NSF PR 97-76 - December 15, 1997
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NSF Distinguished Lecturer Warns Higher Ed Must Adapt
to World Forces of Change
A former chancellor of the University of California-Berkeley
today told engineers and scientists at the National
Science Foundation (NSF) that "time is running out"
for American higher education to adapt to world forces
that are changing the nature of business, education
and society.
Chang-Lin Tien delivered words of encouragement and
warning during his NSF Distinguished Engineering Lecture
concerning "future challenges facing American higher
education." Now the university's NEC Distinguished
Professor of Engineering, Tien stepped down earlier
this year after serving seven years as chancellor.
Tien urged American colleges and universities to diversify
their sources of financial support, to encourage young
faculty to engage in teaching and basic research,
and to reform the traditional tenure system. He also
called on the higher education community to better
foster racial and ethnic diversity among students
and employees, to shift operational thinking from
seeking short-term success to pursuing long-range
goals and to become deeply involved with improving
the quality of primary and secondary education.
"American higher education is still the best in the
world, but it is very needy, very stressed," Tien
said. Compared to universities and colleges in Europe
and Asia, American schools appear to be doing very
well, "but that is only because other countries are
doing worse." Economic problems and administrative
lethargy are worldwide problems that will only worsen
unless campuses adopt fiscal and academic innovation,
he said.
Tien urged public universities to engage in more aggressive
fund raising among their alumni, a source of largely
untapped goodwill, he said. As chancellor, he shifted
his university's portfolio from what he believed was
an over-dependence on support from state and federal
research funds.
Tien warned against a widening gulf between universities
and secondary education. "American higher education
must do something to improve the K-12 system - or
pretty soon there will be no qualified students" to
admit to U.S. colleges and universities. He urged
universities to become "deeply involved" with helping
to improve the curriculum and facilities of neighboring
primary and secondary schools.
Tien said higher education must adapt more quickly
to the information and telecommunications revolution.
As chancellor, he replaced the adage for faculty to
"publish or perish" with "get online or face decline."
Among high-tech advancements, he urged "distance learning"
- widespread, electronic education to an increasingly
diverse population in need of technical skills. He
said "shared teaching" among faculty from different
disciplines and even different institutions will improve
the quality of education and save scarce resources.
Recalling his own progress from being "a penniless
immigrant" to the chancellorship of California's flagship
public university, Tien said America's "democratic
system and cultural diversity" make the United States
especially adaptable to change and give it a competitive
edge over its less democratic, more homogeneous neighbors.
California's growing Asian and Hispanic populations,
if well educated and employed, "can do wonders for
our relations with the nations of the Pacific Rim
and Latin America."
Tien's lecture was the second in the semi-annual series
of Distinguished Engineering Lectures inaugurated
this year at NSF. NSF has supported Tien's pioneering
research in heat transfer engineering for three decades.
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