For a very long time we believed that institutional transformation was a matter of rational decision-making. According to this model, problems and opportunities led to rational analysis and then, like night to day, to change. What we now know is that much of this was an illusion, in two ways. First, as we learn more about organizations we learn that what we took to be signs of change, the press releases, the new formal organization charts, and the new units and programs, really signified nothing more than themselves. Underneath the choppy seas of apparent change, life went on much as it had before, impelled not by new titles but by old and embedded cultural understandings and habits. Second, when we did see authentically new things in existing organizations, we forgot to look at whether the old things had changed. Especially in the good times we have enjoyed over the last sixty years, we have been able to innovate without changing, by adding units and programs at the periphery of our organizations without fundamentally challenging the core.
That luxury has been an expensive one for us inside higher education, for it has enabled us for too long to avoid thinking about the fundamentals of what we do and why, and to meet the occasional calls for change by creating a center here and an institute there. We find ourselves today groping for answers to those questions, not just to satisfy ourselves but to satisfy an increasingly dubious public. To address these questions we must do two things.
First, we must return to basic principles. Universities are the institutions in society charged with creating new knowledge through research, transmitting that knowledge through teaching, and bringing that knowledge to the public through service activities of one kind or another. We must hold ourselves to the highest standards in each of these areas and we must never compromise on those standards. Second, we must look for new and creative ways to achieve these goals within the context of a changing and increasingly challenging environment. The combination of these two vectors occasions an imperative to transform the way we accomplish what it is that society charges us, indeed expects us, to do. So, then, how does one begin to gain leverage on the issue of transformation against a backdrop of both environmental demands and core values? The key is the power of private support. We are in an era of constrained resources and declining state support. The decline is so dramatic that it has completely blurred the line between public institutions and private. For example, UCLA receives less money annually from California than Harvard receives from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But as compelling as this need has been, there is also a significant opportunity, an opportunity for private dollars not just to embellish a going program but to provide the fuel for real and deep transformation of institutions like ours.
There has never been a time, since perhaps the turn of the century when private dollars built the great universities of the industrial age, during which the leverage of private dollars has been as great as it is today. Private dollars provide the investment capital with which to turn ideas into reality and to reestablish the essential role of the university in very new ways. Within the GSE&IS we already are feeling the benefit of these private dollars as we seek to transform ourselves to generate knowledge, transmit knowledge, and employ knowledge for the next century. Private funds have enabled us to build a professional doctoral program that has changed the way we think about doctoral training for professionals. Private funds, in the form of fellowships, are enabling us to rethink the life cycle of Ph.D. students, making it possible for students to enjoy a year of full-time study, working closely with faculty in research apprenticeships. Private funds have helped us build bridges between the two departments, creating exciting synergies in research and teaching.
In these areas and more, private dollars have fueled exciting transformations in the way we do business. But we are far from complacent abut our achievements and far from sanguine that we have done enough. The times demand and we must demand of ourselves more constant attention to transforming the GSE&IS to meet the highest goals of the university and our professions. That will require leverage, leverage that will depend upon the support of a broad range of friends.
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