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- July 7th, 2008
- Posted in Fargo ND News
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By: Norwegian Explorer
North Dakota Higher Education Dismal Shape…
From a good vantage point, I can tell you with authority that higher education in North Dakota is in dismal shape. Never mind what you hear on the news, unless you know what to listen for. Most of the “news” comes out of the southeast corner of Old Main on the NDSU campus, that is to say, Joseph Chapman’s office. There was one other piece on the news tonight that didn’t emanate from there, but rather, I think, the NEA or some such organization. It concluded that the only North Dakota institution it studied, Valley City State, did not adequately prepare it’s education graduates in mathematics. There were other local institutions mentioned as well, but Valley City was the only North Dakota institution. More about the significance of this later.
The fact is that the whole system is desperately underfunded. NDSU, supposedly an up and coming research institution, virtually doesn’t have a library. A few years ago, the students tried to fund part of the library themselves. That’s how dismal the situation is. Wonder what happened to their money?
Now, make no mistake about it: the best Universities are research institutions, as are certainly those that grant doctorates. One thing the best research institutions don’t all have is athletic teams, eg: the University of Chicago, where nuclear fission was first achieved and Carnegie-Mellon.
So, how did this situation arise? I think part of it is that NDSU and UND have high profile exorbitantly funded athletic programs. Now to set the record about that: 1) according to ESPN, no institution of higher learning has athletics in its mission statement: 2) Regardless of what Steve Halstrom says, the majority of the faculty at NDSU are against division one athletics because it detracts attention from the rest of the university. Chemistry money, does not go to athletics, as he has said. 3) Money given to and earned by the athletic program stays in the athletic program.
The reason I think this important is that the athletic programs at the two “flagship” institutions give the appearance that these institutions are adequately, even well funded, and they’re not.
For several decades, NDSU, and certainly UND which in many ways is in worse shape has had a difficult time retaining faculty. The reason is simple: salaries. The senior researchers at NDSU make about half what they would at a comparable institution. Not ten or twenty per cent less as many would have us believe, but half. And the argument that the cost of living justifies this is rot. The F-M area is about average nationally in cost of living. Sure, it’s cheaper and safer to live here than in Minneapolis, Chicago or New York, but not Champagne-Urbana, Clemson, SC or Raleigh NC. It’s easy to hire a fresh PhD just out of graduate school: Fargo’s nice, the campus is pretty, the students well behaved, and research is encouraged. So most new faculty spend a few years getting their research program up and running, maybe are awarded tenure, finally take their heads out of their notebooks and look around and realize “hey, there’s no future here” and off they go.
So how do we fix this situation, or do we want to? I think that the core there is a fundamental lack of understanding in North Dakota of what Higher Education is and it’s value to the state and community. But that’s a subject for another essay. For the moment, let’s talk about how we waste what little we put in to the system.
Notice that we’ve been talking about two major universities. Note that such un-enlightened states as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio make do with one. We also have nine smaller institutions. A few years ago the population of North Dakota voted to keep all nine of them. I remember one of the principals in favor of this waste holding forth publicly on how “good” these schools are. Please see the beginning paragraphs of this essay. It is also true that graduates of these other institutions are unable to perform graduate work at NDSU, anyway.
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I find the response by InnerJoe to my ESSAY on North Dakota Higher Education amusing and inaccurate. Evidently he didn’t do more than glance at the essay and decide to pop off about athletics.
First, I find it interesting and amusing that he called me a Fargo Phantom crack pot. I do not work for the Phantom; I’m just and infrequent contributor. As far as being a “crack pot,” I have 45 years experience in higher education, all at research Universities, most as a faculty member, some as an administrator, some as a member of the NDSU University Senate, some at some of the worlds most prestigious institutions. Wonder what I’d have to do not to be considered a crack pot by InnerJoe.
Now, about the content of his remarks. Nowhere in my essay did I say or imply that funds that should go to education are going to athletics. What I did say is that that the exorbitantly funded athletic programs gives the APPEARANCE that NDSU and UND are adequately funded. Since that is the perception, why would the electorate want to change the system? Apparently InnerJoe did not read the part where I said that Steve Halstrom was in error in thinking that education money goes to athletics. JoeJoe’s right in that athletics funds athletics, but I think I implied that too. In fact, the move to division one by NDSU couldn’t have been otherwise: since the expense was borne by donations and therefore not appropriated funds, President Chapman told the University Senate that it was none of their business. Most members of the Senate were, I believe, against the move.
InnerJoe is also confused about how Universities such as NDSU are funded. He would have us believe that the funding is generated by state appropriations and tuition. He neglects entirely the considerable funds generated by research grants and contracts as well as private donations.
I wonder if InnerJoe even read the rest of my essay. It described the the evidently excess number of institutions of Higher Learning in North Dakota, implying that this a waste of the funds we do have. And we have some very recent evidence that these other institutions are not really as good as we have been told they are. That VCSU would try to refute the documentation is hardly a surprise.
I have one tangential comment for InnerJoe: it is bad journalistic and rhetorical form to argue ad-hominim: you’re not going to accomplish anything that way except turn off some that might agree with you a la Rush Limbaugh( to argue ad-hominim means essentially name-calling). It is also considered bad form to give someone a position they don’t have in order to attack it. Nowhere does ayone say my contribution is an article: I call it an essay.
No one that I’m aware of except InnerJoe has referred to me as an expert. I did say I could speak with some authority on this issue, and indeed I can. But this does not in my view an expert. Note that Inner JoeJoe made disparaging comments about each term, which are completely his and not mine nor Fargo Phantom’s.