Well thank you very much, John, for the introduction and for the opportunity to meet with you. When I accepted John's kind offer to meet he suggested a couple of things that he wanted me to talk about. The first of them was the question that he just gave the answer to, that is why are Unclassified Staff here at KU? I don't know why you are here individually, that's a pretty idiosyncratic answer for each of us I suppose. But I think that it is pretty obvious why your jobs exist here, and that's a pretty simple answer for me. Your jobs exist here at KU for the same reason that my job exists here at KU. We have a blindingly complex and sometimes dauntingly difficult set of tasks to facilitate the research and learning that goes on here. More than any other place I have been, KU's staff seems to understand that they are here for the sake of the institution rather than vice versa, and that is a remarkably healthy, and in my view, correct understanding of the situation. My job exists to do whatever I can to improve the operation of this place, and to enhance the research and teaching mission that the institution has. That's exactly how I understand your collective jobs as well.
If you look at it from one perspective, we are distinctly second in the hierarchy of importance here; at least from my perspective that's how I understand my job. What happens at the lab bench, in the libraries, and in the classroom is more important than what happens in my office--because, I exist for what happens in the laboratories, libraries, and the classroom. I think that is why all of your jobs exist as well. Now having said that, if somehow, someone were to magically do away with all of the jobs that you and I occupy, not much would happen in the libraries, labs and classrooms. So it's really a much more useful thing to think of our jobs as being an integral part of the fundamental mission of this university. Without what you do on a daily basis, we could not conduct the research or the teaching at the university. And my impression as the new Provost is that this is a really wonderfully dedicated, almost to the point of selfless, set of professionals that you represent in this room. It's a real pleasure for me to work with you.
The other question that John asked me is: "How can Unclassified Staff help KU faculty and students dream big dreams." One of the issues that I am dealing with at KU is how to get KU, the whole community, both on and off the campus, to understand how important this institution is nationally and internationally. Keep in mind that I am coming from 24 years of living in Texas, so that kind of skews your perspective on lots of things. I am really surprised and occasionally dismayed at the sort of instinctive humility that the KU community shows. The kind of "awe shucks and scratch your toe in the dust" attitude that says we're just Kansas and we just do what we do, and we're glad to have you here. This place is really powerful. This is a huge force in the world of science, technology, humanities and social science research. This place really has a significant international and national impact. We all need to understand that and more to the point, we just need to step up to that responsibility. This place is really powerful, and we don't do anyone a service by hiding our light under a bushel. We certainly don't do our students a service. We don't do the state of Kansas a service. Now, we have some burdens here in Kansas that other states don't bear to quite this same extent; there is no question about that. We've got all kinds of follies going on in the political arena and in the social/cultural ward, but I look upon that as an opportunity for KU to show the way. The difference between some of the lunacy that has been manifested in Kansas and the lunacy being manifested in Texas is a very, very small difference; just a couple of votes here and there in some cases, and a couple of media choices here and there, as well. The burdens that we sometimes feel are overwhelming with regard to bizarre attitudes towards funerals or some peculiar understandings of the functioning of theories like evolution and so on. Those aren't Kansas problems; those are American social problems that are articulated in a public way in Kansas. We have an obligation as an institution of higher education to respond to them with the exact sort of maturity and sophistication and reasonableness that those stimuli should evoke in an institution like this. I don't see this as a particular liability of Kansans. I know for some people, it is. I see it as an opportunity for us to show what an institution like this can do in the midst of those kinds of challenges. I want to come back to this topic in a moment.
"As the new Provost, What challenges would you like to present to Unclassified Staff at KU"-- Do more with less. Solve every problem before it comes to my desk. See if we can't do something about the offensive team for the KU football team--any other questions? One of the things I hope that we can do as the days, months, and years unfold ahead of us is to have regular kinds of meetings like this in which I get feedback from you and I have the opportunity to tell you first hand what some of the issues are that we're looking at from an institutional perspective. Your role in fulfilling many of these missions is really crucial, and I think one of the mistakes that big sprawling research institutions like this make sometimes is that they don't focus on getting all the pieces aligned in connection with the mission. Even when it doesn't look like someone who works for F&O should be really worried about graduating in four, the truth of the matter is that when you work at KU, you are KU and the community. People turn to you and say "what are you doing about whatever the issue is that bugs them?" (The fact that their kid didn't get accepted, or the football team lost or whatever. . .) We all bear some responsibility in the KU community. You are the face of KU for everyone you interact with in the community. The more you understand about the institutional issues of the day or the week or the month, the better for everybody.
