Retrofit 4: For the Love of Money

This is my fourth “thinking out loud” installment in preparation for the RBMS seminar “Retrofitting Expectations or Redefining Reality: What Does the Future of the Special Collections Professional Look Like?”

* * * * *
By most accounts, state support for higher education is dwindling. In part, this has been a state response to the recession and weak economy. James Hilton noted in a talk to Minnesota library staff that “our institutions face profound and existential change. As a society, we are redefining our beliefs about the purposes of higher education and our conceptions of what it means to be ‘educated.’ Along the way, we are changing beliefs about who/how to pay for public education.”

According to the American Council on Education (ACE):

Despite steadily growing student demand for higher education since the mid-1970s, state fiscal investment in higher education has been in retreat in the states since about 1980. In fact, it is headed for zero. Based on the trends since 1980, average state fiscal support for higher education will reach zero by 2059, although it could happen much sooner in some states and later in others. Public higher education is gradually being privatized.

My state, Minnesota, is characterized by the ACE as one of the “biggest losers.”

Minnesota has reduced its higher education investment by 55.8 percent…. Extending the trend since 1980 into the future, state funding for higher education will reach zero in 2037. But another extrapolation hits zero in 2032.

The National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) paints a similar picture, while suggesting different solutions. “Tighter state resources, rising costs, high tuition rates and other factors make the current model of financing public higher education unsustainable.” In a recent report The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities indicated that Minnesota’s change in spending per student, adjusted for inflation, between fiscal years 2008 and 2013 was a negative 30.4%.

I’ll be retired by the time we reach the zero point. But my granddaughters will be in college. Will my state support their education in any way? Or will the entire burden fall to them and their parents? I’m not optimistic. The Atlantic recently published an article, “The Myth of Working Your Way Through College,” that opened with these words: “The economic cards are stacked such that today’s average college student, without support from financial aid and family resources, would need to complete 48 hours of minimum-wage work a week to pay for his (sic) courses—a feat that would require superhuman endurance, or maybe a time machine.”

The University of Minnesota Law School is currently engaged in a fundraising campaign “to ensure the future of the Law School's high-quality education and service to the profession and the larger community” regardless of how the state decides to fund higher education. Their goal is $70 million; they are 90% of the way there.

Throughout most of the Law School's history, the state of Minnesota heavily subsidized the cost of a legal education. But that funding has declined steadily over recent years. State support now represents only a very small fraction of the Law School's total budget, and that fraction is directed entirely to the Law Library, a resource we share with the University and broader community. In recent years, several other top public law schools that faced dwindling state funding made the move to financial self-sufficiency. Now the Law School is making that transition—to funding based almost entirely on tuition and philanthropy. A successful campaign will enable us to continue and expand on our agenda of excellence.

The University’s Carlson School of Management is in a similar situation. In a 2012 interview the school’s new dean, Sri Zaheer, made this observation:

As of last year, state funding for our school was 3.5 percent of our total budget. We’ve had, for all intents and purposes, to live, breathe, and think like a private school. We have a proposal to charge a tuition surcharge to our undergraduate [business] students, and that plan is close to being finalized. Our student body has grown 20 percent or more in the past four or five years, but we haven’t been able to [expand] our tenure-track faculty. Any tuition surcharge we collect from the undergraduate program will be dedicated to hiring new faculty.

In seeking approval for our current university budget, administrators and regents agreed to a two-year freeze on in-state tuition in exchange for increased funding from the state. It is a high-tuition, high-aid model that increases graduate, professional, and out-of-state tuition along with fees and room/board costs. First-year resident law students expected to see their tuition rise by nine percent. We no longer have a professional library school on campus; it was swept away in financial crises of the 1980s. Were it still in existence, I wonder how long it could survive under today’s constraints.

