BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff
It is a question of vital interest to the entire
university community — faculty, staff, students and alumni:
How can UCLA maintain its academic excellence at a time of shrinking
resources? More to the point, how can UCLA compete for the best
faculty and graduate students when the gap in resources —
funds available for faculty salaries and other compensation,
and for graduate student support — is widening between
what major public universities like UCLA and elite private institutions
can offer?
Chancellor Albert Carnesale asked campus leaders
to consider this challenge at a retreat held in Ventura last
September. The consensus was clear: UCLA must move forward quickly
to develop and implement strategies that will ensure that the
campus maintains and grows its status as one of the nation’s
top-tier universities.
In October, the chancellor appointed Executive
Vice Chancellor Daniel Neuman to lead a 12-member Competitiveness
Task Force, representing a broad cross-section of academic leaders,
to recommend an action agenda. The task force is coordinating
the work of six action groups that will each focus on a specific
area of concern. The groups are scheduled to submit their reports
to the task force by Feb. 15. A unified set of recommendations
from the task force will be going to the chancellor for consideration
April 1.
UCLA Today Editor Cynthia Lee spoke with Executive
Vice Chancellor Neuman to find out more about this initiative.
Q. What is the basic goal of the task
force?
A. To remain competitive with the very best institutions
in the nation, public and private, we’re going to have
to be smarter, and act smarter, in order to compete for the
best people — the best faculty and graduate students.
That, simply put, is what we mean by competitiveness. Focusing
on academic excellence, the task force brings together academic
leaders from all sectors of the campus to help us develop more
effective processes to address the resource gap that exists
between us and our major private competitors. The disparity
between the resources we have, based on the number of dollars
we receive per student, compared to those of the nation’s
very best universities with whom we compete, has been large
and is growing. By bringing together the talents and thoughts
of the wonderful, bright people we have here, we can come up
with new ideas to make us better at what we are already doing
very well.
Q. What are some of UCLA’s comparative
advantages?
A. There are many factors that have kept us competitive
our multidisciplinary strengths, for one. A prime example
of this is the California NanoSystems Institute, which has attracted
much national attention and interest.
In another area of strength, our research funding
has broken records. Between 1997 and 2000, UCLA rose from 12th
in the nation to third in the amount of federal funding it received
for science and engineering research, leapfrogging over Stanford,
Harvard, MIT, Michigan and Penn, among others. As directed by
the chancellor, we’ve concentrated on those areas that
make a great university — on core academic activities,
the libraries and the College of Letters and Science, to name
a few. The chancellor’s initiatives — especially
UCLA in LA — have also been highly productive.
But we cannot stand still. We need to be concerned
about our vulnerability with respect to retention and recruitment
issues, particularly in this budget climate. Private universities,
especially the ones with whom we compete, are not as vulnerable
because although they may have lost the value of some of their
portfolios over the last two years, they have still done relatively
well and are able to adapt more flexibly.
Q. What are some specific concerns on
which the action groups are focusing?
A. One of the key questions is how do we allocate our
resources more wisely to recruit the best graduate students
in high-priority areas. If you’re a first-rate scholar,
you want to be in an environment where your colleagues and your
students, undergraduate and graduate, are first-rate. That’s
what helps maintain your edge as a scholar, teacher and a researcher.
We are often on the losing end when competing
with the best universities for graduate students because the
Stanfords, Harvards and Princetons can offer more generous packages.
But it’s not only about money; it’s
also about who mentors you and who chairs your committee. Exceptional
graduate students know which are the best departments and the
best people in their fields, and they will naturally want to
study with professors who are distinguished in their fields
so that these students can learn from them and benefit from
their prestige within their disciplines. It’s better to
think of a holistic approach to this challenge in terms of the
facilities, faculty, staff, research support and first-rate
graduate student peers, all of which we have here.
Another of the action groups will focus on identifying
the processes we need to gather information and seek advice
to help the chancellor, provosts and deans decide how best to
allocate and reallocate resources. For many, it’s unclear
how academic leaders make informed decisions with regard to
resource allocation. These are hard decisions that people may
or may not like. What we want to do is make that process transparent,
explicit and understandable.
Another group will focus on how we can more
efficiently deploy existing resources to enhance competitiveness
and diversity. For example, ensuring that quality child care
is available for faculty is a matter of great importance. Yet
another group will identify processes we should follow to best
utilize space to make us more competitive.
Q. What is the role of staff in keeping
UCLA academically competitive?
A. UCLA is quite remarkable because the staff infrastructure
here is incredibly strong. The staff provides as much a foundation
for the ability of this institution to compete for the best
and the brightest as does its faculty. Staff members are as
critical to our achieving that competitive edge as any of the
other components that make us an outstanding public research
university.
Q. What is the Academic Senate’s
role in this process?
A. In my address to the Legislative Assembly last fall,
I talked about the task force. And both the chair and the vice
chair of the Senate are members of the task force. True to our
tradition of shared governance, we would very much expect to
continue consulting with the relevant Senate committees and
councils about the recommendations that will come through this
task force.
Q. What is the relationship between
the task force and the current tight budget situation?
A. The difference between what we can provide and what
our competitors can offer would exist whether we were living
in a time of plenty or a time of poverty. The scale may be different,
but the problem is basically the same. Although we most certainly
face short-term challenges posed by the budget, the task force
is taking a longer view of these concerns. In the short term,
there may be some task force recommendations we must wait to
implement.
But we aren’t just looking six to 18
months down the road; we’re asking how we can enhance
our ability to compete over the next five to 10 years. With
the current budget situation, this is a good time to examine
how we should focus our resources and set priorities.
This entire process will inevitably bring about
change. While it is difficult for institutions to adapt to change,
I have every confidence that our campus leadership will find
a way to continue our progress and meet the competitiveness
challenge ahead.
THE COMPETITIVENESS
TASK FORCE
To read an Oct. 22, 2002, interview
with Chancellor Carnesale on UCLA’s future and the
challenges posed by a lean budget environment, go to
www.ucla.edu/bulletin/future.html
