Who Does UB Serve?

Link: http://UBdumb.com

UB serves two communities — a local community that extends little further than Metro Buffalo and a global community that stretches across the United States and around the world. Too much emphasis of the current administration has been on the fantasy of saving downtown Buffalo and thus limited to serving the local community — expanding UB to become an important regional school. This model may work for MBA programs whose graduates might be absorbed into businesses residing in the extended community, (of course that’s assuming that other factors keep the economy and local businesses thriving), but it doesn’t work for building a premier university of national and international repute.

The argument can be made that local businesses can extend outward to hire lots of people worldwide. Consider a food concession empire that employs 50,000 people as workers around the world. Surely this impact is comparable to that of a university professor who publishes a small scientific ‘breakthrough’ or a creative arts person who writes a thought-provoking play? Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. If some song goes unsung because it’s never written, the world has lost that work forever. But if Acme Hot Dogs, Inc. doesn’t sell hot dogs at Fenway Park, then some other company or entrepreneur steps forward who is happy to fill the vacuum. In short, many (but of course not all) businesses simply compete for who will win the concession, who will get the contract, who will distribute or build the new cell phone that everyone demands. They don’t create markets; they supply markets.

Academic work traditionally creates new knowledge opening up hitherto unexplored territory. It invents the television, the microcomputer, the polo vaccine if not directly, then through those whom it has trained. There is a big difference. And not to malign commercialism and the better standard of living it brings to all of us, these two functions are much, much different. Even commercial enterprises are quick to recognize the importance of developing new technologies for their corporate expansion and for the creation of new emerging markets. But where does the university stand in this enterprise?

Many faculty members ‘play to a larger audience,’ one that the administration seems to have forgotten or perhaps never really understood. Young people (if they’re ‘smart’) are concerned about developing their careers and finding a long-term home to conduct their work, while older, tenured “professors” have the luxury of thinking about things more important than themselves. Of course some young people run afoul of the system by trying to pursue abstract ideals too early in their developing careers, while many more tenured professors never transcend their own sense of self-importance and maintain priorities dominated by career aspirations and personal gains. A good number of those surviving the system to become tenured do, however, move beyond that primitive, self-oriented stage of psycho-intellectual maturation to a ‘calling’ that makes life meaningful, more than just the passage of time or playing “he with the most toys when he dies wins.”

The beginning of the end for the true academy began in the 1980s during the Reagan/Bush era when American university professors started to become encouraged by Federal funding agencies to explore commercial applications of their research. There was a conflict developing between the traditional free and open exchange of research and the development of potentially marketable products from grant-sponsored research. The universities were moving into competition with industrial research centers as new funding sources for university research emerged (e.g., industrial contract research, cf. grant-sponsored research) and as cost-cutting measures for the industrial powerhouses (e.g., the former Bell Laboratories) became a choice method of increasing the “bottom line” on their financial reports. The difference between a real university and a research institute would continue to become blurred during the next several decades until finally commercial development of most university activities became firmly entrenched as a priority in many 21st Century universities.

The transformation of the traditional university into a money-generating, self-sustaining institution culminated with the popular “university as a business” model which seems to partially justify awarding leadership and control to career business-types from outside the academy rather than to traditional academic types that have risen up through the ranks of the university. Even many of the academic administrators who have ‘risen up’ through the ranks are people who were never really very successful in their chosen academic fields and hence might be considered actually ‘business types’ in disguise.

Major universities generally share a tripartite mission — education, research, and community service. Although these missions are not mutually exclusive in principle, an institution often excels at only one or two of these aims. The degree to which an institution excels at the latter to the neglect of the other two determines the degree to which it is simply a local institution. Excelling at only the second makes it a research institute, while excelling at the first makes it a true “university” whether or not it also has strong research or community service components. What does UB truly want to be?

Service to the local community is important and is an obvious obligation of every institution of higher education. At least its importance should be obvious even without the University’s public relations (PR) department constantly touting the impact of UB on the city and on the region. The PR machine loses effectiveness as it tries to broadcast its message further and further away from Buffalo, however. Like the light from a candle or the sound of a voice, the intensity diminishes rapidly with increasing physical distance unless it’s echoed by those far away (e.g., others independent of the university touting the importance of the institution’s accomplishments).

