UT Headlines

Channel 13 highlighted pictures and recordings of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s visits to Toledo during John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign and Ted Kennedy’s own run in 1980. Just one more reminder of the wealth of historical information housed on the 5th floor of Carlson Library and the brilliant archivists who know so much about so much.

The University of Toledo has established the Dr. John M. Howard Endowed Professorship of Pancreatic Surgery to honor the man who has spent more than 34 years at MCO/UT and more than half a century in the field of medicine.

The Blade has a story about Dr. Howard in the front page of its second section today. Dr. Howard will join UT President Lloyd Jacobs and family and friends Friday, Aug. 28 at 4 p.m. in the Lucas Room of the Dana Conference Center on the HSC as UT formally announces the professorship.

CORRECTION: A caller correctly points out my initial entry was wrong regarding the recognition event. While there was a birthday party for Dr. Howard Aug. 26, the ceremony recognizing the newly established endowed professorship is this Friday. It has been corrected above. My thanks to those keeping me on my toes.

Several stories caught my eye these last few days, one good, one less so and one that I’ve read about seven times and still don’t understand.

1.) Xunlight makes first delivery, The Blade:

After more than half a decade the former UT start-up business Xunlight sold the first solar panel to come off its production line yesterday. The buyer? The UT Scott Park Campus of Energy and Innovation where it will serve both a symbolic and utilitarian role as UT’s alternative energy focus continues to broaden.

2.) $8 million deficit UT plans temporary furloughs, new layoffs, The Blade

The UT Trustees’ Finance Committee recommended to the full board for its Sept. 21 meeting the budget amendment needed to re-balance UT’s budget after the state cut funding to balance its budget in July. The result will be furloughs and another smaller, but no less painful, round of layoffs. The president spoke at the Aug. 6 Town Hall meeting about not letting today’s temporary pain overshadow the goals for the institution as a whole – and acknowledged just how difficult that task actually is.

3.) Nothing’s Guaranteed, Editorial, Independent Collegian

I have to assume this opinion piece is based on several basic misunderstandings. The editorial essentially asserts the UT Guarantee program is sitting on the edge of a metaphorical knife and could succeed or fail with the slightest news either way. While warnings about the potential dangers of pilot programs and trial runs may have made some sense a year ago, the results are actually in now; tangible results to measure and celebrate – which the IC points out on the front page of its news section. The editorial struck me like warning a marathon runner about the dangers of dehydration 30 minutes after she won the race and has been checked out and cleared by doctors.

The UT Guarantee has been a success for everyone, even those who may have never heard of it before. Here’s why:

• UT’s Strategic Plan calls for increasing the number of undergrads from 16,000 in 2006 to 20,000 in 2011. We’ve currently passed the 18,000 mark. The increase in Blue and Gold Scholars (recipients of the Guarantee) comes from students who either wouldn’t have gone to college or would have gone to schools in Cleveland, Columbus or local branch campuses.
• The Guarantee program brings in students who are well-qualified, diverse and more likely to graduate.
• Blue and Gold Scholars are, by-in-large, receiving sizable Pell Grants and state awards. The result is UT is paying about $3,000 per student, on average, to cover the remainder of their tuition rather than $8,000 per student to cover their tuition. This frees up more UT scholarship money available to award to UT’s student body. The UT Guarantee program certainly received the vast majority of UT’s marketing efforts this past year because it was new and innovative. Meanwhile, more quietly, the rest of the UT student body received the vast majority of the $40 million UT dedicates each year to scholarships.

The UT Guarantee would be a good idea even if it lost money because it changes the lives of many Blue and Gold Scholars from urban communities and that is exactly the mission of this University. The fact that one year after it was envisioned it has brought more, better-qualified students to campus AND more than paid for itself is cause for campus-wide celebration.

In March, UT CFO Scott Scarborough wrote – and received much flak for - a journal entry discussing UT’s use of new distance learning technologies to reach new student audiences currently served in increasing numbers by for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University.

As Scarborough says in the post, while he has no interest in copying Kaplan University, he is very interested having those students who currently look to a place like Kaplan U. instead choose and find the same accessibility to a higher quality education at UT.

In late June, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a column asking the same questions and highlighting the same ads as Scarborough’s March post.

The column, “Kaplan U.’s Catchy Ad Provokes a Question: Do Colleges Serve Today’s Students?” (subscription required) explores the same issues and in the end suggests (to me) the same conclusion:

Universities need to marry their quality with the innovations in accessibility the for-profits are currently offering. Creating a false mutual exclusivity between the two will leave higher education institutions across the nation with the same problem newspaper publishers are currently facing: offering a better service, but finding fewer and fewer people willing to pay for it.