is the way in which they have done so across the breadth of the university. Recent major gifts have come:
The latest contributions by the Bings and by Mel and Joan Lane were among the lead gifts to a new $50-million Restoration Fund, approved by the trustees in April to support completion of our recovery from the October 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake. More than four years after that quake, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Stanford finally reached agreement. FEMA would pay about $50 million, which is one-third of the total cost of restoration. In addition, the State of California will provide $5 million under its disaster assistance program. The estimated $100 million remainder must be paid by Stanford itself, through reallocation of resources and the support of its alumni and friends through the Restoration Fund.
The aforementioned gifts illustrate our three development priorities: restoration, preservation, and innovation. Restoration, as I have just outlined, means restoring the physical structures of Stanford destroyed by the earthquake, as well as those suffering from the less dramatic assaults of aging. Preservation refers to preserving our traditional strengths, particularly the quality of our students and faculty. Innovation aims at strengthening our ability to pursue, on short notice, promising new ideas and unexpected opportunities.
Apart from the breadth of vision and generosity, there is another striking fact in my list of major donations: Many of the names are familiar as long-time Stanford benefactors. A small group of dedicated supporters has for years invested generously in Stanford's success. Yet precisely because they are a small group, we cannot expect them to carry the load endlessly or alone. The support of the full array of Stanford alumni and friends - whose donations may be in the hundreds, rather than millions, of dollars - is vital to Stanford's future. Besides broadening our base of support, annual donations also provide unrestricted funds - that is, current year expendable dollars, available for whatever the university needs most.
Mayor Daley of Chicago, the father of the present mayor, once complained about the treatment he received in the press by exclaiming: "I have been crucified, I have even been vilified." Occasionally, I am inclined to join his lament. Surely the most peculiar vilification of the last year came from a student who was quoted in the Stanford Daily as accusing me of attempting "to raise money from alumni." Well, of course I am - for such worthy causes as student financial aid, faculty support, and the library. I am turning to the present generations of alumni because they, in turn, had benefited from a sense of moral obligation that moved earlier generations of alumni to give unstintingly to their alma mater. I am also attempting to bring back into the Stanford family even those alumni who do not agree with everything we are doing. That is a subtle and difficult task. Those of us who are presently on campus could at times show a little more understanding for the elder members of the Stanford family.
We are taking concerted steps to re-engage our alumni and strengthen the bonds of mutual support between them and their alma mater. Already under way are expanded Reunion/Homecoming Weekends, designed to give alumni a sampling of the best of what Stanford has to offer, including classes by many of you. In the months ahead, you will be hearing of our plans to engage a greater percentage of our undergraduate degree holders in giving to a new Stanford Fund.
Even with generous giving by alumni and friends, however, let us harbor no illusions about economic realities. In the world of the 1990s, we and all institutions face the continuing task of managing our finances in ever-more effective ways. This is not easy, but neither is it optional.
This year, we have embarked on two major changes to ensure that our economic house is in order. One is based on a principle - not a political principle, as some would have it, but a principle of sound financial management. Simply put, the provost and I are determined that Stanford's budget - like that of any well-run household - will be revenue-oriented, not cost-driven. In addition, we are working not just to balance the budget but to strengthen Stanford, and that requires that we free funds for innovations.
We have begun the process of a three-year $20 million budget adjustment to make this possible. Clearly, after $40 million in budget cuts in the last five years, any easy answers were used up long ago; there were few to begin with. The cuts we are facing are extremely painful, particularly when they involve positions and people. I do understand the strain and pain of these times. We will do our best to alleviate the pain, but we cannot promise to avoid it. Universities are not exempt from reality.
That leads me to the issue of last week's events on campus. As you know, last Wednesday, a group of Chicano students began a protest on the Quad, including four Chicanas who chose to engage in a fast. They, like all of us, feel the uncertainty and stress that inevitably accompany times of contracting, rather than expanding, resources. The provost and I suspended most other business and met with the students several times over three days. We have agreed to the establishment of committees to examine their concerns in depth and make recommendations.
