Office of the President
January 30, 2002

Remarks to the Higher Education Subcommittee of the House Ways & Means Committee

Introduction

Chairman Keegan, Representative Riser, Representative Neilson, and Mr. Gordon Shuford;

Almost one year ago to this day, the Clemson University Board of Trustees adopted a new vision statement and set of 10-year goals aimed at making Clemson one of the nation's top 20 public universities. It was an ambitious vision, but one that could yield significant benefits for the state if achieved. A top-tier research university could stimulate economic development, give our brightest young people unmatched academic opportunities without leaving the state, and provide a higher level of service to our people, industries and communities. These goals led to a very practical and thoughtful plan of action.

The timing was not ideal. In the light of substantial revenue shortfalls, we came to you knowing that we faced the prospect of the largest education budget cut in history. In the final hours, however, you spared higher education. That action was coupled with an equally bold decision by our board to set Clemson's tuition at a level needed to offset previous years of shortfalls and enhance quality.

So let me start by giving you a report card. You showed your willingness to support and invest in higher education. What is the return on that investment?

Although we are only one year into our strategic plan, we already are beginning to see the early returns.

  1. Clemson's external research support has grown by 70 percent in two years, from $55 million to $93 million, ranking us among the nation's top 100 research universities, according to the National Science Foundation.
  2. Our capital campaign raised almost $295 million for academic programs, facilities, scholarships, and athletics. Since closing the campaign, we have continued to pursue significant private support for our academic plan, including a $6.9 million gift from John Walker to endow and name the department of economics, a $1 million gift from the class of 1941 to create a student communications laboratory, and a $1 million gift from Richard Rutland to create the Rutland Center for Ethics. On Friday, we will announce another seven-figure gift to support academic programs.
  3. Professor Joel Brawley became the fourth Clemson faculty member since 1986 to be named the Governor's Professor of the Year a strong indication of the quality of our faculty.
  4. We enrolled our brightest freshman class ever, with an average SAT approaching 1200.
  5. As another measure of quality, GE added Clemson to its nationwide group of "executive schools" a selective group of 30 universities from which the company recruits. This distinction gives our graduates a considerable edge in the GE job market.
  6. Our graduation rate for minority students in engineering and science is one of the best in the nation, a full 21 percent above the national average.

Another indicator of a research university's impact is the relevance of its research and service programs. Let me share just a few success stories.

  1. Several weeks ago, a group of faculty and students in our wind engineering project traveled to Conway to rip apart a house that had been condemned after Hurricane Floyd. The object was to test the effectiveness of technology developed at Clemson and other universities that can help a home better withstand hurricane-force winds. The knowledge gained from such research can save homes, dollars, and lives.
  2. A $10 million contract awarded by the Defense Department to a Clemson-led consortium will develop radar-surveillance blimps that can enhance the military's tracking and early detection capability.
  3. Researchers at the S.C. Institute for Energy Studies at Clemson are wrapping up a multi-year project to develop a 21st-century gas turbine, having successfully increased the efficiency of combined-cycle gas turbines to more than 60 percent. The current efficiency of the entire U.S. electric power industry is only 35 percent. This translates into lower cost for producing electricity.
    Clemson is identifying roughly a dozen core research initiatives in areas where we have faculty strength, the potential for external funding, and a close alignment with South Carolina's economic development needs.
  4. Those initiatives include automotive engineering, genomics, biomedicine, nanotechnology, and advanced materials, just to name a few. By building our research strength in these areas, we believe we can be a driver for development of a knowledge-based economy.

Accountability

In the interest of full accountability, Clemson has adopted an open budget process in which decisions about funding are shared with the entire campus and that includes students as well as faculty and staff. Last fall, we held a town meeting to outline decisions made about how to allocate the new funding from our tuition increase, and that information was distributed by e-mail to all faculty, staff and students. Additional meetings with students and parents followed. Every single dollar of this year's tuition increase was presented in this open process.

This level of accountability has been well received. Students told us they did not object to tuition increases as long as we delivered on our promise to increase quality. They appreciated the fact that we told them exactly how the money would be spent on the library, information technology, a new student academic support center, facilities enhancements, and faculty salaries, for example.

These budget allocations are also available for your review on a university web site, which is listed on the handout. We have taken accountability to another level. Each of our goals are listed on a university web site that tracks progress, and each quarter we issue a status report of progress on each one (for the world to see). This is serious public accountability.

