Higher education is costing more and some say it's delivering less.
In a world of fast-paced technology and micro-credentials, are public universities becoming relics of the past?
A group of experts in higher education, including former Ohio State President Gordon Gee, will gather at Ohio State to discuss ways to modernize universities.
From expanding AI to strengthening transparency. From rebuilding trust to aligning education with real-world needs.
How can academic leaders position higher education for the future?
Guests:
- Gordon Gee, president emeritus, The Ohio State University
- Steve Gavazzi, professor of human development and family science/director of CHRR, The Ohio State University
- David Rosowsky, senior advisor to the president, Arizona State University
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. College is getting more expensive, and honestly, some people are feeling like it's just not going to pay off anymore. With tech moving at lightning speed and short-term certificates popping up everywhere, are public universities becoming a thing of the past? To tackle this head-on, we are talking today with three higher education experts. They are meeting for an event at Ohio State University's Union. But they are talking with me in the studio to offer a preview and to talk about how we bring universities into the modern era. They'll be diving into everything from embracing AI to bringing more transparency and also to rebuilding public trust. Joining us now we have Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of The Ohio State University. Welcome back to the show, President Gee.
Gordon Gee: Thank you, ma'am.
Juravich: And we also have Stephen Gavazzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Science and Director of the CHRR, which is the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University. Welcome to the show, Steve.
Steve Gavazzi: Thank you so much, Amy.
Juravich: And we have David Rosowsky, Senior Vice President to the Senior Advisor to the President of Arizona State University, welcome to All Sides, David.
David Rosowsky: Thanks so much.
Juravich: All right, so you all wrote a paper together. You're talking about how higher education and specifically land-grant universities can position themselves better for the future. And we're gonna get into your recommendations throughout the hour, but this all stems back to the Morale Act, right? That's the federal law that allowed public lands to be used for colleges back in the 1860s. So you're trying to position this act in a 2026 lens. So Steve, let's start with you. How do you take something as old as Um... That act and make it new again.
Gavazzi: That's an excellent question. Great to start with that. So I think that the way that I'd like to attack that question would be to say that the principles underneath the Morrill Act are not going to change. It's the fact that we need to figure out a new way to apply them because America in 1862 was largely an agrarian driven economy and we are in an AI information driven economy right now. So what we have to do is figure out what those principles, the same principles... For the public good, accessibility, affordability, how that relates to 2026 and not 1862.
Juravich: 1862 is quite some time ago. President Gee, what made you decide to collaborate on this paper with Steve and David, to talk about the future of land-grant universities? I mean, you could just say, I'm all done. I'm retired. I'm gonna stay out of it, but you figure it out.
Gee: I have been fiercely engaged in what I'd call land-grantness for a long period of time. I've been president of two big land- grant universities, West Virginia University and obviously Ohio State, and I have come to believe very strongly that the land-gant universities are the universities of the future. And I say that based upon all the evidence that we're seeing about the problems that that are happening in the private sector, the problems that. So many institutions are facing, and land-grant universities were made to be the people's universities, and I think that that reestablishment of this notion that there are institutions that are made to be different in support of the common cause is what has really been driven us. And Steve and I wrote a book, really, I can say this is the definitive book on the land- grant universities. It's called "The Future of the Land-Grant Universities." We wrote it about, what, 10 years ago?
Gavazzi: Yep, 2018.
Gee: Yeah, 2018, and so it's been something that we've been working on for a long period of time. And David has been very engaged in land-grant institutions for a longtime also, so the three of us came together to collaborate.
Juravich: And David, unless I read it wrong, the Moral Act started with Kansas State, where it used to work, is that right? Was that the first one?
Rosowsky: And Justin Morrill was a senator from the great state of Vermont, where he used to be as well.
Juravich: You're following around this act. Yeah, okay. Now I'm thinking where you are now as the senior advisor to the president of Arizona State University, maybe that wasn't around back, you know.
Rosowsky: It wasn't too long after that, but it also is not the land-grant university of the state of Arizona interestingly enough
Juravich: Okay, which one is?
Rosowsky: The University of Arizona is the land-grant institution. That said, if you look at Arizona State University. Something that Michael Crow brought with him and implemented upon arrival at ASU was what we call the charter. And if you look at the ASU charter, it is essentially a restatement or amplification of the principles of the land-grant university. So it's very much a university engaged with its communities, committed to the health and well-being of the people in those communities. Serving as an economic engine, working on problems of greatest interest to the most people in the state, and providing access to a world-class education.
Juravich: So is your history though with Kansas, is that what brought you on board or you just, you love land-grant universities? I love land grant universities.