Now in that connection, I want to talk very briefly about the issues that we are going to be paying some attention to in the immediate future, and probably the longer term future as well. Then I'd like to open it up for conversation and questions or whatever.
One of the issues that has been around for a while, but seems to have sort of, not exactly run out of steam, but hasn't had the attention that it probably needs to, is the "Graduate in Four" initiative. This is really important for an institution like KU because we have invested huge amounts of time, energy, creativity, and sometimes lethargy and bickering in designing curricula that are intended to be fulfilled in four years. Not three years, not five years, not two years, not six years, but four years. And, the whole undergraduate experience is sort of shaped around that unit of presence on the campus. And when people choose to deviate from that, for whatever reason, it's disruptive to that design. Now, it's not catastrophic in most instances but it is disruptive. I would like to see us get as many kids through here in four years as possible. For a variety of reasons: from an institutional standpoint, it's what we are designed to do, and when we have lots of kids graduating in four years, it means that we can admit that many more kids on the front end. The net effect is that we can simply educate more kids given the assets and resources that we have on campus. This is a very serious motive in the "Graduate in Four" program. From the student's perspective (some of you have heard me sing this song before) it's crushingly expensive to take longer than four years. We often hear, as I'm sure many of you have heard in your professional and personal capacities, students say "well, I can't afford to take a full course load this semester because I don't have the extra however-many-hundreds of dollars it will take; so, I'm going to drop back to 12 hours, or 9 hours, or whatever" thereby extending their period as an undergraduate. Now, let's think about the cost of that for a moment. I think this year we told the feds that it costs $17,000-$18,000 per year to go to school here. Let's say it costs $20,000 to go to school here, four years, $80,000. That fifth year costs $20,000, plus the forgone income of the first job. Let's be very conservative and estimate that at $30,000. Suddenly that fifth year costs $50,000. Now you can say to yourself if you're a student, "well maybe if I had a job maybe…" eventually you're going to have a job, a real job with a real salary that is going to pay something. I know this--I have a daughter who has a real job, much to my astonishment! It will take a very long time for most people making $30,000 a year, or $40,000 or $50, 000 to recoup that $50,000. It's very, very, expensive to take that fifth year. And some students, in their innocence, will say "Oh, well, I'm going to law school". Now that first year of employment doesn't cost $30,000, it costs $80-100,000. We need to get people out in four years here, it's the right thing to do. There are certain specific curricula that require five years, that's fine. Taking six years is wrong for those programs. This is going to be a big push for us. In connection with that, we are going to ask the Board of Regents at the next Regents meeting for their permission to pursue an attempt to guarantee tuition for four years. This is going to be a really tough program, and we're going to need all of your collective wisdom to make it work. Here is basically what we're going to propose: if you come in as a freshman in 2007, the semester credit hour rate that is in effect in the year that you come in will be locked in for you for four years. That cohort will pay the fixed amount, it will not change, decline, go up, whatever, for that four year period. The next cohort in the 2008 academic year will have the same program in place, but their number will be different than the previous year. There will be some inflationary increase. The point is, that for four years, the rate of tuition will be guaranteed for that cohort. At the end of four years, if you haven't graduated, then you immediately go to a rate that would have been in place had we gone to the normal pattern of increases during your four years. In just speaking from a standpoint of hypothesis, if we were to have this program in place next year, and we were to guarantee the four years and have roughly a 5% increase in the other cohorts, in your fifth year you would go from paying about $6200 a year in tuition, to paying about $7300 dollars a year in tuition--a