It was crucial - crucial - to the provost and me that the university's constituted processes for making decisions be followed. Practically any issue is open to discussion at the university. When the provost and I can be responsive, we will be. But we cannot work for Stanford's future in an environment dominated by the politics of ultimatum. I should like to state in the most unambiguous terms that without faculty and student and staff support in this fundamental respect, we cannot perform our tasks. As we have again learned in the last few days, universities are very fragile institutions. If we shortcut argument and reason, we abandon the essence of the university. If universities make their substantive decisions for political, rather than academic, reasons, they have no particular claim to untrammeled existence.
I said to the students last Saturday that we do respect them. I also said that we have no respect for those who, under cover of darkness, shout slurs. On this point, the Chicano students and the provost and I have been in complete agreement from the start: The actions of some members of the audience during the showing of the film "No Grapes" at the May 1 ASSU Sunday Flicks were unacceptable. Let me reiterate that I was appalled to hear that some people made remarks that were at best stupid and at worst racist. Such behavior has no place whatsoever at Stanford.
I also repeat what I said in my inaugural address and have repeated many times since: "No university can thrive unless each member is accepted as an autonomous individual and can speak and will be listened to without regard to labels and stereotypes." This is the sine qua non of all universities, and not just because universities are arguably the most diverse communities in America.
We must manage to maintain Stanford as a place whose common denominator is to protect the openness, the rigor, the seriousness of our work in education and research - as what I like to call a noncommunitarian community. My friend Edward Levi once characterized how we must do that. He wrote:
It requires clarity, intellectual rigor, humility, and honesty. It requires commitment and considerable energy. It requires that we ask questions, not only of others but of ourselves. It requires that we not only examine the beliefs of others but those newly acquired doctrines which we are all prone to believe because they are held by the group we favor, or are the cherished aspirations that come to us in the middle of the night and which we are certain cannot be wrong. Habits of thought and searching intellectual honesty must be acquired and forever renewed.
Stanford must let nothing weaken its commitment to the power of reason.
Neither should we let the glare of immediate events blind us to the fact that on issues of diversity, the university has this year done the kind of quiet work that I hope will produce concrete and lasting results over the long term.
On September 9, the Cabinet issued its response to the UCMI report.
On September 22, we released and began acting on the report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Committee on the Office for Multicultural Development, chaired by Professor Al Camarillo.
On September 23, I expressed my views on the difficult questions concerning culture and cultures in my welcoming speech to our new students.
On September 30, we brought to closure three years of debate and rewriting, and issued a new policy prohibiting sexual harassment, along with a new structure to resolve complaints.
On December 2, the Provost's Committee on the Recruitment and Retention of Women issued its report to the Faculty Senate.
On Dec. 8, the Provost's Committee on the Recruitment, Retention and Graduation of Targeted Minority Graduate Students, chaired by Associate Dean of Graduate Policy George Dekker, began its work.
On January 20, Provost Condoleezza Rice appointed Professor Robert Weisberg to be Vice Provost for Faculty Recruitment and Retention in an effort to improve our record in finding and supporting women and minority faculty.
On February 23, a search committee led by Professor Luis Fraga recommended Sally Dickson as the new director of the Office for Multicultural Development. We are indeed fortunate to have such an able and committed director. As advised by the Camarillo committee, she is refocusing the office on staff affairs, with affirmative action as its top priority; just yesterday, she reconvened the Affirmative Action Council.
In addition, the anthropology department continues planning for "Culture and Cultures in the 21st Century," the series of lectures and discussions I will sponsor to further understanding of the issues.
