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Ohio State University president: Reinvention key to survival
At the recent annual meeting of the American Council on Education, Ohio State University president E. Gordon Gee gave a provocative keynote address in which he admonished colleges and universities to reform themselves in order to avoid "slouching into irrelevance." Gee argued that with the mounting economic pressures, universities must revisit practices related to faculty tenure and promotion, rewards for scholarship, and institutional leadership. And he cited OSU's recent decision to hire former Johnson & Johnson vice chair Christine Poon as business school dean as one example of doing things differently. Hiring leaders without academic backgrounds is unconventional, but often leads--as one can see with former University of Colorado president Hank Brown--to excellence and independent thinking.
Gee is right: The current economic downturn provides opportunities to re-orient and reform higher education so that it fulfills its time-honored mission of transmitting knowledge while meeting the needs and demands of the twenty-first century. One need not agree with Gee on all the details to recognize that he is right, in the present climate, when he notes that "more of the same" is not a winning prescription for trustees. With this in mind, his speech is well worth a read.
Posted by Sandra E. Czelusniak on February 20, 2009 at February 20, 2009 09:57 AM
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