--- title: An Interview with James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday | TIME description: Judy Woodruff interviews James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday at the 2013 TIME Summit on Higher Education canonical: https://time.com/video/ESLPPI3c/ og:title: An Interview with James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday og:description: Judy Woodruff interviews James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday at the 2013 TIME Summit on Higher Education og:url: https://time.com/video/ESLPPI3c/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ESLPPI3c/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: An Interview with James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday twitter:description: Judy Woodruff interviews James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday at the 2013 TIME Summit on Higher Education twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ESLPPI3c/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # An Interview with James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: An Interview with James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday [Watch (HLS stream): An Interview with James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ESLPPI3c.m3u8) (20:41)  _Published 2013-09-20. Judy Woodruff interviews James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday at the 2013 TIME Summit on Higher Education_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:46 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Digitizing Wellness : James Park \(Interviewed by Stephanie Ruhle\)](/video/G7dundIE/) ### Digitizing Wellness : James Park (Interviewed by Stephanie Ruhle) [Charles Oakley: James Dolan is on the same level as Donald Sterling](/video/qFuG2axj/) ### Charles Oakley: James Dolan is on the same level as Donald Sterling [Nancy Gibbs Kicks off the TIME Summit on Higher Education](/video/g4pXViBA/) ### Nancy Gibbs Kicks off the TIME Summit on Higher Education --- ## Transcript I'm really pleased to be here, to, to talk to two of the leaders. Thought leaders, in, in what we're discussing. As [ UNKNOWN ] just said. The, the, the project that, Jim [ UNKNOWN ] and Chad Holiday have been the principal authors of research universities, and the future of America. And I think every one of you. Is gonna get a copy of this. We're here to talk about the report that they've put so much of their energy and their effort into to talk about the role of the research university, to kick off the, the rest of the discussion that you're having today. I don't think either one of them needs an introduction. Dr. Dudas Dot is the president emeritus. And university professor, now, of science and engineering at the University of Michigan. Chad Holiday is the chairman of the Bank of America. The former CEO of DuPont. Dr. [ UNKNOWN ], I'm gonna start with you, Jim. why, just the fundamental question. Why do we need Research Universities? Why are they important to this country? Well you know? In a sense, the nations prosperity public health, it's national security depends on knew knowledge in, in this time. On, people with advanced education Graduate level, in the professions, and those are the principle products of research universities. That was recognized as ralph mentioned, back in the time of the civil war with the creation of the land grant acts, that created the great public universities, reinforced in the closing days of world war 2, and has been. Responsible for a very significant fraction of the economic growth of this country as well as the quality of it's work force. Chad can tell you a little bit more about how this got started, but there was a strong appreciation of the importance of this institutions and yet a growing concern particularly on the part of the United States congress that they were at risk. And shared, you know, as somebody who clearly comes from the world of business. Engineering, science background. Why was it so important to you to get involved in this? I think a story, it really is the best way to describe that. When Ralph, and Chuck, his counterpart, at the National Academy of Engineering called and asked me to be involved, I thought back to my time at It was are annual Patton dinner. And I was sitting next to someone who had receiving their 100th Patton that year. But that wasn't why I was sitting next to him. It's because he was very upset with me. It's because he was very upset with me. Because we were moving away from some basic catalyst research that makes a chemical process work. And we were focusing more on research that would serve Depot, because what our shareholders wanted. And so he, he, he was concerned about that. We'll no longer be the leader in catalyst research. And I told him, well, we won't be the leader, but we've got these great relationships with these research universities who will be the leader and that's where we'll get that we don't develop ourselves. And he looked at me and he said, but what if they're not there? Man: And that was the echo in my ear when they called and said let's work on this. So my answer was they must be there, we just do not have the choice for the prosperity of the country if they're not there so I think it's very critical. Woman: What, what, how do you define a research university, Jim? Man: Well. [ COUGH ] All research universities cover a very broad spectrum of higher education. They teach undergraduates they provide services of various kind. But the unique character is that they offer advanced education. At the graduate level they offer a broad array of professional schools. And they produce new knowledge. In the United States, the research universities. Have a fundamental task of doing most of the basic research for this country. That's particularly important today because, of course, Wall Street no longer allows Bell Labs and so forth to exist. So that has moved over onto the campuses. So that's where it's done, and that's in contrast with most of the rest of the world. It combines basic research With