Rosowsky: I love land-grant universities, so I've been privileged to work at several of them. Even though I am actually a product of East Coast private universities, I spent all but four years of my career at large public and land-grain universities and fiercely believe in the mission. And also, like Gordon and Steve have come to realize, not only are great land grants and public universities the future of higher education, but if you peel away all the criticisms of higher education today, and you ask what really matters in a higher education institution and in a high education for citizens of the state and the nation, you really come down to the mission of the land grant university. And part of our mission is to help people recognize that land grants always have been what the country best needs and serves in the greatest interest of the most people of the country. And what we're interested in doing now is reframing the brilliance of the Morrill Act for what America needs today and tomorrow.
Juravich: And Steve, you called your paper, you're calling your event, the Morrill Act 250 in honor of America's 250th birthday. We need to be forward thinking here. We need be planning for the next 250 years, not looking back, right? How do we not get swept up in birthdays and anniversaries though? Because that, I mean, America loves a good celebration, 4th of July, you know?
Gavazzi: Yeah. And there is great reason to celebrate. There's so much to be proud of. And yet, the Land-Grant University is the institution that comes to work every day, lunch pail in hand, and does the actual work. So I think we absolutely have to be celebrating the kinds of signal events that we have. But at the end of the day, and I'm just echoing what David already said. The land grant university shows up, they're the practical university, they're doing that day-to-day work.
Juravich: What made you, though, want to, like, lean into this 250 thing? Because you said you wrote this book with Dr. Guy, you know, in 2018. We've been thinking about the future of land grants for a while. Right. Why? Like right now.
Gavazzi: Well, I think that we were taking advantage of the fact that Ohio State also was celebrating 250. And so a big part of what I was already thinking about was how can we make a contribution to what Ohio State is trying to do in terms of saying, we've been around 160 plus years. How is it that we can be a part of the celebration of America?
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the future of higher education and land-grant universities. We are talking with Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University, Steve Gavazzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Science, and also the Director of the CHRR at Ohio State university. And we have David Rosofsky, Senior Advisor to the President of Arizona State University. All right, so in your paper, you outline a series of things that universities can do to commit themselves to the public good. So I wanted to start with, it's a list of five things we're gonna start with rebuilding public trust. President Gee, what trust has been lost? What do you think is needing to be rebuilt here?
Gee: Yeah, well I give an example that when I became a university president in 1980, the Gallup poll that year showed that 95% of the American public thought that higher education was a positive, was a good. I spoke to the annual gathering of the Gallop organization a year and a half ago in Omaha and the Gallep poll that years showed that it had gotten down to about 35%. So trust All institutions, and my friend David makes this point very well, that the military, every institution has lost public support. But for universities to lose public support and trust is a devastating blow because the force that drives universities is really that trust, trust of faculty, staff, students, of our alumni, of our friends, of the general public. And so, this notion of rebuilding trust... Is really what we're focused on right now. So we have lost, and you know, there are so many different reasons you can talk about. The Tenor of the Times, you know. Obviously, the things we've been through, the wokeness of a variety of other things. I think there's so many issues. But really, the bottom line is for the land-grant university particularly, it has a unique opportunity to reestablish a public trust because we are, as Steve said, we are in the business of doing the business of the people.
Juravich: Well, David, let me ask you about the trust idea, because a lot of people say, you know, they have a lack of trust in leadership, right? So we're sitting here with a former university president, you advise a university president. I mean, what do you think whenever people say I can't trust the university, you don't care about the individual students, they just care about the bottom line, the president of the university doesn't care.
Rosowsky: So I can honestly say having worked for several presidents and with several presidents, I've never met a president that fits that description.
Juravich: There's a perception there.
Rosowsky: There's a perception, and there's also a perception that the university is not serving the broader needs of its communities or its constituents or its students. It's part of a narrative that has two origin stories, in my opinion. One is universities, for the most part, have taken their eye off of the public perception issue and the public confidence and public trust issue, which is why we're in this rebuild phase now. But the other, frankly, is there are a lot of stories out there. That are partial truths or incomplete truths, and the media likes to push those out, and so you hear these stories. Oh, that darn media, I know. Oh, we love the media, but you know, the stories of the $100,000 tuition and the $150,000 debts and so forth. If you just peel back one layer of the onion more, you get to the truth. And one of the things you find out is that university presidents, the ones I've met, and Gordon, you know far more than me, the ones that I've meet are so deeply committed. To the issue of access and affordability, that they prioritize student financial aid in their philanthropy efforts, and they are essentially committed to outpacing inflation so that they can continue to increase the affordability and access of their institution, despite the fact that their real fixed costs are going up and despite the the fact that the federal and state support certainly has not kept pace.
