1926) Universidades americanas: a excelencia vem de baixo

A receita é muito simples: se você quer ter universidades excelentes, comece com escolas primárias e secundárias excelentes, públicas, de preferência...

Tales Out of School
By CLAUDIA GOLDIN
The New York Times Book Review, February 7, 2010

Book Review:
THE GREAT AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected
By Jonathan R. Cole
616 pp. PublicAffairs. $35

Of the top 20 universities in the world, according to one 2008 reckoning, just three were outside the United States. Of the top 50, just 14 were. American colleges and universities are unquestionably pre-eminent in teaching and research, attracting students and faculty members from around the world. We may no longer be the nation that exports cars. But we are the nation that exports higher education.

This is a relatively new phenomenon. Before the 1940s many of America’s greatest scholars and scientists went abroad to study. Americans have won a majority of Nobel Prizes in science and medicine since 1955, but before 1935 Americans took home far fewer of those trophies.

As provost of Columbia University for 14 years and a professor of sociology and dean of faculties before that, Jonathan R. Cole is in an excellent position to write about the rise of the American research university and its special contribution to American life. In “The Great American University,”he makes a case for the extraordinary role such institutions play in improving our daily lives. He also argues that these “jewels in our nation’s crown” face a host of serious threats.

As the parents of every prospective college student know all too well, America offers a mind-boggling array of choices. About 1,600 public and nonprofit private institutions grant a bachelor’s degree, while an additional 1,100 two-year colleges are often the gateway to a four-year education. But Cole is concerned primarily with research universities (and medical schools), the 125 or so institutions that do the most to foster innovations that “enhance our standard of living and our quality of life.”

He lists their dazzling achievements, which in biology and medicine include findings on gene-splicing, recombinant DNA, retroviruses, cancer therapies, coch­lear implants, the fetal ultrasound scanner, the hepatitis B vaccine, prions, stem cells, organ transplantation and even a treatment for head lice. In the physical sciences, universities have contributed to the Hubble telescope, lasers, LEDs, bar codes, radar, transistors, M.R.I. technology and numerous advances in computing. In a chapter on the social sciences, he cites, among many others, such useful innovations as theories of human capital and social mobility, research in linguistics and even the use of prices to reduce traffic jams.

No one can for a moment doubt the special role universities play in innovations that arise from research in pure science and an interest in solving problems. But a 150-page inventory like the one Cole provides here tells us as much about why some universities are “great” as a list of names of accomplished people in a large family shows us why their family is “great” relative to others. Moreover, it does nothing to illuminate whether universities did it alone and what kind of incentives were used to enhance researcher productivity.

Private enterprise and government agencies work with universities, as Cole’s own roll call of great achievements demonstrates; they also compete with them. For example, the University of California scientist who isolated the gene for insulin founded Chiron. The cancer drug Gleevec originated in research at M.I.T. and U.C.L.A. but was produced by Novartis. The fetal scanner was produced by Physionic Engineering Inc., formed by researchers who had left the University of Colorado. Organs can be transplanted only with the immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine, developed by Sandoz (now Novartis). The head-lice shampoo developed at Purdue was marketed by Nature’s Sunshine. The Hubble telescope was a joint venture among the European Space Agency, NASA and others, though the idea came from a Princeton astrophysicist. The laser came from research at American universities and Bell Labs.

Cole notes these collaborations but does little to address the numerous questions they raise. What is the optimal division of research among universities, private enterprise and the government? Some universities allow faculty members to hold patents; some give them joint interests in private sector ventures. Which arrangement is most advantageous for research output? Which is best for the integrity of the university? “At Columbia, we pursued technology transfer aggressively,” Cole writes. “If we succeeded, we could use the resources generated to compete effectively with wealthier universities.” But was Cole really just acting as a modern Robin Hood, or does the profit motive pervert the mission of his and other universities?

According to Cole, the current threats to the American university don’t come from the outside — no other nation’s universities are within striking distance — but from within our borders and even within the university itself. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, foreign students and professors find it more difficult to venture to the United States. Cole devotes two chapters to the Bush administration, which he sees as a “frightening example of how the distrust of scholarly and scientific work — because it chal­lenges the ideological views of the prince — can begin to seriously erode the structure of knowledge production that has made our universities the finest in the world.”

But he also sees a grave threat from inequalities among the great universities. A few universities have colossal endowments, but most do not. In 2008, before the financial crisis, 76 had endowments of more than $1 billion; 19 (including Columbia) had endowments of more than $5 billion; and 6 had endowments exceeding $10 billion. “The alarming growth of inequality among university endowments over the past two decades has produced an unnerving potential for a few institutions to be able to dominate the competition for talent,” thus sapping vital competition, Cole argues. But are such inequalities good or bad? Could 125 equally sized automobile firms produce cars as cheaply as a few very large ones? Probably not. So why isn’t that the case for university research as well?

In his conclusion, Cole plays with the notion that universities could engage in cross subsidies, as in baseball, where a luxury tax applies to total payroll. Only one team can win, and taxing rich teams keeps the game more interesting. But knowledge creation, unlike baseball, is not a zero sum game. Everyone can win.

Cole then reverses course and proposes cost-saving mergers among universities. Provosts may see institutional boundaries, but professors, separated by miles and oceans, already work together, sharing research ideas, course syllabuses and students. University researchers are truly scholars without borders; ideas do not wear school colors.

Today, the greatest threats to American higher education probably do not concern any of the things Cole discusses. Rather, they relate to the openness of the system and the academic preparedness of its students, who, as Cole acknowledges at the outset, play almost no role in this volume. But teaching and research cannot be so easily separated. The great research universities educate a substantial fraction of all four-year undergraduates and produce more than three-quarters of all Ph.D.’s. As Cole acknowledges, “excellence in teaching and excellence in research” are “mutually reinforcing.”

But many students are finding it harder to gain access to that teaching. In 1980 average private tuition was 20 percent of median family income, but it is 50 percent today; average public tuition was 4 percent of median family income in 1980 and is 11 percent today. We have witnessed, just this past year, the vulnerability of the great California system.

American universities became the very best in the world because of the nation’s early commitment to universal high school education. Maintaining excellence at the highest educational levels requires sustaining the pipeline from the lower levels. Without renewed commitment to preparedness and access, the great American university may not remain great.

Claudia Goldin is a professor of economics at Harvard. Her latest book, with Lawrence F. Katz, is “The Race Between Education and Technology.”