Let’s bring this back to the concerns of special collections professionals. What does the future hold, given the bleak landscape of state funding for higher education? What do these numbers tell us, if anything? Are there different concerns for public versus private institutions? Here are a few more questions to consider:

• Will dwindling state support mean less public money for acquisitions or staffing?
• Are we in the process of privatizing library operations?
• If state-funded acquisitions money decreases, will we be more reliant on gift funds or endowments to make up the difference?
• If so, would this reliance necessitate more time spent in fundraising and donor cultivation?
• Or do we care about the difference and simply purchase less for the collections?
• Will there be any new money for new staff, or will we rely on capturing funds from vacant positions and re-craft or re-design job descriptions as needed?
• Will there be greater pressure to develop and gain acceptance of grant proposals to cover part-time or short-term staffing as part of an externally funded project?
• How will preservation/digitization programmatic efforts hold up as state contributions shrink? (Or were the majority of these projects/programs always funded by external grants?)
• Will older staff feel pressured to consider early or phased retirement? (And are we opening ourselves up to possible age discrimination lawsuits?)
• How might increases in undergraduate student aid packages translate, if at all, in the number or quality of student assistants we employ?
• Does the model of adjunct faculty, translated onto a library stage, mean the use of lower-paid, project- or function-specific personnel to sustain library operations? Or has the plight of adjuncts created such bad press that libraries don’t want to go there?

There are more questions. This is just a sample occasioned by the specter of diminished state support.

There are a number of other haphazard thoughts, issues, or ideas floating around my mind that have some bearing on our panel topic; all are connected to expectations or realities. State funding is one piece of that randomosity. Stand by for more.

A Failure of Imagination

I have just finished the last chapter of my book on the closing of the University of Minnesota library school. All that remains, in terms of the writing, is an epilogue. And then finding a publisher. And then securing permissions. All right, there's more than a little bit left to do.

But in the meantime--and at the suggestion of a colleague long-steeped in the publishing world--I'm posting a small excerpt from the beginning of the book. I've framed the entire work as a four-act play (calling it a "biblio-tragedy"). Although not a play in the strict sense, I found the structure of acts and scenes conducive to the narrative I wished to create. Some editor down the road may wish to disabuse me of this structure, but for the moment this is what I've settled on as a means to express the story.

Here, then, is a segment from the "Prologue" to A Failure of Imagination: The Closing of the University of Minnesota Library School (my working title).

Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass: for the which supply, Admit me Chorus to this history; Who prologue-like your humble patience pray, Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play. —William Shakespeare, Henry V

The weather forecast for the last day of April 1982 was not promising. Winter still hugged the countryside, reluctant to let go, cloaking the ground ten days earlier with two inches of snow. The following days brought enough warmth to melt the wet slush. But rain—mixed with flurries and gusty winds—was predicted for month’s end. The Mississippi River, colored by the sky a gunmetal blue, clove a channel through the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. Students—not yet ready to don sandals and shorts but tanned all the same from a recent spring break—hurried to and fro across the pedestrian bridge that connected the East and West Bank campuses. The academic quarter was winding down. Minds were slowly turning towards warmer thoughts and an escape from the grind of the last eight months. It was a typical spring day in the upper Midwest.

For some at the University this last day in April was anything but normal. Three weeks earlier a hearing had taken place of the “Budget Executive”

to consider the priority of the Library School in comparison with the other programs of the University and to develop a set of recommendations on the actions to be taken with respect to the future of the School. In addition to the members of the Budget Executive, Dr. Warren E. Ibele, Dean of the Graduate School, was present, as were Professors Joan Leigh and Wesley Simonton, who represented the Library School. The hearing process consisted of a presentation by Professor Simonton based upon materials distributed in advance, questions and discussion involving all participants, and a final opportunity for Professors Leigh and Simonton to present any other information they considered relevant to the issues under discussion. The meeting lasted approximately two hours.

There is no indication where this meeting of the Budget Executive took place. Most likely the hearing was held on the East Bank campus in Morrill Hall, a pillared and bricked edifice on the picturesque northeast corner of Northrop Mall—and home to University administrators.

On this dreary last day of April the Budget Executive published its findings from the hearing. The report appeared on plain paper, unadorned by any official letterhead from the University that to a casual observer might link its findings to an office or administrator. Later documents would connect this report to the Budget Advisory Committee of the College of Liberal Arts. Titled “Report on Library School Hearing” and broken into four sections—Introduction, Supporting Information, Evaluation, and Recommendations—the three page document in essence marked the end of the fifty-four-year-old school. The evaluation section was devastating, but it was the recommendations section with its four points that sounded the death knell.