huge one year jump. Now, it's not actually a significant increase over the actual numbers because as you know, tuition goes up from year to year for a variety of reasons. So, we're neither looking to save money, nor are we looking to add to the cost, we're looking to provide as much predictability for these students and their parents as we possibly can. But here's the problem, and this is where your creativity and your input and ideas are going to be absolutely crucial to us. Tuition is a tiny fragment of the cost of attending school here. It's less than the fees, and we notice that I didn't talk about fees. It doesn't account for room and board, and one of the dangers I see in this proposal is that we are going to give the illusion to families that they're going to be able to sit down the day that Susie or Timmy gets admitted to school, and write 8 checks, one for every semester, and they'll be done. In fact, the amount they write in the first semester will be different than the amount they write in the second semester. In addition to the fees not being included, and room and board not being included, there is the issue of differential tuition. If someone starts out in Social Work, and decides to take a couple of courses in Business or Pharmacy, or Engineering, it's going to jack that number up dramatically. I would like to see us move eventually to a model similar to that of the private institutions that says if you're a full time student at KU, this is what you pay. I would like to see that for its predictability and its relative fairness, but most fundamentally, I would like to see that for pedagogical reasons. Because, what we have done not just at KU, but in general in public higher education, is we've turned everything into a transaction. "So you are requiring that I take this course for my degree, well that's a 3 hour course, and that course does X, so you just added X to my degree. What am I getting for my $581?" I don't think it's worth $581, I think what you will get is worth $575. Nobody says that, but you understand the transactional nature. And, the most important thing for me about the structure that we find in public higher education with differential tuition, and per credit hour charges, and so on. . . is that that differential between for example, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Business is so big that someone of limited financial means might opt out of a particular curriculum because they just don't feel they'll have the money. They look at their options and say "Well I can probably muster the cash for this degree, but I don't think I could get the cash for that degree". And that really makes me nuts, really makes me nuts. The logical statement then is "Well, even if you have one price, wouldn't it be the case that some kids could say ‘well it would have been cheaper for me to get this degree than that degree' ". Undoubtedly that's the case, but it also clarifies things for us institutionally--exactly what it is that we need to have for every single individual who comes to this campus. Right now, the financial aid people look at a likely program for a student and say they will likely need X dollars. If that student subsequently changes from Social Work to Business, Social Work to Pharmacy, or Sanskrit to something more useful, their financial aid package doesn't match with that change. It may eventually catch up, or it may not. I think it's much healthier institutionally and clarifies our burden in terms of mustering the resources to help the lower socioeconomic strata of our student body if we know that it's going to cost this much money to go to school here for a year. Now we're a long way away from that, and I'm not sure that I am young enough to see us ever get to that point. But I think it's something that we need to work toward for all the reasons that I've said.
Well, I'm talking way too much here. I'm going to just stop here and there will be a period of about 12 seconds of embarrassed silence, and then we'll have a conversation.
Q: I'm Ryan Papich, I'm the Customer Service Manager at Network & Telecommunications Services. At last week's convocation with Information Services, you made it very clear that this is a premier research institution. Because of our "awe shucks" attitude, maybe we haven't put as much of an emphasis on shining that light on that reality. Something we may want to even possibly raise our profile regionally, state-wide, nation-wide, worldwide, as far as what we produce here. Do you see the Center for Research adding staff in that area, to get the word out?
