Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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independent institutions. There is no question but that in the last twenty five years we have witnessed a major societal shift towards mass higher education. If one includes research universities, large state universities, four year colleges and two-year colleges, then higher education has almost become a universal right. Because of that, it has become politicized. These changes between the public and private sectors have major financial ramifications. The private institutions survived because between increases in tuition and fees, income from endowments, and growth in the number of students they were able to remain viable. The growth factor is often overlooked in such discussions, but in the 1950 ' s and 1960 ' s it was the normal technique used to balance budgets. By adding students you kept adding to income. It was this growth in college age children which provided the driving force for the major expansion of the public sector. It ivas considered to be a political good so that political parties adopted programs to provide mass higher education. The economic constraint on obtaining a college education was greatly reduced. Of course, although the public institution appeared to be less expensive to any one individual, the total cost was at least as much as that in private institutions. Subsidies from taxes keep the public institutions in business, but they are spread over the entire population. However, the era of growth is over. We are currently in a period of no growth and the 1980 ' s will be a decade in which the number of students will markedly decline. Hence, the growth factor is no longer available as a budget balancing technique. Another difficulty results from the erosion of endowments, which have not increased in proportion to the increase in the number of students and budgets. Most of the endowments were added in an era in which it was possible to create and accumulate this kind of wealth. Because of government regulations and restrictions, it is now much more difficult to create such wealth. Consequently, income from endowments has become a smaller and smaller part of the income needed to meet the total expense. Another factor causing the erosion of endowment is the effect of inflation. Endowment income averages between five and six percent, so that higher inflation rates inevitably mean a reduction in the value of the endowment. If heavy taxation remains or even increases, if high inflation continues and rates of eight percent or higher become politically acceptable, then there is no way that the independent sector can compete with the subsidized public sector without passing an increased fraction of the costs on to the students through increased tuition. Thus, these government policies of taxation and inflation will create a very competitive situation between the public and private institutions in the 1980 ' s. The competitive battle lines are already being drawn and the private institutions are threatened. Although most of the institutions will manage to continue to exist, some of them will not survive. But eventually survival will depend on some form of subsidization to the independent sector from the public sector. Some giant steps have already been taken in the direction of a public presence in the independent sector through federal and state programs of financial aid. Over half of our students receive financial aid of one kind or another. The question is whether these programs will reach a level enabling the private sector to survive. With regard to WPI, we have already introduced a policy of no growth in the number of students. The physical plant, facilities, and the size of the faculty cannot justify further growth. Hence, we will have to manage our financial affairs in an era of no growth. I think that WPI is in an advantageous position because it has implemented its attractive and innovative plan before the difficult and competitive decade of the 1980 ' s has arrived. Many institutions will be forced to look at their market and they will try to change their objectives by coupling with careerism. Severe institutional strains will occur as financial difficulties arise. You can picture schools running from programmatic pillar to post, grasping at educational straws, and biting off little pieces of the market in one area after the other until the whole concept of institutional integrity becomes unstable. Fortunately, WPI has thought through its program and has it in place before the most difficult period arrives. Intewiew with President and Mrs. Crunch Q: How has your life changed due to your move from Cornell to WPI? A (President Cranch): Apart from the academic side, one of the big changes has been the extensive involvement with students and student groups. That is a new dimension for me because at a big university many of the functions and activities are handled through a large offic e of student affairs. Faculty members and deans do not get nearly as involved with the affairs of students as they do at WPI. Q: Have I read somewhere that you ' re an avid hockey fan? Which team was your favorite before the Bruins? A (President Cranch): In theory I have been a Montreal Canadiens fan, but in practice I have a split personality. I admire the Canadiens for their finesse and talent. It is a wonderful sight to watch them skate and see Ken Dryden play goal. But I ' m also a person who by nature roots for the underdog. I think it would be good for ice hockey if the Flyers, Bruins or Rangers could win once in a while. A long time ago I was a Ranger fan but I gave up on them. A few years ago I rooted for the Flyers before they became so physical and abusive and tried to intimidate everyone. I think that the Bruins have a good team. Q: Does President Cranch bring his work home from the office? A (Mrs. Cranch): President Cranch has his work here right now. There are piles of papers both at home and in his office. One day I set up a card table in our sitting room upstairs to begin Christmas cards and before I knew it there were piles of papers there. He found that it was a lovely sunny spot one Sunday morning so he sat down there to work. He ' s always been that way. I ' ve never seen a professor who didn ' t have piles of papers. (President Cranch): We were talking about careers earlier, and in an academic career your work is with you all the time, twenty-four hours a day. If you track the hours spent, it can easily reach 60 to 70 hours a week. Certainly 50 to 60 hours a week is not abnormal for an academician or academic administrator. You can ' t possibly accomplish everything in the so-called normal 40 hour work week in your office because of constant interruptions and the 28