The other audience, the physically distant audience in some respects is often intellectually closer than the local audience. This audience (i.e., the second ‘community’ a university serves) consists of the people who learn and benefit from the work conducted by the scholars ‘hosted’ by a supportive institution. This characteristic (i.e., serving the larger intellectual community) largely defines what people across the United States and around the world consider a real “premier university.”

• A real premier university has impact well outside its region of physical contact.
• A real premier university can even reach further that a well-managed PR department can project its boastful propaganda.
• A real premier university makes ‘contact’ with thousands of people who know no geographic limitations and indeed transcend boundaries of time and space.
• A real premier university reaches the minds of the young and old long after the author's drum beat has died.
• A real premier university transcends itself in influence by supporting its faculty whom perform the university’s mission as a natural pursuit and out of a passion for their work.

In a truly premier university many of the benefits to the local community are incidental to the institution’s ‘higher calling.’ The faculty members simply do what they have trained to do and in many cases have dedicated their lives to do. Many of the consequences of this activity trickle down to the local community as they are broadcast to the larger world stage. A new vaccine for MS discovered by a university’s research faculty may be commercially developed by a pharmaceutical firm outside the local community, but the vaccine finds its way back to the ‘host’ community through immunization of the local school children. Of course smaller contributions are the norm; a discovery in basic science might pave the way for others at another university or in private industry who eventually develop the vaccine. Still, the benefits ultimately find their way back home to the community which supported the work of the basic scientist who published the essential breakthrough that permitted development of the important medical application. In such cases the local population would seldom be aware that their neighbors at the local university contributed a critical piece to the puzzle whose final authors receive the bulk of the public credit for the work. Nonetheless the unheralded basic discovery was critical to the breakthrough which benefited all despite the fact that the original work might not have created any local jobs. Without reaping the rewards (both financial and personal) of the final product, many basic scientists at premier universities find satisfaction in the work itself and in the recognition received from their colleagues for the fundamental contribution to understanding the subject matter and for their astute insight which helped to solve the scientific puzzle, qua puzzle. Would-be academic managers do not understand this process; would-be academic managers focus on the rewards that are tangible in their system of accounting such as grant awards and total research dollars; would-be academic managers through their myopic dictatorial policies suppress the very creative thinking necessary to make the true breakthroughs and leaps forward in knowledge leaving potential critical accomplishments sold-out for the price of adding another dime to the university’s coffers.

The institution is its faculty — no more, no less. The quality of its faculty determines the quality of the institution. No institutional managers can dictate the quality of an academic institution or the impact it will have on the local community. They can only help create an atmosphere where its scholars are free to pursue their intellectual and creative work in a supportive, nurturing environment. Within this context the local community usually benefits. Some professors direct large research programs which hire staff whom help make the scientific breakthroughs. Others write and perform plays or musical compositions which play to a local audience while being rehearsed for a bigger stage. And still others write novels which inspire students, colleagues, and the world alike. All perform their ‘duties’ out of a passion for their work and not from the mandates of some would-be academic manager. The mission of a premier institution is not to hire, entertain, and inspire the local population. These benefits develop out of performance of the institution’s ‘higher’ duties.

As the “University at Buffalo” perhaps it is right that the University focuses on the local community with little concern about its impact or reputation outside the region. However, as the “flagship campus of the State University of New York” the taxpaying citizens deserve better, not only a university which serves local interests, but one that serves the state, the nation, and the world by pushing the frontiers of knowledge through its research, education and training, and through its ancillary service to Western New York and beyond. Perhaps the UB administration’s insistence of being known as the “University at Buffalo” sans “State” is appropriate after all being congruent with redefining the University’s mission as service to the local area.

UB’s descent into second-class university status is heralded by its official department of work and play, or rather, work/life balance. The Buffalo Blog Frog remarked earlier that perhaps this was goaded by the former heir apparent for the interim presidency, a professional businessman who reportedly only resides in Buffalo during the workweek and returns “home” to California during the weekends. It was a tide that was a long time coming – many of UB’s administration staff seem to be absent from the university on a regular basis—some seemingly as much as those professors whom are never found in their offices. Of course many professors do most of their work outside of their offices. They often work in their laboratories or in secluded environments where they are left alone to pursue their creative work undisturbed by ringing telephones announcing textbook salesmen or by the panicky pleas of failing students unwilling to do the minimum assignments necessary to pass a course. Administrators, on the other hand, are on-campus to administer with their work often neatly organized in piles of paper on their desks. They are there to keep the institution running smoothly, to sign documents approving a grant submission or the addition of a new academic course. When they are gone their work most often remains ‘on their desks.’

