I recently read an article entitled “Higher Ed’s Cult of Growth” (www.chronicle.com/article/higher-eds-cult-of-growth). In it, the author warns that the situation of every college and university chasing growth may very well lead to disaster.
Across the country, the population of traditional college-aged students has declined over the last 10 to 15 years, and adult learners often gravitate to the for-profit institutions that promise quick credentials and easy paths to degrees. Thus, universities are competing for fewer and fewer students.
The issue is not just a lack of students, but also the environmental cost of unchecked growth. The more buildings and people, the greater toll on traffic, utilities and the ‘aina itself. Indeed, as I reflect back on my time as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, I remember the love/hate relationship the community had with the campus, which persists to this day.
Every community wants its university to be bright and shining, with new buildings, more students and greater economic impact. UC Berkeley, when I was a student there, was 10 times the size that UH Hilo is now. As a student, I felt as though I was a number as I waited to register for classes, apply for financial aid, and try to get a space in housing. That university was and is arguably the best institution of public higher education in the country, but it was monstrous in size, and relatively few students got individual attention.
Of course, we do not need to worry about UH Hilo turning into a campus of 30,000. We have had the opposite issue: declining enrollments. We are not alone in that, and we are truly fortunate that our community supports our mission and that many families on our island and in our state trust UH Hilo with their students’ education. Students from other states and throughout the Pacific still consider us a destination for some areas of study. The number of college-aged students on our island is growing, so we can, too.
What has been largely lost from public conversations about enrollment growth and decline, however, is analysis of what is the right size for a university, based on its location, its academic offerings and its overall mission. UH Hilo can be larger than it is today. On the campus we are working on many strategies to increase our enrollment. But what size do the state and the island need us to be? How large do we have to be to provide the level of service to students that they need and deserve? What services can we share across the UH System? These are the big, hard questions that chancellors grapple with every day.
Growth for UH Hilo rests in a number of things. We need to identify our areas of distinction, both in the state and elsewhere. We live in this incredible learning laboratory, which is our island. Our people are diverse and our place is unique. How our academic programs situate their curriculum and student experience in this rich environment and then how we advertise these unique experiences to the world can lead to more students deciding to stay here at home to get their education as well as bringing in students from the outside.
What does our community need from us in terms of research and service, and how large do we have to be to provide those things? This is also a key question in determining how big we should be. There is tremendous potential all around us to partner with others in our community to meet the needs of the present and future, to safeguard our environment and improve the quality of life for our citizens.
One of my previous workplaces had the slogan, “big enough to matter, small enough to care.” I think about that phrase a lot here at UH Hilo. We need to be big enough to be the university our island needs, but small enough so that the personal attention to students and their individual needs can be met and their dreams fulfilled.
We can and will grow, but we will also keep our culture of care and excellence because that is what our island truly deserves.
Bonnie D. Irwin is chancellor of the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Her column appears monthly in the Tribune-Herald.
