A fragile public institution

Second of two parts

Public higher education is a fragile institution. To work properly, all of the participants must assume a critical role and play that role consistently and with great respect to the other participants. The students, those for which the system is maintained, must be driven in their quest for knowledge and put forth their best effort to contribute as well as receive.

The faculty must maintain currency in their discipline and they must use every device at their disposal to transfer their knowledge and understanding to the students coming to them. They must be responsible for curriculum and course development, conduct meaningful research and work with the university administration to maintain a respectful environment that fosters the academic process.

The administration must provide the infrastructure in which the student and faculty come together and they must be responsible for the development of funding strategies that obtain the best results for dollars invested. They must develop a planning process that insures the continued improvement of the learning environment and they must, with the faculty, recruit new, exciting young faculty to join them.

Beyond the university (and this is where public and private higher education begin to differ) the system office must take responsibility for providing statewide planning to insure that higher education is available to students at a reasonable cost and reasonably close to their home. This planning must focus on the maintenance of quality and access while using resources as economically as possible. The system must present the case for higher education to the Legislature and work to obtain adequate funding to support the overall plan.

The Legislature and the governor are responsible first for the appointment of knowledgeable and credible people to the system board of trustees and to work with them to understand the statewide plan and allocate the resources to implement that plan to the extent possible. They must require evidence from the system staff and the university administrations that the quality of education and the cost of that endeavor is consistent with the level of resources provided, that is, the state is getting what it is paying for.

This arrangement is a fragile one, especially if the participants are not focused on their role and begin to seriously stray into the role of others. Certainly there is overlap and the degree of overlap is constantly changing but each of the participants must understand the importance of each group’s responsibility. The students must trust the faculty to provide a series of courses and experiences that will prepare them for their career goals; the faculty must trust that the administration will provide a fair share of the resources to each program; the university administrators must trust that the system will make the case to the Legislature and governor; the board must trust that the Legislature and governor will work to understand the higher education plan and provide funding that maintains quality and access; and the Legislature and the governor must trust that the plan has been developed by people they have appointed and empowered through statute.

Recently the balance that is critical to the orderly provision of higher education was disrupted in the state of Maine. The board of trustees and the chancellor, after working for a year and a half on a strategic plan for improving the university system, were put in a position of negotiating with the Legislature to be allowed to implement the plan.

Obviously the first mistake was for the chancellor and the chair of the board to participate in such negotiations. A second mistake was for them to agree to the legislative group without consultation with the trustees. The board of trustees has a responsibility to develop and implement such plans. Of course the Legislature has the right to question such plans and to make suggestions, but they did not have the authority to order postponement of a major provision of the plan. That is, not until they passed a bill which severely limits the board of trustees’ authority to develop future plans that should respond to the never-ending pressure on needed resources.

We resigned from the board of trustees because it was clear to us that the Legislature no longer wishes to have an independent board that is

separated from the realm of partisan politics. They do not want to play their traditional role and they do not want the board to play theirs.

As citizens of the state, this should concern you because the fragile relationships between the key stakeholders involved are now being disrupted. Decisions about higher education are now being made by legislative committees and not by people appointed to the board of trustees for the express purpose of studying and understanding the needs of the student.

Donald L. McDowell, former executive vice president and president of Maine Medical Center and Maine Health Plan, was a University of Maine System trustee from 1995-2005. He served as interim chancellor in 2002. Wickham Skinner, the James Robison Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, where he taught for 28 years, was a UMS trustee from 1995-2005. He was vice chair of the board from 2003-2005.