BusinessTN

Colleges and universities comprise one of Tennessee’s most important economic sectors. There’s little question that higher education plays a significant role in the state’s economy, whether it be through direct expenditures, workplace preparedness or enhancing the state’s overall appeal to current and new business and industry. BTN recently interviewed some of the key players in the state’s higher education arena to discuss issues pertinent to business in Tennessee. The following is a composite transcript of those discussions.

• Dr. Rebecca Hawkins
President
Columbia State Community College

• Dr. Shirley Raines
President
University of Memphis

• Dr. Richard Rhoda
Executive Director
Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC)

• Dr. Sidney McPhee
President
Middle Tennesee State University

• Dr. John Petersen
President
University of Tennessee

Governance of the higher education system in Tennessee falls to the Tennessee Board of Regents, the UT Board of Trust, and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, which exists in part to process the message of other two systems into one voice. Many in the state’s business community would like to see the current organizational structure of higher education in Tennessee re-evaluated. Is oversight of higher education in Tennessee flawed leading to duplication and inefficiency? And if so, what can be done about it?

Petersen: That’s one of the reasons you have a higher education commission. Because the commission is pretty much charged with how do you maintain that. Creep of mission—that’s really in most states where the issues come about. You find sometimes that institutions have a tendency to not really define themselves the way in which they originally intended. So not everybody should be offering doctoral degrees. There are different roles for various aspects, and it is based upon the needs of the state, and also the missions of the various institutions. We do that within our organization, too. Off the Knoxville campus, the programs we have are fairly specific and fairly limited in scope and try to address needs that are appropriate for what it is we’re trying to do. That’s the approach all of higher education really should take in terms of what it does.

McPhee: There’s no question that the economic health, social well-being, and cultural well-being of a state is directly connected to the quality of education and the quality of its citizens in terms of educational attainment levels. So taking a look at the effectiveness of how we deliver educational services to the citizenry is an important part of being governor. He’s done a great job of focusing on pre-K through 12 and now is getting focused on higher education. I will say, however, that based on my experience working in three states—Oklahoma, Kentucky and Tennessee—that if you look at the systems in those states and others where every university has its own board of trustees, that it helps when you only have two working with THEC to minimize the issue of duplication.

Rhoda: You reorganize higher education structures to accomplish an objective, not just for the sake of reorganization. If there are areas of higher Ed that can be improved then we definitely need to pursue it and it definitely needs to be under review. But the last time we had a blue ribbon commission which was in the Sundquist administration, to look at access, accountability, excellence, programming and funding and determine if the current governing structure was a positive or negative, in the final analysis the existing structure was re-affirmed. There is talk of fine-tuning it, but no major reorganization. Having said that, it could be streamlined. There are two governing bodies and a coordinating body. There are other states that have a super board. But what works in one state doesn’t necessarily work in another. There’s no preferred model.

Hawkins: We did a good deal of scaling back at the time of the [blue ribbon commission.] There were duplicative programs that were eliminated. But that didn’t look at the overall structure of Tennessee higher education. And the governor is probably right. I think periodically that a look at structure needs to be taken to see what can be gained.

Raines: There are many different models of governance across lots of different states. We are a small state in terms of population with a lot of governance of higher education that includes UT, TBR and THEC. However, let me make very clear the major issue for all of us is to provide more educational opportunities, not less. If there were stricter, tighter controls there would be less of this program and less of that program. The reality is that Tennessee is behind the rest of the nation in opportunities. So as much programming as we can provide in an efficient way is crucial. Yes, we have two medical schools but they serve two very different ends of the state. So there’s duplication but there is also the need for great opportunity.

Would it even be possible to start fresh?

Rhoda: The structure that’s in place here and other places are structures that have evolved over time. It’s not a matter of starting all over, or starting new. You have to deal with the dynamics that are in place. And here you have two governing boards that are very entrenched and govern their institutions differently. The Board of Regents is an incredibly vast, decentralized body. The UT Board of Trustees is smaller and more decentralized. And there are a lot of behaviors that are built in to that.

Hawkins: I would say this—if we were going to take a look organizationally at higher Ed in Tennessee it couldn’t occur at a better time than during Gov. Bredesen’s second term. That would be a good time to get that study done. He doesn’t have to be elected again. He won’t fall on his sword over this. And I experienced that in the state of Maryland with the governor there who did it in his second term. And it worked out just fine. In that case, there were some flaws and some need for reorganization. To this day they are still some 12 years later under that organizational plan.

Dr. Raines, isn’t the University of Memphis looking to become independent of the TBR system? Is that a decision based on problems with the organizational structure and governance of higher Ed in Tennessee?

