tv Washington Journal CSPAN November 5, 2014 8:00pm-8:47pm EST
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tonight on cspan 3. looked at challenges facing higher education. including student debt, admission policies, campus safety and a number of other issues. then the heads of the national institutes of health and the food and drug administration talk about cures and innovation. after that, virginia state senator creigh deeds, a year ago the governor attacked him before committing suicide. this weekend on the cspan networks, friday night at 8:00 eastern on cspan, more reaction to the midterm elections.
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sunday evening at 8:00 on q&a, author and television host tavis smiley on his book author jeff chang on race in america. friday at 8:00, on american history tv on cspan 3, medal of honor recipients reflect on their service in vietnam, world war ii and in afghanistan. and saturday at 8:00, the social prejudice immigrants faced during the 1800s. find our television schedule at cspan.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-400.
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join the cspan conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> this edition of the program features ohio state university executive vice president joseph steinmetz, it's about 45 minutes. this week on cspan, we're continuing our big ten college tour, cspan bus has been on it for a number of weeks. and this morning, the bus is on the campus of the ohio state university in columbus, ohio. joining us from the bus is the university executive vice president and provost, joseph steinmetz. and mr. steinmetz, let's just
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begin with your job as provost, you oversee osu's academic curriculum. how do you assure that the curriculum is relevant to a modern global economy? >> thank you and i want to begin by thanking cspan for visiting our campus. also i would like to say, i notice how the bus is painted gray with a touch of scarlet on it. so we appreciate that as well. as for your question, i think one of the main duties of the provost is the chief academic officers is to assure, first of all that the programs that we offer throughout the university and it doesn't matter if we're talking about our professional or graduate programs, that they are current and that they meet the needs that the students have in this world today.
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and so one of the interesting thing is if there's any trend in higher education, or edge -- not just what's going on in the state of ohio or in the u.s. so we're constantly looking at ways that our individual programs address that internationality and also that what comes with that is that we're preparing our students that make -- for them to make an impact on that global stage in an economic sense. so i think with program development and in the assessment of those programs going forward, we actually spend a lot of time doing that. and i'll also add that along these lines, the university has opened what we call global gateway offices in three countries around the world, one in shanghai, china, one in
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mumbai, india, and i had the bless of being in sao palo just three weeks ago. the problem is the gateways that provide portals into those countries is to really make sure that ohio state is well connected to these countries on all dimensions, education, and for the economic impact that we can have in those countries. >> it's poised to open in the fall of 2015, what does this cost, who pays for it and why do you think it's worth it? >> we actually opened it on time, because like i mentioned
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just a moment ago, i traveled down to sao palo to officially cut the ribbon and open the office. the $250,000 comes directly from my budget in the office of academic affairs. it pays for a small staff, some travel and a few other items. why i think it's a really, really good investment is for -- has several reasons behind it. first of all, we're very interested in connecting our faculty and our students that are already here on campus with what's going on in brazil. and it's a great example of building on the relationships that we already have.
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the other thing we're interested in is that the mayor of columbus is very interested in establishing relationships between the business community here in ohio and floorly in columbus with the people in sao pa palo. so we believe this $50,000 investment we make will really advance our mission in the university as well as our land grant mission to serve the city here as well as the state. >> so this can serve economically the local community in columbus, is that the same
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for these gateway offices in china and india? is the state looking through the university to get inroads in those countries. >> that's exactly right, we're looking for opportunities to connect chinese businesses as well as the businesses in india with the businesses here in the state, and one last thing i might add is that we actually recruit students in the united states. and this is invaluable to send people there to have orientation sessions for example for students that are coming over here. they have worked out quite nicely with what i think is a relatively small investment. >> we're talking with the executive vice president and provost of ohio state university, joseph steinmetz aboard the cspan busses as our
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big ten college tour rolls on in columbus. i want to take about curriculum in general, not just gateway offices but as provost, what is the process for you to establish the curriculum, how does it work? >> so curriculum is actually established in a very bottom up sort of approach. so we have that currently, i believe, about 175 different degree programs here at ohio state in various areas. and there's a long history behind some of these programs. and those older programs are, i might add are constantly updated. and to reflect where the world is today. but often, there is the development of new programs that happen typically by developments that happen in the areas of scholarship or interest of
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faculty as well as the institution. i'll give you one example of a curriculum that has just started this fall but is extremely timely and is triggered by things that happen here at columbus as well as on campus at ohio state. that's the creation of our new undergraduate data analytics. i think the world knows that big data is everywhere. it's fundamental to the business community to health care, it's fundamental to research and scholarship and teaching these days. so recognizing that and also recognizing through our discovery themes is the development of some core research areas at the university, that an lit ticks that was -- this would be the way that you would actually see