A: I wish it were that simple, I wish it were simple enough that we could say if we just hired 8 more people in the arena of External Relations, that we'd have our problems solved. I think it's more complicated than that Ryan. It has to do in some ways with how each of us individually presents ourselves and our institution to one another and certainly to the outside world, to this community, and to our larger professional community. I'm interested, if not a little amused, at the attitude that I frequently hear and see expressed with regard to the University of Texas at Austin. It's seen as this rich, high-powered, really superb institution on the rise. All of which is true I think, but we're not going to find very many people at UT- Austin that are convinced of that. There's something about our professions where we spend so much of our time focusing on the problems that we know we have here. And, we look around us and we can find any problem that any of us has in this room. We can find an institution that doesn't have that problem to the same degree that we do. You can find every single problem that we confront. Now, they may have ten other much more serious problems that we don't have, but that's not of concern to us because we solve those problems. They figured this out, and man I wish I was at Bowling Green, UT, Berkley, whoever has figured out our particular problem. And, even though we know better, when I articulate it this way, it's a natural assumption to assume that we've got all the problems--everyone else has got it figured out, that here we are stuck at this place that's just being overwhelmed with difficulty. That's the attitude at UT for the most part. And, it's the attitude of every institution I have ever been at. With this difference: when folks at UT step outside of the bounds of the campus, they become Texans by God! And, even if some of them come to Kansas, they're still Texans, by God! We need a little swagger here. We need to be proud of what we're doing, because you're doing some things remarkably well, as well as I have seen anywhere. There isn't any reason to be modest about that or shy or embarrassed or quiet, frankly. I know it's not in the Midwest character to be boasting on; it's rather in the Midwest character to sit and fume because nobody has come over to notice how good you are at something. I know, I was raised in that culture. But, you need to just get out there and boast about this place. It is really, really good. And it's so much better than we talk about it. And so much better than it should be, given the level of support from the state of Kansas, etc. It's really a point of intense pride, for me at least. I'm really pleased to be here.
Q: Not an all inclusive list, but from your observations, what are some of those things that we ought to be boasting about?
A: Well, you know the usual academic stuff; the public administration program is number one in the country, so you can go through that list. But the Geological survey is first rate. Paleontology is world-class. You can just go through the list. The classics department has got some people in it that the rest of the world envy for their ability to translate Homer and the classics into the community. I don't mean translate it just from Greek into English, I mean into the community. Familiarize yourself with your competition. If you do that, you're going to discover that you've got some real strength here. That's what I would ask each of you to do. The academic side is the easiest one because of US News or World Report; you can always find a ranking somewhere that makes you look better than other rankings. But for me, one of the things that is really amazing about this place, and I've really had to recalibrate my whole conversation about higher education, is the premium that is placed on undergraduate education here. For a research institution with big league science and research going on, it's very unusual to have undergraduate students be sort of on the pedestal they are here at KU. It's a story that isn't easy to tell because you can't say "Well the US News and World Report says we're X or Y", but I see it all the time, to the point where I've come from an institution where it wasn't the case--a lot of lip service given to it at administrative levels--but on the ground it wasn't always the case. You always had to steer people back to that central portion of the mission; it's not the case here. Everybody understands the importance of undergraduates to the health of this institution. At the same time, we're knocking down almost $3 million dollars in federal research money. That's really amazing. The problem is, to be as amazed as I am, you have to really be an insider and figuring out how to tell that story is one of the challenges that we have.
Q: Question regarding the guaranteed base tuition that you were talking about, the cost that they would come in, like if we started next year, would it be different than current KU students? It would be an estimate over the four years?
A: Yes. Pretend I am a power point slide. This is the current tuition--this is going up year by year. Then this would be the guaranteed rate of tuition. In the first year, this cohort of students would pay slightly more than the current freshman class would have paid. But, in years two and four, they would pay significantly less. That delta would be a mirror, so the average cost would be the same essentially. You would have the predictability of knowing that it was this amount. Now, we're working with, as you may know, student government and student success to see how much of the total cost we can make predictable. We think we may have figured out how to do this with fees, the housing people think it's too complicated to do for housing; they're wrong, but they just don't know it yet. What I would like to do is get as much of the cost into the predictable model as possible.
Q: When would we, like you said, be presenting to the Board of Regents? Is that this fall?
A: Yes, lest you think that this is just my brilliant idea, this is really a demand by student government that was put in place in 2004 for implementation in 2007. What we're going to do at the next Board meeting is ask for their permission to begin planning for this change. If they say "absolutely not, you can't do this" then we're not going to. You can imagine the IT investment in gearing up for something like this. It's pretty complicated. We need to get started on this immediately if we're going to be ready for next fall. We're just going to ask for their permission. The actual numbers that we plug in probably won't be determined until next June, in the normal pattern. Again, the Regents will set these numbers. The cohort of 2007 will have a number set by the Regents. The next year, in the same manner, the cohort of 2008 will have a number set by the Regents. Does that make sense?
