Hawaii’s World
BASED particularly on a recent session he had with a group from the Hawaii Society of Corporate Planners, I am convinced University of Hawaii President Kenneth Mortimer loves dancing on the hot griddle his job provides and sees himself as an agent of necessary change. Era of change at UH can
be painful, but exhilaratingHe even can joke that he and Gov. Ben Cayetano are in an unpopularity contest with the Manoa faculty -- each with favorable ratings down around 20 percent.
Mortimer ventured that the winds of change driving university operations have similarities with those that have swept through the practice of medicine. More focus on results instead of inputs. More outreach to make services more convenient.
Doctors once called the tune on treatment and hospitalization. The soaring cost of health care led insurers, including government, to take charge to restrain it. This has driven both physicians and millions of their patients into health maintenance organizations and group practices with a better handle on cost.
In Hawaii, the state Legislature has cut the purchasing power of funds appropriated to the University of Hawaii by 30 percent since Mortimer became president seven years ago. In exchange it has given the university more autonomy including freedom to set and keep the tuition it charges. Mortimer likes having his own lawyers.
The UH system now gets little more than 50 percent of its $721 million annual operating income from the state, not counting health and retirement programs. The rest comes primarily from federal grants, tuition, private sources and investments. UH is jacking up tuitions for its professional schools. Out-of-state students who pay more have a new attractiveness. Consolidations of schools and departments are reducing administrative costs.
All this is being done, Mortimer says, without losing sight of the goals of excellence for the university in chosen fields and offering solid basic education to undergraduates, particularly the disadvantaged. Faculty teaching necessary courses like philosophy outside profit-driven areas like the professional schools must be protected, he said.
Football Coach June Jones has brought new popularity and resources to the athletic program. The new dean of medicine, Edwin Cadman, says he hopes to be a June Jones for medicine.
SPEAKING to university presidents from six nations in Hiroshima in September, Mortimer ventured that more higher education will be delivered to students who are part-time rather than full-time, that it will be delivered directly to the customer as at Hawaii's neighbor island centers and that even advanced degrees may be achieved through the Internet.
Intellectual property is of growing importance. UH keeps patents from inventions in its laboratories but shares 50 percent of derived income with faculty. It looks enviously to the day when it might match the $200 million a year Stanford University gets from its DNA patent alone.
If Hawaii is to become a successful high-tech state it will be accomplished primarily through the University of Hawaii, Mortimer believes.
His Hiroshima speech ended with this final paragraph: "As a product of our intellect drives our economies and provides the sustenance for successful universities in the 21st century, faculty talent will become more -- not less -- important. The competition for it will be fierce."
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.