There's something rotten in the state of Ohio

Specifically, at the University of Toledo.

U of Toledo's president, Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, is a medical doctor who took leadership of the Medical University of Ohio in 2003 and became president of the University of Toledo when it merged with the Medical University of Ohio in 2006. He holds an MD, not a Ph.D., and appears bent on transforming the University of Toledo into an institution devoted entirely to the STEM fields (or STEM², meaning science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine). According to the latest version of Toledo's strategic plan (the document itself is a Word file available at the first link on the right-hand side of the linked page), Jacobs identifies the following (among others) as strategic directions for the undergraduate programs of the university:

• Develop and implement innovative ways to integrate the knowledge and skills of STEM2 (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine, as defined by federal and state legislatures) and related disciplines with liberal arts and broader humanistic traditions. 
     
  
• Strengthen the general education curriculum to emphasize university-level skill proficiency and a shared core experience.  We will also enhance the relevance of the core to professional, science and technology programs (my emphasis). 
     
• Implement innovative ways to integrate science and technology literacy throughout the curriculum as a pathway to full societal participation.

His goals for the graduate programs include:

• Develop policies and align resources to increase the reputation of and enrollment in graduate and professional programs based upon quality and a careful analysis of investment return and market demand.
     
• Expand existing and add new graduate level programs in STEM_ areas, professional schools and other academic disciplines that demonstrate the ability to grow and be self-sustaining through enrollment and/or external funding. 

Now, these goals are part of a longer list, and some might protest that they shouldn't be taken out of context, but they way they focus on "relevance" (defined by whom?) and marketability is distressing. As a historian, I find the bolded section particularly galling: why does history (or any other "core" liberal art) have to justify its existence through its "relevance" to the professional, science, and technology programs?

Even more upsetting, however, are the plans that the document outlines for becoming "highly distinguished and ranked internationally as a leader in research and intellectual property transfer":

• Invest in the following areas of research excellence:
     
  a.  Environmental Impacts on Health
  b.  Energy Sustainability and Conservation
  c.  Translational Interfaces of Health Sciences, Engineering and Clinical Care
  d.  Public Engagement, Regional Economic Revitalization and Global Competitiveness
  e.  Science and Technology Education
  f.  Health Care Delivery Systems
  g.  Search for Origins
      
• Emphasize relevant basic science and translational aspects of research in each specific area and work closely with the intellectual property and technology transfer efforts of the institution.

Finally, at his April 2 state of the university address, entitled “Re-Engineering the Undergraduate Experience or Mass-Customization in Higher Education, Jacobs outlined a plan for massive curriculum change which was a surprise to all listening. (The PDF of his address can be downloaded here.)

Now, all these might be perfectly lovely plans for a new STEM-only university, but they constitute a radical change from the University of Toledo's traditional role as a metropolitan comprehensive university - especially given that they're being proposed without any significant input from anyone, faculty or student, outside of the STEM fields. I don't work at the University of Toledo, but what's happening here seems to be part of the distressing trend towards the corporatization of the university, and to demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of what education actually means (as the first two letters to the editor here point out, it's not the same thing as training).

Regardless of whether you know anyone at the University of Toledo, and even regardless of your opinion of the importance of STEM fields, if Jacobs succeeds in transforming the institution as radically as he proposes, he will have trampled all over faculty governance to do so, which should disturb all supporters of higher education.

What can you do? Opponents of Jacobs/supporters of the liberal arts at the University of Toledo have created an online petition, asking "the Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents and the Governor of the State of Ohio to review and amend the direction and governance of the University of Toledo." You can find it here. I'm not that sanguine about the influence of such petitions, frankly, but certainly signing is better than nothing, and the more non-Toledoans (Toledoese? Toledoites?) who sign, the more the administration becomes aware that their actions take place on a stage larger than just Ohio.

(You can also check out the blog for the University of Toledo's Arts & Sciences Council, here.)

Comments

[Jane Dark]

Wow. And, uh, scheiss.

[Neogrammarian]

While MFI is, literally, a space-grant branch campus, it also serves as a regional comprehensive campus. Our freshly inaugurated president was hired away from his Science Research Dean position at a fancy East Coast U.

His gameplan looks much like this. And we all just got emails about the 7.5% we have to cut out of departmental budgets to balance the state budget. Think about what that'll mean to STEMS depts, who run over 60% on external grants, vs LAS depts, who run entirely on our budgets.

My new position is at a liberal arts school, and I can't be more pleased. I am tired and sick of living in the same house as abusive Pappa Science.

[susie]

While that's a good point, neogrammarian, I don't think it's a good thing for the science and liberal arts divide to grow even starker --- it's not good for faculty, or for students, who I could see in the future having to choose one track or the other when applying to college and getting less and less of the perspective of the "other side." Then we'd have even less balance and dialogue, and even less understanding of each others' perspectives.

[Belle]

I particularly hate the 'mass-customization' bit. Ick.

[Bardiac]

What's the part about the "search for origins"? Isnt' that history, and anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, sociology, and all sorts of other stuff?

Or is he thinking that he's going to find god there?

This sounds totally crappy, and not at all unlike what's happening at a lot of universities these days (though more open and extreme). States (read: the people) want to pay less for education because they don't value education (unless it's their own), so public universities are more and more desperate. UGH.