education, which gives a, a an energy and an innovative character, which is quite unique. So that's what's unique about them. As many others have said, they do take enormous make enormous effort to have outstanding undergraduate education programs. But their real uniqueness is at the advanced level in producing highly educated people and the knowledge that provides for the prosperity and security of the country. What would you add to that, Chad? I mean, what makes them, what makes it so important that we're here talking about this? I think it's the creative nature, and it's the uniqueness of the model as, as, as Chuck Vest has said many times, research universities, particularly the publics, are unique, American invention, and shame on us if we don't use them properly. And why, and why are they in danger? Let's talk about, you lay out the challenges very clearly in this report. Why are, what are the principle challenges facing Clearly one of them is funding. Right. And, and you can talking about that [ CROSSTALK ] right. You know, all of our society faces the challenge of globalization, of the rapidly changing demographics of our, of our nation. Financial issues, we know about. Technology is really a change agent but as we moved into this study. We kind of framed it in a different way. What is unique about American higher education at research universities is a partnership that evolved out of actions during the Civil War between the universities, the federal government, the states, business industry, and philanthropy. And that very unusual partnership has been sustained for over one hundred and fifty years and led to the strength of these institutions. What's happening right now is for Many broader reasons that partnership is beginning to fray a bit. The Federal Government has backed off of support of both research, basic research and graduate education. And it tends to be very unstable. It goes up, it goes down, and puts the university at some risk. It also is characterized by policies and regulations that are increasingly burdensome for the institutions. The states, as I've said, have really turned their back on the support of public research universities. Their funding from state sources has dropped by 25 to 50 % over the last decade, and the poster child was the University of California, which is probably the finest university in the world That's lost over 60 % of its state support during the last decade. With business and industry, there the challenge is that it's very difficult for them with, under current financial pressures, to do the basic research that used to be done. So that's now shifted to the campus. But we really don't have the right way to couple industry with the campuses to take advantage of it. And then finally, the challenge to the universities themselves In this kind of world is they are challenged to be much more cost- effective much more efficient, and enhance very significantly their productivity. That's what the American people suspect. So all of that is pulling apart this partnership and putting them at great risk. Would you, I, I want you to jump in on this Chad, and, and particularly on the business Piece of it right now, because what we hear, what we know is that it has, the research has moved away from the business community. Is that something that needs to change? Is that something that, that has to change? We believe we need a new partnership So if you look at from business today, they have it a little bit too easy. So we go to the university and we license your research. And we're pretty good negotiators, so we license at a pretty good price. And then we take your best students. And you want us to have your best students. So, but, what are we putting in the game to do that? So we believe the partnership should change. States need to do more, federal government more, but business needs to do a lot more than what they're doing now. They need long- term relationships with universities, to help fund that research. Obviously, guide the research to areas where they Commercialize it, which is good for the country. You can commercialize it and create jobs. And we've, we've been going around the country. We've been at nine different cities and we see great examples at, at the University of Texas and Texas Instruments. Tremendous partnership Where TI is telling the University of Texas the kinds of research they need, the students they need, and they're supplying them. And they're helping fund it along the way. That's the model we think we need to develop across the country. But is that something the business community is responsive to? We found from this work is that certainly some are. But they don't realize how important the research universities are to them. So, what we're trying to explain by these regional conferences is the difference it's making and why they should care. And it's not necessarily they should reinvent the research inside. I, I think Jim's right, that's not gonna happen in the stock markets today. But they can't have a ten year relationship. At Dupont, we had a ten year relationship. W -, with MIT, around biotech, industrial biotechnology, they can plan on the funding, we can plan on the research cooperation, a great partnership could be worked out very well. What a, in, in terms of, of, we're not going to spend the whole time on, on funding [ LAUGH ] Jim, but how, how do universities begin to think about the fact that there are not gonna be the streams of revenue that there have been. From the federal and from the government and from the state. Well, I think we were not quite that pessimistic at putting togther the report. We recommened strongly to the federal government more stable and supportive policies and practices. At the outset we were very realistic about the current environment and suggested Why don't you take as a first step, essentially honoring earlier commitments that you made, and with a strong bipartisan method, effort, to the America Competes Act, and to doubling the budgets of the National Institutes of Health, which did double, and then