UND must grow its enrollment
Today's Grand Forks Herald editorial, posted to enable feedback and comments.
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Enrollment isn't the only measure of UND. But it's a measure, and the downward trends at the university must be reversed.
Why? Because North Dakota State University's enrollment has passed or is very likely to pass UND's?
No. Bragging rights aren't the issue here. Programming is the issue: UND has the buildings and faculty to accommodate more students. But the numbers keep going down instead of up, and the lost revenue from three years of enrollment declines may take its toll on UND's next annual budget, to quote Herald staff writer Joseph Marks' Dec. 15 story ( Enrollment drop may lead to belt tightening, Page 1A).
That - not NDSU's growth - is the really troubling news.
UND should gear up to make sure the decline is reversed.
Colleges and universities are funny things: not businesses, not charities, not hospitals. . . . So, traditional measures of organizational health don't always apply.
Consider enrollment - specifically, growing enrollment. Businesses always want more customers, so colleges always want more students. Right?
Wrong. Harvard University and other selective schools could triple their enrollments, but they choose not to. Instead, they keep enrollments stable at what they consider to be an optimum size, and grow their endowments instead.
Harvard now has so much money per student that undergraduates whose families make less than $60,000 a year can attend almost for free.
In fact, there are colleges that have grown too fast, some higher-education analysts say. When enrollment growth outruns revenue and endowment growth, students can wind up in crowded and shabby facilities - and that school's reputation will suffer over time.
In UND's case, the university could accommodate up to about 15,000 students, including 12,500 on campus and 2,500 through distance learning, administrators have said in the past.
One of President Charles Kupchella's early goals was to have 14,000 students enrolled by 2005. That always seemed about right: Enough to take full advantage of the campus and its facilities, but not so much that classrooms would feel jammed.
If enrollment had reached 14,000 and stabilized, UND then could have chosen either to build more buildings and grow even more, or hold firm on the numbers and pull in more dollars per student. Those are the choices a university likes to make.
But enrollment never reached 14,000. Instead, it hit about 13,200; and rather than steadying out at that point, it started to slip. The first-day spring enrollment now stands at 11,141, a 1.4 percent drop compared to this time last year.
UND officials are keenly aware of these trends and are working hard to reverse them. That work should continue and be made an even higher priority, if possible. Enrollments do fluctuate and occasional dips must be expected. But when those dips reach the point that administrators start fretting about cutbacks, then the time for explanations has passed and the time for strong action has come.
The finalists to be UND's next president will be visiting campus this month; the first - Robert Kelley, dean of health sciences at the University of Wyoming - makes his first public appearances today.
The need to grow UND's enrollment should be a core topic of the interviews as the search committee continues its work.
Posted by: tdennis on 1/11/2008 at 8:31 AM | Comments (9) | Permalink
On the nickname and 'diminishing returns'
A little bit of economics may help clarify UND's nickname debate.
As a person who has read virtually every letter to the editor sent to the Herald in the past 10 years, I'm struck by how the same arguments surface again and again. You know them, too: Nickname supporters will bring up the Fighting Irish, the Minnesota Vikings (honoring Minnesota's Scandinavian heritage), the fact that tribal schools often call their own teams "Braves," "Warriors" or other tribal names.
Nickname opponents will say the "Fighting Sioux" nickname perpetuates a negative stereotype, the Fighting Irish/Vikings comparisons aren't valid because the Irish and Scandinavian experience in America differs so much from that of American Indians, and that tribes have a right to use Indian nicknames in a way that majority white institutions do not.
Each side makes a number of other claims, too; and like I said, almost every letter on the subject simply offers some variation on that standard lineup of arguments.
Why?
Because the arguments fail to convince -- or at least, they fail to convince people on the other side. Nickname supporters keep bringing up the Fighting Irish because in their view, the argument is decisive. Nickname opponents keep countering by pointing out Indians' unique status and historic grievances. They feel those points are decisive, too.
Then the two sides repeat themselves, because they're talking past each other in ways that long ago devolved into "preaching to the choir."
Here's my observation: That's a change, at least in comparison with the great civil-rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. And the change seems to show the economic principle of diminishing returns.