[Susan]

Thanks, NK, for talking about this and drawing our attention to it. I agree with Bardiac, while this might be extreme, it's not unusual. What freaks me out is how people think that it's actually possible to do the STEM fields without having a sense of history, or ethics, or culture. As if science occurs in a vacuum.

This past winter I heard a story about a STEM faculty member in a strategic planning meeting saying, "We don't need to value teaching, we don't do that". Um, well, actually the state he works in does call him a FACULTY member, not a research scientist. And I suspect -- especially at R1s -- he's not unusual. The only teaching that matters is graduate teaching. How people get to be graduate students?

[Matt Gabriele]

Thank, NK. Linked to this on my site.

[Neogrammarian]

Susie, I'm not promoting a divide- remember that liberal arts colleges strive for a well-rounded student experience- including both arts and sciences.

Perhaps there are schools out there where the humanities are king, but I've worked at too many where the sciences had money, and the humanities depts ran out of paper, or where it rained into humanities faculty offices. Based on my experience, I'd argue that the divide is already there in most cases. Compared to where I've worked in the past, a liberal arts college is an integrated environment.

[Janice]

What's especially frustrating is that a lot of these schools run on the liberal arts undergrad enrollment to prop up their much more expensive science side. I've seen the numbers and we social science and humanities types are very good at educating lots of undergraduates far more cheaply than our STEM counterparts (we teach more students in more courses without expensive lab requirements).

There's been an interesting push that's somewhat related in New Brunswick where the provincial government is seeking to remake one of the UNB comprehensive campuses as a polytechnic, promising a MIT-like prestige while also claiming they'll train workers for "just in time" demands of local industry. That they don't see the inherent contradiction in such a scheme is maddening and that they propose to do it by downgrading the liberal arts to a bunch of adjunct courses is even more frustrating!

[Notorious Ph.D]

I remember once, in an undergraduate class on the Renaissance, we were discussing Humanist education. In mid-lecture, the prof broke off and said, "Education is not the same as job training. Don't ever forget it."

I haven't.

[~VP~]

Notorious Ph.D wrote: the prof broke off and said, "Education is not the same as job training. Don't ever forget it."

~VP~'s response: Isn't that what education ios all about though these days. Elementary kids spend 4-5 years "getting ready for middle school" and then they spend 3 years "getting ready for high school" and then four years "getting ready for college."

What's left if not graduate school? Getting ready for a job?

I want my students to be engaged in learning for lots of reasons. Actually sometimes ANY reason will do!! I tell them I don't really care why they're taking my class. If it's for an A, that's great. If it's preparation for a job, sounds good. The point is they're motivated.

As long as they are (1) willing to work hard to achieve their short term goal for my class and (2) are engaged in the process of learning what they (individually) need to know to reach their goals, then who am I to complain. They doing the work and they're learning and we're all happy with the situation.

I don't care why they're taking my class but I do care they put forth effort and learn something along the way.

People have lots of motivations to take classes. I always hope learning for the sake of education is one of those reasons. But sadly, in these days and times it's just not. So I'll take whatever I can get that motivates them to learn.

~VP~

[ohioan]

Ohio is an aging state with stagnant population growth and an aging infrastructure and substantial opposition to increasing taxes for education. The state's massive pension obligations (their academic retirement system is amazingly good) and current financial crisis is already causing cuts to higher education.

Specializing the regional state universities instead of supporting weak programs at every state university is a great way to save money and maintain or even improve educational quality. Ohio has many regional universities, and the state doesn't need to provide every Ph.D. program or even every undergraduate program at every campus.

I wish that states didn't have to make budget cuts like this, but the current triple crunch of pension obligations coming due, the credit crunch, and the shrinking tax base is going to cause this to happen in many states. However, if you have to make cuts, it's better to make them wisely.

I applaud the University of Toledo for having the courage to make changes at this level. Their president's going to catch a lot of flak for doing this, but it's a far better solution than slowly killing the whole institute with across the board cuts.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

The problem at Toledo is not just the content problem that I emphasize above (the shift to emphasizing STEM programs over all other disciplines), but a method problem: the president seems to have an incredibly narrow and counter-productive view of what education is. I didn't go into his "state of the university" speech in detail, but it focuses on the idea of "mass customization" (which, honestly, sounds like a complete oxymoron), and Margaret Soltan at University Diaries has a wonderfully scathing send-up of the whole, in which she (I think accurately) describes his vision of the university as "a big room with computers in it."

So the issue is not just one of content, but of how students learn. Also, how does one define "weak" programs? Defining education by the job it gets you is NOT the way to go - most history majors do not leave college and get jobs as "historians" - but they DO get jobs, and good ones, because they know how to read, right, and analyze. The skills that the liberal arts impart to students are crucial to success in any job in any field. If you have a purely vocational program - say, nursing - that is not graduating students, or that is not successfully placing students who do graduate, then you might define it as "weak" and evaluate whether the cost of running the program is worth it. But the liberal arts aren't designed to get students jobs - or I should say, to get students one specific job. How do you decide what's a "weak" program in that circumstance? If you measure a liberal arts program against a professional/vocational program by the standard of job placement in the field of study, the liberal arts are ALWAYS going to lose - because it's an inappropriate measure of success for the liberal arts.

A 63 year old former industrial trainer with a B.S. in Education at UT, currently a student in Anthropology. See Letter to editor in Independent Collegian which should appear next week