Bangor Foreign Policy Forum
Nov. 7, 2005
Robert A. Kennedy, President, University of Maine
Thank you for the invitation to be with
you this morning. It is nice to see so many friends here, and it is
great to see this forum taking hold. I'm pleased that UMaine, especially
through Bahman's hard work, is centrally involved in this series. It's
another one of those things that makes it great to have a university in
the community, because it helps to make interesting and intellectually
stimulating activities like this possible.
I've been asked today to share some thoughts about higher education and
the global workforce. This is a critical issue for all of us who care
deeply about education and what it means to the future – the future in a
world that is changing very quickly and very dramatically.
The university is, in many ways, an ideal, which has broad and
significant meaning for our society. Based in 19th century Europe, the
university has of course modernized, but it is based on a sort of
utopian vision.
That ideal is exemplified in this quote from Noel Annan, the 20th
century British author and academic, who once said that universities
"exist to cultivate the intellect. Everything else is secondary. The
most precious gift that universities can offer is to live and work among
books and laboratories and the most important lesson they can teach is
how to use the intellect," Annan said.
That still applies today. We do exist to develop people as
problem-solvers, as communicators and as contributors to society.
But we do so in a 21st century world that is changing – a world with new
expectations for higher education and for the students who emerge as
graduates.
The international landscape is, of course, changing. Higher education is
subject to forces of change from the economy, demographic shifts,
federal and state policies, and public opinion.
Information technology increases accessibility and it creates new ways
of teaching, learning and researching. It also means an explosion of new
opportunities.
If the universities of the 1800s were shaped by nationalism,
universities of today are being shaped by globalism.
The "death of distance," as Bahman calls it, is affecting education in
the same way it is affecting business. The World Bank estimates
worldwide spending on higher education at $300 billion per year. There
are more than 80 million students around the world, and 3.5 million
people employed in this enterprise.
In his new book, "The World is Flat," Tom Friedman contends that the
world is in the grips of what he calls a "soft revolution," where
knowledge is replacing physical resources as the main driver of economic
growth. Technological capability is now seen as a measure of a nation's
strength.
Human capital has become the most scarce resource in the global economy.
Our ability in the U.S. to attract the best scientists, engineers and
entrepreneurs, is one of the country's greatest advantages, but it is
one we are in danger of losing.
The best asset the U.S. has with regard to technological and economic
strength is its system of higher education.
We have some of the top universities in the world. Students from every
continent are coming to the U.S., in very large numbers, to study at our
universities, and for good reason.
The Institute for Higher Education at Shanghai University has an
objective ranking system, based on a variety of measures, for ranking
universities around the world.
Seventeen of the top 20 are in the U.S., 35 of the top 50.
American universities employ 70 percent of the world's Nobel Prize
winners.
The Economist magazine, looking at data from 2000, figures that Boston's
eight research universities provided a $7.4 billion boost to the
region's economy, generated 264 new patents, and granted 280 licenses to
private enterprises.
I'm proud of the impact we have at UMaine, along similar lines. We
generate over $600 million in economic activity each year. We have an
economic output estimated a $6.60 for each dollar of state investment.
Our researchers in many areas leverage federal dollars at an even higher
ratio. We are one of this region's two largest employers, and we have a
presence in every county in Maine.
UMaine carries a specific designation as a statewide flagship university
and our mission is unique. We have more students than any other Maine
college or university and the largest faculty – a collection of scholars
as good as any I have ever been around, and I've been fortunate to work
at places like Ohio State, Texas A&M, and the University of Maryland.
UMaine has internationally recognized scholars in many areas. Bahman, by
the way, certainly is one of those professors. Our institutes and
centers, such as the Climate Change Institute, Laboratory for Surface
Science and Technology, Advanced Engineered Wood Composites Center,
William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce, and Sen.
George Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research are
world-class.
And we have plans to add to this roster. For example, we have a new
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, which will have a significant
statewide impact, on our economy, on the education of students and,
potentially, on human health. It is a very exciting
initiative.