When Americans learned of Rosa Parks' courage and saw city officials using police dogs and firehoses to break up civil-rights demonstrations, there basically was no argument. The injustice was so raw and open -- think "Colored Only" and "Whites Only" signs above water fountains -- that resistance essentially folded, and Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act and other landmark pieces of civil-rights legislation in pretty short order. Martin Luther King Jr.'s eloquence had a lot to do with neutralizing opposition to these measures.
Why did a supermajority of Americans accept King and others' arguments, but seem, on balance, to be so much more skeptical of the anti-tribal-nickname arguments of today?
Because times have changed, and examples of open and undeniable bigotry are much harder to find these days. Instead, a fair amount of civil-rights activism today involves pointing at less-immediately-objectionable markers of modern life and describing why they (the activists) take offense.
The "hurt" or offense no longer is obvious, in other words, as it was when King was jailed or Rosa Parks had to sit in the back of the bus. Instead, it's registered to some degree inside people's heads.
And pure argument can neither prove nor disprove what's happening inside someone's head.
That's why actual acts of racism (for nickname foes) and equal opportunity (for nickname supporters; think how many supporters point to UND's INMED and other programs to strengthen their case) are such precious "coins of the realm" in this debate, because these real-world examples are so valuable as persuasive tools. The nickname leads to name-calling, scrawled insults and other bigoted acts, opponents say. No it doesn't, at least not to any degree recorded by university police, supporters counter. And so on.
In my view, the civil-rights movement has to some extent been affected by the principle of diminishing returns. When oppression was obvious (and therefore, persuasive), civil-rights activism brought about great changes in policy and law. Then, as the civil-rights movement succeeded over time, the oppression it highlighted became less and less objectively clear and more and more subjective -- that is, more open to judgment and interpretation; more likely to be a case of a person or group pointing to something and saying, "I take offense."
But that very subjectivity makes the incidents less immediately persuasive in the court of public opinion, too.
And so, it takes activists ever-more time to bring about what can seem to be ever-more marginal advances in civil rights.
I don't doubt the sincerity of anti-nickname advocates for a moment. I don't doubt the offensethey take at or hurt they feel over the nickname, either. And, I think the state is right in this case to acknowledge the futility of arguing about whether someone should or shouldn't take offense by giving North Dakota's Sioux tribes the final say.
But I also think there's a fair chance that a majority of tribal members will turn out not to be offended at all. "Live by the sword, die by the sword," as the saying goes; people who dislike the nickname always said the decision should be the tribes', and now they've got their wish. Nickname friends and foes alike should be willing to live with that outcome.
Posted by: tdennis on 12/11/2007 at 12:15 PM | Comments (10) | Permalink
On the nickname: Taking 'yes' for an answer
The reaction to UND's settlement of its lawsuit with the NCAA has surprised me. Scratch that: I'm surprised by half of the reaction. Not the half represented by nickname supporters, though; I expected their resistance, because as they absolutely are right to perceive, the settlement meant the odds of UND keeping its Fighting Sioux nickname have suddenly dropped from "moderate" to "slim."
No, the reaction that has surprised me is that of nickname opponents, who can't seem to accept that for all intents and purposes, they've won. They got what they wanted -- namely, UND's agreement that the Sioux tribes of North Dakota get the final say.
Isn't that what nickname opponents have called for from the beginning? But in that case, how does one explain, say, Clay Jenkinson's reaction in his recent op-ed, where he called the settlement's terms "the worst possible outcome of this long, silly and tedious controversy"?
(Here's a link to the Bismarck Tribune's copy of Jenkinson's fine column, as the Herald's version already has been archived:
bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/11/04/news/columnists/jenkinson/142144.txt )
I admire and respect Jenkinson (who, by the way, was very gracious in giving the Herald permission to reprint his Tribune column), so I think it's worth trying to get at the heart of what he's saying. Again, why would he or any other nickname opponent consider a settlement that gives authority over the nickname to the tribes the "worst possible outcome"?
Here's my guess: Because the tribes might just say "yes." And if they do, then nickname opponents will be proven wrong in the core assertion they've made for the past 20 years: that there's something fundamentally racist and oppressive in a university's use of a tribal nickname.
After all, as the NCAA's own policy wisely admits, it's darned hard to find anti-Indian racism in a nickname that the sovereign and representative government of an Indian tribe openly accepts.
