Progress at the University of Minnesota Toward

Becoming One of the Top Three

Public Research Institutions

in the Solar System

(You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.)

Our provost smugly stands before the Board of Regents at the University of Minnesota every year and proclaims that, yet again, we have made progress toward becoming one of the top three public research universities in the world. Board member nod knowingly and quiz him hard about whether we are on the leading edge...

The facts suggest otherwise. As the Daily put it last Fall:

"As for commitment to quality education at an affordable cost? Meaningless drivel. The administration has flatly failed on its promises of excellence and affordability."

Daily (13 Oct 2009)

Today in MinnPost and earlier in the Minnesota Daily, the sad facts are revealed about the decline in tenured and tenure-track faculty at the University. We are seeing the rise in adjuncts and the use of contract faculty who can be thrown away like a used Kleenex when they are no longer useful.

This creates an atmosphere with lessening institutional commitment and many practical difficulties, such as making it extremely difficult for students to get the kind of recommendations that they will need to get into the best of all possible medical schools.

My comments on the MinnPost piece today by Casey Selix:

Chickens, coming home to roost...

These numbers are yet another sign of the obvious decline in the quality of education at the U of M.

As the Minnesota Daily put it last Fall:

"As for commitment to quality education at an affordable cost? Meaningless drivel. The administration has flatly failed on its promises of excellence and affordability." Daily (13 Oct 2009)

And this decline cannot be blamed solely on the financial collapse of revenues from the State of Minnesota. It was in progress long before the so-called "new normal" and is the result of the poor priorities of the current U administration. See, e.g., "Can BigU become GreatBigU?" which in 2007 made the connection between our plight today and the hubris of Morrill Hall.

Let us hope, as Jane Wellman [Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit group in Washington that advocates for controlling costs to keep college affordable] put it today in the New York Times "... policymakers as well as university presidents and boards must learn to be better stewards of tuition and taxpayer dollars.”

Thanks to MinnPost and the Minnesota Daily for pursuing this important index of educational quality.

W. B. Gleason, U of M faculty and alum ('73)