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curriculum develop, to talk about how would we, at ohio state university build a major and a presence in data an lit ticks. so these group of faculty met over a period of time, decided the best thing for us was to have three or more tracks through the analytics, and one in big data as it applies to social sciences. curriculum contains opportunities for internships for students. it also contains a great deal of interaction between the business community such as ibm and nationwide insurance that are located here in columbus. and i think it's an example of how curriculum these days are built. being responsive to what the students need, being responsive to what the community wants out of the ohio state, and also
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being responsive to where the expertise to where our faculty lie. >> we want to get our viewers involved in this conversation. if your have questions, concerns about curriculums at universities or any higher education issue, doesn't have to be related to ohio state university specifically. we want to hear from you, we're dividing the lines this morning by students, parents, educate fors and ohio state residents as well. so there's the numbers on your screen. >> caller: hi, how are you. we're smarter institutions, we
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have government being involved in our education since 1953 when they established the department of education. we have other institutions, such as the progressive agenda to dumb down the people, to make them more easily controlled and manipulated. and we have people like the center for american progress, hence the word progress, progressives and they want to take out the curriculums of -- they call them low impact curriculums. they say they want to take out constitutional studies, world finance, and american history and what it is is they were talking about budget cuts and they were calling them low impact curriculums. we are losing our country because a lot of people don't know their history, they don't know their constitution. they don't know anything. >> all right, rick, i'm going to jump in at that point and have
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mr. steinmetz respond. >> i think the point that the caller is trying to make is that there's a lot of pressure from a lot of different places to control curriculum or to change curriculum. we don't react very well to that pressure and i think the pressure that we see, are pressure from our students, pressure from the parents of our students to deliver a quality education. a quality education that will result in good employment opportunities and a curriculum that will help these students adjust to the world that changes around them. and i think we have done a good job here in ohio state of maintaining the important basics that rick mentioned in his comments. >> victor is also a parent. good morning, victor. >> good morning greta. good morning provost steinmetz, i have a couple of questions for you, first of all, i was a former student in ohio state
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back in the '80s and my fees, my tuition for a quarter was about $160 a quarter, fully loaded. today i understand you have converted to a semester system, so there's a reason for that, i'm not sure what it is. i would like you to comment on that as well. but i would like to ask you, how do you justify the staggering cost of public state university education. in a place like ohio state, with tuition today is close to $10,000 a year. if you can answer that for me, that would be great. thank you. >> yes, sure, victor. the first question about our conversion to semesters, it happened a couple of years ago, it turns out that most of the institutions within the state of ohio have changed from quarters to semesters several years ago. and in fact most of the academic world is on semesters and not
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quarters if you look around the country. so we made the decision to align the calendar at ohio state, along with the calendars of the state institutions in part to make sure that there was good transfer ability for credits between the institutions as students come in or go out of ohio state to the other state institutions and the lines of the calendar are much better i think with the rest of the academic worlds throughout the country. give you an example, we now end in early may, instead of mid-june, in the instant effect of that that was very positive is that our students are now much more able to take study abroad opportunities, as well as to find summer jobs and all kinds of other opportunities. basically because they're
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finishing our semester at the same time other students are around the country. and our program start and end dates. so if you asked me what's going to be the single most issue that keeps me awake at night, it is this issue of aed fffordability. it's no secret that over the last couple of decades, the cost of higher education has risen faster than just about the cost of everything else. including the cost of tuition. so at ohio state here, we're taking this issue very seriously, in the sense that we want to make sure that our education remains affordable to students that want to come here. so a few things that we have done is if i just look back at the last seven or six years, if
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i use that window, the tuition increase that ohio state has been just under 2.5% during that period of time. during the seven-year window, if we look at just another year out, we have had a zero percent increase in tuition four out of the seven years, this is in an effort to keep costs at least where they're at. and the reason, by the way, that the costs have risen is that the costs within the structure of higher education has risen with all kinds of things with requirements now that we have in regulations that have risen -- that have had costs rise to providing amenities for students that students want nowadays. and so -- and also, to of course build a strong academic programs. and perhaps the last thing i'll mention is that in -- to help us with this affordability issue,