Much remains to be done. On the issue of attracting and retaining the best faculty, we must build an environment of support for all faculty - women and men, minority and majority, junior and senior. I will say that our faculty senate debate on the issue of recruitment and retention of women was itself a cheering example of a major part of such an environment. People spoke their minds, people spoke in opposition, people made good points. They did not engage in any self-censorship even though this was a volatile subject. It is that kind of honest exchange of ideas that creates a strong - and supportive - intellectual environment.
Finally, as you may know, some students recently brought suit against Stanford to invalidate the Grey interpretation of the Fundamental Standard. I do not want to discuss the suit, but I do want to point out that the suit is brought under a recent California statute, the Leonard Law, which is itself an example of governmental intrusion into the autonomy of private educational institutions. To my mind, this law - and its use by members of the Stanford community - is poignantly ironic: While purporting to promote the First Amendment value of freedom of speech, it would infringe on the university's First Amendment rights to propound and interpret its own rules, to teach its students in the way it sees best, and to express and safeguard its fundamental values.
Which leads to my third major topic - government and the university.
As Senator Stanford had hoped when he accepted David Starr Jordan's recommendation on a motto for this university, the winds of freedom generally have blown over Stanford and American higher education, both private and public. While the United States Constitution does not specifically protect academic freedom, on the whole, the First Amendment guarantee of free speech - and, even more important, the civic and political culture supporting it and higher education - have kept government out of "the four essential freedoms" of a university cited in 1957 by Justice Frankfurter in his famous concurrence in Sweezy v. New Hampshire. They are a university's freedom "to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study."
To be sure, at times, such as the McCarthy period, these values were put to a stern test. However, in a worldwide comparison, there can be little question that the United States may be proud of the freedom from government its universities have enjoyed as to Frankfurter's core freedoms.
There has been a sense in America that academic freedom serves not only those who are its direct beneficiaries - universities and their faculties and students - but also society. As Justice Frankfurter wrote in Sweezy:
Progress in the natural sciences is not remotely confined to findings made in the laboratory. Insights into the mysteries of nature are born of hypothesis and speculation. The more so is this true in the pursuit of understanding in the groping endeavors of what are called the social sciences, the concern of which is man and society. . . . For society's good - if understanding be an essential need of society - inquiries into these problems, speculations about them, stimulation in others of reflection upon them, must be left as unfettered as possible. Political power must abstain from intrusion into this activity of freedom, pursued in the interest of wise government and the people's well-being, except for reasons that are exigent and obviously compelling.
I think it is fair to say that these exhortations are no more than exactly that - exhortations, urgent appeals. As little as universities are ivory towers are they legally autonomous. Whatever constitutional protections universities and their members enjoy are those of every other citizen, no more, no less. There are implications for every citizen in the rising tide of government intervention in the form of regulation. As a university faculty, we have a special responsibility to concern ourselves with government-university interactions.
One of my highest priorities since coming here a year and a half ago has been to engage my faculty colleagues, our students, the staff, the trustees, and the university's alumni and friends in a review of our institutional priorities - particularly our curriculum and policies related to research and teaching. I wanted our focus to be an internal one. What kind of institution are we? What should we be? What should we do? How should we do it? In short, I wanted to concern myself with the objects of Justice Frankfurter's "four essential freedoms."
However, all too often my attention has been drawn from internal considerations and diverted to issues involving government. I have long known that contemporary research universities, including the private ones, are heavily dependent on government in many, mostly inevitable, ways and from many jurisdictions. From my new vantage point, I am concerned that the very character of universities could be transformed - and their contributions reduced.
Let me discuss two aspects of government-university interactions today that cause me concern: the serious side effects of direct regulation of essential activities and efforts to extend regulation into fundamental educational processes.
On the first issue - the side effects of direct regulation - many university research activities cannot be conducted unless they comply with government regulations. Research involving animals, human subjects, radioactive materials, DNA, contagious diseases, and what we now define as hazardous substances is subject to various government prescriptions and proscriptions.