1. Admission of new students to Library Science programs should be suspended indefinitely effective with the Summer Session, 1982.
2. The Library School courses necessary for completion of the M.A. degree should be continued for three years and students in progress should be counseled to concentrate their registrations in their major courses so that they can complete them during those three years. It should be noted that all students can complete their major requirements in that time even if they register for only one course per quarter. The total time available to complete all other degree requirements would continue to be defined by Graduate School policy.
3. A task force should be formed to examine the feasibility of developing a substantially restructured program that would provide opportunities for curricular and research activities in information processing and management as well as in the more classical aspects of librarianship. This task force, which should include representation from the Library School faculty as well as others, should determine whether the interest and expertise exists at the University to provide such a program and should consider how such a program could be supported and where it should be located in the organizational structure of the University. This task force should make its report by June, 1983.
4. If and when the restructured program is approved by the Board of Regents on the recommendation of the President, the admission of students can be resumed.

The program was not restructured and therefore never approved by the President or Board of Regents. No new students were admitted. The library school was dead.

This is not an impartial account of the school’s closing. I was accepted into the University of Minnesota program in the summer of 1980 and graduated, in absentia, in December 1982. I was present when the visiting team for the Committee on Accreditation (COA) of the American Library Association (ALA) made its site visit in 1980 and issued its reaccreditation report in 1981. I participated in formal and informal discussions with fellow students, faculty, and administrators on the status of the school. Part of my second year in the program was spent lobbying administrators and regents to keep the school open. Three days after my final oral examination, in late September 1982, I left the university for my first professional position. Since then, over three decades of experience, I occasionally received appeals from the University’s alumni association for donations. In many of those cases I offered a polite reply: when the university could tell me why they closed my school I would then consider making a donation. Not surprisingly, they never provided an answer.

I had my own suspicions on why the school closed, based on my own experience, but never felt compelled until recently to search further for more definitive answers. My experience told me that the school closed because of internal university politics. The dean of the College of Liberal Arts, by his own admission in my presence, could not understand why he and the college were saddled with the library school. The director of the library school did not have collegial or productive relationships with the dean or other administrators; there was a clash of personalities between the dean and the director. Some members of the faculty had been characterized by the dean and others outside the school (and perhaps a few within) as “dead wood.” The library school faculty did not have a strong record of bringing in outside grant funding. A strong relationship did not exist between the library school faculty and practicing professionals within the university library system; indeed, in some cases these relationships were antagonistic. The school, although well enrolled, was behind the times when it came to new technologies and the impact computers were having on the information environment. A sizeable state budget deficit, passed on in part to the university, meant that some programs would be targeted for elimination. The school, along with other programs within the university system, was in the budget spotlight.

These were my suspicions, my recollections from the time. Many of them proved true, but it was not until I took a closer look at the history of the program and its interactions with the university and profession that they were in some ways confirmed. This is a record of that confirmation. Thirty years have passed since the Budget Executive issued its report. Many of the principals in the drama are retired or deceased. In my present position I have almost immediate access to most of the primary sources. It is time to tell the story.

30th Year Reflections/27: Accreditation

“The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that in all four of the cases, accreditation by the American Library Association did not, and could not, guarantee the survival of library education programs on campuses where administrators had determined to eliminate them.” — Marion Paris, Library School Closings: Four Case Studies (1988)

As noted previously, I’m writing a book about the closing of the University of Minnesota library school. The school closed in 1985, three years after I graduated from the program. The framework for my narrative is provided by Marion Paris’s book, specifically her case study of the Minnesota closing. I’m now writing the last major chapter, with the goal of having the book finished and ready for some publisher (as yet unidentified) by the end of January.