Juravich: Well, at President Gee, you have to keep the university afloat. You have to chart. You have to charge tuition. It can't be free. Even though this is we're talking land grant here and it sounds like it should be free, it can't be free. So how do you balance that as being you want people to trust you that you have everyone's best interest at heart, but you got to charge the money. Yeah.
Gee: Question, I think the question for the modern public university, particularly the land-grant university, is how do you increase quality and moderate and decrease costs? I mean, it's that simple. We can no longer just say that we can raise tuition and that people are going to say that's fine. We now need to make certain that there is an ROI, I use that word. We need to be certain that people feel that the university is using their resources wisely. And the university itself needs to make certain that it explains very carefully what it's doing. For example, here during my tenure, we did raise tuition, but we made certain that we raised tuition at the very lowest possible level and that we provided financial aid support that exceeded the amount of money that we were raising. And then also we had a people's program here, raise money to support people. Get out of the building business, get out of a variety of other things, just raise a lot of money to be able to support the students who are coming to the institution.
Juravich: Ohio State also does something that I didn't know about, but you guarantee the same tuition when you came in as a freshman, so you don't raise tuition on a sophomore, junior, or senior. You raise tuition at the incoming level, so at least you know what you're in for, right? Steve, let me ask you about that idea that land-grant universities should be, I'm not Um, you know, land-grant universities should be less expensive than other universities. I mean, is that possible in this day and age? Everything costs more. The land- grant university has to keep the lights on.
Gavazzi: Before I answer that question, I'd like to just go back to the trust issue for a second, because one of the things that my colleagues didn't point out is that one of things that we're bringing to the table in our discussions of what needs to happen differently is to recognize that trust is not a unidimensional concept. In our own research that we did, we asked a question about overall trust, but we also asked, how much does the public trust to provide a good education. And the good news was that over 80% of people in the eight most populous states in the country, plus West Virginia, because that's where Gordon was, so we tapped into that citizen group as well, they trusted us to provide good education when we asked the question, though, how much do you trust us to create research that you can rely on? That fell to 60%. When we asked a question, how much to you trust this to prepare citizens to participate in democracy, 50%. And when we ask the final question... About trust, which was, do you trust us to keep political bias out of the classroom? That was only 30%. So it's a very complex story that we think we need to be telling about what's happening with trust. In some ways, the really good news is people trust us do the main job we have, which is provide a good education. But some of the other things that we're also trying to do seems to be pulling this down. And I will pull that back now to your question, which is. I think it's, trust is also an issue about trust to provide a good return on investment, the ROI that Gordon talked about. And so, whether something is less or more expensive, I think is all relative to what the students think they're getting out of it, and I think that's the real question that we actually have to ask.
Juravich: We will get more into that idea of, you know, the politics and the trust and the transparency. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. Our guests are staying with us. And if you want to hear more from these three, you can join them tonight at the Ohio Union on Ohio State's campus. There will be a panel discussion called Redefining Ohio's Land Grant Compact. And it's today, Thursday, September 3rd at 6 p.m. Coming up, we're going to talk about more of the priorities our guests say that land-grant universities need to focus on to prepare for the future. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. What role should our public universities play in a time of rapid technological change, political division, and growing skepticism about higher education? Our guests today say the answer lies in re-imagining the Morrill Act, the federal law from 1862 that created land-grant universities. They want to put a modern spin on that old mission. They want universities to do everything from embrace AI to be more transparent, to rebuild public trust, and make sure classes actually prepare students for real world jobs. So how can academic leaders shake things up and set higher education up for the future? We're gonna continue our conversation and still with us in the studio. We have Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University. Thanks for being here, President Gee. And Stephen Gavazzi, a Professor of Human Development and Family Science and Director of the CHRR, which is the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State. Thanks for joining us, Steve. Thanks, Amy. And we also have David Rosowsky, Senior Advisor to the President of Arizona State University. Thanks for being here, David. Thank you. All right, so before the break, we mentioned that you have these five essential priorities of how universities can recommit themselves for the public good. The next one I want to discuss. Is aligning education with real world needs. What does this look like? Planning for the jobs of tomorrow in an AI world, predicting the future. Steve, how can we predict the future? How do we know what job we need to be training incoming freshmen for?