We have accommodated this seemingly inexorable expansion and simply added the expenses to our cost of doing business. At present, however, we find ourselves increasingly subject to regulatory processes that begin seriously to interfere with the very nature of the academic enterprise, especially on the research side. Let me recount, for example, the recent regulatory activity in the State of California with respect to the use, storage, and disposal of hazardous wastes at Stanford.
At Stanford, more than 4,000 faculty, staff, and students work with chemicals, and the resulting waste, in one way or another. Research involving thousands of chemicals is conducted in roughly 700 locations in schools and departments throughout the campus.
California has promulgated hazardous waste regulations to protect human health and safety, preserve the environment, minimize waste, and prevent pollution. These rules, however, were developed with large-scale manufacturing processes and industrial settings in mind. And that was a wise decision by the state because 99.99% of all hazardous chemical waste comes from manufacturing and industrial processes; less than one one-hundredth of a percent (0.01%) comes from university laboratories.
Officials freely admit that the development of the regulations did not take into account the nature and organization of universities. The result is agreement between the university and the state on objectives and outcomes - safe practices, sound management of waste, environmental protection - and sharp disagreements on paperwork, administration, and organizational requirements.
Take, for example, labeling. Research and teaching at Stanford produce about 25,000 small containers of chemical waste annually - most of them smaller than a glass of water. State regulators require that each of those containers be labeled with a special label itemizing six specific pieces of information, even if the chemical is in its originally labeled container provided by the manufacturer. An error on any one of these items is a violation. Furthermore, if a state inspector finds a container mislabeled in laboratory A on the west side of the campus and on a subsequent visit finds that another container is so mislabeled in laboratory B on the east side of the campus, Stanford can be considered "recalcitrant" because "repeat" violations have occurred. Labeling fines range from $100 to $10,000 per violation. A 1% error rate, therefore, could result in annual fines of $25,000 to $2.5 million.
In one actual incident, a conscientious graduate student at Stanford put the wrong date on a bottle because his calendar watch was off by a single day, and by chance a state inspector that day noted the resulting labeling violation. The student's supervising faculty member, a distinguished member of our chemistry department, Paul Wender, wrote a memorandum on the incident to our Environmental Safety Office. Professor Wender commented:
I would invite . . . the inspector to meet with this individual and better understand how serious he and others are about compliance and how inspections that focus on such human errors and not on more pressing issues of safety serve only a destructive purpose. . . . We have very little time these days to do much science because it seems that every week there is a new issue, many of a reasonable nature but far too many of which simply do not address safety. . . . If we continue to focus on non-problems, we will not achieve what should be the objective of our safety programs and legislation, i.e., to create a safer environment. Instead we will discourage compliance and drive our educational and research system into the ground.
Unhappily, I report to you that our most serious disagreements with the state are not over labeling. I merely use this example because it can be readily understood, and it illustrates the regulatory attitude we are dealing with. Nevertheless, we can live with labeling - if that were our only problem. But it is not.
Far more important to us are complicated issues of authority over laboratory practices, the definition of laboratory and associated work spaces, the requirements for supervision and storage of chemicals, the length of time substances can remain in a laboratory, when a substance becomes a waste, when containers can be reused, what training documentation is required for different job classifications and for students, and other important issues.
We seek agreement with the state on interpretations of existing regulations. Real environmental protection is not at issue, nor is compliance with the law. Stanford understands and agrees with the importance of both of these objectives. At bottom, our dispute is not about whether these activities should be regulated; it is over the state's rigid interpretation of regulations designed for industrial processes and its insistence on applying those to university laboratories. It is the country that will suffer if the research enterprise is smothered by red tape.
My argument is that seemingly "neutral" rules and their serious side effects are beginning to make the research enterprise extraordinarily difficult for reasons that are not, to use Justice Frankfurter's formulation, exigent and obviously compelling. "It matters little," Frankfurter wrote, "whether such intervention occurs avowedly or through action that inevitably tends to check the ardor and fearlessness of scholars, qualities at once so fragile and so indispensable for fruitful academic labor." Transaction costs can extinguish scientific ardor as effectively as the inquisition, never mind that many regulators are behaving as if they were the inquisition.