One of the issues I’ve been wrestling with in my research and writing is the role accreditation played (or didn’t play, as the case may be) in closing the school. All of my findings line up behind Paris’s original observation: accreditation did not guarantee the survival of the school. Just yesterday, I found a most remarkable letter written by the director of the school, Wesley Simonton, to Elinor Yungmeyer, accreditation officer for the ALA Committee on Accreditation. Here’s one section of the letter that caught my eye:

As the same time I must convey to you my express regret that the faculty of our College of Liberal Arts is unwilling to recognize the importance of accreditation….Unfortunately, our Liberal Arts Dean has told me that the liberal arts faculty generally, being unfamiliar with the accreditation process, tend to assign little weight to its findings. Future events may indicate how University officials “up the line” view the results of accreditation, but knowing something of the resistance of University officials to the many accreditation agencies on their doorstep, I cannot be optimistic. And so I end with the disturbing thought that universities are not sensitive to the accreditation process. This is undoubtedly “old hat” to you, but at least you now have new evidence on the subject. You have a difficult job in explaining the process—its details and its integrity—to university presidents and other high-ranking officers.

The letter is disturbing and makes me wonder what the current state of affairs is with the ALA and its Committee on Accreditation (COA). Are they still fighting these same battles with university administrators? Why do we accredit programs? What utility is there in the process?

I have, in some ways, been involved with the accreditation process. As a student at Minnesota, I observed a COA visiting team and met with them during their visit. While working in Illinois I was a member of an accrediting team, not for a library school, but for a private high school. As an adjunct faculty member of the MLIS program at St. Catherine University in St. Paul I participated with the school in providing feedback for its self-study report, met with visiting team members during a site visit, and saw the process develop into the eventual accreditation of the St. Kate’s program. The accreditation process is hard work. I discovered, while working on my book, how much work the faculty and administration of the U of M school went through for two self-studies and site visits. A year or more was spent working on each self-study. Enormous energy was spent by the visiting team preparing for the visit, making the visit, and then writing a report of their findings. All of which then went up the line to the COA for its evaluation and processing. At every step great amounts of time and careful attention were paid to the process.

Yet I am still left with the question: to what end? I understand the need of accreditation to insure the quality of individual library/information science programs. I’ve seen how this process helps guide a school and its parent institution towards avenues of improvement. I know and understand how the process, in the end, provides the profession with a cadre of new and competent practitioners. But if the parent institution doesn’t grasp the process, if administrators and faculty from other disciplines can hold the process in such contempt, where does that leave us? I’ll admit, I’m not up to speed on what’s happening on this front today; I’m reflecting my findings from three decades ago. But it does make me wonder and want to find out where the matter stands today.

30th Year Reflections/26: Desire

“Two hearts fading, like a flower. | And all this waiting, for the power. | For some answer, to this fire. | Sinking slowly. The water’s higher. | Desire.” — Ryan Adams, “Desire”

I’m pretty sure the lyrics to Ryan Adams’ song, “Desire,” have nothing to do with writing or authorship, but they came to mind all the same as I was thinking about this week’s post. I like to write, and I’m finding the practice of writing—on this blog and elsewhere—an enjoyable experience. I want to do more of it; I desire to write.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing over the last three months and have come to the conclusion—surprising in some ways to me—that I’m in the process of writing a book. I’m writing a book about the closing of the University of Minnesota library school. The project started out in late August as an article. I was reading a book by Marion Paris about the closing of four library schools. Each school was described in a case study, made anonymous to protect the identities of the schools and those interviewed. As I read one of her case studies I realized that she was describing my school—the U of M—and that it was the 30th anniversary of the decision to close the school. I never received a satisfactory answer from anyone at Minnesota as to why they closed my school and so, after reading the Paris case study and realizing the significance of the date, I decided to write about the closing and to take the case study out of its anonymous wraps and put names and faces and actions to the events I lived through thirty years ago. I thought I could do this in an article-length piece, but as the research and writing progressed I quickly burst the bounds of a standard length article. I’m now at about 120 pages of writing (160 pages total if you include my notes for unwritten sections and the 20 pages of endnotes); a total of over 70,000 words. I still have one chapter to write and so the final product will probably be at least 150 pages and perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 words. I never imaged such a thing could happen, but it has. And, as painful as it has been to write some of those words, and describe some of those scenes, I’m finding it a useful, cathartic, and enjoyable experience.

