The university's mission remains essentially as it was at the time of the opening. It flows directly from our perceptions, then and now, of our responsibilities for the education of our students. Fulfilling our mission amidst the complex challenges of the coming century will require that we extend ourselves, perhaps to a degree unmatched in our earlier history, in setting and reaching ambitious goals for teaching and for scholarship. To do this we will have to rise to new levels of resourcefulness, both in an intellectual and a financial sense. In that case, and only in that case, all the goals set forth in our strategic plan will be attainable.
Economic and social advance no longer hinges upon growing availability of capital, nor growing supplies of workers, nor ever-increasing utilization of natural resources. Instead, it is abundantly clear that for the coming century the driving force behind successful societies will be the power of ideas and the command of skills and information. At the beginning of the 20th century, the products of greatest value arrived in crates, bags, boxcars, and ships. Now, on the eve of the new century, the most eagerly sought products can be shipped over the fax, and the Internet. Moreover, new types of products and services now blitz markets each month, eclipsing others that may have first appeared only last year.
Universities will not be exempt from the dictates of this new reality. The pace of modern life, which creates and then overturns whole fields of knowledge in much less than a lifetime, also challenges educational convention, and will threaten many universities in the years ahead. For Rice, however, the future is one of opportunity. The singular style of learning and investigation to which we are devoted is even more compelling today than it was at the founding of the university. The leaders of the next century will need to be broadly educated, possessing an array of skills, not merely a specialty. Our undergraduates will have truly learned to learn. And they will be able to communicate what they know clearly and effectively. These are the characteristics of many of our students today. Our strategic plan will ensure that a Rice education, enriched in important ways, remains an affordable preparation for leadership in the coming century.
Graduate education in leading universities, including our own, is already being buffeted strongly by these fast-paced changes. By the mid nineties, more than half of all new Ph.D.s found work in non-academic settings, a pattern likely to become more pronounced in the coming century, especially in science and engineering. If so, we should be considering measures to reshape, but not fundamentally alter, the Ph.D., so as to yield degree holders who are more agile, over the course of their careers, in coping with vicissitudes in the markets for their expertise. This may require institutions such as ours to place greater emphasis upon breadth in graduate studies, just as we must in undergraduate education.
For graduate studies generally, the quest for international distinction requires, now more than ever, that we focus our resources and energies upon a small number of carefully selected areas.
In so doing, we will be better able to provide a financial and an intellectual environment that will enable our graduate students to attain standards of accomplishment matching those of the finest graduate programs in the world.
Rice is fortunate in most all academic endeavors, especially in our admirable balance, compared to other distinguished small private universities. This is most evident in the interplay of scholars in letters, science and art, and in the presence of excellent professional schools in architecture, business administration, and music. Two of these have risen to the topmost echelon in their fields, and the third is undertaking measures to join them æ without delay. Our professional students will be the beneficiaries of our strong reaffirmation of standards of the highest quality in architecture, business administration, and music. They will also benefit greatly from enhanced opportunities for partaking, through interdisciplinary programs and activities, of our growing strengths in science and letters.
We will fulfill our responsibilities to our students by satisfying three basic objectives set forth in the implementation plan. For expository reasons only, these objectives are presented within this implementation document under three separate headings.
a. Enhance the quality and value of education and scholarship at Rice.
b. Strengthen the faculty.
c. Expand and strengthen our interactions "beyond the hedges."
As a practical matter, the order in which these three basic goals are listed is of little consequence. Indeed, well before coming to the end of this document, the reader will readily appreciate the inextricable linkages not only between goals within each separate category, a., b., c., but strong interdependence between objectives across categories a., b., c.
For example, major improvements in the quality of undergraduate and/or graduate education would not be forthcoming absent a resourceful program for faculty development, to enhance the quality of the faculty. At the same time, we include under faculty development new programs to enable faculty to become more proficient teachers.
Expanding and strengthening our activities beyond the hedges will not only enhance the quality of a Rice education, it will also assist in efforts to recruit the most imaginative and resourceful new faculty. And, in turn, in all highly selective schools a stronger faculty clearly is a magnet for stronger students. But the reverse is also true: it is undisputed that better students, both graduate and undergraduate, are important in attracting higher quality faculty. Moreover, undergraduates directly benefit from distinguished graduate programs not only because such programs are essential for recruiting the most energetic and imaginative new faculty, but because these are the faculty most likely to seek out undergraduates for involvement in leading-edge research. And Rice's experience is replete with examples wherein there have been strong complementarities between teaching and scholarship: where good teaching has infused good research, and good research infused good teaching. Finally, strengthening the library, together with other investments planned in information technology, will advance all three of our basic objectives: enhancement of the quality and value of education, strengthening the faculty, and expanding our interactions beyond the hedges. For Rice, the promise of the new information technology lies in the enrichment of the intensely individualized, personal style of learning we value so highly. We can give faculty and students new ways to acquire, manage, and share information. By creating new ways of integrating technology with academic life, Rice can attain preeminence in the Information Age.
Earlier, it was asserted that, given a high degree of resourcefulness, all these goals are attainable. Let us examine this claim, to determine whether it is or is not realistic.
At least four institutional traits provide support for this optimistic assertion: size, leanness, past history, and agility.
Many universities are too small to cope with large issues, while many more are too large to deal effectively with small problems. It is quite true that no universities are large enough to handle well by themselves most or even any of the major technological, economic, and social challenges of the coming century. Most American and European universities are, however, really too large to cope well with smaller problems, such as student alienation, student advising, faculty-student interaction and even campus food.