Gavazzi: Well, I think that David would probably have something to say about this because this really hits on his writing, too, so I'll quickly toss it to him. But I think one of the things that we have been leaning very heavily into is the idea that we are training skill sets and that these skill sets are the things that will be transferable to a variety of different jobs over time. It's not we're training one person to do one specific thing, but rather we're giving them a set of critical thinking skills, we're giving them soft skills in terms of how to work in teams. These are the kinds of things that will be transferable regardless of what the specific job actually is.
Juravich: All right, David, what do you yeah, you.
Gavazzi: Pitched it over.
Juravich: Yes, yes, take the ball. I think, I think.
Rosowsky: The universities that are at the forefront of making sure students are prepared for what comes next, even though we may not know what it is, tend to be these large public and land grant universities. They're fiercely practical, fiercely committed to making sure our students have successful outcomes upon graduation. And they're fiercly committed to staying in contact with their graduates, which I think is really important. So when I think about the skills that we're trying to provide for our students. Whether it's AI enhanced or enabled, or whether it is group project, or whether is experiential learning, or whether its co-ops and internships. What we're really trying to do is equip them with an adaptability mindset. So they understand that the world's changing faster today than it was even 10 years ago, even five years ago even last year, and that they're going to be called upon to pivot in their career and to pivot in their expertise and to acquire new knowledge and new capabilities along the way. So. With adaptability, I think about instilling agility, which is the ability to move quickly and to respond quickly. Curiosity. I think great universities like land grants instill curiosity by virtue of how they operate and the kinds of students that they bring in. And then finally, because things are changing so quickly and because we know students will change careers five, six, maybe seven times. In their working life, I think universities have an opportunity, if not an obligation, to stay connected with their graduates in a lifelong relationship. And I refer to this in a piece I wrote earlier this year called the 60-year degree, which is saying our partnership doesn't end when we hand you the diploma, it continues for your professional career.
Juravich: Well, President Gee, I mean, David just referred to a 60 year degree, but I was going to ask you about whether we need it to be a four year degree. Like, can we teach the students to pivot? Can we teach students to learn to think creatively, to become broader minds in three years, two and a half years? Like, you know, just to save them some money.
Gee: Yeah, well, you know, Amy, I'm going to be heretical here. I do not believe that everyone should get a four-year degree. I do believe everyone should come to a university. But what I do belief is that we need to think about education in this country as pre-K through life. And that means that everyone needs to continue their education. If you're going to skills training, the nature of technology right now requires that people who are plumbers, electricians, This is a very sophisticated world. So everyone needs to continue their training. And within university itself, we need to make certain that we do a number of things, including stackable degrees, including providing a stop in, stop out. The notion of a four-year degree, in many ways, has the agrarian basis to it, again. And what we have.
Juravich: What farmers needed for years, I don't know.
Gee: That's sort of what they did, you know, you go bring in the sheaves and then you go off to college and it took about four years to do it. That's the reason that it was. Half the time was traveling, but anyway. And half the time, was just simply the fact that they had to drop in and drop out. So yes, the notion of reinventing the nature of what education is about starts really very early, but universities need to be about reinvention, not about holding onto the past.
Rosowsky: But the academic semester system was wholly tied to the agrarian calendar, and there's so much about higher ed today that made sense in the 1800s and the 1900s, but today really doesn't make sense, and it actually restricts us from sort of meeting the moment and the need and the type of learning that people are expecting.
Juravich: Isn't that Ohio State was one of the last universities to have quarters before moving to semesters. Did they change it? Did you change that?
Gee: Yes, I did. I did, and I took a lot of hell for it. But, you know, the point was...
Juravich: No, I think everyone is better on the other side now, I don't know.
Gee: Yeah, no, they were at the time, but people thought, well, you can't do that. But the answer is yes. And the reason we did that was both in terms of time and space and cost saving. And it has proven to be very much the case. And now we need to think about try message. We need to thing about stop-ins. We need think about. Yes.
Juravich: Yeah, some universities do like a J-term where it's just one class in all of January. I always found that very interesting.
Rosowsky: And students shouldn't be punished, and universities shouldn't be downgraded for graduation times longer than four years or six years per IPEDS. Because there are students who choose to opt out for work experience, and there are student who have to opt out whether it's for family reasons or financial reasons. Or the military. Or for the military, and I think that that's one of the things that no longer makes sense, that we talk about four-year graduation rate, we report nationally our six-year graduate rates, And that's all for today. It's an artificial barrier. Really what we should be is infinitely flexible and meet the students where they need, when they need it. I think Gordon talked about stackable certificates. I think that is a brilliantly undertapped model. We haven't yet figured out how to really stack certificates toward a degree.
Gee: Or toward success, right. Yes, right.