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we have joined a alliance of 11 institutions called the university innovation alliance. and two of our big ten school colleagues are part of this a lichbs. they are perdue and michigan state. and the reason for joining this is to find scaleable ways to actually rein in the cost of higher educations. is so for example one of the keys to keeping education down is to make sure our students finish in a timely manner, finish in four years and not the expected five or six years. to do that, we can use predictive analytics to make sure that our students are headed on track and on time for their degrees. we can also increase financial
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a aid. we can look at students -- some of the flagship larger institutions like ohio state. we're excited to be part of this alliance that was just launched in washington just a month or so ago and will run at least for the next five years or so. and it's really, what are the good ideas out there from these large institutions that will help us keep an education affordability, that's our goal. >> our guest is joseph steinm z steinmetz, he's the ohio state provost, as we continue our big ten college tour. we have got a few lines open for your questions, your comments on higher education, your concerns. we want to hear them, mr. steinmetz what regulations are you referring to that have
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raised the costs of education for ohio state university? i'll just use one area that's in the area of compliance, there are regulations and rules in a number of compliance areas that we have to staff and it's actually the addition of staff in these particular areas that leads to the increased cost, they're areas where we didn't have to have people before. >> a former student, columbus, ohio, go ahead. >> caller: yes, i had a question, i was wondering why -- i have a lot of friends who live in ohio and i was a former student, probably like 18 years ago, and it seems that ohio residents are denied main campus entry and they're put on branch campuses where out of state students are put on the main
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campuses with similar academic records. i was wondering that. and he said that they switched over from semester to quarters and i was just wondering why, if he has any insight, it seems to me as a student, quarter, i learn more, it was a much faster pace, it was much easier for lending. so why does everyone seem to choose semester over quarters? >> so let me answer the second question first, since it refers again to quarters and our conversion from quarters to semesters. if you ask a semester student about the amount that they learn, and if you go back to our students today that some of them that have been on both, and some have only been on semesters, it's actually debatable on which of these two systems that you actually, quote, learn more in. so i'm -- we're running those --
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we constantly look at data by comparing the performance of students that are on quarters and semesters and to date, we haven't seen the differences that the caller refers to. regarding the access issue for ohio students, a decision was made some 20 years ago or so, so it predates me by about 15 years. so actually stop the open access policy that ohio state university had for students. and this was an attempt to deal with what is a pretty severe problem and that was a first-year retention rate of our students that was somewhere between 50% and 55%. it was that low, so that meant half of our students would start here and then not be able to finish because of issues of preparation and perhaps not a bad selection of an institution at that particular point and
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where they were in their lives. so for several reasons, the open access policy was stopped. and over that period of time, there's been a steady increase in the credentials of the stuchb students that have come in. this particular year our act score on average, this is an average of 7,000 first-year freshman that are included in this year's class. that average is a 28.8. if you look at just about ten years ago, that average was around a 26. so i think the university is more selective. but what's happened at the same time is we're retaining students at a rate of nearly 95% from first year to second year, we're graduating more students and we're servicing students more. our mix of out of state to in state students has changed. in the five years that i have been here at ohio state, it was
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about 18% out of state students, and it's now up around 25%. and what that mixture actually represents, i think is the -- what our benchmark institutions, those institutions we want to compare ourselves to, what their actual rates of in state and out of state students are. in fact we're about 10% behind those benchmarks. and we're having discussions right now of where -- what's the proper mix of out of state and in state students and where do we want to settle out in. one more point that i think is important, we continue to draw students and serve the state of ohi ohio--this first class is first generation students, this is the first time, they're the first in the family to go on and get a college education.
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headed now by vice presidents and associate vice presidents, et cetera. that staff these programs. and i also mentioned areas like compliance that i talked about before that now require these senior staff -- senior administrators, with all of that said, here at ohio state, we are at presently taking a very very close look at this mix of administration faculty and students, asking the questions, are we overstaffed at the top level? are we administering effectively, are there programs that can be eliminated and those moneys transferred to student programs. so it's something that we're sensitive about and something we're trying to do something about. >> and on that, here's a tweet from one of our viewers about salary. how much does your highest paid professor make as opposed to the higher paid sports coach at your
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school? >> i don't have those exact figures, but i know the sports coach makes much more than the highest paid professor, so i don't know exact. again, there's a market for sports coaches, there's a market for professors, regardless of what area of the professorship that we're actually talking about. one thing i will mention about the salaries of coaches, et cetera, one thing we're very proud of here at ohio state, is the university provides no support for our athletic program, they generate their own revenue, and in fact have turned revenue over to the university. a good example of this is they gave a major gift, the athletics department did when our library was reconstructed just four or five years ago. and so i think those -- the athletic department want to be the best, just like our physics department, or our business college want to be the best.
