Research is the future for NMSU
Visiting Paris last May, I strolled by the Sorbonne, a venerable university founded in the 13th century. New Mexico State University, founded in 1888, is not nearly as old, but it is New Mexico’s oldest public institution with a 135-year history of serving students.
In recent columns, NMSU’s interim president and provost predicted a bright near future for the university based on strong enrollment numbers, exciting faculty hires and prospects for new leadership. I certainly agree. Yet pondering the ancient Sorbonne, I ask myself what does our university’s future look like, say, a century from now? I believe it looks uncertain without robust growth in research.
All academic institutions, including NMSU, face significant challenges, including decreasing enrollment, increasing costs, debilitating student debt, proliferation of alternatives such as apprenticeships, trade schools, and artificial intelligence tools, closures, loss of public trust, threats to faculty tenure, low faculty morale and intrusive political influence.
In the book “The Great Upheaval,” Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt address the future of higher education and ask whether academic institutions will adapt to challenges, or if they will be disrupted by them. The authors are confident that research universities will adapt and survive, writing that these universities “carry out the basic and applied research that fuels the knowledge economy, and they prepare people who carry out that work, the next generation of researchers.”
They add that while research universities are indispensable, there is a caveat. There are 261 research universities in the United States, but “in a wired world that number is likely to prove excessive and based on their productivity, location and quality can be expected to decline in number.”
Of the 261 research universities, roughly half are composed of institutions classified as “Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity,” or R1, in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as of 2021. The rest are classified “Doctoral Universities – High research activity," or R2.
Research universities are stimulating environments for learning, teaching, discovery, knowledge and product creation and dissemination, outreach and more. They benefit from superior reputations, credibility, ranking and recognition. The culture of high research, scholarship and creative activity results in more competitive recruitment and higher retention of faculty and staff. Research universities, particularly R1 institutions, are expected to manage enrollment decline better than most colleges and universities that are not research-intensive. For example, while international enrollment in science, technology, engineering and math has decreased nationally, it has not done so at most R1 institutions. Finally, many research universities are co-located with growth of local and regional business and industry.
At the start of the 21st century, NMSU was classified by Carnegie as “Research Extensive.” That classification became today’s R1, the “Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity,” with designation metrics we no longer meet. Today, we remain a Carnegie R2 institution.
NMSU’s current research and development expenditures exceed that of some R1 institutions. Our turnaround in these expenditures, and other essential elements of the Carnegie classification formula such as increased post-doctoral fellows and expanded doctoral programs observed since 2018, underscore the health of our research and creativity enterprise. Our Carnegie R1 ranking goal is within reach if we maintain current research and development expenditures in STEM, increase these expenditures in non-STEM areas, continue to add post-doctoral fellow and research scientists to our ranks, and expand Ph.D. programming in the humanities and social sciences.
Will NMSU’s future be as bright one hundred years from now?
The university’s strategic plan states its vision: “By 2025, the NMSU system will excel in student success and social mobility for our diverse student populations, achieve the highest Carnegie research status (R1), and maintain our Carnegie Community Engagement classification.”
Yes, if NMSU leadership through the 21st century is resolute in fulfilling that vision for research so the university can deliver a bright future for our students.
Luis Cifuentes is NMSU’s vice president of Research, Creativity and Economic Development. He may be reached at ovpr@nmsu.edu.
This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Research is the future for NMSU