Rosowsky: Or toward any credential or not, or that can be transferred to another university, and that's going to be the key to the success of a stackable certificate problem.
Juravich: This is All Sides. On 89.7 NPR News, we're talking about the future of higher education in land-grant universities. We're talking with Gordon Gee, President Emeritus at Ohio State University, Steven Gavazzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Science and Director of the CHRR at Ohio state, and David Rosowsky, Senior Advisor to the President of Arizona State University. So in the introduction, I talked about how universities are facing a lot of political division that's happening here in central Ohio. Ohio lawmakers passed sweeping legislation called Senate Bill 1. I'm sure you've all heard of it. It was a big overhaul of higher education. It eliminated DEI programs. It requires open access to all syllabi. It eliminated programs with low enrollment. I mean, it did a lot of things. It also created civic centers. So the law created the Salmon P. Chase Civic Center for civics, culture, and society at Ohio State. Now these civic centers are supposed to be a way to combat liberal bias on campus. How do you? Reimagine universities for a future in the way that you have outlined while Ohio lawmakers are doing the same thing. Steve, you want to take that or Gordon, do you want to take it?
Gee: Go ahead. Well, the point is the fact that, and I make this, I was talking about this last evening, universities are their own worst enemy. We need to be preemptive. We need read what the public wants. We need understand what is happening.
Juravich: Well, what if it's Ohio lawmakers saying what the public, like, yeah.
Gee: The point is, is Ohio lawmakers reflect what the public wants, and when we are resistant, when we refuse to think about change, when we refused to listen to what is happening, then we end up having people impose things on us. So that's number one. Number two is the fact that I would not say, you know, I've been very involved in the role of the civic centers nationally and certainly in the CHASE Center here. I would not say that it's so much as an antidote, but it's to what is being taught, but more an opportunity for a wider range of conversations that take place. Now that is a nuance, and people argue with me, and we'll go back and forth about that. But I do think that Ohio lawmakers are very reflective of what was happening in the general public. Guys. You know, 2024, let's put the presidential election to the side. When you think about it, it was a real revolution, and much of it was focused around that election was much, it was focus around higher education. People in the Midwest of this country, people in the South, people in a variety of other places, they're tired of being told by the cultural elites and by the coastal elites of what to say, what to do, what to hear, what pronouns to use, a variety of other things, they really revolted. And that is reflected in what is happening in higher education. We need to listen in order to be able to lead, and for some reason or other, we're very tone deaf in higher eduction.
Juravich: Well, the bill's sponsor said that it would return public universities and colleges to their rightful mission of education rather than indoctrination. Steve, do you think we had reached the level of indoctrination with the liberal bias on college campuses?
Gavazzi: No, I don't. I think that this is a case where a very few loud individuals tended to color up all the rest of us. Again, I'm speaking here as a faculty member, not just an administrator at Ohio State right now. But I actually want to look at the glass half full part of this. And I want to make a comment about the Chase Center. Lee Strang, the director there, has actually been a great friend to. Many of us who have been interested in the issue of public trust, in fact it was Lee Strang who was our original partner on this. And so he helped develop the questions that were really, in many ways, attempts to get at what the public was thinking about us. And in addition, we also were tapping into questions about what people thought about civic education. And what we found out was really interesting was that people who were more supportive of civic education were actually also more supportive of universities. And so I think there's this really interesting tie there between that. I also wanted to point out that in the original research that Gordon and I did, we found some really interesting bipartisan agreement on higher education, which was what are universities supposed to be spending their money on? And in 2021, which is the first year that we had asked this question, we simply said, You have $100 of taxpayer money, and there's three buckets. Teaching, research, and community engagement. How would you divide it out? And it did not matter if you were a Democrat, Republican, independent, or unaffiliated. You said $50 should go into teaching, and then pretty much split the rest. A little bit more went to research. It's 26% or $26, and then $24 to community engagement, but fast forward to 2025 when we ask these same people the same questions. That shifted, and again, did not matter what you actually were from a political identity perspective. But what we saw was a shift towards, we now want even more money spent towards teaching, and actually a tiny bit more on research, and where did it come from? Community engagement.
Juravich: What was that statistic you gave me a few minutes ago, though, about politics in universities? You said that how many percent? 80%.
Gavazzi: 80% really, really supported teaching. Oh, 80%, yeah. Again, without political differences. Okay.
Juravich: Well, yes, David. So you, I mean, I'm sure you've heard of Senate Bill 1. I think, you know, like you don't live here in Ohio. You didn't live through it, but it was a very contentious time whenever this bill was being discussed. It passed, it's being enacted. What's your take on Ohio lawmakers making these changes to higher education rather than higher education changing itself?