Looking Ahead

Momentum is a powerful force, and we are enjoying considerable momentum right now. However, any sports fan will tell you that momentum can shift. Continued progress will depend on good planning and adequate resources.

However, we are not here with a large bucket that we are asking you to fill. We are willing to do our part. In fact, our plan only asks that you continue the same level of support you have provided for the past 10 years, which has generally been a modest annual increase of 1 to 2 percent. We ask that the same commitment continue over the next 10 years.

We have already demonstrated that we can leverage investments to yield additional private gifts and external grants. We also have taken the pre-emptive action of offering faculty and staff an early retirement incentive program to increase vacancies and give ourselves more financial flexibility. And we continue to look for ways to increase cost efficiency. Since our university-wide restructuring in 1995 in which we initially reduced nine colleges to four colleges, this has become a way of life. In our performance funding assessments, we traditionally earn the highest marks possible in administrative efficiency.

Budget Request

We ask the State of South Carolina to be our partner in these efforts to build a top-tier university. Specifically, we ask for your help in the following key areas:

  1. First, we request stability in state funding for both the academic budget and our public service activities budget. Although there are some targeted programs in our budget request, there is no higher priority than financial stability of basic programs.
  2. Second, we endorse and encourage you to support the business-led initiative to set aside part of lottery revenues to fund endowed chairs and the necessary start-up and operating costs associated with recruiting world-class faculty to our research universities. This support is not for the universities. It is for the business climate in our state. It is for the economic future of South Carolina.
  3. Third, any special funding initiative to cover the new costs related to living in an age of terrorism must recognize the critical role that Clemson plays in protecting our farms and food supply, in regulating the use of pesticides, fertilizers and other potentially harmful products, and in meat inspection or monitoring for invasive pests.
  4. If a bond bill is considered, we ask that higher education's needs in new facilities and renovations are at the top of the list.
  5. Fifth, we ask for relief from provisos and regulations that limit our ability to generate revenue or add to operating costs. A host of regulatory changes proposed by the Task Force for Regulatory Relief to the S.C. Council of College and University Presidents have the potential to save higher education millions of dollars and enhance revenue opportunities. I encourage you to consider the task force's recommendations carefully.
  6. We also endorse continued funding for EPSCOR and the academic endowment incentive program, which provide funding that can be leveraged for additional federal grants or private support.
  7. Finally, we ask that you support two special projects.
    1. The first is "Call Me Mister," the highly successful effort to recruit, educate, certify and place African American men in our public schools. This program has earned private and federal support, but the state's prior commitment is still needed. Any program that has the financial support of the federal government and Oprah Winfrey must be given serious attention. This program has earned South Carolina and Clemson substantial positive national publicity. We need to honor the commitment we made to the young men who are currently enrolled in school.
    2. The second is a $1 million commitment for cost-sharing to bring another National Science Foundation engineering research center to South Carolina. Our first NSF engineering research center has multiplied the state's initial $1 million investment into annual external support of $7 million to $8 million per year. Another center this one in wireless communication has the same potential for substantial federal and industry support.

In closing, as Clemson is the state's land-grant university with a mandated mission of statewide public service, I must make a special plea for support for our public service programs. At Clemson, we don't think of ourselves as two different state agencies. We are "One Clemson."

I realize this committee's purview is our academic budget, but I hope you'll permit me to share a few comments I made to the subcommittee on PSA a week ago. I promised that Clemson will not whine, and I will honor that commitment. However, we must recognize the potential of a tremendous loss.

This year our state is in danger of losing a treasure.

The work of the men and women in public service to South Carolina is in genuine jeopardy. More importantly, the people of South Carolina are on the edge of having their individual lives impacted by this loss in real, tangible and profound ways.

My concern here is to illustrate that without the real commitment to save this resource for our citizens, it will take us 25 years to recover from this year's decisions on budgets.

With all respect, encouragement, sympathy, and concern alone will not do it. It will take nothing short of all of our collective energy to make it possible for us to save the very core of PSA.

Truly, we are now at the edge of a very deep abyss. Only extraordinary work and action by you and by us will keep us from the loss of this treasure.

As you can see, a decline in state funding for our academic programs will be a setback, and it will likely lead to increased student fees and reduced services. However, a continued decline in PSA funding is much more devastating. It means lost jobs, closed Extension offices, and the loss of services that have a direct impact on public safety.

I sincerely thank you for your time, your attention, and for all that you do for Clemson and the State of South Carolina.