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University President Karen A. Holbrook visited the Lantern newsroom Nov. 21 to discuss a variety of issues about Ohio State.
The Lantern: There's been a lot of talk recently about you renewing your contract, so I was just wondering if you have any update on that?
Holbrook: I have a five-year contract, and somehow when it was developed by the attorney - and an attorney always develops these things - he had written into it that at the end of the third year that the trustees and I would discuss whether the contract would be renewed. We got to the third year and I said this doesn't make a lot of sense to do it now because if we agree to renew it now, it's really a seven-year contract. Then if I say no and I want to stay five years and that's it, then I've got two years as a lame duck.
So it doesn't make sense to really do it at the end of the third year and so we said, both the trustees and I just said, let's wait till year four then we'll talk about it. So that'll probably happen in spring and we'll talk about it. So that's how it came about, that's why it was changed from what it was.
TL: As far as enrollment, OSU's dropped to No. 3, I was wondering if we had planned this decrease? If this was something OSU was looking to do? Why did it happen? Why now?
Holbrook: Well I think there are a couple of answers to that. We didn't specifically say 'we're going to decrease our enrollment.' Our target has been about 1,500 entering students every year. One year we simply missed the mark and ended up making more offers and getting more acceptances than we had, and we came way over 6,000. That's the year we became No. 1, in terms of size in the nation. Arizona State is targeted to beat us, and it isn't a competition, that's a bad way of putting it. Arizona State has set as its goal to be the great American university and to be one of the largest universities in the nation. They admitted 9,000 freshmen this fall. That's a lot of freshmen. But what they have is a Tempe campus, their main campus, then they have an Arizona East and Arizona West and they have a downtown campus. And their view is that they want to admit all qualified students to one of those four campuses ... but Arizona has three schools. The state of Arizona has only three colleges - ASU, AU, and Northern Arizona. Then they have of course, Maricopa Community College, which is about 300,000 students - I think the largest community college in the nation. They partner a lot with Arizona State in the kinds of things they do in articulation of getting students from community college into ASU. So their target has been to grow and become much much larger ... They have a different philosophy and they're a totally different state. Arizona is one of the great growth states in the nation right now. People are just pouring into the state. It's also a state with a lot of minority students and they really reach out to the Native American population, Hispanic population in that state to bring them in. Their standards for admission are not as high as ours. It isn't that they're crummy. They're fine. They believe they set a level of admission requirement and anyone who meets that will get in. The way we set our admissions is a little bit different. We don't set them, per se, they set themselves. In terms of us recruiting top students and picking them off as they come down, and then when we fill the class that's ... we also obviously have top requirements but we pick the best in students coming down the levels, so it's a little bit different then what they've done. So that's why. Minnesota is another one of those huge campuses like ours and they moved ahead of us and that's fine. We're a good size. We're proud of our size and we're doing fine.
TL: I'm curious to know, a lot of the backgrounds of the trustees are in the business and private sector. I know The Dispatch and The Lantern had editorials on how we need better higher education representation and how there needs to be people who actually have a lot of experience and expertise in higher education, and I'm curious if that's kind of been a topic that you've discussed as far as getting more people on there and how that would change and what aspects of the university would be most affected and could actually get more light shed on them if there were people who actually had more expertise.
Holbrook: There's been a lot of discussion about that and the trustees have taken that very seriously. In fact when we knew they were going to expand they put together a matrix of who's on it now, what the talent is now, what the backgrounds of the people are, what areas they are most capable and where are gaps are most importantly. And the governor was given that analysis.
Where do we need more talent and I think we need, we don't have anybody specifically in the medical area or the biomedical area, mostly the medical area, and yet that's nearly 50 percent of our budget, so we clearly need somebody who is in that area. Everybody likes to be in that area because it's very interesting ... so that's one of the gaps.
The other thing that everybody is concerned about is in today's Enron environment, and with the kind of money that OSU manages, both in the operational budget of $3.5 billion and our endowment of about $1.7 billion, the investment area we really need people who understand sarbains oxley, understand what kind of reporting requirements we need to have and how we invest.
So (in) financial areas we've got some really sharp people in that area. We have a very good audit committee that I think is very functional, good investment committee, and then we've got people that run our self-insurance board for the hospital, but I think those are the areas that people were looking to.
I would say high-tech, from my perspective. I think with today's high-tech environment and with the emphasis on science and technology that's all over the nation in terms of preparing students we need people who really think in terms of high-tech corporations, and Wally O'Dell certainly is in a high-tech area with Debolt - that's high-tech so we've got somebody. We don't have anybody who comes straight out of higher ed. We don't have a Ph.D. on the board or somebody who has been a president somewhere, somebody in higher ed. I think those are the areas that the board has identified and we've identified as looking for talent.
TL: Students are always hearing rumors about how OSU might eventually go to semesters. What's the likelihood of that happening?
Holbrook: If we do, it will be about a three-year time frame because we have to get the people and the software system in place in order to get all the courses and all the student data online in order to make the change over. It would take three years anyway to do it intelligently so students don't lose credits. Whether we're going to go that direction is still up for discussion on the campus with faculty and students.
I will tell you though that OU is going to go that direction quite likely. I also believe Cincinnati's going to go that direction and perhaps this is a time all of us can go that direction. But I don't know. It really takes discussion on campus. It's an important topic. What do you all think? I think it hurts students in a number of ways. You've given one really good example, the transfer process. But I think we also get out very late compared to the students who have gotten jobs early in May, and it also affects some of the athletics schedules ... We come back, our football team has played three games before our students arrive on campus.
So there are a number of things, not that athletics is going to drive what we do academically, but you can go down a whole list. Then you will also get the faculty that are excited about quarters as you are, because it's a nice way to teach a package, a smaller package of information, and then move on. It will take discussion on campus, and I think it will start up.
TL: The anonymous phone line. What do you think about that. Do you think its a good idea?
Holbrook: I think what's happening with it now is it's slowing down as far as implementation because it didn't have student input. It was put in place for good reasons not for bad reasons and unfortunately some of it got rolled out in not as positive as ways as it should. We have many mechanisms in place for students, faculty (and) staff to do reporting and to be accountable and to allow people anonymously or safely record complaints or problems that exist.
What we should have done is put all that out and then say here's where the gap is, here's where we're missing an opportunity or here's where we need to have a different kind of a mechanism that absolutely assures people of anonymity. It didn't quite come out that way.
So what I think is going to happen now is that we'll be stepped back, slowed down and come out in March. That's the target date instead of Jan. 1, to give people more of an opportunity to learn more what it's about, to buy into it and to offer advice and opinions.
TL: You talked about some of the reports that came out for reforms. I was curious to what your thoughts were on the honors program reforms?
Holbrook: If we're going to have one, we ought to have a model honors program. It ought to be real. It ought to mean something. It ought to mean something to get in it. It ought to mean something to stay in it and ought to be the right kind of classes for students to get something extra out of it, so it truly is an honors program. We do have a good honors program. I'd like to see a premier honors program like some of the programs in Virginia ... to have some of these programs that are really extraordinary. It would be nice to see Ohio State have that. But in the mean time I just hope the honors program we have is the best quality as we possibly can have.
Compiled by The Lantern staff.
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