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Educators discuss relationships with legislature
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by Tom Schalmo
Friday, October 27, 2006
Higher education experts gathered at the Pyle Center Thursday to lay out alternatives for the responsibilities of and relationships between state legislatures and public universities.
Representatives from various universities across the country gathered to trade ideas on how relationships between the two groups could work successfully.
Lara Couturier, a higher education consultant at Brown University, spoke about an "experiment" being conducted by the state of Virginia. The state government is granting three universities — the University of Virgina, Virginia Tech and the College of William and Mary — more independence in exchange for higher expectation levels.
"Accountability in exchange for autonomy — that seems to be the core discussion," Couturier said. "Universities want tuition setting authority; that's the bottom line."
Right now, most universities already have control of tuition, but most states step in and try to have a hand in the matter. Couturier said attempts for greater independence from states is a "reassertion" of something colleges already have. In exchange, the states are expecting more from their universities.
When former Virgina Gov. Mark Warner was in office, Couturier said, he made a renewed commitment to higher education and was able to launch talks between both Republicans and Democrats.
Joining in on the discussion was former University of Wisconsin System President Katharine Lyall, who stressed the need for "our friends at the other end of State Street" need to sit down with UW officials to discuss priorities.
"I hope we'll get some new leadership [from both parties] that'll be able to come to the table and discuss these things," Lyall said.
Lyall added that the relationship between UW and state government is a "scratchy" one, saying the state's budget structure is outdated.
"Virginia was able to get all parties to the table," Lyall said. "We have not been able to do that in Wisconsin."
And Couturier said that times have changed, and that the relationship between states and public universities should reflect that.
"Higher education operates in a different way than it did even 15 or 20 years ago," she said, adding the state-university relationship today is a "complicated story."
In addition, Couturier attributed the nationwide conversations regarding change to the increasing competitiveness between universities, the rising use of merit-based financial aid and the additional providers of college education, like the Internet.
Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, which hosted the event, introduced the speakers Thursday, acknowledging the steady increase in discussions nationwide regarding higher-education policies.
Created five years ago, WISCAPE aims to study the higher education challenges using university leaders, researchers and policymakers as resources.
"There's a need for reliable outcome measures," Radomski said. "It's necessary to examine how to be successfully educating students."