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so they bring in the market best in those particular areas. >> according to the lantern, again, it's the osu student newspaper, the economic impact of osu home games, football games, is 7.15 million in total revenue, $6.5 million in ticket sales, 270 million in parking revenue. and mr. steinmetz, you're saying that this money stays within the athletic department? >> yes, it's -- well, some of it does, because it depends on who's running the concessions or who's running the parking et cetera, they're -- so to speak, their vote is on their own bottom. so they have to exist in revenue that they where in, the interesting thing about that article is that it doesn't -- afternoon the city of columbus,
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there's 106,000 fans inside the stadium for these games and several hundred others who don't go in the games, but enjoy the city of columbus, these are individuals that are in the restaurants, that are staying in the hotels, et cetera. there's this other indirect effect that particularly ohio state football has on the economy and on the region. and one other thing is, ohio state has 36 varsity sports. and we want to always talk about the major revenue sports, thinking particularly of football and basketball and we sometimes forget, that those two revenue sources are also supporting the athletic experience of about 1,000 student athletes that are part of these other 36 sports that we rarely talk about. and it's really the idea --
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yeah, i just wanted to say, it's the idea that that revenue is being spread to these other sports as well as being spent on the major sports. >> so just to be clear, the athletic department pays the salary of all the coaches as well? >> yes, that's correct. >> we'll go to brandt in los angeles. >> caller: hello, yes. i would like to ask you about online course study, if there's any type of financial aid for that, would the costs be less and also a follow-up about what you talked about earlier, about opening branches abroad, possibly in mexico city, would that be under consideration as well? thank you. >> yes, thanks. i appreciate the question about the distance education part of it. there are financial aid -- financial aid is available, i don't know the particulars about that, but i know there is some
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financial aid for distance education, and it's one of those areas that i think ohio state is a little behind in, and it's offering programs that are online as well as the introduction of technology and online experience for our resident students. so one of the very popular things that we're working on now, all over campus is this ability to flip the classroom which is resident students that can watch lectures and other things that would normally go on in a large lecture hall and in the rooms, they can look at these lectures as many time as they want and the flip part is when they come to class, that class time is spent on projects, on discussions, on one-on-one time with the instructors, when problems set in, et cetera. this strategy that we have on distance education is -- it centers around the incorporation of technology in general.
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either 100% offerings like someone like you could take on campus or somebody across town or somebody on campus which could take a course from ohio state. and it's the same quality you would see offered in one of our classrooms. the second question had to do with the gateway, and whether or not there's a gateway office to be opened in mexico city. right now, we have concentrated on these three, and really haven't discussed the next location for a gateway. but we're trying to spread them in strategic places around the world that again serve our faculty and our students and central ohio well. so we just haven't had these discussions yet. >> we have about 10 minutes left here, we'll go to alexander in carbondale, illinois. go ahead. >> my question deals more so with the assessment of admission, have institutions of
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higher education gotten to a point to where they're more concerned about their national ranks, that may have a little more to offer rather than just a high zbrgpa? >> very, very good question, because i think the answer to that is yes, i think that higher education in general has become fixated on what i sometimes think as input variables. and i think, myself, and there's many here at the institution that believe -- by that i mean, what are the students do when they leave ohio state or when they leave another institution? and along those lines, for example,recently partnered with gallup to do a gallup survey of our graduates.
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this was a project that was initially launched at perdue, by gallup and perdue university. it gives us an -- a chance to go out and measure the where our alumni is at any point that we choose, so fiveer years out, te years out et cetera. but it goes beyond asking those individuals how much salary are you making, but the things that gallup is good at assessing, your satisfaction with life, your relationships, how you were prepared to deal with issues of employment and other things as you move forward. that's an example of an output measure, and i think that when we have those output measures, i think that's the time that we switch the dialogue to, instead of being thinfixated on these i
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pout variables, that we measure those output variables. greater scrutiny and in the article it says a report issued this summer by a u.s. senate subcommittee said that four-year colleges are largely failing to educate students, faculty, staff and even police about sexual assault. it said a third of the 440 schools surveyed failed to provide training clearly defining sexual assault to those who adjudicate assault claims brought on my students. 6. >> yes and greta, this is in a very, very critical issue on college campuses, and i for one am pleased that this is in the headlines, here at ohio state,
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we spend a lot of time trying to educate our students about sexual assault and i would say violent crimes in general. for a good reason, ohio state is in an urban setting. there are approximately 1.8 million people that live in the greater columbus area. so our campus sits right in the middle of this urban area just a couple of miles from downtown columbus. and so what comes with this kind of a setting are crimes, crimes just like you would expect in any large american city. so we have a special duty, i think, of educating students about violence in particularly sexual violence. and so we have spent time developing programs and making sure that we're doing a good job in this particular area.
