Ohio State University President Gordon Gee said via Skype Tuesday that LSU needs to emulate the University System of Ohio by consolidating into one university during the Transition Advisory Team meeting.
The Transition Advisory Team invited Gee to weigh in on the reorganization of the LSU System, a task Interim LSU System President and Chancellor William “Bill” Jenkins has said is a necessity as funding is cut and the structure of higher education changes. Members of the LSU Board of Supervisors and Board of Regents Chairman W. Clinton Rasberry also attended Tuesday’s meeting.
Gee has held presidential positions at West Virginia University, University of Colorado and Brown University. This is his second tenure as Ohio State’s president. He was the chancellor of Vanderbilt University for seven years, and Time magazine rated him the best college president in the country in 2009.
“Change is upon us in higher education in a dramatic way,” Jenkins said. “The pace of that change is escalating. The components of the new demands are becoming challenging, but LSU from Gee’s perspective has all the potential and capabilities to meet those challenges and become a major research institution and ultimately could become an AAU institution.”
Gee said the power of an institution like LSU is in its size, so it needs a common core and way of doing things.
“There needs to be a consistency and structure that allows for effectiveness, efficiency, quality and expectation,” he said.
Ohio State is one university with six smaller campuses, said Mike Boehm, Ohio State’s vice provost for Strategic and Academic Planning. All degrees are under the Ohio State University name.
“Our goal is $20 million in savings and cooperation… We have exceeded that,” Boehm said.
Gee said the most significant challenge he faces is that Ohio State is not graduating enough people. Ohio has about 70,000 to 100,000 jobs that are waiting because there are not enough educated people, he said.
Gee said LSU should reward people for completion instead of entry and that funding of the University should be based on graduation and completion rates, not on the number of bodies.
LSU, which is a teaching and research institution, is behind Ohio State in terms of research.
According to LSU’s Director of External Affairs Jason Droddy, LSU has $119 million in research. Ohio State has $1 billion in research, Gee said.
The Transition Advisory Team will present its initial findings to the LSU Board of Supervisors on March 18.
Staff Writer Alyson Gaharan also contributed to this report.