Raines: Finding governance structures that help us share our strengths are important, number one. And number two; finding governance that allows us to involve our local communities is very important. At the University of Memphis, I have a Board of Visitors. They have no governance authority, but they do have advisory authority to me—I ask for their advice. And they are some of the great members of our community. It comes down to three questions. Does the governance of the universities allow those of us who have some common interests and needs to work together to help Tennessee reach its goals. Two, are we providing enough educational opportunities that are closely matched to the opportunities that exist in society. And three, do we have governance structures that allow more involvement from the communities that support each individual college, because less and less support is coming from the state. So, therefore, we are counting on local support from private donors. Those are the issues I have to answer. There are lots of ways to have governance. We want, at least I would like at the University of Memphis, one that allows for a good deal of community involvement. The reason for the local board is to have more involvement with the university. It is the funding issue. It is not so much dissatisfaction with TBR as it is getting more involvement at the local level.

During his recent reelection campaign, Gov. Phil Bredesen stated that he felt higher ed schools in Tennessee were perhaps “too entrepreneurial.” Structural issues aside, would anyone agree with the Governor’s assessment?

McPhee: I’ll be interested in hearing more about what the governor means by ‘too entrepreneurial.’ I think we’ve done a good job of working with THEC in looking at duplication of programs. We all went through the process of reducing and eliminating certain programs about five years ago and we continue to do that. Certainly it would be worthwhile to take a look and have some discussions about that. My sense, though, is that once we have that discussion and deliberation I think the conclusion will be that perhaps it is not as bad or problematic as one would think.

Rhoda: I would submit that we’re not at the point of over duplication. Yes, there is duplication. On paper, to be more efficient, we probably would have fewer graduate programs at some universities and more at others. But this has evolved over time and we are not at the point in my judgment of being over duplicative. Having said that, we have a number of colleges of agriculture that at one time when the state economy was different probably made sense. Now some of them are less productive and in a perfect world could be consolidated. But the reality is that’s not going to happen. They serve different constituencies. They’re well entrenched.

Hawkins: We have to be entrepreneurial to a high degree. You can’t wipe that out of the higher Ed environment. We need to be very attuned to the needs of the state, our regions and local communities. Unless we can be entrepreneurial in our response to those needs then we’re not going to get very far very fast. Let’s be working together collectively as a group to get both systems involved to get the needs of higher ed and post-secondary training addressed in this state, but let’s don’t clip our wings in terms of creativity and the diverse things we do in order to fulfill individual and local community needs.

Switching gears, a big issue facing Tennessee industry is workforce development and filling the knowledge-based jobs increasingly available in Tennessee, or that we could potentially have with the properly educated workforce. What can be done to improve the preparation of students to go in to today’s workforce, specifically to improve math and science skills?

Petersen: We feel an obligation to the people of Tennessee to make sure we help deliver the types of programs that will enable us to recruit those companies into the state that are going to help us with economic development, which means that we can’t be frivolous in terms of where we put our expenditures. If we really want to support the state, we’ve got to target our programs. They’ve got to be things we can excel at—things that will really connect and make sense academically but also make sense in terms of the capabilities we’re trying to develop for the state. So we must be consistent and cognizant of what the state is trying to accomplish. That’s not always done in higher education, but it’s a responsibility of the state land grant institution to make sure you do that.

Raines: Frankly, that’s the strength of the University of Memphis. If you look at our focus areas, we have closely aligned them with the focus areas of one of our major business groups in town called Memphis Tomorrow. The very industries, the very professional opportunities on which they are focusing are the ones we’re also focusing on. It is a tight relationship. In fact, I’m serving this year as the first ever woman chair of the Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce. And one of the reasons I was chosen is this very issue—how do we make the match between what astute corporations who are being successful in Memphis need and making sure we’re in tune with them. Not just in tune but partners so that we too are helping to create what those new opportunities are.

McPhee: That is an issue that has gotten the attention of universities not only in Tennessee but also across the country—the role of the university system in supporting workforce development and the economic development. There are a number of activities I’m aware of particularly as they relate to math and science that MTSU as an institution is focused on. First and foremost, we have a history since starting as a teacher education college, a NORMAL school, with a primary mission of training teachers. And even though we have grown to be a major comprehensive university and offer now a variety of degrees from the bachelor to the doctorate, we have not moved very far from the regional mission of training teachers. We train 30% of all teachers in the state of Tennessee. That is by far the largest number that any other university in the state, private or public, is producing. When you look at the production of mathematicians and scientists, you have to start with the elementary schools and how math and science is being taught and the involvement of the universities in preparing teachers to do a better job at teaching and stimulating interest in those subjects. We have started a number of initiatives to help teachers train and do a better job.

What role will the new science building at MTSU play?

McPhee: We have an opportunity now with the construction of the new $100 million-plus science facility. Rather than focus exclusively on building that facility for research—though that is important—we are designing that facility to also help us do a better job of preparing teachers in the areas of math and science.

Rhoda: We’re coming at it from many different directions. The most direct being of course what’s going on at UT primarily strengthening math and science and engineering and technology. On another dimension, you’ve got the community colleges that are more immediate to the workforce. The same with the technology centers. The infrastructure is being built up gradually. The new science center at MTSU gets into the teacher education component, providing more math and science teachers. And importantly, higher ed is also working more and more with local school systems, getting students and their parents to start thinking about college while the students are still in middle school.