A second area of concern regarding government and universities are recent efforts by the government and regional accrediting associations to intrude on educational processes at colleges and universities. Here we are no longer talking about side effects but about avowed intervention. This country's higher education system, although clearly not without its share of faults, remains the best in the world. As my colleague, Steven B. Sample, President of the University of Southern California, recently wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Times:
No one I've ever met believes this extraordinary level of excellence is due to increasingly intrusive accrediting bodies or increasingly burdensome regulation. Rather the excellence of our colleges and universities is attributed to their freedom to be different from each other - to their ability to take risks and chart their own destinies in a highly competitive environment.
In 1992, Congress added several new sections to the 1965 Higher Education Act intended to address increasing fraud and abuse in student loan programs. This abuse is largely found in short-term proprietary trade schools, not in the vast majority of higher education institutions. One of the new sections added to the Act required each state to establish a State Postsecondary Review Entity - the acronym is SPRE; you had better learn it - to investigate problem institutions according to specific standards.
Early versions of proposed regulations to implement this part of the Higher Education Act, however, appeared to apply new standards of control to all institutions, not just those that fail to meet the tests of sound management established by the underlying law. These regulations would have increased both federal and state control over institutions that administer student aid programs properly, even though such institutions were never the target of the law.
To the credit of the Secretary of Education, final regulations recently promulgated have removed troubling ambiguities and limited the scope of authority of the SPREs. But the SPREs will be required to set certain standards for institutions subject to review, and the entry of the government into these matters carries with it the potential for expansion and unwise intrusions.
Another section of the Higher Education Act provides for greater control over accrediting associations. Accrediting associations are nominally voluntary, non-governmental bodies that provide a seal of approval for institutions ranging from trade schools through research universities. I say "nominally" voluntary, because this seal of approval is taken by the Secretary of Education as a determining factor in the eligibility of an institution and its students for federal programs, such as educational grants and guaranteed student loans.
In an effort to make the regional accrediting associations themselves more accountable, new sections of the Higher Education Act require twelve standards that accrediting bodies must use in their evaluation process. These standards cover such areas as curricula, faculty policies, recruitment and admissions practices, tuition and fees, and measures of student achievement. In short, government is contemplating to intrude on "the four freedoms" of a university - "to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study."
The six regional accrediting associations are certainly aware of these developments. In California we are under the jurisdiction of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), which issued a proposal entitled "The Future of Self-Regulation." The very title of the report is disturbing, marking a shift from accreditation - WASC's traditional role - to regulation.
The argument is that teaching is the one common denominator of all colleges and universities, and that there is widespread public dissatisfaction with our performance in this area. Therefore, WASC should guard the public's interest by ensuring that institutions measure teaching effectiveness, hire and promote faculty on the basis of their abilities as teachers, dedicate appropriate financial resources to teaching, and require their governing boards to involve themselves directly in the review of educational quality.
Any university president who objects to this kind of regulation is in a delicate position. We stand to be accused of not valuing teaching and of favoring research, or of not wanting to be accountable for our institutions or our faculty, or - to use that all-purpose insult of the day - of being arrogant. But we cannot let the debate be shifted in this way. The presidents of all the universities with which Stanford competes - and we are very competitive - are committed to providing the best possible education for undergraduates. And on many campuses, including, of course, ours, there are large-scale reviews of undergraduate programs under way. We are voluntarily taking a fresh look at the educational component of our mission. We need to do so to remain competitive.