slip back As inflation set it. So in a sense, do what you've already committed to do. Okay? And then as the economy improves downstream, perhaps some other investments will be there. At the state level while we all believed on the committee that we have to implore the states to try to restore funding With aging populations and other needs, that may not be a realistic thing for many states to do, so there the issue was providing universities with much great autonomy and agility in return for accountability, so they can take the internal actions to get through what would be a decade Or even longer, period without significant state support. Chad, talk about some of the, some of the changes this report is saying that universities are gonna have to make internally. Economies, efficiencies, that need to begin to happen, that need to continue to happen, begin to happen in some cases. Our committee was a cross- section of industry, university, government, national labs We hit a few heated debates about how much more efficient universities could be and I would say there's a lot, there's a lot of very good things going on. But we saw examples in our regional thing i, it University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon co- operating and sharing things even development staff, they were sharing which you think would be impossible. S, so, so, what we'll see is those examples going around a, and, and, and In Tennessee we had the Vanderbilt University of Tennessee that normally don't get together at all, but we had both the presidents and chancellors in a room talking about cooperation they can make across the state. So there's a lot of self- help that could happen. And we think that's an important step, and we think that the government should recognize that universities are doing a great job. What would you add to that Jim. As somebody who's led a great University, and continues to, to to be very involved at a great University. What, it mean, how should schools, how should the country think about the changes that need to be made internally? Well, first the country needs to look very carefully at the relationship between the cost of education. The price we charge for it and the value it provides. Okay? And I think that's very, significantly misunderstood. For public universities over the last 20 years the actual cost of education that we provide, instructions has only been increasing about a half a percent a year. Of course the state subsedy has slipped, so the price has gone up. But having said that Beyond that lack of public understanding is many of the current practices at Universities, which just kind of appear wrong to the American republic. In effort to recruit students, they build very elaborate resident halls with sushi bars, climbing walls, and pay football coaches five million dollars a year. Does that suggest a university that's being very cost effective and so forth? So, it's public perception on the outside that we need to deal with. Inside, I think the concern was raised that in many cases, particularly for the very large universities, they do not have the fi -, the strategic, financial and management tools really to do what industry and corporations may be able to do in many cases. They, they use fund a county, a technical term and so forth, but They're kind of limited in how they do it and that's going to have to change. Collaboration as Chad said, is the key particularly in research, but it's also the key in instruction as well. Collaboration University University to University, faculty member to faculty member. The day is when each faculty member could have their own labratory with. Two or three junior faculty, and twenty or so post- docs is coming to an end. In fact, when we build buildings now in Michigan, we intentionally put faculty offices across bridges from laboratories which are single laboratories so they can't carve up their own kingdom. And [ LAUGH ] Chad, what about how, it, how the different communities, constituencies inside the university community Need to be part of this change that the two of you are talking about. The administration of faculty the the parent body who are paying the bills in, in many respects. Certainly the, the, state, local, and federal political leadership. " Talk about how those constituencies need to be on board with what you're recommending here ." " Great question, what we found is we went out and talked to Governors who've been very successful and we said how do you build up your University system in your state. And what they kept talking about over and over again, is talk to the public about concrete examples, not theoretical things, not numbers that they can't relate to, but examples ..." Of how it's created jobs, how it's had prosperity, and, and that's the critical, you know, step that we need to make going forward. It, it's a tough sell, and one thing we just have to stress today, is that these public universities are the core of this unique American experiment. And, and, and we talk about the great privates. And we need the great privates. But they just don't have the volume to support the, the size of the economy we have in the US today. So it's critical that we, we build those relationships with the public universities as well as the great privates. And, and we build them early on so we're sure the jobs will accrue here. So, so don't worry about our great corporations as, as we heard on the panel last night, if, if they don't find what they need here, they'll go somewhere and get it. So we just gotta make sure it's here and the jobs stay here. Jim, what would you say? Well, let me kind of insert a footnote here. American research universities are very comprehensive. Our panel was, of course put together by the national academies of science, engineering, and institute of medicine, but our recognition is that the comprehensive character of universities create interdependence between The sciences professional schools like engineering, business and law. Social sciences, and particularly the arts and humanities. And I think there's