November 10, 2006

Purdue University President Martin C. Jischke made these remarks Friday (November 10) during a meeting of the Purdue University Board of Trustees.

President Jischke's comments to the board of trustees

Patty and I enjoyed having you at Westwood last night for our annual meeting of current and former trustees. We honored two people who have just retired from the board: Barbara Edmondson and Bob Peterson.

This has been an exciting fall. On our West Lafayette campus, we have opened a $20 million Lawson Hall of Computer Science and a $25 million Biomedical Engineering Building. We have broken ground on a $10 million Discovery Learning Center.

Last Friday we announced completion of the $30 million Goodwin Challenge for endowed faculty chairs and we announced a gift of $4 million toward construction of a new Hospitality and Tourism Management building.

We have admitted a top freshman class to Purdue West Lafayette, our largest class ever.

Later this morning, I will present a governance report on progress with our strategic plans. We have a lot to be excited about.

As you know, last year U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings named a commission to look at American higher education. It was named the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Secretary Spellings formed this commission to launch a national dialogue on the need to strengthen higher education so that our students and our nation will remain competitive in the 21st century.

We can all agree that as a college diploma becomes more critical, higher education must be accessible to all Americans and meet the needs of our nation's diverse and changing student population.

The commission issued its final report in September. That report charged that while America's colleges and universities have much to be proud about, they are not well-prepared for the challenges of an increasingly diverse student population and a competitive global economy.

According to the commission, our system of higher education has become dangerously complacent. Among its claims:

• College access, particularly for low-income and minority students, is limited by inadequate academic preparation, a lack of information and persistent financial barriers;

• The current financial aid system is confusing, complex and inefficient, and is, therefore, frequently unable to direct aid to the students who need it most; and

• There is a shortage of clear, comprehensive and accessible information about the colleges and universities themselves, including comparative data about cost and performance.

As a result of these findings, the commission charged that "too many Americans just aren't getting the education that they need."

It further charged "there are disturbing signs that many students who do earn degrees have not actually mastered the reading, writing and thinking skills we expect of college graduates."

The commission presented to the secretary of education six recommendations designed to improve the accessibility, affordability and accountability of higher education.

First, student academic preparation should be improved and financial aid made available so that more students are able to access and afford a quality higher education.

Second, the entire student financial aid system should be simplified, restructured and provided with incentives to better manage costs and measure performance.

Third, a "robust culture of accountability and transparency" should be cultivated throughout the higher education system, aided by new systems of data measurement and a publicly available information database with comparable college information. There should also be a greater focus on student learning and development of a more outcome-focused accreditation system.

Fourth, colleges and universities should embrace continuous innovation and quality improvement.

Fifth, federal investments should be targeted to areas critical to America's global competitiveness, such as math, science and foreign languages.

And sixth, a strategy for lifelong learning should be developed to increase awareness and understanding of the importance of a college education to every American's future.

Based on the report from that commission, this fall Secretary Spellings announced a plan designed to improve higher education's performance and our ability to measure that performance. She focused on accessibility, affordability and accountability.

Secretary Spellings proposed five steps that she said would make American colleges more accessible, more affordable and more accountable:

• One, expand what she termed "the effective principles" of the No Child Left Behind Act to high schools while continuing "efforts to align high school standards with college work" and increasing "access to college-prep classes such as advanced placement."

• Two, streamline the process of applying for federal student aid to "cut the application time in half" and notify students of their eligibility "earlier than the spring of their senior year to help families plan."

• Three, create a federal database to track students' academic progress.

• Four, provide matching funds to colleges, universities and states that collect and publicly report student "learning outcomes."

• And five, convene members of accrediting groups in November "to move toward measures that place more emphasis on learning."

Secretary Spellings and the commission are to be commended for initiating a national dialogue on future directions for American higher education.

As chairman and now past-chairman of the American Association of Universities, I was involved in studies on all of these findings and recommendations. There is much that we agree with. And there is much we disagree with.

We agree on the need to broaden opportunities for Americans to attend college. We support a number of the commission's recommendations to improve access, including strengthening Pell Grants and other federal, state and institutional need-based student aid; reducing aid programs' administrative costs; and replacing the current Free Application for Federal Student Aid form with a shorter and simpler application form.

We also agree on the need to address costs, increase transparency and improve competitiveness.

We support the commission recommendations to relieve the costly regulatory burden on colleges and universities, create a consumer-friendly information database on higher education institutions and revitalize the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education to support educational innovation.

We also support its recommendations to increase federal investment in U.S. competitiveness and renew our commitment to attracting the best minds at home and from around the world.

In some of these areas, Purdue is already well ahead of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education and Secretary Spellings. For example, we have a rolling admission policy so students do not have to wait until spring to receive their acceptance.