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had several different interests that went quite deeply and I was trying to sort them out. At that time one ' s choice was limited to very traditional engineering programs and very traditional liberal arts programs. Hence, had programs such as the one at WPI been in existence, I would have sought it out. It is not an easy matter to describe how one ' s educational preferences and choices influence one ' s experience and future career. I think that college students have difficulty perceiving how their future career paths relate to their immediate educational experience. Justifiably so, they have difficulty in recognizing that these paths are very tortuous. What one may be doing at age 35 can be far different from what one may be doing at age 45, which is likely to be different from what one will be doing at age 55. It is a mistaken notion to believe that your education sets you on a straight line trajectory at age 20 for your future career. In my own case, my college experience uncovered a strong personal desire to become a part of higher education. I found the course content very stimulating intellectually, but I also wanted to know why things were the way they appeared to be. How did our social and economic institutions evolve? How did different industries mature? How do the technological, human and economic pieces join in influencing the development of society? I acquired an interest in the history of technology. It became clear to me that I was attracted to a career in education, but I did not want that career divorced from real life factors. But within higher education one has a choice of direction. You can become caught up in your own scholarly pursuits, including graduate education, and become divorced from the rest of the educational process. 77ms is very tempting for an individual and it is one of the reasons why many people are attracted to an academic career. The opportunity to isolate yourself. define your own problems, and essentially support yourself through teaching is an attractive alternative. Every academician has to face this decision of emphasis. Higher education is essentially the only institution in our society in which one has the opportunity to pursue one ' s own interests. While I have pursued the scholarly mode at various times in my own career, I decided that at this stage there were other dimensions of higher education which for me were of greater interest and importance. Q: Do you see any changes which will or should come about in the near future in higher education? A: I believe there will be an extensive self-evaluation in educational institutions with respect to the relevance of educational content to the life-long learning needs of individuals in our society. 77ie notion that just the first four or five years in college is sufficient for an entire lifetime is being challenged. I think that even the traditional elite universities will be forced to examine their programs in light of the recognition that learning is a life-long endeavor. Engineering education has experienced this problem for many years as a result of technological obsolescence, and we have tried to meet the need through short courses and continuing education. However, it has been a patchwork, add-on approach and institutions have not looked at modifications of their basic programs. When they do, I think that many of them will recognize the importance of the fundamental elements of the WPI Plan. Although there was a great flurry of activity in the 1960 ' s involving the use of television for education, this development has not penetrated education to the extent originally foreseen. In fact, there has been some disenchantment with so-called educational technology. The technological approach to education is a very passive one unless one utilizes interactive modes such as programmed learning. However, it is now clear that these interactive modes of instruction are quite expensive. We ' ve also learned that the presence of an instructor is important in fostering human interaction and stimulating interest. To some extent we have rediscovered what was intuitively understood in the time of Plato. Namely, from the point of view of human interaction and efficiency, an effective teaching approach is to have a professor talk to a group of individuals in a classroom of modest size. If you try to pick apart the process of education and make it a technological process, you remove the human element. The interchange which takes place through the look on a person ' s face, the way he rolls his eyes, or the way he phrases a question is lost if you reduce education to interfacing with a machine. But after recognizing these limitations, I still believe that educational technology will at some stage come to play an important role in higher education. When educators feel comfortable with releasing certain parts of the educational experience to technological assistance and concentrating their efforts on those parts of education where human interaction is most important, then educational technology will find a very useful role. This will require much hard work and, clearly, we have a very long way to go. Q: Are institutions of higher education in much worse financial condition than they were a few years ago? If so, do you know of any way around the problem? How has the WPI Plan influenced the financial situation? A: The financial position and security of private institutions has eroded very seriously in recent years. Using 1950 as a benchmark year, when fifty percent of the college students were in private institutions and fifty percent in public institutions, we have moved to a present division of almost eighty percent in public institutions and twenty percent in private or so-called 27