Rosowsky: Well, there's a lot in that question. It's brilliant. As a student of higher ed, still I read a lot and follow all the states that are going through similar law-making and similar response by universities. I think the politicization of the nation has actually been part of the challenge for us in higher education because you have people and lawmakers on the right accusing institutions of training activists that are far left and you have people on the far left that are saying we don't want to bring voices in from the far right. So this is a very slippery slope, and I think we're caught in a pretty tough time, and it's challenging a lot of leaders. But my point is when I hear you describe the Ohio legislators saying the idea of introducing a civics requirement is to, and I'm using your words, to combat liberal bias on campus, I think that's a missed opportunity. The objective is to prepare citizens. Right, the objective is to prepare critical learners who become critical thinkers, who become engaged in the democracy of this country and become contributing citizens.
Juravich: So I think that needs to be the objective. The bill's sponsor, Jerry Serino, would say that universities weren't doing that. They weren't teaching civics properly. He wanted to decide what properly is, though.
Rosowsky: That's a politicization problem. I think the issue of civics, government, American history and so forth goes far deeper than just colleges and universities. Our K-12 curriculum also has cut way back on teaching of civicks and government. So I think you have to look at the whole educational spectrum, but I would caution, I would cushion against contributing to the partisanship and the politicization.
Gee: I couldn't agree with David Moore, but I just want to point out that Senator Serino, for example, he made the point. When we stop teaching civics, when we have very little of it being taught in universities, then you open yourself up for that very charge. That's not politicalization. That is reality. And my point earlier is the fact that we should have been preemptive. Universities need to be on the on the vortex of reading their own tea leaves and moving very quickly to respond to the needs of the public almost immediately.
Juravich: Steve, what would you say to what President Guy said before, because he said the lawmakers do reflect what the public wants because they're elected by the people. So if the students and even the faculty at Ohio State University were upset about this law, would your answer to them be like, well, all those students needed to vote or something like that? Why?
Gavazzi: I think there's some truth to that as well. I mean, sure, that's the democratic process, right? If your elected representatives are not fairly representing your viewpoints, then you have an opportunity to change them over.
Juravich: But unfortunately, from a university standpoint, students are coming from everywhere. So these lawmakers are like, dictating or changing a higher education and changing what Ohio State has to do. But the people who it affects live everywhere, not just, they're not represented by just Jerry Serino.
Gavazzi: Agreed. But again, so I think Senator Serino might have been one of those Canary in a coal mines from the standpoint of universities historically have not asked the public what they think. And that's one of the things that we're actually bringing to the table. We're talking about this tonight. We're actually going to be creating a panel here in Ohio. It will be representative of all 88 counties. And we are actually going to start asking questions about perceptions of higher education. And six months, and one year, and a year and a half, two years later, we're going to keep asking the same people those questions. And so we are going to create a dashboard for people to understand exactly what Ohioans are thinking. And we don't expect that there's one uniform way that they're going be reacting, but we're gonna be able to say, 60% of the people think this, 40% of people think that. Universities, for all of us... That sounds like something we needed five years ago. But anyway, that's that one. That's my point, Amy. That's the point is that we should have been doing it then had we had this happen, then maybe Senator Serino and everyone else would not have had to do this because we might have been picking it up. One of the open ended questions that we ask is actually if there was one single thing that universities could do to increase your trust, what would it be? And we asked that back in 2021 in our more national audience. And we found that there were eight different themes. So again, people don't All believe the same thing, but but we actually had eight themes we could
Juravich: write about. Well if you want to hear more from these three you can join them tonight at the Ohio Union on Ohio State's campus there will be a panel discussion called redefining Ohio State land-grant compact that's today Thursday September 3rd at 6 p.m. And our guests are staying with us coming up we're gonna talk about leadership and we're going to talk a little bit more about how the Chase Center at Ohio State is doing. That is when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. Higher education is costing more and some say delivering less. In a world of fast-paced technology and micro-credentials, our public universities becoming relics of the past. With us today are three experts in higher education who have written what they call a blueprint to take higher education and land-grant universities forward successfully into the future. Still with us, Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of Ohio State University. Thanks again for being here, President Gee.
Gee: You're welcome.
Juravich: And Stephen Gavazzi, professor of human development and family science and director of the CHRR, which is the Center for Human Research at Ohio State University. Thanks for joining us again, Steve.
Gavazzi: Thank you, Amy.
Juravich: And David Rosofsky, senior advisor to the president of Arizona State University, thanks for being here, David.
