UW-Madison leaders hoping to convince a sometimes skeptical public and their elected representatives of the value of higher education need to come prepared with a few key arguments and stay on message, one of the five finalists for the university’s chancellorship said during a public forum Thursday.
Even then, the work of persuading can be a “slog,” former Notre Dame University provost Marie Lynn Miranda said, and an increasingly “poor public perception” of higher ed’s value is “incredibly frustrating” given how that value is clear in terms of student life outcomes and the real-world impact of university research.
Miranda at the outset of the hourlong Q-and-A in an event room at the Memorial Union laid out three strategies she believes are crucial to improving higher ed’s image.
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Reconceiving how education is delivered is No. 1, she said, meaning students need to be prepared both to lead meaningful lives but also to compete in a global marketplace.
The public and policymakers also need to see the university tackling the world’s most intractable problems, she said, from climate change to the erosion of democratic institutions.
Finally, she spoke of connecting the university’s work to the university’s stakeholders, whether they be farmers in northern Wisconsin or entrepreneurs in Milwaukee.
“We used to believe that if we discovered knowledge in the academy that people would use it,” she said, but that’s not enough anymore, and universities need to know how to deploy that knowledge in a way that people understand and see, given that people are not always moved by facts alone.
“We want people thinking, ‘what is the University of Wisconsin doing on this topic,’” she said.
In response to a question about how she would elevate UW-Madison’s long history of shared governance among administration, faculty, staff and students, Miranda said that as provost, she had open office hours and was struck by how lowering the barriers to interacting with university higher-ups can spark more feedback. Taking into account everyone’s unique perspective makes the university stronger, she said, and “It’s kind of in my nature to do that.”
Charles Hoslet, UW-Madison vice chancellor for university relations, noted that the university has seen its top-10 ranking in research spending slip in recent decades, going from consistently being in the top five to eighth last year. While Miranda made clear there was no shame in being eighth — with about $1.4 billion in spending annually — there are steps the university can take to bring that ranking up.
It’s important to take faculty to Washington, D.C., where decisions are made about how to spend federal research dollars, she said, “so that we’re getting our ideas in front of people.”
To attract more corporate research funding, she said it’s important for companies to have a good experience working with the university from the beginning, such as when they’re signing contracts to partner with university researchers.
Miranda, a statistician by training, also emphasized the importance of the humanities to the university, saying “it’s not a university” without them.
She said that discussion and research into the social impacts of certain technologies, such as artificial intelligence, often come after the technologies have been deployed, but that those considerations need to come earlier to ensure that tech is “respectful of the human condition.”
One of the afternoon’s questions — culled from suggestions from the campus community and asked of all finalists — was how to maintain UW-Madison’s quality amid a long decline in taxpayer support and a nine-year tuition freeze.
Miranda said there could be ways to develop university-owned land and add summer campus programs to create cash flow, and that some of the university’s $4 billion endowment could be put into higher risk/higher reward investments.
With universities often home to student activism and divisive debates over hot-button cultural issues, Miranda said that if you can’t have civil conversations about controversial topics at a university, “then all hope is lost.”
“I may not agree with you, but that does not mean I have the right to yell at you or curse at you or use really divisive language,” she said.
Her own approach when confronted by strongly worded criticism is to be a “de-escalator,” she said, and to focus on the substance of what the person is saying rather than the way the person is saying it.
The last finalist in the chancellor search, UW-Madison provost John Karl Scholz, will answer questions Friday from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium.
The other finalists are: Ann Cudd, provost at the University of Pittsburgh; Jennifer Mnookin, law school dean at the University of California Los Angeles; and Daniel Reed, a University of Utah computer science professor and former provost.