sometimes a mistake by thinking that it's the scientific and technological part of the university that we're worrying about, that's interacting with the private sector. In fact, it's the comprehensive nature of the university. We're moving into a society, for example, that is more and more dependent on creativity and innovation. Who knows how to do that? That's the visual and performing arts. The impact of technology has a very human character. We need to understand history through the humanities and how that happens. So, this idea of universities as an integrated core is absolutely essential to understand how we move ahead. Is the, is the community of higher education in this country on board with what you're talking about? How much of a selling job do you still have to do Inside the world of higher, higher ed. I used to get into trouble with the quote that Universities tend to change one grant at a time. Fesents should never say that. But it is the case. We have many different communitys on campus. Some get it, many don't. These are very complex institutions and in the same way that I think universities have to unify with a common voice to educate the American public more broadly about their importance and what they are, I think that same effort has to be done internally because I don't think we're coherent enough in the multiple communities we have to get the necessary changes to happen. What about the external communities, Chad? I mean, what needs to happen? Business, political, and beyond. So, so, I, I think, as we, as we look at, at, the, the question to Jim, it, it, would, would, you know, what do universities need to change. I think one, the, the most critical things we had in our study was, how do we approve the effectiveness and efficiency without taking away the creativity which is so critical to the success. And that is a very delicate line, but the coop, cooperation we saw at the University of Texas and Accenture. They came up with ideas of just purchasing materials better. Some simple things that could be done that in no way take away the creativity of the in the academic freedom from the university but just to have more resources available. So I think we have to explain that. We have to explain where the differences are. And, and cuz I think it's very critical, that we, we not make these universities like a business, cuz then we'll, we'll, we'll take away our basic strength. Is there fear inside the university community about getting too close to business. Jim? There is from time to time. I think that what we find is the professional schools really have a direct relationship with, society, business, law, engineering, medicine, and so forth. But the intellectual core of the university, the liberal arts shall we say, can be very threatened by that. And I think that's just a dialogue we have to have. But I think universities also need to be very sensitive that they have fundamental values that are sometimes in conflict with those organization they interact with outside the campus. And those have to be put on the table and done in the right way. I should say, so we don't. Convey the impression that what we're after are, you know, primarily the Federal government, the states, and so forth but to change the university exchange somewhat inside. We also recognize those universities have to interact with other parts of society in a very fundamental way. For example, We don't believe that they are sufficiently engaged with K12 education right now. That is not something that they can just assign to their schools of education. They have to get deeply engaged in it. The whole challenge to demographic change, we are rapidly becoming a nation of minorities. We've got to pay attention to breaking the glass ceiling for women's rights. "... for providing opportunities to underrepresented minorities. And then the final component of that is one of the great values of these institutions, is there capacity to attract extraordinary human talent from around the world. And that issue is something that I think they're committed to but they've got to fight through the difficulties we have with current immigration policies. So in the immigration act we have right now, if that passess ..." There will be important ways to open up the opportunity to, you know, attract talent, and give them the opportunity to stay here if they wish. So all of that are things that universities themselves should be doing in addition to strengthening this partnership. Just in the minute or so we have left Chad, what needs to happen in the coming year Two years to move toward the, the kind of future that, that you two lay out, in this report, need, needs to be the face and the reality of re, the research university. So, we, we have, ten recommendations, five cost money, five are self- help, we need to do both. And we think it'll take ten years to implement. And so we're just monitioring our progres year by year, and we think in ten years from now we can have these ten recommendations implemened. So, we have to keep them in front of people they understand. And we gotta celebrate every accomplishment. I think this conference is doing that. That's the spirit. Ten years, so that means the two of you are committed for the next ten years. Ooh, is that what that means? [ LAUGH ] I guess so. [ LAUGH ] [ LAUGH ] Alright, I wanna thank both of you, Chad Holiday, Jim Duderstad. Thank you very much. [ NOISE ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"An Interview with James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday","description":"Judy Woodruff interviews James Duderstadt and Charles Holliday at the 2013 TIME Summit on Higher Education","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ESLPPI3c/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-09-20T13:11:33.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ESLPPI3c.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/ESLPPI3c/","duration":"PT20M41S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/ESLPPI3c/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```