Perhaps the most surprising thing that has happened as I’ve moved through the process is how consuming the practice of researching and writing can be. There are days when I think of almost nothing else, sometimes to the detriment of my regular work. And yet, as a library professional I am expected to research and publish in service to the profession. So there is no guilt here, no desire to run away from something that has become almost an obsession. But it does mean that I need to be careful with my time and make sure that other things in the office are getting done, the necessary things to keep the unit functioning and on track. Admittedly, it has been a struggle. But the end of the book is in sight. I hope to have the last part of the draft completed by no later than January. Then it will be a matter of finding someone who might be interested in publishing it. I’m still not sure who might want to read it. The audience that has developed in my mind as I’ve worked on the piece is a combination of library educators, those involved with professional accreditation, and folks with an interest in higher education. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.

I’ve been obsessed about projects before. I combed through all the sources I could find many years ago when working on a bibliography of the published and unpublished writings of a friend of mine for a festschrift in his honor. (I think the final product of my bibliography resulted in some 78 pages of published text.) I dove into boxes and files when working on a chapter for a book on Swedes in Chicago. Other projects had the same flavor. All of it was fun. Some of it was hard work. The end result was rewarding.

The flip side, which I also discovered this fall, is that one can come to a point of seeming exhaustion. I was “all written out.” That realization came to me just a few weeks ago, which perhaps explains the somewhat sporadic appearance of the last few blog postings. What has saved me, and what prompts me to soldier on with something I desire, is the discipline I’ve also imposed on myself of writing each day, and posting each week. It has been a valuable lesson, one I’m sure has application in other parts of my work. If the discipline is there, coupled with desire and commitment, it will carry you through the rough patches, when everything seems exhausted and “written out.”

Mr. Holmes Comes to Minnesota

While working through some archival files for my research on the closing of the U of M library school I came across a small Sherlockian tidbit that is worth sharing. I found it in the May 3, 1974 minutes of the library school council, a governing body made up of faculty and graduate students. The meeting, as the minutes report, opened at 9:30 that morning with some preliminary comments and reports. The third report came from Dr. Edward Stanford, formerly the University Librarian and now serving on the faculty. The minutes read: "Dr. Stanford reported that the University had purchased a private collection of materials related to Sherlock Holmes. The collection had been designated the Errett Weir McDiarmid Collection in honor of Dr. McDiarmid, leader of the Norwegian Explorers (Baker St. Irregulars)."

This was the beginning of what is now the largest assemblage of Sherlockian materials in the world. The collection the University acquired was that of James Iraldi, a book collector from New York and member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the primary Sherlockian literary society in North America. The Norwegian Explorers was founded in 1948 as a scion society of the Irregulars and is still active today. E. W. McDiarmid, also a former University Librarian and member of the library school faculty, was a founding member of the Explorers and known in his leadership role of the group as "Sigerson." That name, along with the name of the group, was taken from the Holmes story "The Adventure of the Empty House."

Sherlockians are fond of saying "I hear of Sherlock everywhere." Now we can add that his name resonates even through the archives of library school faculty minutes.

30th Year Reflections/12: Identity Crisis

“The identity crisis for librarians has undoubtedly had a subtle but important influence on the collapse of library schools….In most institutions of higher learning, library schools have suffered greatly not only from how they perceive themselves but also from how they are perceived by other parts of the institution. They apparently have been easy prey.” 

— Larry J. Ostler, Therrin C. Dahlin, and J. D. Willardson, The Closing of American Library Schools: Problems and Opportunities (1995)

For the past couple of weeks I have been engaged (primarily during lunch, on the bus, and during any other free time I can carve out) in some basic background reading and research as I start to flesh out the story of the demise of my graduate professional school. By 1982 the University of Minnesota library school was in a coma and would linger on life support for three more years before it expired. An earlier post made passing reference to the time I spent—along with other students, many more active than I—fighting to keep the school alive. Obviously, we lost the fight. Now, in retrospect, what strikes me as I review the literature from the time—yet does not surprise me—is how much energy the library profession spent (and continues to spend) on questions of professional education and identity.

Education and identity issues are too complex to address in a short post such as this. But let me lay down a few contemplative markers (in no particular order):

1. Early library education was rooted in a philosophy that stressed technical proficiency. This philosophy dominated library education for at least a century. Is this still the case?

2. A dissenting and minority voice called for liberally educated students and a greater emphasis on theory (as opposed to practice). Is this voice still in the minority?