On the matter of assessing educational outcomes, no matter how attractive the notion is, some basic facts must be considered. There is very little evidence that the outcome of an undergraduate education can be measured in any rigorous way on a broad scale. General achievement tests are too crude a measure to assess vast differences in the preparation students bring to college, the differences in colleges themselves, or the differences in programs within colleges and universities. Students attend our institutions for a variety of reasons and with a variety of expectations, have a variety of experiences while in school, and leave with a broad range of outcomes. The value of an education is not measured at a single point in time. Indeed, as many of our alumni attest, appreciation for education often increases many years after graduation. And, as someone who has been engaged for decades in discussions with college and professional school alumni, let me assure you that "the public" whose interest the would-be regulators would like to protect has not arrived at any agreement whatsoever as to what precisely it wants its universities to provide.
The best investigation into teaching effectiveness that I know of is being done at Harvard by Professor Richard J. Light in the Harvard Assessment Seminars. These are an intensive series of discussions, surveys, interviews, and evaluations that focus on the experiences of particular groups of students in particular programs and that are designed to lead to specific policy recommendations that can be acted upon by the faculty and the administration.
In the second of a series of reports on this work, Light writes:
[We] quickly and unanimously agreed on one unalterable principle. Our explorations, the sample surveys, the in-depth interviews, the evaluations of curricula, must all be first-class science. This principle may seem obvious. But we often remind ourselves that without good science, we will accomplish little.
The kinds of investigation WASC proposes do not meet the criteria of first-class science. WASC suggests, for example, that we measure how much our students use the library as a way of determining whether they are spending sufficient time studying. Or, that we analyze patterns of enrollment to see what choices our students are making about their studies. Or worse still, many of its recommendations deal with issues of process and governance: How are faculty hired and promoted? How are financial decisions made? What is the role of governing boards? None of these, arguably, provides any direct evidence about learning outcomes. As a group, however, these processes represent the very essence of self-governance and institutional autonomy.
It serves no purpose to require institutions to gather costly, yet trivial, statistics as a substitute for real evidence. In fact, if we were forced to take on the expense of satisfying WASC guidelines in this area, we would have fewer resources to devote to thoughtful and careful evaluations of our educational programs.
The WASC proposal will now be debated among the membership, and I hope that the outcome will be a significantly modified policy that respects the difficulty inherent in trying to measure effectiveness. There is hope.
Whether there is hope in the larger arena of amendments to the Higher Education Act is less clear. The final regulations promulgated by the Department of Education are a vast improvement over earlier proposed versions. We are grateful for the responsiveness of the Secretary and his staff to an outpouring of critical comment from colleges and universities.
Nonetheless, the final, joint product of the new laws and regulations is a greatly expanded oversight structure for higher education that draws states into new policing roles as federal deputies, substantially federalizes an already flawed accreditation system, and arrogates to federal officials significant decision-making authority over the four freedoms of a university.
These trends require our attention. We should not allow ourselves to slip unintentionally toward a "ministry of education" that imposes standards and academic policies for every institution in the country. To do so would be to risk bringing an end to the breadth, diversity, and quality of our system of higher education. And let me say with all the authority conferred upon me by my accent: let us not "Europeanize" American higher education.
I have not intended these observations and reflections on two quite different aspects of the government-university relationship to be a comprehensive statement. Also, it would be churlish of me to speak so long about government and the university and only discuss troublesome matters. On balance, we have to conclude that the government has been a generous and, for many decades, benign patron. As former President Lyman pointed out some years ago, it has generally refrained from interfering with internal operations at universities, isolated exceptions notwithstanding. For the past several decades, it has funded institutions, students, and merit-based research with salutary effects on learning, science, and society as a whole.
My concern - and sometimes my alarm - is that we may be seeing a shift away from the interests of "wise government" spoken of by Justice Frankfurter.
I worry most of all that we may take universities for granted. It might be assumed that they can absorb increasing political demands and regulation, and the accompanying increase in operating costs, while remaining unaffected in their quality, their vitality, and their ability to contribute to society as they have so magnificently done. If I had only one message to leave with you, it would be that you not permit that profound misconception to gain currency.
And let me repeat what I said earlier: If we want to claim our four freedoms, we must make our decisions on academic grounds.