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Making History Together Thank you, Dr. Jennings [Clara Jennings]. It is a great pleasure to be here this evening. I am especially pleased to be able to celebrate with you, Youngstown's thirty years as a state university. I have long been convinced that public universities such as yours are among America's most unappreciated assets. It has become the fashion in our day and age to pillory public institutions while praising everything that is private. So let me take a moment to praise our nation's public universities and colleges. The very idea of giving the sons and daughters of farmers and workers and clerks, common people as we were called in the nineteenth century, an opportunity to go to college was a uniquely American idea. Private colleges and universities were for the sons and daughters (mostly the sons) of the privileged, and a few poor scholarship students. But oh, what the sons and daughters of us common people can accomplish when given a chance to learn. If you doubt me, take a moment to stroll through a book entitled Who's Who In America. Let's see… Steven Spielberg, Academy Award-winning producer and director . . . Long Beach State College. Eileen Collins, astronaut, first American woman to pilot a spacecraft and now the first to command one . . . Corning Community College. Michael Dell, entrepreneurial wizard, creator of the hugely successful Dell Computer Corporation . . . University Of Texas. Terry McMmillan, author of Waiting To Exhale and other best-selling books, and most importantly, one of Oprah's favorite writers . . . University of California at Berkeley. William Raspberry, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist . . . Indiana Central College. Carol Browner, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency . . . University of Florida. Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of magical children's books such as Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen . . . Keane State College. Andy Grove, driving force behind Intel, the powerhouse maker of microchips, including the famous pentium chip . . . City College of New York. The list goes on and on. The contributions made to our economy, the world's most productive, and to our vibrant and diverse culture, by the alumni of public universities and colleges are beyond measure. It is no wonder that our systems of state colleges and universities are the envy of the world. During the second half of the twentieth century, other countries have been scrambling to recreate them. And of course, Youngstown State University has many accomplished alumni: astronaut Ron Parise [pah-ree-zee], astronomer Thomas Bopp who shared in the discovery of the Hale-Bopp comet, educator Cynthia Tyson, whom many of you know . . . and Bob Davie, who now holds what has been described as one the highest offices in the Catholic Church in the United States -- he is the head coach of the Notre Dame football team. And yet, the accomplishments of our public colleges and universities go largely unheralded. We are like the sherpa farmer who can view Mount Everest from his bedroom window, but doesn't see it any more. Or the Washington, D.C., federal worker who rushes passed the tidal basin every spring morning barely noticing the cherry blossoms. "Ho-hum, another brilliant oratorio of color." Familiarity can lead to indifference, and worse still, indifference can lead to erosion. In the 1980s, I think we allowed very serious erosion in our values to occur. Historically, Americans have believed that an educated population was a benefit to society as a whole. This powerful idea nourished some extraordinary American initiatives such as the land grant colleges and the G.I. Bill. But in the 80s, this idea was undermined, fundamentally, without any real debate. It was undermined by the idea that only individuals benefit from higher education. As our conservative brethren are always reminding us, ideas matter. They are right -- ideas do matter. Once you allow an idea such as "only individuals benefit from higher education" to gain ascendancy, all sorts of consequences follow. We saw it happen. Government substituted student loans for student grants on a massive scale. And states hiked up student fees and tuition. After all, if college benefits only individuals, then individuals should find the money for it themselves. Even worse, this mindset leads to colleges and universities thinking of students and their families as "customers." Now on the surface at least, that may sound like a good public relations move, much in keeping with today's push to marketize every aspect of American life…from prisons to hospitals to elementary and secondary schools. But do we really want to live in a country where there are no more students or parents…or citizens -- only customers? In such a country, there will be no more "unum," as in e pluribus unum, through many, one. It will be every individual for him or herself. Is that what we want? Well, the pendulum seems to be swinging in that direction, I have to admit. However, let us at least acknowledge that it is not what George Washington or Abraham Lincoln had in mind for us. Nor is it what Martin Luther King had in mind. Continue down the road of it's every individual for him or herself, and we might as well start changing our national holidays. Make President's Day Adam Smith day, replace Martin Luther King day with Milton Friedman day…and of course Labor day would become Capital day. As educators, if we buy into this trendy notion that "students" are really just "customers," we will be cooking our own goose. You do not demand of a customer what we demand of our students. You do not challenge a customer to stretch his or her mind as we challenge our students. You cannot provide a student with the instant gratification expected by a customer, because education is a journey and the payoff usually comes years after the exertion. You cannot flunk a customer. Student is a noble word, dating back to its Latin root, meaning one who studies. Let us use it, proudly. Now, let us turn to the complicating matter of rising costs. Why is Zeus hurling these lightning bolts at us, I wonder? Are he and the missus, Hera, having another one of their spats? Is Hera still mad at Zeus for his fling with Leto? But why take it out on us mere mortals? Who knows? All I know is that we are being challenged. The cost of higher education to students and their families has risen 200 percent faster than the cost of living since 1980. As a headline last month in the New York Times proclaimed: "rising tuition worries the middle class, drives out the poor." This a problem. A big problem. A problem not only for administrators, but for every faculty member, every professional, and every support person who works in public higher education. I commend to you the recent report of the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. It contains a warning we all should heed. The commission warned that public concern about the cost of college is real. And if colleges and universities do not address the issue, the report said, it could lead to "a gulf of ill will between higher education and the public they serve." We do not want a gulf of ill will between higher education and the public. That is why