Officials consider Keohane's vision

When President Nan Keohane called on the University to conduct a "ruthless analysis" of its academic offerings in an October address to the faculty, other high-level administrators--those who would be around to conduct such an analysis--took notice. The officers who will assume the reins of the University after Keohane steps down July 1, including President-elect Richard Brodhead, said they will follow through on Keohane's call to "reconceptualize the enterprise" through specialization and cross-institutional collaboration, though perhaps not in as dramatic a fashion as some anticipate.

  Keohane's call to take a fresh look at Duke's offerings and possibly make cuts in certain areas came as part of a broader address to the faculty about challenges that lie in Duke's future. Speaking of growing costs in higher education, Keohane suggested that the University could spend less money on certain inefficacious expenditures and instead look to nearby institutions to provide the absent services or opportunities. Following through on her suggestion could mean a new era of increased specialization and collaboration for Duke, but it is unclear how drastic the changes will be.

  "Close collaboration with other institutions, both those physically nearby and through virtual linkages, will allow us to offer a full range of courses for students and collegial ties for faculty members without having to produce everything on our own campus," Keohane said in her speech. "This would require us to get away from the attitude that everything is always better if we provide it here and be more open to the strengths of our collaborators. It will mean accepting some modest inconvenience in travel time, or learning technological skills, and over time reducing the scope of what we offer in some areas as we decide where Duke's own comparative advantages lie."

  Brodhead, the incoming president and current dean of Yale College, said he had no interest in getting rid of departments at the University and that collaboration was "not a magical solution," suggesting a desire for a limited application of Keohane's specialization and collaboration idea.

  "So Duke will essentially say, 'We're not going to hire in this area we have now, and we'll try to encourage cross-institutional course-taking by graduate students and undergraduate students, or by moving faculty, so a Carolina faculty member will commit to teaching a course at Duke, and a Duke faculty member will commit to teaching a course at Carolina."

  Another topic that is inevitably linked to the rising costs of higher education is the increasing array of undergraduate student services offered by Duke and other universities. In a New York Times article last year, the modern university was described as "Jacuzzi U" for offering a large and sometimes preposterous array of services provided to students. Duke may not be "Jacuzzi U," but with fundraising underway for a $10 million plaza and an upcoming student center that will cost more than five times that, the University is clearly showing its commitment to student services for the foreseeable future.

  While maintaining that his division was efficient with its funds, Vice President for Larry Moneta said student services would not be reduced anytime soon. "At this point, I don't think that Duke would ask that we shrink services," he said. "We're a relatively low cost unit for the array of services we provide and enable many students to stay in school."

  Lange said it was more difficult to collaborate with other institutions on undergraduate services than on academics, for what he termed obvious reasons. Moneta agreed that a large-scale services collaboration with UNC-Chapel Hill or NC State would be unlikely, but pointed out that Duke is always exploring modest partnerships with these schools and noted that there have been other remarkable examples of shared services throughout the country.

  The rising cost of higher education is a hot topic at Duke and other universities, as well as in Raleigh and Washington, D.C. Most agree the rapidly increasing cost of a college education is a problem, but many in academia temper their reservations by pointing to the enormous lifelong benefits of a college education.

  Lange has defended Duke by noting that over the last six years the University has raised its tuition by less than the median of its highly selective peer schools, and that it still offers full need-blind financial aid that must be accounted for when determining the real cost of an education.

  Whilst confirming he will continue Duke's commitment to financial aid, Brodhead said rising costs were often parallel to rising ambitions. "Colleges and universities do so many things," he said. "It's not as if Duke is frivolous."

  In Keohane's faculty speech, however, she struck a note of grave caution against a "false sense of confidence" about the sustainability of increasing costs that have arisen as a result of ever-improving admissions statistics and a perceived lack of limits on tuition hikes.

"Financial aid itself is an increasingly costly commitment," she said. "This year, across the University, we will invest more than $92 million of institutional funds to support financial aid for students at all levels. And financial aid is not going to save us forever from the consequences of inexorably rising costs. Even the California real estate market can't expand forever, and anyone who has been through Econ 101 knows that we can't increase our costs indefinitely."

  Specialization and collaboration were not the only suggestions Keohane made about combating rising costs. She also suggested the continuation of the day-to-day fiscal responsibility that the University has long exhibited, more imaginative use of information technology and new, rigorous expectations that sources of funding for facilities not get built into future tuition and fees.