I believe the odds of that acceptance in the case of the UND Fighting Sioux are low. But they're not zero -- and that very fact, the fact that there's even a modest possibility that North Dakota's two Sioux tribes might agree to UND's nickname, already has exposed a weakness in the anti-nickname argument because it undercuts nickname foes' moral certainty.
The nickname is racist; and if you disagree, then you are either unenlightened or racist or both, one common line of anti-nickname argument runs. But while that argument is often enough to convince some non-Indians (and coerce others), it falls apart when a large number of American Indians themselves declare, "Hmm. We're sorry, but we don't see the racism here after all."
By making the nickname subject to a tribal council vote, the settlement has opened up exactly that possibility. Nickname opponents have been able to explain away other signs of majority support for or indifference to tribal nicknames among American Indians (such as Sports Illustrated's famous survey of a few years back).
But it's darned hard to square a tribal council's public and fully informed support for a tribal nickname with the claim that the nickname is immoral and racist, as opponents of the Florida Seminoles' nickname have learned.
No wonder the settlement is termed the worst possible outcome. It sets up the prospect of "cognitive dissonance," of nickname opponents being proven partially wrong and one of their core assertions turning out to be not a moral imperative after all, but simply an issue on which reasonable people can disagree.
Can't ... let ... that ... happen.
True, giving nickname-authority to the tribes does mean the tribes might be subjected to political give-and-take over the next few years. But I have to ask, so what? Aren't tribal leaders and members grownups who can handle lobbying and politicking perfectly well? Who is being condescending here: The settlement supporters who have given the tribal leaders final authority, or the nickname opponents who seem to think those leaders must be protected from vigorous debate?
After reading this, you may wonder whether I'm a nickname supporter, too. Here is my bias: I'm a settlement supporter. (That's probably not surprising, given that the settlement's terms first were outlined in a Herald editorial in 2006, as I'm very proud to note.)
I think the settlement is a reasonable way to resolve one of North Dakota's most divisive issues -- not to everyone's satisfaction, but to the satisfaction of most. It recognizes that former UND President Tom Clifford was right to say that tribal leaders are the ones who have the moral authority to make this call. By doing so, it recognizes and yields to nickname opponents' views.
At the same time, the settlement acknowledges nickname supporters' convictions by giving them one last chance to make their case. This time, though, they have to make it in the forum where it counts the most: the tribal councils of the Standing Rock and Spirit Lake tribes.
If the councils say yes, then yes. If the councils say no, then no. And now, for the first time ever, the state of North Dakota has officially declared it will agree.
That's the best -- not the worst -- possible outcome, it seems to me.
Posted by: tdennis on 11/21/2007 at 12:01 PM | Comments (6) | Permalink
More on salaries
Some great conversation is happening now on the question of salaries for UND and NDSU presidents.
The Herald's editorial today (http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=508075&=Opinion) says the state basically should go ahead and pay whatever it takes to attract top talent to the presidencies. By coincidence, the Forum and the Bismarck Tribune editorialized on the same topic today -- and not coincidentally, they concluded the same thing.
I say "not coincidentally" because it's no accident that our editorial boards reached the same conclusion on this matter. Did we consult with each other? We did not. But editorial boards are pretty good at finding the consensus or, I'd argue, common-sense view of what a public policy should be. We're neither far left nor far right; instead, we listen to each side's arguments and adopt the views that seem to make the most sense.
That's the niche newspaper editorials can fill on the marketplace of ideas, I think. We're the blue-dog Democrats or the moderate Republicans of the opinion world, the Congressman Collin Petersons of the online fray. I think that's a pretty good position to hold ...
But that's another blog entry. Today, I just want to respond to one or two comments that came in response to the Herald's story on the college presidents' salaries. For example:
"How is it that they always seem to come up with and justify HUGE raises for administrators? and the faculty and staff get 2-5% if they are lucky? I agree we need to pay our top administrators well to keep them, but when will it trickle down to the average wage earner?"
Great question, MH in Grand Forks (the comment is posted here: www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?page=comments&id=50775&start_row=11 )
And the answer is this: It will "trickle down" when the average wage earner stops working for our typically low North Dakota wages.
