A Call to Action
Higher education is at a crossroads. So is the University of Minnesota.
We are presented with unprecedented challenges – and unprecedented opportunities.
We must act, and act urgently, to renew and transform this great university.
We must confront our challenges and opportunities with boldness, creativity,
and determination. Our goal is no less than to transform the University
of Minnesota into one of the three best public research universities in the
world.
The goal we announce applies an equivalent standard of excellence to all our campuses, each of which has its own unique mission and strong signature and reputation. An equivalent standard of excellence applies also to our network of statewide research centers and Extension Service offices, the legacy of our land grant tradition. The more specific paths mapped out by the University’s coordinate campuses are included later in this document.
To best serve the state of Minnesota – and the world – the University must excel at all we do. To be the best, we must attract the brightest faculty, staff, and students in the face of fierce competition from other major research universities. This competition for talent, combined with our new fiscal constraints, compels us to act and to manage change strategically. To simply continue with the status quo would be to weaken seriously the University and the state. “The time for bold leadership, for hard choices, for reform, for innovation, and for long-term investments is now.”1 If we are serious in our quest, “extraordinary resolve will be required on the part of the Regents, the administration, and the University community to accelerate the difficult choices needed to align standards and resources with competitive excellence.”2
We live today in a global, multicultural, highly competitive society and marketplace. We are judged by world-class standards. Unless the University meets and exceeds these standards we risk losing our leadership role as one of the leading public research universities. This would impair severely our ability to fulfill our vision to advance the public good and to improve the human condition through the advancement of knowledge.
How can the University of Minnesota become one of the preeminent public research universities in the world? First, we must be committed to building excellence through a coherent vision. Each of our decisions should be consistent with our framework of analysis. We constantly need to ask: Are we significantly advancing academic quality and building excellence at each opportunity? Are we aligning our resources and budgets with our academic priorities?
Second, our current financial environment requires us to exercise fiscal discipline as part of our stewardship. This does not mean cutting “fat” from the budget – we already have done that, as acknowledged in an audit by Deloitte Touche: “The university has really tightened itself up. It is an excellent example of an organization that is very focused and very efficient. I’d call it a model of fiscal responsibility.”3 What fiscal stewardship requires at this point is looking at ourselves, our core, and our budget in a different way. The breadth and scope of the University of Minnesota is a strength that permits us to integrate knowledge through teaching and research across a broad spectrum of subject matter – but it can hinder us if we pursue too many options. The consequence is a dilution in quality. We must focus our resources in strategic ways.
Our values and our academic priorities inform our decisions and transcend our circumstances. We prize groundbreaking research, scholarship and creative work, and we cherish the advancement of knowledge through the interplay of research and teaching. By doing so, we provide an education that is transformative for students and faculty, and that prepares students to make a difference in the lives of people. The University is deeply committed to a diverse university community – including the diversity of ideas. We have an obligation as a great public land grant university to share our groundbreaking research, our knowledge and wisdom, and our creative work with others. A university that is publicly engaged is more accessible to the public, more responsive to public needs, and more closely connected to the communities and partnerships in which it participates. Through education and public service, we prepare thoughtful and responsible citizens prepared to play a leadership role in a diverse democratic society and an advancing civilization.
To become recognized as one of the top three public research universities will require bold choices, new investments, and inspirational leadership at all levels of the university. Our strategies must include: recruiting and retaining talented, qualified, and curious students from diverse racial, ethnic, economic, and social backgrounds; recruiting and retaining innovative, energetic faculty and staff; recognizing the international dimension of all our educational programs; promoting an effective organizational culture that enables us to reach and maintain our goal; exercising responsible stewardship by setting priorities and enhancing and effectively utilizing our resources and infrastructure; and vigorously pursuing more collaborative and cross-college interdisciplinary research and teaching.
To achieve our goal, we will need to work together, creating, exchanging and testing ideas and practices. We will need to be innovative, creative and responsive at all levels of the University, across each of our campuses and throughout the state. We will need to develop objective benchmarks to regularly measure and monitor our progress toward our aspirational goal. We will need to be fair and consistent in our decisions. We will need to communicate clearly these decisions to the entire University community.
This is a time for all members of the University community to reach together with determination, pride, and courage toward our common goal. There are exciting times ahead for us as we transform the University of Minnesota and take it to a new level of excellence in the 21stst century.
1 The Citizens League, Trouble on the Horizon: Growing Demands and Competition, Limited Resources, & Changing Demographics in Higher Education (November 2004), p. 5, available at http://citizensleague.net/highereducation/html/Final%20final.11%2005.pdf .
2 Commission on University of Minnesota Excellence, Report to the Minnesota State Legislature, (September 2002), p. 14.
3 “A Tighter Belt; Inefficient ‘U’? Don’t Believe It,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune (November 23, 2004) (quoting Cliff Hoffman, partner, Deloitte & Touche). Mr. Hoffman further explained during an oral presentation to the Board of Regent’s Audit Committee on November 11, 2004: “What the financial statements show, both on a cash basis of accounting and an accrual basis of accounting, and frankly I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in 30 years, when people announce a freeze usually there’s still a cost creep upwards – here it was an actual decrease in expenditures of $20 million. You just don’t see that in the world I live in.” |
|
