What has been an exciting and rewarding activity for me is moving toward and end. WPI will install its fourteenth president on August 7, this summer. With the decision of Jon Strauss to leave WPI last September to accept a very exciting job opportunity with the Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute, our Board of Trustees decided to fill the vacancy in the president's office with an interim appointment and to proceed with a national search to find a permanent (or at least, long-term) replacement for him.
The search has been dramatically successful. Dean Ed Parrish of the Vanderbilt College of Engineering has agreed to take over the leadership of our university and he is eminently well qualified to do so. For the remainder of my tenure at WPI, I will be working toward the further development of some interesting projects we've started since my arrival and serving as President Parrish's representative on the campus.
The last seven months have provided me with one of the most interesting and rewarding opportunities of my short and happy life. It became apparent fairly quickly after I retired in 1992 that I was going to have a difficult time getting the hang of retirement in the traditional sense. I've had a number of interesting jobs since then, but none can compare with returning to my alma mater and presiding over Commencement fifty years after my own graduation in 1945. It was a memorable day.
WPI is different than it was back in the 1940s. The choices of curriculum are much richer. Engineering remains a most important option, but the engineering curriculum is complemented by required courses in humanities and social sciences. Aspiring engineers are required to undertake projects which explore the implications of technological developments for society. All of our engineering majors become involved in projects that provide them with experiences much more like the activities that occupy practicing engineers. Students learn to see the larger picture, to integrate the various components of the knowledge in addressing realistic problems in the context of a working team.
Traditional engineering, chemistry, physics, and mathematics are not the only areas in which one can earn a degree. Other areas include economics, management, pre-medicine, pre-veterinary science, pre-law, and a variety of areas in the social sciences. Computer technology is a relatively new and exciting area of concentration.
Another major difference in WPI since my days as a student here is the presence of women in the student body. They represent only 20% of our student body but they include a disproportionately high percentage of our very best students. That's because there are so many societal pressures that continue to foster the antiquated notion that a career in engineering "isn't for a woman". Achievements for our women graduates certainly belie that outmoded idea.
The mid '90s are an exciting time in the history of higher education. There are finally indications that the educational process is on the brink of some monumental changes. Tuition at WPI is over $17,000 per year. In my day, it was $500 per year and that seemed like a lot of money at the time. The thirty fourfold increase is significantly greater than the overall increase in the cost of living over those years; education costs are rising faster than the cost of living and something must be done to stem the tide. In recent years, the business community has gone through major changes, with downsizing, implementation of total quality management, reengineering and other efforts to do the job better, more efficiently, and with significantly less expense. Many observers of the higher education process believe that a similar effort must soon be applied to higher education.
Since the '50s, there has been a continuing transition of students from the private sector to the public sector as tuition in private institutions has risen. As a consequence, the competition among private institutions for those students who are interested in the private sector has become quite intense. With every increase in tuition in recent years, the relative amount of financial aid schools must provide has increased, significantly reducing the gains derived from higher tuition. This process can't go on much longer. Some schools have already begun to address the problem by retrenching, reducing the size of their faculty and staff. This approach is also subject to limitations.
Another approach is to investigate new ways in which the teaching process can be made more efficient. Applications of new educational technologies can reduce the number of hours of faculty time required to teach large introductory courses, including laboratory courses that have been traditionally very labor intensive. Time saved can be applied to the achievement of a better balance between teaching and research or scholarship, toward the admission of more students or, in some cases, in a reduction in personnel.
The rather rigid requirements for a minimum number of credit hours are being revisited. So too, are the traditional procedures of having all students in a given class proceed at the same pace, even thought some may be able to demonstrate the necessary level of understanding or competence in a given course or subject matter more quickly than others.
Changes of this sort can't be made by administrative proclamations; they must be accomplished by consensus with leadership coming from the faculty. This will require the implementations of the changes in a way that clearly serves the best interest of the faculty. Though this may seem an unlikely possibility, there are many indications that those institutions that don't embark on this kind of effort soon, simply won't be around any more not many years from now.
Public institutions are having their problems along with the private, as state budgets are being subjected to increasing strain. Education is not the most important area for many politicians, either at the state or the national level. Balancing the budget nationally will certainly require some significant sacrifices on the part of public education.
WPI, based in its history as an innovator in engineering education and now providing educational programs for technologically literate humans as well, is in a strong position to take and important lead in the transition to a much more efficient educational process. At WPI we have the facilities, the faculty and, with the arrival of President Parrish we will have the leadership to make another major contribution to higher education of equal or greater in importance than the WPI plan. The years ahead will be exciting.
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