The Potential Impacts of Increasing Emphasis on Positive Undergraduate Student Outcomes at Public Research One Universities

In this talk, I will describe the potential impacts of increasing research one university program emphasis on positive undergraduate student outcomes. This study is based on a modification of an agent-based model previously published in the refereed literature, and which was shown to track outcomes across a range of institutional measures for the University of Wisconsin System.

We undertake this study with the understanding of the range of pressures that currently exist in the higher education ecosystem, which include declining college-age populations, reduced public perception of the value of higher education, political pressure, and declining state government support. Under the most severe cases, such pressures can lead to an inability to address funding shortfalls in any manner other than reducing staffing, which then produces a downward spiral in institutional health.

We explore a range of scenarios and examine the impacts on “more favored” and “less favored” institutions, where we assume that an alteration of the narrow research focus implies less time for individual faculty to devote their energies to research. Initial findings are that while individual faculty productivity declines, overall research funding across the institution increases owing to increases in retention and overall enrollment and stabilization of faculty numbers. Implications for atmospheric science programs will be discussed.