This August, Mark Yudof will step down from his position as president of the University of California.
With a handful of committees and a private firm all working to find his replacement, now is the time for the UC to reimagine its role as a nationally relevant higher education system.
In selecting its next president, the UC Board of Regents Presidential Selection Committee should look for a person who can advocate for a UC that goes beyond California and seek greater patronage from the federal government.
President Obama has articulated a national goal to, by 2020, make the United States the country with highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
To reach this goal, the president advocates doubling the number of Pell Grant awards, expanding educational tax credits and helping students pay back their school loans.
Since 2008, the UC has moved to include more students from across the country, not just from California. In 2012 alone, the UC accepted 43 percent more out-of-state and international students than it did the previous year.
The UC seeks to capture more substantial financial support by looking to out-of-state students. This trend reflects an institutional broadening of the UC’s vision, and for this reason, the UC should embrace a greater role of the federal government in education.
In a recent interview with the Daily Bruin’s editorial board, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block identified several qualities the next president of the UC will need.
Primarily, Block said that person will need to focus on the unsteady financial state of the UC. The next UC president, he said, will also need to explain to taxpayers the economic and cultural value of the UC.
Current president Yudof is adept at articulating the interests of the UC, but was less successful at realizing that vision in a state that often looks to education for its first round of cuts.
Most recently, the University lost an opportunity to make its welfare the explicit concern of the Californian government through Proposition 30. Gov. Jerry Brown crafted Proposition 30 to benefit California education at all levels. It was not explicit what portion of the funds generated by the initiative would go directly to the UC.
Yudof led the Regents to throw the support of the UC behind Prop. 30, despite the lack of specificity in the measure.
But Proposition 30 is not a long-term solution. Given the tenuous position of state finances, it is unlikely that sufficient support will stem from Sacramento in coming years. In an effort to mitigate this, the UC needs to more actively pursue the largest pool of public funding available: the federal government.
This move will not be unprecedented. In a 2009 paper he authored on federal funding of higher education, UC President Yudof notes that the federal government has a long history of financing research and development. Today, federal agencies are important benefactors of aerospace and biotechnical research at public universities.
Admittedly, the federal government faces significant challenges of its own; for example, the sequester threatens to cut funding to research grants that support many UC laboratories.
However, if Obama honors his commitment to higher education, the federal government will remain a potent source of support for the UC.
At the federal level, the UC will face competition from other public universities across the nation. Fortunately, the UC has several advantages. Foremost, the system is a conglomeration of ten superb research institutions, with laboratories, medical systems and graduate schools that lead the nation in environmental research and innovation in biotechnology.
What is more, the UC campuses are surrounded by premier private firms that frequently partner with its graduate schools for mutually beneficial projects.
Lobbying these assets to the Department of Education should be among the next president’s chief concerns.
California has been a strong supporter of the UC, but recent financial constraints have kept the state from meeting the system’s needs. While the UC must retain its state connection, the university’s next leader needs to look beyond the Golden State to safeguard the future of the system.
You think prop 30 money was for the schools? haha
at what point do we stop asking the federal government (read your taxes & my taxes) to stop spending money & ask schools & government to control spending? it’s ridiculous that yudoff supported prop 30 which only went to shore up pension liabilities….he’s walking away with a quarter million per year pension after only 5 years (2 of which he probably didn’t even contribute to UCRP); he’s let union members continue to get 3% COLA increases each year but this year, not represented staff. the whole system needs an overhaul & federal money is the last thing needed – tough love spending measures across the board need to be implemented at all UC’s (well, at all levels of government but the UC system is as good a place as any to start).