Q: If they give you the amount they'll pay, will there be talking points developed? I'm asking these questions because we're being asked already in recruitment "what is it going to be next year?". Right now we just don't have any idea what to tell perspective students.
A: Well, that's the right answer. We don't have any idea at this point. We're going to have to work closely with folks in Admissions and Recruiting to figure out the best way to articulate this. If we only do what I talked about, mainly semester credit-hour cost, it's going to be a fragment of the cost of going to school here. To talk about guaranteed tuition, is in some ways kind of setting yourself up for some unhappiness when next year that tuition portion is still guaranteed, but the fees have gone up, housing has gone up, etc. I'm hoping that we can wrap all of these things together and talk about guaranteed tuition and fees, and housing. Then other stuff is up to the student in some sense; because, we still have the differential tuition issue that's going to be with us no matter what.
Q: With tuition basically rising across the country faster than inflation, where do you see that trend ending? It seems like it could go on forever.
A: I hope I don't have to explain to this group why tuition is going up faster than inflation; because the erosion of support is eroding faster than inflation. We have a double whammy. We've got erosion of state support and inflation to deal with. We've been very lucky that inflation has been relatively modest, but if you look at things like the higher education price index, our increases are pretty modest compared to those. We're really one of the great bargains in the western world. Now you and I can agree, sit here and nod our heads about that, but when you're turning to a kid who doesn't have the last $4,000 necessary to go to school here the next year, it doesn't matter how cheap the place is. Even if they can pay for it this year, they know it's going to go up next year; they're scared, etc. One of the daunting challenges we have is sticker shock discouragement. If you're a parent that doesn't understand the financing of higher education (that's about 98% of the population) and you're of relatively modest means, and read in the newspaper that when your 3 and 4 year olds go off to college, it's going to cost $200,000 a year, and you look down and count noses and multiply $200,000 by 3, where are you going to find $600,000? You've never seen $600,000 in one place in your life. It's not going to be possible for your kids. At ages 3 and 4, we suddenly find that we're pushing kids away from this experience in ways that are catastrophic to society. We have to figure out a way to engage that question. It's not our primary responsibility, but it's a huge responsibility for us. We have to do this collectively and individually in our neighborhoods. We have to do this systematically and institutionally across a broad spectrum, particularly focusing on that growing segment of the Kansas demographic that is coming from households in which no one has ever gone to college. We have to get those kids here. We have to start really early. Where is it all going to end? I have no idea. However, I can tell you it's going to continue to get more expensive. I don't see, in the near future, a sudden change in the priorities of the demands on the legislators such that they're going to return to the good old days of 50% support for a flagship institution like this; I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think they are the bad guys in all of this. We very often talk about it as if they were just stupid and dilatory and benighted etc. They have huge demands on them. Those demands, I'm sorry to say, have been placed on them by you and me. They're responding to the demands and society is sending a message that says we're not interested in investing at the same rate in higher education that we were before. Part of the reason is this transactional business that we've stumbled into as a collective profession. We talk to kids about how much more money they're going to make when they go to college. The legislature or the people voting for the legislature turn around and say well if that kid is going to make more than a million dollars more, as a result of going to college, let him pay for it. It's not an unreasonable response, but it's not a response that is in the best interest of society over the long term. That's what we've got to talk about. We've got to talk about the social impact of these institutions--about the fact that we transform whole societies. If we can't figure that out, we're going to let ourselves down.
Q: Unable to transcribe the question/not able to hear the attendee's question.
