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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Spring 2005 : Keeping the Academic Torch Burning

Keeping the academic torch burning: Saving public higher education

“There is an ancient, enduring discipline that provides [the] indispensable, rigorous training [from which all great enterprises grow]—the liberal arts. It is the core, heart and soul, blood and sinew of a great university. It has been the backbone of universities in unbroken succession through the more than 700 years since the founding of the first university in Bologna. It is the backbone of the University of Minnesota. If the liberal arts are starved and wither, so, too, inevitably, our civilization will wither. [We] cannot allow this to happen. Disturbing signs have appeared that our citizens and political leaders do not understand the critical importance of this issue.” —Tom Keller, attorney and President's Club member, CLA Scholarship Dinner

As CLA celebrates its 135th year, I am reminded once again of how fortunate I am to have led the college during a time of growth and renewal. Day after day, I’ve experienced the joy of working toward shared goals in partnership with faculty and staff, students, alumni, and friends of the college, always in a spirit of celebration. I am sometimes amazed by what we have accomplished together in just eight years. I also know how fragile the gains can be, and how hard we must fight to preserve them and keep moving forward. And I know that we can recover from setbacks—if we believe in the fight and give it our all. That, in a nutshell, is the lesson of CLA's history.

The challenge of changing times

Since its beginnings in 1869, CLA has faced many tough challenges. Through its many cycles of transformation and renewal, our college—in the true liberal arts spirit—has taken on those challenges with an uncommonly nimble creative intelligence. Yet the increasingly unfriendly environment for public higher education in this country is taking a toll.

We all pay a price when fiscal policies at the state and federal level erode support for public higher education. Students, of course, bear the brunt of tuition increases, one of the very unpleasant side effects of the diet pills prescribed by cost-cutting public officials. But soaring tuition doesn't just hurt students. It exacts an enormous and unacceptable social cost.

One of the critical needs of a healthy and vibrant society is an educated populace to do the creative work that will keep our nation economically and culturally vital. No society can afford to slam educational doors in students’ faces simply because they cannot afford tuition. Aside from the wasted potential, there's a larger issue at stake. A fundamental principle of a free and open society is that class and income boundaries are permeable. And the on-ramp to mass-transit upward mobility in such a society is public education.

Erosion of access is bad for the University, and bad for Minnesota. Access means opportunity. It's the public in public higher education. It taps into human potential at every level of society, allowing talent to be nurtured and developed in a fashion that will contribute to the betterment of our society in all spheres of activity. In the end, providing access not only is the right thing to do, but also is the best way to keep our communities and workplaces vital and our state economically and culturally healthy.

Shifting cultural values

The challenges we face are not just fiscal—they are cultural. Our state 's oncerobust and unshakable commitment to advancing the public interest is fast losing ground to an ideology of self reliance that privileges private gain over the public good, and self interest over public responsibility. The alarming decline in public-spiritedness and community- mindedness has meant a devaluing of all things public, including our public research universities.

For many decades, one of the deeply held values of Minnesota's body politic was that public education mattered. By common consent, Minnesotans would support their University with their tax dollars, and in turn, the University would educate Minnesota's sons and daughters; deliver knowledge, know-how, and innovative solutions to industries and communities; import talent to the state; seed important new enterprises that fuel the economy; and elevate the standard of living for all Minnesotans.

State funding for Minnesota's public research university was all but taken for granted, and so were pride in the University's stature and belief in its centrality to Minnesota's quality of life. Minnesota was widely acknowledged to be the “education state.”

Investing in the public good

Today, there is growing skepticism about the value of public education as a public good worthy of public investment. A college education is increasingly considered a private good that benefits primarily, if not solely, the individual receiving the degree. Such thinking is misguided and shortsighted. It erodes the very foundations of the social and cultural space we share as “we the people.”

In pursuit of the American dream

To be sure, a university education can be and most often is a ticket to the good life. It enhances individuals’ earning power and opens doors to satisfying and lucrative careers and upscale lifestyles. It produces citizens whose entrepreneurial activities yield a high standard of living and help drive the economy. On average, college graduates far out-earn and out-spend people without college degrees.

But economic gain is by no means the be-all and endall of a college education.

The phrase “American dream” may conjure six-figure incomes and five-bedroom houses with three-car garages. But I don't think the dream our forebears from other lands fought for and encoded in our Constitution and system of laws was ever simply about the private pursuit of happiness and material possessions. And I don't think any soldier or any great leader ever put everything on the line so we could all drive 80 miles per hour in $40,000 cars and qualify for platinum credit cards with $100,000 limits.

Fully realized, the American dream is about something far greater than affluence. It's a dream of a society of opportunity and access. It's a dream of a society valued for its freedom of thought and expression, for its openness to new cultures and new ways of thinking, for its civility and humanity, for its commitment to a better life for all.

It's a dream of a society where people aren't afraid to question their values; where learning is cherished and teachers are revered; where a quality education is as accessible to low-income residents of housing projects as it is to the sons and daughters of the wealthy; and where ideas are freely exchanged in a marketplace whose measure of worth is what's good for the commonweal.

It's a society whose universities are widely acknowledged to contribute to the collective good—to the nation's moral character, to its spiritual and intellectual as well as its economic prosperity.

It's a dream of a society whose values are democratic in the truest and very best sense.

The state of the college at 135

Fortunately, there is good news on the CLA front. The features and “Vital Signs” in this issue testify to the vitality of a college whose forward momentum seems unstoppable even in the face of powerful countercurrents.

In celebrating our anniversary, we mark 135 years of monumental achievement; 135 years of transformative contributions to our state; and 135 years of educating graduates who have led Minnesota and our nation—some 110,000 now living around the world.

That's why we say that CLA has been creating the future for 135 years.

CLA remains strong in part because of the growing support of our community partners and our ever-widening circle of alumni and friends, who have stepped up again and again with their generous gifts, their advocacy, and their counsel. Their support—your support—has helped sustain the gathering momentum of forces set in motion over nearly 14 decades by faculty who have passed the academic torch from generation to generation. That torch continues to light the way for future generations of faculty, students, and Minnesotans.

Continuing the momentum

If you believe as I do that CLA and the University of Minnesota are among our state 's greatest assets, and that a strong Minnesota depends on a strong University, please spread the word. Tell your legislators how important it is to support this great center of learning, Minnesota's only public research university and a prime mover of Minnesota's quality of life.

And send a message to your friends, your neighbors, and your coworkers: The University of Minnesota must continue to be a magnet for talent. As the University goes, so goes the state.

I am confident that, with all of us working together, we will continue our forward momentum and continue the legacy for at least another 135 years.

Steven J. Rosenstone
CLA Dean and McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair