WOODEN LEG OR TABLE?: THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF
GRADUATE EDUCATION
by
Steadman Upham, President
Claremont Graduate University
Remarks delivered at the Jonathan Club on March 18, 1999, for the Financial Executives
Institute, Los Angeles.
Many years ago when I was a teenager living in L.A., I became acquainted with a new
form of television entertainment, the talk show. You may remember one of the earliest
practitioners of this genre of TV, a man named Joe Pyne. Joe Pyne created fire and
excitement around his activities, and used his TV show as a platform for the expression
of his very conservative political beliefs. Pyne was a former Marine, a decorated combat
veteran of the Korean War who lost his leg in action. As a result, he wore a wooden leg
which gave him a distinctive gait and posture, and contributed to his imposing demeanor.
Joe Pyne was outrageous, purposefully provoking guests to elicit from them strong,
opposing points of view. I don’t remember being persuaded by any of his banter, but in
my callow youth, I do recall experiencing sheer wonder over the open and aggressive
expression of views.
Joe Pyne pioneered shock-talk TV in a format that was 30 years ahead of its time. In the
mid-1960s in Los Angeles, this grabbed attention. I remember one evening when Joe
Pyne interviewed Frank Zappa, the founder and creative force behind the Mothers of
Invention. The Mothers were an in-your-face, liberal, anti-establishment rock group, and
Zappa was their leader. The popular press had called Zappa un-American because of his
views on ending the Vietnam War and legalizing marijuana. So here was a promising
confrontation: Pyne, the arch conservative, former Marine and combat veteran, poised to
lock horns with Zappa, the dope-smoking, expletive spewing, anti-war rocker.
I don't remember Pyne's exact introduction of Zappa, but I do remember his first question
to the shaggy haired, unshaven rock star. He said, “Well, I see you have long hair. You
must be a girl.” Without shifting expression, Zappa fired back, “So, I see you have a
wooden leg. You must be a table.” Zappa’s flash of wit and humor put both men at ease
and set the tone for what I remember to be a wonderful conversation.
This verbal jousting has stayed with me over the years because it underscores what
happens if we generalize based on superficial perceptions or incomplete evidence. Joe
Pyne, of course, was not a table, even though he had a wooden leg. Zappa was not a girl
as his long hair might have suggested.
I find that much of our public discourse about higher education follows the logic of the
initial Pyne-Zappa exchange. Too often we see only the wooden leg or the long hair, and
fail to appreciate how they relate to the detail and vitality of the larger entity. College
costs, tenure, faculty productivity, governance, accountability, relevance, and valueadded are currently among the wooden legs of higher education that often prompt Pyne
Zappa-like exchanges.
Today, I address these issues, not as specific subjects, but from the perspective of change
in higher education. My lens for this discussion is an enterprise within the university
known as graduate education. Like all of higher education, graduate education is
experiencing rapid and perhaps profound change.
My format today requires that I describe two very different scenarios of graduate
education. Both scenarios are accurate yet each portrays a markedly different reality.
They illustrate the struggle currently underway in higher education, and highlight the
difficulty of seeking to understand this sector of our society by recourse to single issues
or simplistic ideas.
Scenario I: Graduate Education and the University
The university is one of the two oldest institutions in the world. The first true university
teaching the seven liberal arts to students from all over Europe was the University at
Bologna, founded in the late eleventh century. Universities at Salamanca, Pairs and
Oxford were established in the next decades. In the following centuries, the university as
an institution spread throughout the world. These universities grew out of the monastic
traditions of the Catholic Church, but from the beginning were very much allied with
craft guilds and business interests. In fact, universities were willing partners of business
and the military in the expansion of world trade, development of banking, and spread of
capitalism.
Nine hundred years later in the U.S., the university is still intimately linked to the
economic well-being of the country. In fact, the knowledge and research that flow from
universities have fueled the country’s economic growth during the last half of the
twentieth century. The entire technology sector, and especially the fields of computing,
networking, optics, biotechnology, and materials would not exist today without university
research. Similarly, knowledge of our surroundings, from our most local observations of
family and community to the most distant musings on red shifted galaxies and the origins
of the universe, have been advanced primarily because of university research.
Universities also prepare individuals to staff the professions. Professional education and
training in the fields of medicine, management, education, law, journalism, architecture,
and engineering have built a foundation under the middle class in this country while
providing to entrepreneurs a platform for the creation and acquisition of wealth.
Graduate education, often the silent sector of higher education, is the author and
facilitator of these triumphs. All of the major professions are sustained by continuing
output from the graduate programs of universities. In addition, nearly all university
research is the product of faculty working with graduate students.
Graduate students are the engines of innovation in university research and in the
professions. These are the individuals who will create the next generation of advances in
society, government, business, and education. Graduate students at the best universities
are carefully selected from among the most accomplished and brightest of all students.
Competition for the best graduate students among elite universities is fierce. Bidding
wars for such students are not uncommon, and recruitment packages including tuition
waivers and living stipends often reach five year commitments of support totaling
$175,000 or more.
Graduate students are admitted to full-time study into degree programs that emphasize
research and creative activity. The students are then mentored and socialized into their
respective fields by highly trained faculty members. As Claremont Graduate University’s
Provost, Ann Hart, has so aptly stated, “Graduate education is focused and expert, not
broad and general.” Graduate teaching and mentoring are materially different than
working with undergraduates – not better, but fundamentally different. In fact, graduate
faculty are encouraged to construct the curriculum around research problems they are
investigating; there is a fluidity and dynamic to instruction that merges teaching, learning,
research, and application into a single process. Faculty encourage their graduate students
to participate in their research and enrich the educational process.
Importantly, graduate students bring new ideas, fresh perspectives, and energy into this
educational process. Three key features distinguish graduate education from everything
else in higher education: 1) the close working relationships that develop between faculty
and students; 2) the intense, focused research setting that facilitates the interaction; and 3)
the opportunities for empirical research that involve basic inquiry as well as practical
applications.
The products of this process are intellectual property of all kinds. Increasingly,
universities are protecting this output by patents and copyrights, and are forming offices
of technology transfer to manage this new enterprise. Patent and license income from
intellectual property created in universities totaled more than $700,000,000 last year, and
is growing very rapidly.
Graduate education makes the university the most revolutionary modern institution in the
world. In fact, because of the qualities I have just described, it is useful to distinguish
between “graduate universities” and those that do not emphasize graduate education. The
graduate university is more technologically sophisticated than its counterparts, and seeks
to be intellectually progressive, an incubator of new ideas, and progenitor of the
professions.
At the same time, the revolutionary modern graduate university retains formal structures
from its medieval ecclesiastical beginnings. Faculty governance, the tenure system, the
academic calendar, rites of passage in degree programs, the academic committee
structure, as well as the symbols, scepters, dress, and seals of the university are practices
and customs from this medieval past. There is thus a sharp and purposeful contrast in the
graduate university. The search for revolutionary change and transformative ideas is
cradled and protected by the conservatism of practices, mores, and customs in the
academy.
I have always believed that this dichotomy is rooted in the work people do inside a
graduate university. Ponder this, if you will: the subjects in a graduate university are
taught by people who do nothing else but think them, teach them, and write about them.
The people attracted to this calling come to the university because they believe there is
something intrinsically valuable in the subject matter of the field, so valuable, in fact, that
it is worthy of a life’s dedication. This is the monastic quality of the university, and it is
manifest most profoundly in the conduct of graduate education.
Scenario II: Graduate Education and the Knowledge Industry
Like many other sectors of society, higher education is currently changing very rapidly.
Driven by new information technology, demographic shifts, and rising costs, colleges and
universities are seeking to respond to social and economic challenges that are
unprecedented in the history of our country. A wave of new college students dubbed
“Tidal Wave II” is headed to the doors of academe, raising issues of access and equity in
new and profound ways. Graduate education and life-long learning are increasingly
important to a new generation of college graduates, and to working adults who will face
an average of seven major career changes in their lives.
Traditional colleges and universities are only partially prepared to serve this new
generation of learners. Demand is expected to outstrip supply in such institutions early in
the next decade. As a result, national and international for-profit universities are
springing up. These “proprietary universities” aim to become the convenience providers
of higher education. Underlying this development is the promise of information
technology and the evolution of higher education into a knowledge industry. High-speed
data networks and computing have utterly transformed the way we communicate and
have revolutionized the creation, reproduction, transmission, and storage of knowledge
and information. The burgeoning knowledge industry built around this technology now
includes for-profit universities.
The pols and pundits have labeled the evolving knowledge industry a sea change in
access and learning. In fact, former University of Michigan President James J.
Duderstadt argues that to survive in this newly created competitive marketplace,
universities must shed their monastic baggage. They must shift their focus from faculty
members and their specialties to the needs of students at various points in their lives.
And they must use technology to create asynchronous learning environments--on-demand
learning any time, any place.
Others agree. Pressure from state legislatures to expand access in the face of Tidal Wave
II has led to a preoccupation with concepts like distributed education and virtual
classrooms. The governors of the western states have created a virtual university called
the Western Governor’s University to bring distributed education and asynchronous
learning to thousands of new learners.
Lured by perceptions of reduced costs, legislators and business leaders are pressuring
traditional universities to join the new wave of distance education providers. Today in
universities, more time is spent thinking about distance education and about packaging,
marketing, and delivering curricula “any time, any place” than on graduate education and
the institution’s research mission.
Another challenge born of the knowledge industry and played out in every sector of
society is the ever-increasing rate of change. Seven out of the top 10 “most in demand”
jobs listed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not even exist a decade ago. Curricula
and pedagogy to support career preparation in these areas are developed, but throughput
in the graduate programs cannot keep pace with industry demand. As a result, “corporate
universities” and for-profit providers have stepped in to attempt to fill the gap.
One of the most effective for-profit providers is the University of Phoenix, a private
university and a subsidiary of the Apollo Group, a publicly traded company (that’s APOL
on the NASDAQ). The University of Phoenix has experienced meteoric growth during
the last decade. It is now the nation’s largest private university, enrolling more than
60,000 students in scores of locations across the U.S.
Phoenix’s approach to teaching and learning, especially at the graduate level, is very
different than that used by traditional colleges and universities. The University of
Phoenix caters to adult learners; in fact, all of its students are at least 23 years of age and
are employed full-time. These two criteria—age and employment status—are the
primary ones used in the application and acceptance process at the undergraduate level.
Degree seeking graduate students must have baccalaureate degrees, but graduate students
are not required to attend full-time, nor are they compelled to be degree-seeking. As a
result, students at the University of Phoenix are almost entirely enrolled part-time.
Apollo’s CEO, John Sperling, espouses what might be called the “pegboard” approach to
higher education in which the curriculum is carefully fashioned to articulate directly with
workforce needs. Graduates are thus “tailored” to meet the demands of particular
businesses. As a result, more than 70 percent of the students at the University of Phoenix
are receiving some kind of employer benefit to support the cost of their education.
Sperling routinely talks and writes about Phoenix’s 5Cs—convenience, condensed
instruction, career-oriented curriculum, cost effectiveness, and customer service.
Underlying this effort is a highly standardized curriculum and a well designed model of
delivery that uses web-based instruction, videotapes, and written materials. Interaction
between student and faculty is mediated by e-mail. Every student enrolling in the same
course around the country is taught exactly the same curriculum. This cookie-cutter
approach makes using contract faculty, who are retained on a course-by-course basis,
much easier. Moreover, the University of Phoenix piggybacks on traditional universities
for library support and other infrastructure needs, sometimes subsidizing such use with
modest payments.
The University of Phoenix’s data show that students exit the institution with job skills
and useable knowledge. In fact, persistence and graduation rates are commendable when
compared with traditional universities. Phoenix’s narrowly conceived programs
emphasize job training and niche skill development for the individual. The educational
process, however, is shifted away from knowledge creation and technical innovation.
Concluding Thoughts
These two scenarios identify the yin and yang of higher education today. The scenarios
also raise two questions made famous by Peter Drucker: “What is our business?” and
“Who is the customer?”
In the instance of the traditional graduate university, it is clear that the “business” is
multifarious. Graduate teaching reproduces the professions and graduate research, while
very much a part of the educational process, creates tangible products – new knowledge
and technical innovation. Practice and application are also a part of the business of the
traditional graduate university. In contrast, the “business” of proprietary universities is
primarily in one dimension: instruction geared to workforce needs.