Rosowsky: Thanks, Amy
Juravich: President Gee, you were hired back to Ohio State as a consultant for a year to raise money and to recruit for the Chase Center, which we've been talking about, the Civics and Cultural Center. You were invited back by Ted Carter, now former president, Ted Carter. Were you surprised with everything that happened with Ted Carter resigning from Ohio State?
Gee: Well, I think that the answer is yes. I mean, absolutely. I think he was here, he was doing a good job. I think, obviously, he made some decisions which were entirely inappropriate for the role of university presidency. So yes, I I think it's a sad case. And I think any time a university loses its leader in the wrong vector, then it is sad for the institution. And it causes a lot of disruption.
Juravich: I should add, just to remind our listeners, so the Chase Center is a program mandated by the Ohio Legislature, and it's aimed at quelling what lawmakers believe was liberal bias on college campuses. So you were working with the Chase center for a year, and I interviewed the new OSU president, Ravi Balamkonda, and he said your contract was not renewed. Did you want to keep working with Ohio State and the Chase? I know.
Gee: No, I just signed up for a year. I've got a number of projects that I'm undergoing. I signed up a year and it's been, you know, it was a great year for me. I continue to be, as President Emeritus of the University, I continue be involved with the institution as needed and as wanted and so I continue have a very strong relationship with the institution.
Juravich: Okay, how do you feel like you did in your year, helping the Chase Center grow, how'd it go? Well.
Gee: Well, I think that we made real strides. I think there is a lot of work to do. I think that the issue of how it becomes more structurally integrated into the rest of the institution is going to be the big issue going forward.
Juravich: And just back to the university president part. I mean, you said you were disappointed it was a disruption to have a president leave after just so few years. I mean what's your advice to Ohio State going forward with President Belham Conda? I mean we're spending this whole hour talking about increasing trust in the university. So how can they trust the university with this president turnover?
Gee: Well, I think that the university did exactly the right thing, and that is that I think that it had been very, very disruptive and perhaps even demoralizing for the institution to have gone through yet another presidential search. I think the President Belaconde is doing an excellent job. He came well-prepared. He's a very smart, able guy. He really does have a sense of the institution and its future. I think The Trustees did a brilliant job in making that appointment.
Juravich: Yeah, so, I mean, we had President Drake for a while, I don't know how many years, and then Christina Johnson was just like two years, and then Ted Carter ended up being just two years. What does all that turnover do to a university?
Gee: It says that university presidencies are very fragile. There's all sorts of turnover going on right now. I mean there are so many different presidences that are open, many of them due to the fact that a university presidency, in my 45 years I've never seen a more challenging tide to be a university president than it is right now
Juravich: All right, I'm going to ask David and Steve both about leadership in just a moment. But one other thing that happened on Ohio State's campus while you were here working for the Chase Center is that Ohio State University Professor Luke Perez was caught on video in February throwing documentarian Mike Newman to the ground as Newman tried to ask you some questions. I haven't heard you really talk publicly like your public reaction to that whole incident. I mean, what do you make of what happened there?
Gee: Well, you know, when they caught me, I would say that, I was just coming out of the restroom, when they got me, I answered their questions and then I went on and I was not aware of what was going on. I'm not certain quite what happened there, but I can say very honestly, they're very irritating and very pugilistic.
Juravich: Well Perez was basically defending you. I mean, do you think that he should have had charges against him though? Because I just
Gee: Well, you know, that is not my role, because I'm not privy to the rules of the university, but as I said, I think that it was unfortunate that charges were brought, and I think it's unfortunate that he's in this particular issue right now.
Juravich: So he pled no contest to one count of disorderly conduct in the Franklin County Municipal Court. He was fined $100. He was sentenced to two years of community control, which is parole basically. It was recommended that OSU fire him. Do you think that was the right punishment?
Gee: I am not privy to all the facts, but I would not have fired him if I were in charge. I would have not done that, no.
Juravich: You would not have fired him for? I mean, he did throw a documentarian to the ground and like.
Gee: Well, yeah, but I'm not getting into the defense of this issue, I'm just saying that I think that we all make mistakes and I think that at this point that he's probably learned his lesson. I think sometimes we don't overreact and universities tend to overreaction.
Juravich: Did you
Gee: know him very well or was it just like you he was like yeah no I really didn't know him but he's a he's abridable young man
Juravich: I guess if he wouldn't have, um, pled, you would have been asked to testify in court. So would you have testified to the fact?
Gee: I would have done, my knowledge is fairly limited because I did answer their questions and I did talk to them so I was not engaged in what happened afterwards.