Despite the obvious strengths of the U.S. system of higher education, we
would be foolish to ignore slippage with regard to engineering and
science Ph.D.s and other important indicators, vis-à-vis countries like
China and India.
Technology and mobility are changing higher education, and those factors
are giving students more control over where they get their education.
This is part of a worldwide educational revolution with several impacts:
- Millions of young people study
abroad;
- Colleges that teach managerial and
technical skills are cropping up regularly, in many places;
- Academics are reconnecting with the
wider knowledge economy;
- Most important – this revolution is
freeing resources for intellectual activities; it is filling libraries
with books, stocking labs with equipment.
Perhaps the best example is China,
which is engaged in the biggest university expansion in human history.
Twenty-five years ago, only 2-3 percent of eligible students went to a
university. Two years ago, that number was up to 17 percent. In 1999
alone, that number jumped by almost half. Expansion at the doctoral
level is even more dramatic. Almost 12 times as many doctorates were
awarded from 1993-2002, as compared to 1982-1989. And the number of new
doctoral students went from 14,500 to 48,700 in the past five years. As
a very high-ranking Chinese official acknowledged recently, "First-class
universities increasingly reflect a nation's overall power."
Beijing University is one of China's leaders in this area. MIT
mathematician Tian Gang helped set up an international research center
for mathematics there. That's one of several high-level research centers
under development at that university.
Beijing University officials estimated that 40 percent of its faculty
was trained outside China, mostly in the U.S. Yale President Richard
Levin was in Shanghai in September, where he had high praise for China's
students. "China has 20 percent of the world's population, and it is
safe to say it has more than 20 percent of the world's best students.
They have raw talent," he said.
President Levin also pointed out that low labor costs have made it
easier to upgrade universities in China. He pointed out that new
laboratories he visited at a Chinese university were built for 10
percent of the per-square-foot cost of the same kind of construction at
Yale.
At the same time, other countries are using post-9/11 U.S. restrictions
to their advantage. For example, Australia and New Zealand are, in
effect, working to turn education into an export industry.
Foreign students are potentially valuable in three ways: they pay the
university they attend, they spend money on food and other products, and
they just might end up staying permanently.
For many countries, higher education represents part of a strategy for
shifting market economies away from their traditional underpinnings.
Market-based economies are taking hold in Asia, Latin America and
Europe. Universities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are
competing for students, and they have their eyes on graduate students.
From 2002-2004, the number of foreign students increased by 21 percent
in Britain, 23% in Germany and 28% in France.
More and more European universities are offering American-style
programs, in English. Universities in the developing world are expanding
rapidly, as well.
Other general trends, which are significant, include:
- Improved global communications (the
Internet in particular);
- The general internationalization of
education.
These are trends that are only going to
continue.
U.S. strength in providing the best education should not be underestimated. The loss of the quasi-monopoly is not the same as a
long-term decline. The market for students will grow as Asia produces
its own middle class, and American universities are positioned to
compete in the global student talent market.
There seem to be three primary reasons for optimism about U.S. higher
education and its capacity to attract the best students and faculty.
1) Competition
American universities compete for everything – students, professors,
even hockey players. Professors compete for research grants; students
compete for scholarships. Successful institutions know that they must
always work hard to move forward. At UMaine, we compete – quite
successfully, I might add – to get the best faculty and students into
our community. This will continue to be a focus, and it's a big part of
the reason we're planning a major fundraising campaign. A primary focus
of that campaign will be funding for scholarships, professorships and
faculty chairs. Those are the very things that will help us compete for
the best and brightest.
2) Another strength of American higher education is our capacity to
educate students to be practical and useful community contributors, and
to make real connections.
