What’s next for Boise State?: Kustra asks for new business model at State of the University Address
Main Feature, News Monday, August 23rd, 2010Boise State University President Bob Kustra dropped hints of increased independence from the state and pushed toward increasing forms of teaching through technology at the State of the University address Wednesday. Kustra cited several educational leaders, including the president of The Ohio State University who view state-funded higher education as a dying breed.
“While I still haven’t given up on state government’s role in supporting public higher education,” he said, “with each passing year I see more clearly that the funding of higher education as we experienced it in the past will not be replicated in future years.”
Boise State needs to re-examine the business model universities use and construct a new one, according to Kustra.
NIKBJURSTROM/THEARBITER President Kustra speaks Aug. 18 inside the Jordan Ballroom of the Student Union Building
He did not say what that new business model would be or how it would operate, but it’s likely to be formed around an increase of private funds and student fees.
Kustra said the university returned more than $6 million to the state in holdbacks for fiscal year 2010, with those reductions becoming permanent in 2011.
The state board of education recently reviewed a proposal to create a differential fee policy that would allow charging higher fees for undergraduate programs that have higher costs.
BSU will continue to research new technologies on-campus to help bolster the ways students educate themselves. According to Kustra, students are becoming more tech savvy, prompting faculty to innovate to with the reshaping of the learning process.
Kustra cited a book, “Rethinking Education in The Age of Technology,” by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson.
He said the book raises questions for the university as they map out an “agenda for innovation.”
“Should the social networks now employed in large part to keep in touch and be hip,” he said, “be used to advise students and provide a more structured learning agenda through cyberspace?”
According to Kustra, Collins and Halverson said people are taking education out of school and into homes, libraries, cafes and workplaces.
“Fortunately we are not sitting by in the development of new learning technologies,” he said.
More than 8,000 students enrolled in at least one online course last year at Boise State.
Faculty are using the iPad, software simulations, gaming strategies and interactive 3-D representatives of data.
“We may have a few years to wait it out and see who’s right,” Kustra said, “but the private and proprietary sectors of higher education are not standing still … ”
Kustra announced that the university has raised $145 million for the Destination Distinction campaign, about 83 percent of their goal. He praised the 35 percent of all faculty and staff who donated $1.8 million toward the campaign, despite the current economic situation.
BSU sponsored research funding jumped almost $13 million in the fiscal year 2010 to more than $50 million. Capping the grants, a $4.9 million grant was donated to establish a national geothermal data system.
Biology professor Kristen Mitchell received a $400,000 grant for novel research on liver regeneration while Cheryl Jorcyk received a grant worth $720,000 from the American Cancer Society for breast cancer research.
The engineering team of Don Plumlee, Jim Browning, Amy Moll, Sin Ming Loo and Inanc Senocak were awarded more than $600,000 to develop novel propulsion systems for the NASA.
Read The Arbiter’s editorial on Boise State’s possible move to becoming a private institution.
See the transcript of Kustra’s State of the University Speech.
Short URL: http://arbiteronline.com/?p=49318
Posted by Andrew Ford on Aug 23 2010. Filed under Main Feature, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Kustra is about the last state public university president to announce his embrace of the corrupting business model and to invite privatization of his public university. Soon he will be selling campus property to private corporations (owned or invested in by his neo-liberal Board of Trustees) and leasing it back. Goodbye First Amendment-protected public forums. Farewell library books. Hello degree mill.
Steve, I disagree with your sentiment. Many of the best Universities in the county are privately funded. Take Notre Dame, Rice, Duke, TCU, Texas A&M, BYU, Harvard, just to name a few. We are not talking about degree mills here, but upscale, high end schools. Government funding does not guarantee quality education or freedom. Just state control and tight purse strings that get cinched everytime the government mandates another handout.
Texas A and M is not privately funded. It is part of the Texas A and M University System, a statewide system that receives quite a bit of state money.
@Steve Miller
I'm still on the fence about how this could play out, but expecting Boise State to become a degree mill is the least likely outcome IMO. Kustra has shown over the last few years that he is pretty serious about Boise State becoming a research school. Our university-sponsored research funding is still a drop compared to most research schools, but its accelerated a ton over the last few years. $13 million increase in the last year alone.
@Gavin White
Lots of things to look at. I feel most faculty would prefer working for a private institution if just for the prestige factor, but at the same time having tuition raise 25 percent in a year (Not going to happen under state board of ed's watch) isn't something most students could stomach.
We'll see how it plays out.
There's lots to look at and lots of time before BSU could even try to become private. Questions to look at
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