Clearly, Rice does not share the second problem excessive size and we are rapidly becoming accustomed to dealing with the really large problems through our very strong emphasis upon collaboration with other public and private institutions, including Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center, University of Houston, NASA, the Houston Symphony, and the Museum of Fine Arts. In addition, we are at least as open to possibilities for serious international collaboration in Europe, Latin America, and Asia as any institution in the United States.
A second advantage is that, compared to sister institutions, especially other highly selective private universities, Rice is unusually lean, if not quite sleek. In spite of the fact that the past few decades have brought rising demands for new administrative staff to grapple with a steadily more onerous body of government regulations on higher education, Rice remains unusual in its dedication to trimness in administration.
In comparison with our peer institutions, Rice is striking for its relatively low ratios of administrative staff to faculty, or administrative staff to students. Many other universities over the past decade have been forced to undertake draconian reductions in administrative costs, while still others continue to suffer from chronic, it not acute, administrative bloat. By any objective measure, this has not been the case for Rice, conferring upon us cost and organizational advantages that we exploit not only to maintain affordable tuition, but to channel resources to new programs.
We must, however, take care not to convert a virtue into a weakness. Arguably we have become excessively lean in some respects, particularly with regard to administrative support for research in academic units. While some steps to rectify this problem have already been taken, more will need to be done in the coming years.
Earlier stewards of the university's academic and financial affairs have bequeathed to us another important advantage: to an extent rare among universities, Rice has avoided falling victim to the cycles of fad and fashion in higher education. We have not been rash in creating new departments, whether to cater to the whims of momentarily ascendant constituencies or to satisfy the demands of political correctness. We have not rushed into expensive new undertakings merely to expand the size of our academic domain indeed we have repeatedly spurned opportunities to absorb parts or all of other institutions. Finally, we have consistently insisted that proposals for new Ph.D. programs be justified not only by the needs of the market but by the priorities of the institution.
We have, of course, made mistakes in investing in new ventures. But, as an institution, we have been cautious and appropriately skeptical in responding to waves of fad and fashion in academia. As a result, we have relatively few sins of commission for which we need atone. This attitude has paid both financial and intellectual dividends, and has been an important factor in helping to position the university for greater distinction in the coming century.
A fourth trait that bodes well for successful implementation of our goals in the coming century is the obverse of the healthy skepticism that has also served us so well. While we know how to stick to our last, we are also fairly adept in recognizing when it is time to switch lasts: plastic ones long ago replaced wooden ones in shoemaking. To an extent not commonly recognized in our own community, institutional agility and adaptability have been quite important in the postwar emergence of Rice as a formidable national university.
Examples abound. Rice was one of the first universities to act upon the promise of space physics, at a time when this field was in its first bloom. The university moved to full adoption of the residential college system at a time when this idea was out of vogue; nor did we delay for very long in moving to co-educational residential colleges. Rice moved considerably more quickly and effectively than most universities in recognizing the need for a department to house new and promising disciplines such as biochemistry. Rice faculty were among the first academic pioneers in birthing the new fields of computer science and computer engineering.
Above all, Rice has been in the forefront of those universities willing to take the risks and harvest the results of bold new interdisciplinary undertakings in science, engineering, humanities, and social sciences. To an extent not always fully appreciated in the Rice community itself, the university commands widespread admiration and respect for its resourcefulness and imagination in establishing interdisciplinary institutes and centers that yield tangible, often quite sizable results. These investments have paid rich dividends. To illustrate, from the Rice Quantum Institute and the Computer and Information Technology Institute have come recognition ranging from steadily growing academy membership to the Nobel Prize. Our newest interdisciplinary undertakings, the Center for the Study of Science and Technology and the Baker Institute for Public Policy both hold out the promise for comparable achievements in the humanities and social sciences. Rice has been truly well served by the receptivity of its faculty to serious new ideas, and by their adaptability in pursuing them.
All these factors bode quite well for our plans for the coming century. Our commitment is evident, our priorities well suited to our culture. Considerable resourcefulness will, however, be required to identify and then mobilize the financial support required to do what we say we intend to do. The fundraising tasks to be fulfilled to enable implementation of these plans are formidable, but not at all unrealistic, from a five or a ten year perspective.
The six year perspective through year 2004 involves more daunting, but nevertheless attainable requirements. Implementing all the basic priorities would require upwards of $450 million of new resources. This sum is large for a university our size, but not at all unreasonable for a university with our aspirations. Mobilizing these sums will not be easy, but well within the realm of feasibility.
From the very beginning, Rice has set for itself goals that were both exalted and audacious: to aim for university standing of the highest grade, and to assign no upper limit to our educational endeavor. Our generation has the responsibility and also the opportunity to ensure that this ambitious commitment to excellence is as fully honored in the coming century as in the one now drawing to a close.
Malcolm Gillis
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"Rice: The Next Century" Table of Contents
Go to Preface
Go to Implementing
the Plan
Go to Table
1: Summary of Funds Required
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2: Funds Required to Enhance the Quality and Value of Education and Scholarship
Go to Table
3: Funds Required to Strengthen the Faculty
Go to Table
4: Funds Required to Strengthen our Interactions "Beyond the Hedges"
Go to Table
5: Funding Priorities
Go to Graph
1: Funds required for Endowments, Programs & Capital Projects
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