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need to be accessible to people. It takes a block of uninterrupted time to do library research, read books, and write up ideas. (Mrs. Cranch): I ' ve seen him carry home piles of files and carry them back the next morning without getting to work on them. (President Cranch): I don ' t want to be discouraging about an academic career, but if you choose it, do it realistically. Q: What achievement in your life are you most proud of? A (President Cranch): I have gained great satisfaction from leading and building academic programs as a dean and now as a president. On the professional side my major achievements and rewards come from influencing policies and building institutional strength. On the personal side my family has been of greatest value to me. My wife and I have known each other for a very long period of time, since grade school. The whole process of raising three children, watching them develop through college, and following them as they build careers has been very rewarding. Q: Do you feel that putting so much time into your academic life has detracted from your family life? A (Mrs. Cranch): Well of course you never have time for all the things you want to do. Your work always comes first. In Ithaca we had a 19 acre wood lot. We used it for family recreation. On a Sunday afternoon in the summer we would go to the lake to swim and in wintertime we ' d go to the woods to hike or cut wood. But we wouldn ' t have time here even if we had the 19 acres. (President Cranch): From my perspective it is a question which has no ultimate answer. For many years when the children were small I was not heavily engaged in things administrative. However, I was very active academically writing papers and notes, so that my wife saw me put a lot of time into my work. Certainly, our original decision to locate in Ithaca was a conscious decision to raise children in a community where you could enjoy family activities without much trouble. Within fifteen minutes you could be swimming or in the wintertime skiing or snowshoeing. Compared with many colleagues I found that I spent more time with my children. (Mrs. Cranch): You have to realize that your children were all born while you were getting your Ph.D. Now people wait and get their degrees first and work for a while before they have their families. They are more mature and more willing to have baby sitters take care of their children. I was never willing to let somebody come into my house to take care of my children while I went away for the night. (President Cranch): We did give very intense oversight to our children. Sunday was always a day when we spent a considerable amount of time with the children. You could always say that you could have done more, but it is a subtle thing. It is the quality of what you do and the spirit in which you do it that counts. I ' m certain that we can all think of counter examples where families spent tremendous amounts of time with their children, yet all sorts of difficulties developed. One must avoid stereotypes in judging family norms. (Mrs. Cranch): When you live within five minutes of your work you don ' t waste time commuting. When we were children our fathers went on the train to New York City — over an hour in the morning and an hour back at night. (President Cranch): I ' m glad that Virginia raised that point, because we were both reared in families where our fathers commuted to New York. The first year I worked I commuted to New York from northern New Jersey and that year was a turning point in my career. I decided that I was not going to get sucked into that syndrome. I was doing graduate work at night school at N.Y.U. while working during the day in New York and I could see a pattern developing. Our children were very young at that time and I decided that I wanted to be in a small town where the urban transportation hassle could be avoided. Hence, we made a conscious choice to live in an environment in which we could enjoy family recreation. Q: If you had your lives to live over again, would you change anything? A (Mrs. Cranch): Yes, I ' d insist upon a three or four week vacation each year. We didn ' t take a vacation last year. We moved to a new location (Worcester) and it was exciting, but we didn ' t really go away. (President Cranch): I don ' t view myself as being a work-aholic although others may do so. To me, life is a continuum. When I ' m at home I find myself thinking of educational problems and when I ' m at school I sometimes think of family things. I find it impossible to turn one thing off and another on. That is part of the reason why it ' s difficult for me to press the vacation button and go away for an extended period of time and do nothing constructive. (Mrs. Cranch): Actually, I usually get more vacation than he does because when we go to conferences he ' s working while I ' m playing. We do travel a lot. We have been to Europe several times and we get south during the winter, but it ' s usually combined with work. (President Cranch): I find it very hard to just take a vacation in the sense of turning off my mind. If vacation is viewed as turning one ' s mind blank and doing something only physical, for some reason I find that impossible. Even if I ' m in a strange environment I find myself asking questions. In that sense I find it very hard to uncouple. I ' m still young — maybe I ' ll learn! (Mrs. Cranch): If we go on vacation III fall asleep on the beach, but he ' s jogging up and down the beach. Or he does situps and the children ask, Mother, what is that man doing? He never stops. He doesn ' t just sit down and day dream. (President Cranch): I need to be seduced to take a vacation. (Mrs. Cranch): Not on the beach! (President Cranch): Not on the beach. But the only way I will take a vacation is to be totally distracted. On being at WPI: (President Cranch): Creating a whole new circle of friends and acquaintances and learning how all the elements fit together has been very stimulating. You have to experience it directly. You just can ' t sit in an office and have someone tell you about all the people and networks that exist in any social fabric. This is especially true in a human endeavor such as education. It ' s not like a factory where the chores are laid out and you interact with just the people who work inside a range of certain functions. Education is in that sense open. People from all levels and all perspectives want to be heard and have an input. You have to be involved almost all of your waking hours! Unfortunately, there just aren ' t enough waki ng hours! (Mrs. Cranch): Every weekend in October we went to an inauguration, so we didn ' t have a day free. (President Cranch): When there are so many inaugurations, that says something about presidencies! We are sincere in saying that we like Worcester and find it an attractive place to live. The city has sufficient size and cultural depth to be interesting without being overwhelming. In just five or ten minutes in almost any direction you can be in the countryside. We find that aspect appealing. 29