the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association issued a joint statement supporting the commissions report. That is why both AFT and NEA are extending an olive branch to college and university administrators. We think we should work on this problem together, management and the unions. Let me quickly add, especially for the benefit of the many NEA members who work here at Youngstown as faculty, professionals, and support staff, that I know the difference between an olive branch and a white flag. Positive collective bargaining is not about waving a white flag. It is about union leaders tending to their traditional union duties of handling grievances and bargaining for better wages and working conditions while working with management on concerns common to us all. Is it possible? Well, your higher education colleagues in state universities and colleges in Florida, Massachusetts, Washington, and elsewhere are doing it. Whenever I talk about management and union cooperation, I am reminded of the story of the scorpion and the turtle. It seems that one-day a scorpion and a turtle were standing on the bank of a flood-swollen river. Both needed to get across. Both were pondering their chances. The scorpion suggested to the turtle that he ride on the turtle's back across the river. "From my perch, I could keep an eye out for logs and other debris that could smash into you…I'd be your early warning system." "Yeah," said the weary turtle, "but you could also sting me to death." "Well, that wouldn't make any sense," replied the scorpion, "it is in my self interest to keep you afloat." The turtle considered that for a while, and then decided to carry the scorpion across. About mid-point in the river, however, the scorpion stung the turtle right in the back of the neck. In his dying gasp, the turtle asked, "why?" "Hey," said the scorpion, "what can I tell you -- I'm a scorpion." So who is the scorpion here? Management or the union? It doesn't make a bit of difference. The scorpion drowned, too. Can we shed our traditional adversarial roles to address together the issue of rising costs? I am convinced we can. Together can we find ways of controlling costs without devaluing our currency, that is, without reducing the quality of education we provide to students? Yes, we can, but it will not be easy. Working together, we can find ways to use existing resources more efficiently. Working together, we can improve the quality of teaching in higher education. Research is enormously important, and always will be in our universities, but so too is teaching. Quality teaching should receive the encouragement it deserves, but seldom gets. This could help reduce the dropout rate and increase the graduation rate. Peer assistance and review along with professional development will go a long way to improving the quality of teaching. As the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future has noted: "no other intervention can make the difference that a knowledgeable, skillful teacher can make in the learning process…students learn more when their teacher knows more." Working together we can ensure that distance learning -- the so-called virtual university -- provides a quality education. Working together we can help keep the doors of academe open for minorities and poor students. Access to education is more than a question of individual rights and opportunities. Given the seismic changes in our economy over the past twenty-five years, access to higher education will shape the kind of society in which we will live. Will we become locked in a two-tiered society in which the children of affluent and educated parents go to college and reap the economic benefits of a college education, while the children of lower income and less educated parents are relegated to dead-end jobs and lives of quiet desperation? We seem headed in that direction. Sixty-two percent of high school graduates now go on to either a two- or four-year college. But for minorities that number is much lower. While eighty-three out of every one hundred African Americans now complete high school, only forty attend college. Worse still, only twelve African Americans out of every one hundred earn a bachelor's degrees by age thirty. And only ten out of every one hundred Hispanics earn a degree. We don't have similar figures for low income whites, but I would guess they are equally dismal. These statistics describe an extremely unhealthy situation -- one destined to profit only the prison makers. We espouse equal opportunity. We need educated citizens to sustain democracy and keep the rich tapestry of American life from unraveling. We need an educated workforce to stay competitive. The demographers tell us that sometime in the first half of the next century, we will cease to have a majority -- everyone will be in a minority. But right now, a majority of minority students are not receiving the education they will need to make a full contribution to our 21st century economy. We need to work together to increase the financial aid available to students. We need to work together to help our colleagues in the K-12 schools improve the quality of education. Four out of ten college freshmen lack the language and math skills needed to do college work, and require remedial education. In Long Beach, California, NEA members in K-12 are working with NEA members in a community college and a state college to help raise the level of education delivered in elementary and high schools. The project's goal is an ambitious one. No student will graduate from high school needing remedial education either for higher education or in the workplace if they decide to get a job right away. We need to work together to help the students we already have in our colleges and universities. The dropout rate for minority students is much higher than for white students. We are, as a matter of fact, doing a poor job of holding on to the students of all races who are the first in their families to attend college. We need to acknowledge that college can be an alien planet for some young people, and then get on with job of providing them with a support system. Notice I did not say lower academic expectations for them. You do no one any favor by doing that. In sum, for public colleges and universities to survive and thrive, we must confront and overcome the prevailing ideology of our day -- that it's everyone for him or herself. We have to clamp down on rising costs without reducing quality. And we have to reverse the trend of high school graduates from low-income families either being daunted by the financial burden of college before ever applying or dropping out. You may recall that the Danish prince Hamlet agonized over:
We don't enjoy that luxury. As public educators, we have to "take arms against a sea of troubles." Indeed, we should be eager to do so. Staying with Hamlet for another moment, you might also recall that the Norwegians, led by the ambitious Fortinbras, would never have overrun Elsinore if the Danes had not been fighting amongst themselves. We public educators and our allies will triumph in the end if we unite and pull together. We must lay aside our past differences. Unity is the key. Unity will carry the day. Through our unity, we will make history together, my friends. Thank you, and Happy Anniversary. |