Hawkins: We’re doing quite a bit as individual community colleges working with our local public school systems trying to make improvements in the product that leaves out of the public schools after 12th grade. First trying to help them turn around that high drop-out rate that happens around the 9th and 10th grade. One thing we’ve gotten pretty excited about in our nine-county service area is the Tennessee Scholars program, which is a program sponsored by the National Chamber of Commerce, the State Chamber of Commerce and local chambers of commerce. We’re trying to encourage and we’ve been successful in 60% of our school systems so far to get adoption of the rigorous program students embark on as they enter the ninth grade. Its sole purpose is to have students retained in high school and college-ready or job-ready without remediation when they complete high school. We have high hopes that over time it will improve the number of graduates. We’re also beginning to couple our math and science faculty with those in our public schools so we can create a smooth pipeline of expectations—what students need to be able to do and perform in math and science as they come in to college.

Dr. Hawkins, regarding workforce development, I wanted to get your reaction specifically to Gov. Bredesen’s recent proposal to forge new partnerships with major employers like Wal-Mart and design specialized community college programs that lead to jobs. Is that a real possibility or just campaign chatter?

Hawkins: We’ve spoken about the Wal-Mart option as a group of community college presidents—that seems to be where he would like to focus that kind of a program. It would really have to have a ripple down effect from top management of Wal-Mart nationally and internationally to the local Wal-Mart stores. That’s a corporate culture. If they would like to have better trained supervisors and middle management folks, they are going to have to internally within their Wal-Mart culture embrace that program fully before we could be very effective in delivering anything that would benefit them. We do design a lot of custom training for corporations and businesses, so it’s quite possible to do. But I think it would have to be on a contractual basis with Wal-Mart as we do with other corporations if we want to custom-design something for them and not have it just be open enrollment to the general public.

The business community asks a lot of the higher Ed system. But it’s a two-way street. How can we go about achieving more consistent involvement of the business community in public-private partnerships for the benefit of higher education in Tennessee?

Rhoda: In a perfect world, there would be a permanent partnership that was mutually supportive. In Tennessee, it’s not that there is any antagonism or a lack of a partnership. It’s just uneven. We’ve tried to include the Tennessee Business Roundtable in many of our discussions just at the state policy level, which is much different from what goes on at campus. But it’s important to make sure we understand the business perspective as we talk about all these pre-K through higher ed initiatives—to have a foot in the world of the business community. Overall, there have been some great moments. But it’s something we do need to institutionalize so it becomes routine.

Petersen: One of the things we’re proposing, along with the Board of Regents, is to go out into the communities and try to recapture those people who have gotten partially to their undergraduate degrees and stopped out of college—to try to bring them back into the classroom. One of the challenges I have for the business community is we need your help and participation. Most of these people are working in your organizations all over the state. We’d really like to help you and have you help us make sure we get them re-engaged, so they can advance their education and make a greater contribution to your bottom line and therefore the state’s bottom line. Educated workforce is the biggest impediment in terms of our ability to recruit businesses into the state. It’s not that we don’t have one; it’s just that we don’t have enough. Tennessee is a very attractive place to live. We’ve got great opportunity.

Dr. McPhee, what about MTSU’s work in building the Rutherford County economy through strategic partnerships?

McPhee: MTSU’s Bureau of Economic Research is responsible for developing the economic forecast and advice to the Rutherford Chamber that resulted in Destination Rutherford, which has been extremely successful in attracting the kind of industry that this region needs. We have made major strides and been quite successful in bringing the voice of the business sector in our community to the forefront as part of what we do as a university. We haven’t forgotten our role—to educate students at the highest level—but we want to educate students so they can become part of the solution of our communities and the economic part of that is an important consideration.

What are Tennessee’s public institutions doing or not doing related to the management of intellectual property and the leverage of it for economic development purposes? Are we aggressively creating and leveraging intellectual property?

Raines: We’re not doing as well as we need to do. It’s a relatively long process. But we have had some successes. At the University of Memphis, we’ve increased our number of disclosures tremendously in the last few years. But getting that to something that is commercializable is another place altogether, and there is a gap in expertise. That’s where the partnerships between those industries and our researchers become really important. We want the research to keep going regardless, and something that may look like it has no application now may have an application later on. The other missing gap is there are very few venture capital dollars in Tennessee. We have to find ways to attract more of those kind of people to come in and be partners with us in order to have whatever the discovery is make the leap to a commercializable product.

Petersen: There is always room for improvement, but we’ve also seen a fast ramping up of our disclosures that we’ve gotten every year. We have continually every year since I’ve been here increased the number of disclosures—patents, copyrights, the whole bit. And that’s what we should be doing is making sure we do generate that intellectual property that you need to drive the economy. We can get better and we will get better. It’ll continue to come for us as we go forward.

Can the state do more?

Raines: I have to say that [Economic and Community Development commissioner] Matt Kisber and the governor’s office understand this tremendously. But we in Tennessee have to find some ways to support the research taking place and get it translated into job opportunities and there are many steps along the way.