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in fact, the office of civil rights, just released its report about ohio state and applauded ohio state for what it's doing. we are moving forward with some criticisms from that report, including streamlines and simplifying the instruction and really making sure that access is all that we can for this information, because it's a critical issue. >> there was a letter to the editor this -- on monday by emily peligrino, international studies. she writes i have been a student at ohio state six going on seven weeks and there's already been four reported sexual assaults. she goes on to stay that there's a rape culture and it that must stop. i understand the desire to -- just because you're drunk and the girl you've been dancing with all night is drunk doesn't
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mean you get to have sex with her or vice versa. >> that's a wonderful statement. i think it actually summarizes the education that we continue wally need to do. and also, what's critical in this, and again, how we report out sexual assault, on campus and in our surrounding areas. again, this is a populated area. and i think she's hit the issue right on the head, i couldn't say it better myself about the need for this particular kind of education. >> we'll hear from gary next in avon lake ohio, a parent there. >> caller: i see that a lot of the institutions have billions of dollars invested. and if it's invested somewhere, it doesn't flow down to the students, where do you come up
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with billions of dollars? and at the same time you're saying the costs are going up, i mean you guys are opening offices all over the world what's the point? that doesn't lower the cost and educate anybody any better in my opinion. >> well, gary, i think that first of all, the billions of dlafrs that you're probably referring to is that we have an endowment that has been created by the donations of our wonderful alums and friends of the university. we have over 500,000 alumni of this institution have been incredibly generous. they have built what is a 3$3.5 billion endowment which is invested and generates revenue. and that endowment actually is used for scholarships, it's used for support for faculty and for staff and for programs, and a lot of other things around the
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university. we don't make large investments that are outside of that purview. and then the other issue again about the gateway is i think the value added of having that experience and those opportunities for our students in at least these three places throughout the world, has changed the lives of students who get to experience travel and education in these three places and has actually led to increased funding for our faculty research so there's actually a return on the investment. i'll give you an example of that, when i was in brazil, we were talking with the brazilian skin science funding agency and they agreed with us on our faculty
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and student research. so they're willing to put up dollars that match ours to enable research projects that go on between our faculty and our students. these are value added things, things we should be doing for students in our institution. >> caller: good morning, i'm calling with a couple of points, first of all, a big thank you, shoutout to senator durbin, senator elizabeth warren who are working hard to try to allow families with college debt to be able to refinance those loans. unfortunately, the republicans are blocking that legislation. which is inconceivable to me how they supposedly representing american families, feel that that is not a good legislation. i don't get it. but thank you, senator durbin, thank you senator warren. in addition to that point, i would like to make the point that there's -- i think that we have to really make this more of
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a national discussion, how are we going to help american families, middle class families and really all families be able to afford college? if you look at the top 100 high paid ceos in our country, their salaries start at 18,700,000. they go all the way up, a company who manufactures a drug to fight hepatitis, he makes $180 million a year. why can't we have some kind of tax on multimillionaires, because how in the world do you need that much money, in one year for for example. some kind of tax that if you start making over a certain amount of money that there's a tax that will somehow help fund colleges. >> all right, kathy. mr. steinmetz? >> i'll just comment on the second point about the affordability, because i really
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think it again, we have talked got it a few times, in this hour and i really think it's key to the future of our ability to educate students to keep this affordable. and it really requires some creativity on the part of universities moving forward to do this. and so for us, for example, in the addition to the alliance that we joined, et cetera, we're looking at ways to use the nontraditional sources of revenue instead of increases in tuition, so that we can get a hold on that issue. so one of the examples, one that got a lot of press not too long ago is that we private advertised our parking operations here, and that -- and received a payment of $483 million that could be put into the endowment and that $483 million
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