America pioneered the art of forging links between academia and
industry. We work very hard on such connections at UMaine, through units
like our Advanced Manufacturing Center and Advanced Engineered Wood
Composites Center. American universities earn over a billion dollars a
year in royalties and license fees. UMaine is an example of the more
than 170 universities that have business incubators, and we've started a
new concentration in Innovation Engineering. This shows, I think, that
universities like UMaine have a real interest in extending their
expertise and their resources to benefit not only business, but society
as a whole. And if we do our job right in the education process, we will
turn out individuals who can play major roles in helping to affect
advances of all kinds.
3) Complementing those strengths is our system's diversity, which
reflects our democratic ideals.
The wide range of institutions we have has created a remarkable
combination of access and excellence. Only a small percentage of
higher-education institutions are research universities. Many, many more
are community colleges, which do essentially no research and offer
two-year degrees. But they provide the foundation outstanding students
need to move to a prestigious university. It is a system that encourages
participation and engenders success.
The National Board of Higher Education and Workforce has a committee
that looks at the changing needs for research personnel. Among the areas
in their prevue are:
- Examination of the need for research
scientists in emerging fields like genomics, bioengineering and
biotechnology;
- Assessment of how well MD/Ph.D.
programs encourage research careers.
Both of those relate to current activities
and initiatives at UMaine. Our Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
aims to develop Ph.D. scientists in those important disciplines, while
making real advances in bioscience research.
And we've recently joined with the University of New England to create a
Ph.D./O.D. program, which will combine our faculty and other resources
to work on both research and clinical concerns.
This suggests to me that we in Maine are on the right track, and that
our statewide work to develop collaborations and cooperative
arrangements, which allow us to share resources and expertise, will
serve us well in the changing worldwide environment.
The subject we're discussing today is getting a lot of attention around
the U.S. and around the world, especially in higher education circles.
We're hoping to make sure we're doing the right things, collectively and
individually as institutions, to help the U.S. keep up. Among the things
we need to do, in my view, are:
First, to continue to pursue our core mission of developing and
educating our students, so that they learn to communicate, to analyze
problems effectively, and to contribute in various important ways.
In contemporary times, they must also be prepared with the necessary
background to thrive in a shrinking world. They need an understanding of
cultures, of linkages and of history.
Beyond that, we need to be aware of the needs that exist, and do what we
can to help solve the associated problems. This is not solely to create
a trained workforce for the sake of our graduates who are entering the
work world. More importantly, we need to recognize that those needs
exist because of underlying causes, and we must develop people who will
solve the most vexing problems.
We are thinking this way at the University of Maine, and so are our
counterparts at universities all around the world.
As University System of Maryland chancellor William Kirwan, speaking
last year, pointed out that these challenges are not new. After World
War II, U.S. higher education became much more accessible. That was a
reaction to circumstances not dissimilar to those we face today.
Chancellor Kirwan is right, and his message should give us a signal that
we in the U.S. are capable of getting on the right track and staying
there.
Public higher education, as it is with regard to so many problems, is a
big part of the solution in this case. Our built-in diversity, which we
treasure at UMaine, goes a long way toward helping our students
understand and appreciate differences. Universities are a window to the
world in many ways.
We're proud of our growing international programs at UMaine, which
provide opportunities for travel and study abroad. Students who
understand and take advantage of what a university is, stand to do well
in a changing world.
The challenge is to capitalize on our strengths, remain true to what we
are as universities, and be agile enough to adjust, for the good of
students and the good of society.
Late last summer, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates spoke to the National
Conference of State Legislatures. He stressed innovation as the
essential characteristic people and institutions will need to thrive in
the modern world. And he pointed out that universities are the key to
cultivating that ability to innovate. For one of the great innovators of
our time to be so clear about that point says a great deal, and I
certainly believe that he is right.
Higher education has perhaps the biggest role to play in keeping the
U.S. competitive.
The challenge we face today is how to create and nurture a system of
higher education that balances the twin demands of excellence and mass
access. It must be a system that makes room for global involvement by
universities, while maintaining quality control over the education we
provide.
We need to exploit the global opportunities provided by new technology,
while also recognizing that education requires a human touch.
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