Juravich: Well, in an ironic turn of events, Luke Perez previously taught at Arizona State University. So I have to turn to you, David, and ask, did you happen to know him? I did not. Whenever I saw that connection, I had to ask. Okay. I mean, what do you think about what President Gee just said that universities tend to overreact? Do they? You've been at a lot of universities. Do universities overreakt?
Rosowsky: I think some could be accused of overreacting, but I don't think it's fair to paint with a broad brush and say colleges and universities as a general rule overreact. I've seen some leadership teams react swiftly, others too swiftly, and others react too slowly. But I think increasingly as the presidency has become more challenged and the expectations and forces, frankly, that are... Angled at them and in some cases against them have become fiercer, I think presidents are generally doing a far better job of responding in a timely and appropriate way.
Juravich: Let me ask you about this leadership thing that we were just talking about with Dr. Guy. You know, Ohio State having this turnover of presidents, Christina Johnson left for one reason, Carter left for an entirely different reason, but both were very short stints. And this is, I mean, for Ohio State University, that turnover, like that's a lot and probably unprecedented if you consider how long President Guy was here. So what do you make of this turnover? It may be.
Rosowsky: It may be shocking to Ohio State and unprecedented at Ohio State, but it's becoming all too common across the nation in public as well as private institutions. So the presidential turnover now, at least at public institutions, I believe the last statistic I saw, the average tenure is now just under four years. So it's shorter. That's about three and a half years. Shorter than a one-term U.S. President.
Juravich: Not even someone's degree or a president, wow, okay, so that's short.
Rosowsky: Of course, the job has become far more complex, as Gordon has mentioned, and of course, as I said, there are just more people coming at you for all the different reasons that we know about. But it's extraordinarily destabilizing for the institution. And so what ends up happening when Ohio State and many other schools go through these rapid turnovers, whether it's for this reason, that reason, or another reason, whether it is by choice or by decision by a board, any evolutionary path or decision to evolve, change. Add new ways of teaching, learning, thinking, add new thrust areas in research and discovery, new relationships with hospitals, whatever the case may be, that doesn't take root. And you're simply waiting for a new president to come in, establish her or himself, and then lead. And if they don't have time to get through the establish her or himself phase, then there is no leadership. And it's destabilizing and it's demoralizing. And it's frankly bad for the institution, because if we are out of step with the rest of the world, or if we're seen as becoming increasingly marginalized relative to what people are expecting or needing from higher education, then the rapid turnover and lack of actual growth, action, innovation, evolution only furthers that challenge.
Juravich: Steve, in your research, I mean, does the general public of a university care who the president is?
Gavazzi: That's a great question, because I was sitting here thinking that, you know, we're exaggerating the impact of a president a little bit here. I've been here. I've been here 36 years. I've seen Gordon come and go twice, and my work has continued the entire time. And so I don't want to discount what David and Gordon have said because absolutely for the institution writ large to be able to move, it needs sustained leadership. But at the same time, there are people who are in the trenches who are doing the of work that needs to be done. Again, on a daily basis, the land-grant mission goes on regardless of who the president is. And so I do want to at least say that there are some things that will continue on, that the course that I think Ohio State is on will continue to move. Maybe just not as quickly. But I think that there is something to be said for pushing an institution in a direction and if you get enough of a nudge uh... In the therapy world which is my clinical training we say give it a bump and watch it jump
Rosowsky: I love you brother Steve. Yeah, and and I don't disagree with you But two things I'll point out one is Gordon's tenures here at Ohio State. I believe we're about seven years each. Yes that's a tenure.
Gavazzi: Oh, absolutely.
Rosowsky: Each one of them, to say nothing of the 14 years combined. That's point one. Point two, with what's happening in higher ed right now, and the need not only to be represented to the outside, but to be driving the university forward at a pace of change they are not accustomed to. I do believe you need that presidential leadership.
Juravich: Fair point. We are going to have to leave it there because we're out of time. Gordon Gee, President Emeritus of The Ohio State University, thanks for being here.
Gee: You're welcome. Thank you.
Juravich: And Stephen Gavazzi, Professor of Human Development and Family Science and Director of the CHRR. Thanks for joining us, Steve.
Gavazzi: Thank you, Amy.
Juravich: And also we had with us David Rosowsky, senior advisor to the president of Arizona State University. Thanks for being here, David.
Rosowsky: Thanks, Amy.
Juravich: And if you want to hear more from these three, join them tonight at the Ohio Union on Ohio State's campus. The panel discussion is called Redefining Ohio State's Land Grant Compact. It's today, Thursday, September 3rd at 6 p.m. You are listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.