The 9-to-5 orientation of many administrators is understandable and perhaps appropriate for their work but it is in contradistinction to the academic professors who usually carry their work home, often toiling away into the late hours of the night or early morning, even going to sleep and dreaming about their work which often resumes shortly after awakening. The schedules and the life-styles of businessmen and academics are much different by the very nature of their work and by the types of people attracted to such work. Some businessmen and far too many academics do burn out in part by not balancing their life and work better, but some academics shine very brightly burning-the-candle-at-both-ends before they burn out (i.e., make important, enduring contributions to their respective fields).

A number of years ago the Frog and one of his post-docs took a break from their research and teaching to attend a time-management seminar hosted by UB’s School of Management. Academics, like business people, are always trying to squeeze a few extra hours into a day and to manage their various projects better so that they can be more productive. The opening line of the seminar was: “Remember that you work to live, not live to work.” The Frog and his post-doc immediately looked at one another, the post-doc quietly whispering: “Michael, that’s not true.” Nothing else need be said about the topic; the mutual commitment to our chosen life paths, the decision to make conducting biomedical research in drug addiction and psychopharmacology as the priority in our lives was obvious to both of us. The sacrifices of moving away from family and friends, living in cities not necessarily among our favorites, earning salaries well below those commensurate with our degrees and years of training, even (in some cases) the cost of not having children of our own are all part of the price paid by many academics to pursue an extremely meaningful path for their lives, to accomplish something ‘bigger than themselves.’

Some business people will also confront the classic existential crisis known well by many academics who often circumvent it by engaging in meaningful life work early on in their careers. Such business people usually donate larges sums of money or engage in other philanthropic work to give back something to society, to help humanity, to leave something behind more meaningful than themselves or just their money or the luxuries that it buys. This is usually experienced late in life by the relatively few business people who do experience it; most of their peers never transcend the psycho-developmental stage of simply accumulating wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth and the material objects that it provides. This brief exposé is not intended as an ad hominid attack on the business types who often ‘manage’ a university, but rather simply to acknowledge the great differences between the motives and the lifestyles of academic and business people. No judgmental quality is implied regarding the two endeavors, but these differences often lead to business-oriented administrators misunderstanding the academics who’s work they inappropriately attempt to manage and supervise.

We might need businessmen on our ‘board of directors’ but certainly not at the helm — the guidance of the university, its direction, its very purpose should be dictated by the academics themselves who have dedicated their lives to their scholarly endeavors, not by people who assume a university-managerial role part-time while pursuing their other business ventures (e.g., the current constituents of UB’s Council). It’s not all about the money, Mr. Manager, it’s about EDUCATION — education of the students in pursuit of their degrees and in acquiring continuing education, education of the community through community service and other regional projects, education of the world through research and other scholarly and creative activities.

In too many cases university administrators have become the self-appointed managers of the talent (and the mission) of the academy. This was never their role — they are the groundskeepers, the classroom schedulers, the bookkeepers, the janitors in the enterprise, not the enterprise itself. By doing what many of them do best — playing self-serving, old-boy ‘business-style politics’ — they have assumed control of the academic component of the institution as well as its lighting and heating systems. They not only sell the tickets to the university events, but they have prescribed that ticket selling (of course a metaphor for generating revenue) is the primary mission of the institution with the entire academic enterprise in support of sales.

UB needs to decide whom it wishes to serve as its primary mission — a local audience or the more abstract ideals of a premier university. This institutional mandate then needs to be communicated clearly so that current and prospective faculty members can make informed decisions based on the congruence of their personal aspirations and that of this “university.” The stated goal of becoming a “premier research university” may be ‘false advertising’ to appease many of the current faculty and to attract new (money generating through their research programs) faculty members from outside the region. Indeed it may well be the case that UB rightfully deserves its second-class ranking because it destines itself to play only to a local audience, to serve a single, geographically limited area in a fantasy of saving the community by becoming “the new Bass Pro” — or perhaps having business managers run the university is not such a good idea.

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