A: I'll come back to IT/infrastructure in a minute. We have a deferred maintenance bill here that 18 months ago was $168 million dollars, now it's probably $180 million, or closer to $200 million all in all. That's a daunting number. We tend, when we talk about this, to find the room where the ceiling is collapsed onto a lab bench or the stairs that have crumbled beyond the point where anyone can walk on them. Those are great images. Buried in the numbers is a sort of accommodated inconvenience that diminishes people's effectiveness and productivity. It can be worked around, and may be completely invisible to anyone except the people who have to work around the problem. We just have to live with it because we don't have the money to fix it. There comes a point where those hidden inconveniences are so debilitating in terms of the productivity of individuals that you get a new factor added onto it. If we were to look at the impact of that $200 million on the entire enterprise, my guess is you could probably easily add 10% to the cost. I'm not talking now just about the concrete and the wood to repair things, but the $20 million that we lose in the enterprise, because in your 8 hour day, you're spending 40 minutes coping with this inconvenience. You see what I'm saying? And that is a conversation that you and I will never be able to have, because nobody understands that. I'm convinced that assiduous attention to this, which is required over a long period of time, pays huge dividends that you don't even know about. But, I will also say that I have never worked at an institution that's figured this out. When I told my colleagues at the University of Texas that there was a $168 million deferred maintenance bill here nobody believed it, because Texas hasn't had a $168 million deferred maintenance bill since the Alamo. It's been at least twice that forever. We're not in as bad shape as some other institutions, but we do have some serious challenges. I'm hoping, by the way, that this legislative section will see some relief on that very point. This is a really good time for us, as the legislature has a budgetary surplus. Deferred maintenance expenditures are one-time expenditures and will not take up a chunk of the budget. You have some extra money that you might not have next year; this is a great way to invest it for the future, for the state. We'll see lots of people who are making similar arguments for other purposes and other rooms throughout the state. I think this is something we're going to really work hard on this time.
Now, IT infrastructure: My view is that KU has been on bread and water on the IT side for a very long time. I understand why, I might have had a bread and water budget myself under the circumstances; but, IT is probably the clearest example where some costs shouldn't be thought of as some costs, but rather investments. The enhancement of productivity is just amazing. I have seen this in my professional career time and time again. The problem with this is that you don't realize it until 5 years after you have made the expenditure. You look back and you are dazzled by the amount of work that's being done in this or that segment of the enterprise by the same head count that you had 7 or 8 years ago. Had you gone back 7 or 8 years, and said "here is what we want these people to be able to do on a daily basis, this is the work flow that we want, these are the cases that are to be addressed, and these are the sets of data that we want produced everyday", you would have said "It cannot be done by this number of people. We have to have two times the number of people we have in this office". But suddenly, five years later you realize that you're doing all of those things, and you have not added to the head count. It's because of what information technology can do for us. But it has to be thought of as an investment and not an absolute cost.
Q: KU traditionally has attracted about a third of our students from out of state. About a third of our students come from out of state and it seems like in the past few years with rising costs of out of state tuition, those numbers/that percentage has dropped a little bit. Do you see that as an issue or a trend that you want to turn around, or focus on?
A: Has it dropped? Are you sure? (incoming freshmen numbers, yes) This year? (the past two years) What's the trend (just slight decreases), more than normal fluctuation? (yes)
Ok. I didn't know that. I was told 70/30 split is pretty much constant. It has been for years. I think this goes to some of the issues that we were talking about earlier, about the depiction of the university. I also think that we need to look hard at the wisdom of having a single legislatively determined admission standard for all public higher education institutions, regardless of their mission. I don't think it makes sense that the admissions standards of a sprawling, muscular, research one institution, with a national and international agenda, should necessarily be the same as Ft. Hays, or Emporia, or Pitt State, which have a very different and equally valuable set of missions, but are not the same as KU. I think to have a single set of admission criteria for all of those institutions is not helpful to those institutions, and is a fundamental misunderstanding of the advantage of having a variety of institutions like that in the state of Kansas. I'm pretty convinced, after talking to some of Lisa's (Lisa Pinamonti-Kress, Director of Admissions and Scholarships) colleagues, and from my own experience with my daughter and her friends, that if KU were to simply have it's own admissions criteria that are more in line with who we are and what we do here, it would enhance our attractiveness both within the state of Kansas and outside of Kansas. I'm enthusiastically in favor of as many out of state students as we can attract. My sense of the entering freshman class is that you want the richest possible mixture of people; diversity, but not diversity as a code word for ethnicity--diversity in terms of socio-economic background, life experience, geography, etc. That means not everyone can be from suburban Kansas City.
Well I'm going to take your silence here, and John's movement, as clear evidence that I have explained everything so thoroughly and completely. Thank you very much for your time, I really appreciate it.
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