The growing competition between graduate and proprietary universities creates a menu of
choices for policy makers, legislators, and the public. At the present time, there are
probably enough students for both types of institutions to continue to grow and develop.
But when demand begins to shrink, as it inevitably will, there will be hard choices to
make.
The cost structure, convenience factor, and “pegboard” philosophy of proprietary
universities make them attractive models for state legislatures concerned about the rising
cost of higher education and the truculent nature of the academic workforce. In addition,
the promise of technology has added to speculation that distance education and for-profit
providers will replace traditional universities in the next 20 years. In fact, Claremont
Graduate University’s own Peter Drucker has predicted this outcome.
One might reason that competition between graduate and proprietary universities is
healthy, but we need to examine the nature of the competition. Stated another way, who
is the customer for whom these entities compete?
Students are the primary customers of proprietary universities. In addition, business and
industry are customers because they provide the template for much instruction in these
institutions. This fact is explicitly acknowledged by the University of Phoenix and forms
the basis of their marketing strategy.
Students are also the primary customers of traditional graduate universities, and business,
government, and industry are customers as well because they utilize the professionals
produced through the traditional mechanisms of graduate education. What makes
traditional graduate education different, however, is that the broader society is also the
customer. The products of the research enterprise that are so much a part of graduate
education provide tangible and real economic benefits to every person in the country.
The appearance of the proprietary university has created a new and important space on
the educational landscape, but its growth has also created concerns. In a recent Business
Week article, David Noble, a professor of history at York University in Toronto said,
“Ten years from now we will look at the wired remains of our system and wonder how
we let it happen.”
And I should point out that we “we” of which he speaks is not just the University of
Phoenix and other providers of convenience education. It also includes such universities
as Stanford, Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke and other top-tier institutions. Faced with
competition from proprietary universities and seeking to hike their revenues, these
traditional graduate universities have instituted their own online programs that will reach
some of the nearly one million students who will takes courses at a distance this year.
Some proprietary universities, like the Michael Milken-funded UNext.com,
eCollege.com, and University Access, are partnering with traditional universities in
designing the cyber-courses aimed at working adults. UNext.com’s partner institutions
include Stanford and the University of Chicago. In return for the financial stake offered
by UNext.com, leading professors from these institutions are providing their expertise to
the company.
To this end, traditional universities need to be informed about modern educational
delivery methods. These methods go beyond the Internet, and include such things as
video-streamed lectures, instructional CD-roms, and part-time residence programs
combined with Internet-based courses. Traditional universities need to incorporate these
delivery methods because they are cost-effective tools which expand access to high
quality educational services.
Proprietary universities can also learn from their counterparts. Some, like UNext.com,
are reaping the benefits of consultation with professional, tenured faculty members at
established universities. However, there are other areas in which institutions offering
cyber learning may find that the solutions to their problems come from traditional
graduate universities. Questions about the ownership of course material as well as issues
about course quality and academic freedom are already being raised in many institutions.
Penn State’s president, Graham Spanier, has noted that “online courses require new
policies, and there is a real potential for conflict if not handled well.”
Let me close my remarks by noting that the traditional graduate university is a strategic
asset of this country, and produces enormous public benefits. It is intimately linked to
our country’s long-term economic development, and we sacrifice the benefits it offers at
our peril. There will undoubtedly be critical junctures in the future when those who do
not look beyond first impressions and media soundbites—the wooden leg and long hair—
will suggest abandoning the traditional university. Failure to preserve this institution will
impoverish the broader society and threaten the economic foundations on which we have
built so much. The traditional graduate university has much history, and is an important
part of our social fabric.
As I look to the future, I can predict with some certainty that Claremont Graduate
University will continue to provide relevant academic programs to its students. and the
products of innovative research to the broader society. Proprietary universities and
Internet-based courses will also expand, and we will see more and more traditional
universities entering the world of cybereducation. What none of us can predict with any
confidence is how this competition between the World Wide Web and the traditional
classroom will end. We must pay close attention to the landscape of higher education to
ensure that our students and our society have the best possible educational resources
available to them. In this process we must make sure that we look beyond the long hair
or wooden leg that so often mold our first impressions. Thank you.