Clemson: A More Independently-Funded Public University
The State of South Carolina's budget for the fiscal year ended June 2010 has $1 billion in Federal stimulus money that will not be there in fiscal 2011. SC House Speaker Bobby Harrell has compared the fiscal crisis the state is in to the fiscal crisis in South Carolina's history after the War Between the States. South Carolina State budget cuts for the year ended June 2011 is going to be brutal.
When Clemson President Jim Barker took office in 2000, he set an ambitious vision for Clemson to become a top 20 public university in America by 2010. Clemson is within a rocks throw of attaining that goal.
But after June 2008, state funding support of Clemson will have been cut $76 million. Clemson has gone beyond cost saving measures, large and small, to re-envisioning what the university will be in the new normal.
Like all great leaders, in a recent town hall meeting on campus, Jim defined Clemson’s responsibility to students and the state which is essential to Clemson's mission and non-negotiable:
- Provide talent for and prepare students to succeed in the new economy,
- Drive innovation that stimulates economic growth and solves problems, and
- Serve the public good.
That last bullet is particularly important. Education is a public good, not just a private good. It is in the public's interest to support high quality education. As Jim said, education is not just of private interest to a student and their employer. We all are more prosperous living in communities of other educated, prosperous people. Being around other smart, talented people is why many folks move out of South Carolina to places like Austin and Silicon Valley. We can not achieve our aspirations as a state without significantly increasing the educational attainment of the citizens of the state.
The phrase that Jim used that resonated most with me was that Clemson is becoming "a more independently-funded public university". I've also heard at the University of South Carolina the discussion of what it means to be a public research university with little or no direct state support.
We are in a time when the redefinition of Clemson as a public research university is as profound as at any time since Clemson's founding. Because education is so critical to the economic prosperity of the state, there needs to be a public discussion that is much broader than just the university itself. What aspirations do we have for our ourselves as a state? What is the role of public research universities in making achievement of that aspiration possible?