Right? Think about it: Why do N.D. school boards -- rural N.D. school boards, that is -- pay teachers such paltry wages? The answer, of course, is "Because they can." The teachers will work for those wages, apparently. So why should the districts pay more? Out of the goodness of their heart? Sorry, but that's not very likely.
Why are UND faculty members comparatively low paid? Again, the answer is "Because they work for those wages." Put yourself in the shoes of, say, a college president -- or for that matter, any employer. Let's assume that your turnover among employees is reasonable and that the modest wages you're paying still manage to draw lots of applicants for available positions.
Why would you unilaterally raise pay?
In order for employers to feel pressure to raise salaries, something in the above equation has to change. Either turnover has to go up or too few applications for new hires have to come in, or both. That's exactly what's happening in some fields in North Dakota, thanks to our state's labor shortage. And as those forces play themselves out, wages are very likely to rise.
There are a few things workers can do to improve their odds, and the most common is to join a union. Usually, unions ramp up the pressure on employers by collectively refusing to work for "those wages," thereby forcing employers to pay more. There are some exceptions such as North Dakota's teachers unions, which can't strike -- but can and , I suspect, do vote as something of a bloc in local school-board elections. But most of the time, unions simply strengthen an individual's bargaining power in the marketplace, for better or (in the Big Three automakers' case) for worse.
The other thing a worker can do is become a superstar. That means choosing a livelihood and a career that'll bring in the big bucks. You want to earn a rock star's wages? So go become a rock star -- a successful one, mind you. Too few openings in that field? Well then, more realistically, become a surgeon. The barrier-to-entry in medicine -- the need to attend a licensed medical school -- helps keeps wages in that field very high. That money's waiting for you if you can get yourself the all-important M.D. degree.
UND and NDSU's college presidents now command superstar wages, too, because the requirements for those jobs have dramatically changed. An effective president today has to raise money, generate growth (despite N.D.'s dwindling pool of students), keep the tenured faculty happy and field winning athletic teams, to name just a few requirements. Think that would be easy? I don't. I think it would be an incredible challenge -- and in today's marketplace, the ability to successfully handle great leadership and management challenges commands top dollar. That's just the way it is.
Back in the Coast Guard, we used to have a saying: "You pick your rate, you pick your fate." Your "rate" was your job specialty. So, if you chose to be, say, a mechanic, then you had no right to complain when you found yourself working on greasy machinery all the time.
But the saying captures a truth about civilian life in the United States, too. If you don't like the money you're making, remember something: This is America. You can find another job, move to a higher-paying city, go back to school for a more valuable degree, lobby your employer for a raise or do all kinds of other things. That includes whining about the injustice of a world that generates "haves" and "have nots"; but in my view, one of those other tactics would be a lot more effective.
After all, you pick your rate ...
Posted by: tdennis on 9/19/2007 at 11:28 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink
Passports and the Real ID
A reader e-mailed me today to scold the Herald for a couple of things, one of them being the editorial board's support for using a secure driver's license rather than a passport as a border-crossing document. (Today's editorial, which talks about the "border card," is here:
www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=49875§ion=Opinion )
Here's what I wrote back in response to that complaint. What do other people think about passports at the border vs. the "Real ID"?
"As for the border card, this is a case where the principle of 'diminishing returns' applies. You suggested it yourself in your note when you said, if it'll catch 'one terrorist,' it's worth it.
"But is it? Specifically, is it really worth it to demand passports and subject the nation to huge extra expense, massive inconvenience and a wholesale disruption of trade patterns with our biggest trading partner, when the Real ID driver's license will offer almost the same security at dramatically lower cost?
"Put another way, is the minimal extra security that passports would provide worth the massive extra expense?
"Before you answer 'Of course it's worth it,' remember that American society routinely makes reasonable cost vs. safety trade offs. Why isn't the nationwide speed limit 20 mph? Because while that would save tens of thousands of lives, it would cost too much in terms of Americans' time and money. So: Why not force all travelers to carry passports when going to Canada? Because the Real ID driver's license can deliver almost as much security for us at a fraction of the expense. That's why.
"The Real ID, remember, is a 'smart' driver's license that'll be hard to get and hard to forge. And, it's 'coming soon to a wallet near you,' as I wrote in the editorial, because Congress mandated it and President Bush signed the bill."
Posted by: tdennis on 9/11/2007 at 11:56 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink