Well schooled | The University of Maine looks beyond cost-cutting to widening impacts
“Charting the Course” is written by GrowSmart Maine, a Portland nonprofit that promotes and encourages new ways of thinking about Maine’s future.
Last month, as students were settling into their fall classes at Maine’s schools, University of Maine System Chancellor Richard Pattenaude released a plan to address an anticipated $43 million budget shortfall.
The challenges of looming budget deficits aren’t unique to Maine’s universities: Most government agencies, from the smallest town halls to the biggest federal agencies, are facing shortfalls this year.
But Chancellor Pattenaude’s newly released action plan deserves credit for taking a deep look into the structures and culture of the University of Maine System, to not only find out how strategic reforms could reduce costs, but also to examine how reforms might actually improve the system’s educational outcomes and support the state’s economic development goals.
Nationwide, public universities have been a major source of economic growth and innovation for many states and regions. Maine’s university system, spread out across numerous regional campuses and hamstrung by inconsistent leadership and funding levels, hasn’t always lived up to its promise. But even though the new plan is primarily focused on reducing costs to deal with a funding shortfall, it also features a number of initiatives that should give greater hope to Maine’s economic development prospects.
New goals
The final report of the “New Challenges, New Directions” initiative has two components: one with specific savings targets focused on closing the financial gap, and a second set of strategies, along with specific benchmarks, focused on “protect[ing] academic quality and expand[ing] the impact of the system.”
These two goals are by no means contradictory. By setting specific benchmarks for educational impact — increasing student retention and graduation rates, for instance, and adding courses and degree programs that are relevant to the changing state and global economies — the university system is making a commitment to holding itself accountable to the investments it makes.
The chancellor’s report specifically calls for “expanded use of incentives, strategic investments and accountability measures that will move us away from historic funding formulas and towards more results-oriented funding approaches.” Plus, by setting specific goals to attract and retain more students in programs that are more relevant to our current economy, the system hopes to increase its long-term growth in revenue from tuition.
But the plan also looks beyond the university’s immediate mission of educating students to take a broader look at how its institutions can benefit Maine. A number of the plan’s goals are specifically targeted on growing the state’s economy and improving its quality of place.
Fresh approach
The system plan calls for a biennial “statewide planning summit on Maine’s higher education needs” to work with the private sector and anticipate changing employment patterns and educational needs. On an ongoing basis, the University of Maine System will be called upon to evolve and adapt alongside Maine’s broader economy.
The focus on economic impact is also clear in the menu of accountability benchmarks the plan includes. In addition to measuring and setting targets for graduation rates and degrees conferred, the plan also proposes to measure and increase the university system’s total economic impact, as well as the number of new patents generated, the number of startup enterprises created and the amount of research and development grant funding leveraged.
The plan also proposes that the system should have a stronger role in improving surrounding communities, by improving the public’s access to campus events and resources, for instance, or by getting students, faculty and staff involved in service learning opportunities.
It would have been easy for the University of Maine System to lament its budget shortfalls in Augusta, and to respond merely by slashing its programs and costs without any regard to reforming its institutional culture. Indeed, that has been the path that most state agencies have followed in response to the past year’s budget shortfalls.
Instead, the system has embraced the challenges of a tight budget to shake up its way of doing business and to demand more from its programs. And it looked beyond its core responsibilities — educating Maine students — to ask how it could make broader improvements to the state’s economy and quality of life.
As other government agencies, at all levels, go about dealing with their own budget crises, we would all be well-served if more leaders in the public sector followed the University of Maine System’s promising example.
The chancellor’s report is available here.
Christian MilNeil can be reached at cmcneil@growsmartmaine.org.
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