Short and Long Term goals for the University:

There were meetings on campus this week for two of the highest profile issues at UND: selecting a new president and a designer for the new Fighting Hawks logo.

Both of these topics are important; a new president who is competent and qualified is obviously needed to lead the university towards future progress, while the logo, along with the new nickname, will accompany every UND athletic team for the foreseeable future.

These subjects have been the focus of much discussion and debate in the UND community, as well as the Grand Forks and North Dakota as a whole. On top of these topics, there are continued talks of how to develop campus for future use.

All of these things have likely been mentioned in some level in this publication in almost every issue the past semester, and will likely be topic of concern as the new year progresses.

While these weekly happenings are timely and important to the university, at times I think it may be helpful to take a step back and look at the goals of the university from a more long run viewpoint.

Over the past year, two different bigger picture issues at the university struck me as areas in which the university could improve. First, the four, five and six-year graduation rates for students who entered in the fall of 2007 were 24 percent, 47 percent and 53 percent respectively. These numbers have fluctuated by only small amounts over the past several years, and are slightly but noticeably below the averages of 33.5 percent, 52.3 percent , and 57.7 percent  for public universities in the United States during these same time frames.

Secondly, in The Economist’s college rankings, released in October of last year, used regression analysis to estimate that students who attend UND have median earnings of $46,600 and earn $1,913 less than if they would have attended school elsewhere.

While there is certainly room for debate about the reasons behind the Economist’s findings, the methodology they used and how much the results matter, increasing the earnings of attendees is definitely something that should be a priority for a university. This, paired with the lower than average graduation rates, provides targets that the school should aim to improve.

These comments are not meant to degrade the university, but rather to show that there are measurable long-term goals that the school can attempt to progress towards. Improving graduation rates and the earnings of graduates is not something that can simply happen overnight, nor are they issues that have clear and immediate solutions.

There are other factors that need to be considered when measuring the success of a school; it’s not all about increasing earnings. Graduation rates and earnings are two of the more identifiable and comparable standards that can be measured over time, but there are certainly other factors that influence what and where a student chooses to study and why they choose to study in a certain field.

The issues the school is working through, whether it’s selecting a new president, designing a logo or planning the future of campus, are essential to the future of the school. These decisions should always be viewed as not only solving immediate issues at the university, but also setting the stage to make UND a better institution over the long run.
While there challenges over both the short and long term that the university must address, I am confident in UND’s ability to rise to the occasion.