3. We are identified by some (outside and inside) the profession as service providers. We are also identified primarily as a female profession, comparable in some ways to nursing or teaching. What difference, if any, do these distinctions make?

4. According to some within the profession it is difficult, if not impossible, to build professional theories around a notion of service.

5. At some point in the past there was a split in the profession between public and academic practitioners. Is the profession, in terms of areas of practice (and theory), even more fragmented today? If so, is this detrimental to both issues of education and identity?

6. The profession is seen by some as a second career option, possibly a fallback position if original career trajectories are stymied. On a related note, the profession has opened itself to “feral” candidates who do not possess the traditional master’s library degree. What impact, if any, does this have on professional education and identity?

7. At its core is the profession “reactive” or “proactive” in relation to external forces such as the economy, higher education, technology, or government policy?

Shortly before the University of Minnesota library school entered its final slide toward death it was diagnosed by a number of groups. The American Library Association’s Committee on Accreditation gave the school a clean bill of health. University administrators, internal review panels using outside experts, and faculty outside the school were less charitable. The school, they said, was isolated, unproductive, and behind the times. Was this a smokescreen created by administrators to hide behind while they dealt with real financial pressures facing the university? Was the school “easy prey”? Who provided the more accurate diagnosis?

30th Year Reflections/5: Ski-U-Mah

“Minnesota, hats off to thee! To thy colors true we shall ever be, Firm and strong, united are we. Rah, rah, rah, for Ski-U-Mah, Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah! Rah for the U of M. — the “Minnesota Rouser”

Which schools should I consider? It is a question I face each time a student asks me about the library profession. I always try to frame my answer by asking the student more questions: what are your interests, how flexible are you in terms of location, where do you want to work, what type of library and associated work appeals to you, etc. In my case the decision was fairly simple. I considered only two library programs for graduate school: Michigan and Minnesota. The narrowing of my choices was really a question of geography and my affinity for “Big Ten” schools. At the time of applying I lived in Michigan and was thus entitled to resident tuition. According to various informants Michigan had one of the best programs in the country. I had no doubts about receiving an excellent education there. But two things gave me pause and stifled my application: the idea of living in Ann Arbor (an unreasonable bias, I’ll admit) and a residency requirement in the application that committed me to living in the state for a least two years following graduation. Neither proposal appealed to me.

Minnesota, on the other hand, would bring me back to the land of my birth and close to family. And the family had strong ties with “the U.” My father and various other relations were all “Golden Gophers.” One uncle worked in the library during his undergraduate days. The Minnesota program was not as strong as Michigan’s but it offered the Twin Cities as a backdrop with no residency requirements following graduation. Maroon and gold ran in my blood; I was a child of ten thousand lakes; my family immigrated here, settled and worked the land. The pull was too great to overcome. In the end family and tradition won out over strength of program. I still remember leaping and hollering for joy on the shore of an Upper Peninsula lake when the letter arrived informing me of my acceptance into the school. Tuition, however, remained a problem for one classified as a non-resident. I solved this in fairly neat (and surprising) fashion by successfully arguing to the Registrar (or whoever made those decisions) that although a resident of Michigan my permanent address was in Minnesota, with my parents. Finding the money for tuition was another matter. A friendly banker and a parental co-signed loaned took care of the problem. It was, even in 1980s dollars—and long before universities engaged in annual tuition gouging, I mean increases—a fairly cheap education.

And so I came to Minnesota. I would consider my options differently today. I would place more weight on the strength of program, the opportunities for internships or practica, and the program’s success in assisting graduates with employment placement; look more closely at the faculty, their research interests and publications; examine alumni, their success and career tracks, and places of employment; put less weight on location, although still consider the area, cost of living, housing, transportation, and cultural offerings. But then all of these considerations, and others, come through hindsight, gained through experience. I wasn’t thinking in those terms when I applied, although I should have. But I was content. Studies and work engulfed me. Wrapped up in classes and working in one of the main libraries as an assistant to various subject bibliographers, I was learning to be a librarian. What I didn’t expect, and what occupied a good part of my second year in school, was a political education. Even though the school had recently been reaccredited by the American Library Association, it was under threat from University officials. In the end I graduated from a school that no longer exists, one of a few that fell during the same time. But that is a tale for another time (and a bit more research on my part).