Science and Math Take Money

The findings and recommendations of the Spellings commission serve to emphasize again the significant challenges and expectations facing higher education in the United States today. The work of the commission will undoubtedly add further fuel to discussions about how to enhance access, promote student success, and meet our nation's needs in an ever-changing world. We must be able to compete in a global marketplace and maintain our position as world leader.

Several of the report's recommendations are on target. They make good sense and are a must. For instance, the commission recommends new, enlarged investments in educating students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, also known as the STEM disciplines. That is a high priority for a number of reasons.

First, long-term American economic competition in an increasingly interdependent world will rest heavily on our ability to produce people who can conduct research and create new products and processes. Second, universities themselves will face a shortage of STEM faculty members as a cohort of baby boomers begins to retire. And third, any student with interest or aptitude in the sciences or math ought to have the opportunity to pursue an education in those fields. The United States has never had enough — let alone too many — science and math graduates.

The commission also correctly notes that STEM education really begins in the public schools, which must fundamentally increase the skills and understanding of their students and prepare them adequately to move on to college. That is a message we at New Mexico State University not only understand but also promote among our own institutions of higher learning and our colleagues in elementary and secondary education as we work to better align school and college curricula.

Meanwhile, none of those efforts can be accomplished without money.

The commission calls on colleges and universities to improve efficiency and cut costs. Every administrator and college leader I know is committed to reducing costs without loss of quality. There are more than enough places to put the savings. But universities, especially public research universities, face challenges in reducing costs. Most institutions are now replacing or renovating aging facilities built in response to the surge of the GI Bill students and then to the baby boomers. Now, with many faculty members retiring, the cost of hiring replacements will be substantial. We must continually upgrade our research technology and laboratories, another priority requiring economic commitments. The heterogeneous students we take in today often require individualized attention and sometimes come with special needs. So while we cut costs in one area, they continue to grow in others.

The report's recommendation to consolidate and simplify financial-aid applications and to increase need-based aid for students is laudable. It is important, however, to understand that for many students it is not the cost of tuition and fees that keeps them away from their studies. It is the cost of not being able to work. For those from low-income families, having to work full time means they cannot attend school full time — if at all.

Thus the commission could have appropriately called for more money to expand work-study opportunities. It also could have focused some attention on the practices of many public universities (mine included) that cling to a low-tuition, low-aid model of financing education. Such an approach is often viewed as a means of improving access. In reality, a low-tuition, low-aid approach provides a subsidy to students from upper- and middle-income families and imposes a "regressive" tax on the poor, for whom even low tuition takes a high bite of their incomes. A more comprehensive assessment of ways to create a more "progressive" tuition-and-aid structure is needed.

In summary, the Spellings commission's report issues a call to action and provides the groundwork for further discussion. We know, however, that one prescription doesn't cure all maladies. Across higher education, we have different missions and a variety of circumstances and situations. Each university, working with its governing board and through shared governance, will have to adapt and adopt those recommendations that fit and make sense.

The one overarching implication of the Spellings commission that does apply to us all: We must do better.

President Michael V. Martin wrote this for "The Chronicle of Higher Education."