This highlights one of report's most serious limitations: its one-dimensional view of higher education. This has caused it, in some instances, to recommend one-size-fits-all solutions that may be appropriate for only some institutions.

We share the concerns of students and their families about rising college costs. These costs are driven by several factors, including state appropriation cuts or flatlining and increased health-care, technology and energy costs.

We believe that institutions must continue to seek innovative means of controlling costs. At the same time, the federal government and the states must reinvigorate their commitment to supporting students and the institutions they attend.

The higher education community supports the Spellings Commission's goal of providing better, more accessible information to students and families in a way that protects student privacy. The Association of America Universities is examining how our members can better collect and disseminate to the public key information about our institutions, including actual costs of attendance, graduation rates, time to degree and postgraduate outcomes. At the same time, we must recognize cost factors and privacy issues are very real concerns in this.

Continuous change is essential to U.S. higher education and should focus on how institutions achieve the fundamental goals of an undergraduate education, enabling students to reason critically, write and speak clearly, work collaboratively, acquire field-specific knowledge, and develop judgment and independence of thought.

As a result of all of this, leaders of the major higher education associations have initiated a process that will first, continue the national discussion, and second, produce a systematic means for colleges and universities to share information about innovative campus efforts to improve the accessibility, affordability, accountability and transparency of higher education.

The cost of higher education received a great deal of attention from the commission. It receives a great deal of attention from the public and our state legislatures. Yet as amazing as it sounds, the net cost of attending Purdue today is about the same as it was 10 years ago.

For the academic year 2004-2005, tuition for Indiana residents, plus room and board, books and other expenses totaled an average of $15,322 on our West Lafayette campus. At the same time, thanks to scholarship support from generous donors, federal Pell grants and other sources of aid, the average student received $3,500 in grants, exclusive of loans.

And because of federal and state tax benefits for education, Lifetime Learning tax credits and the tuition and fees tax deduction, we estimate that a typical student's family received $1,500 in associated tax reductions.

Taking all these reductions into account brings the average net cost per student down to $10,322.

Ten years ago, the net cost measured in 2004 dollars was a little more than that — $10,408.

What is happening in public education today is this: State support as a relative share of our operating budgets is in rapid decline.

Ten years ago, the state of Indiana provided about 60 percent of Purdue's operating budget support. Students provided 40 percent.

Today, it is reversed. Students cover 60 percent and the state 40 percent.

With economic downturns in recent years coupled with increasing pressure on state legislatures to pay for federal mandates such as Medicare, funding for higher education has been whittled away. It is reaching the point where people are beginning to talk about state-assisted universities rather than state-supported.

In Indiana, the cost for sending a person to prison per year is three times the amount the state spends to support an in-state student at Purdue. There is a great deal of talk about lower-income students being unable to afford higher education.

The statistics from Purdue are very interesting. At Purdue West Lafayette, the percentage of our students from the highest income brackets exceeds the percentage of the people in these same brackets in our state of Indiana. That might be expected.

What is interesting — we also have a higher percentage of students from the lower brackets than exist in the state of Indiana. In West Lafayette, we are actually behind the state in the middle-income area.

If we take our entire Purdue system into account, we find that we represent the various income levels in our state of Indiana fairly accurately.

A series of articles last year in the British publication The Economist was titled "The Brains Business: A Survey of Higher Education." The articles noted that higher education is undergoing change worldwide, brought about by growth in enrollments around the world, the shift to the knowledge economy, globalization and competition.

"Higher education," The Economist says, "is going the way of secondary education: It is becoming a universal aspiration."

The best model for balancing excellence with large enrollments is the American model, according to The Economist. It said, "The success of American higher education is not just a result of money, it is the result of organization."

The Economist said American higher education benefits thanks to its independence from government policy and controls. I agree.

All of our challenges notwithstanding, the United States still has the best system of higher education in the world. This is, in large measure, because we do not have a national system.

The differentiation and competition that results from this independence is part of our great strength, but if we are to continue this independence, we will have to be accountable to the public.

In the face of business scandals, the public is increasingly skeptical about institutions and leaders. Accountability is our means to gain support. In fact, a major aspect of our strategic planning process is all about accountability.

We tell people honestly in great detail exactly where our funds are going, where we are succeeding and where we have more work to do. The "Strategic Plan Governance Report" I will present to the board today, represents accountability by Purdue.

I believe in the importance of higher education to the lives of individuals, our nation and world. I believe our system of higher education is excellent. But as with all things, it can be built "one brick higher."

I believe to do that will require widespread cooperation and partnership between the public, private sectors and higher education.

Thank you.