admission policies and campus safety, this interview with indiana university president michael mcrobbie is 45 minutes. >> this morning, the c-span bus is on the campus of indiana university in bloomington. on it, we are joined by the president of indiana university, michael mcrobbie. thank you very joining us. >> delighted to be here and welcome to indiana university. >> thank you for the invitation. can we start, president, with your general thoughts before we talk about the details of your university, but your thoughts on the greatest challenges facing those in higher education today? >> oh, i would say that probably the greatest challenge in front of us is to continue to provide a quality and affordable education, especially to the students within the state of indiana. we are a state university, after all. and keeping that education both affordable but also ensuring its quality so that our students are graduating with very high level skills that will enable them to prosper in the workplace, i think is one of the greatest challenges. of course that involves a whole range of factors to do with the sources of funding for an institution with a budget of $3.3 billion. >> so what steps do you think have to take place in order to balance that affordability with quality? >> well, i think one of the key things that we are doing in terms of affordability is we have really focussed in lazer-like in the last couple of years on the whole issue of student debt. you're probably aware that this has got -- i'm sure you're aware that this has got enormous and appropriate national attention. and it has been a concern of ours. and so, last year we introduced a comprehensive financial literacy program that involves things like modules that all entering freshman have to complete on financial literacy, courses on financial literacy for a variety of administrative matters that gives students much better control and knowledge of their student debt. and what is remarkable about this is that we saw 11% drop in the amount of debt that students took on this year. and that amounted to $31 million. and what i think is remarkable about that is that if you multiplied that across all the institutions of higher education in the country and there are 4,500 of those, if you multiplied that, you could see how one could have an enormous impact on the amount of the student debt that students are taking on. of course, debt is a critical opponent of affordability. can one actually find the resources to fund an education. so that has been a really major program that we have been focussing on, aimed at affordability of an ininn university education. >> so on the larger aspect, president mcrobbie, if college was worth it, if they asked you that, how would you answer? >> well, i don't think there's any doubt that college is worth it. study after study after study shows that your prospects in the workplace in general are better with a college degree than without a college degree. now, it certainly is the case that there is a growing emphasis on the kinds of skills that students are graduating with. and we have put in place -- in fact, i announced this last year that i asked all of our schools to comprehensively evaluate opportunities for creative degrees of certificates, associates qualifications, masters degree and so on. and just last week we announced a new program between our very highly ranked school of business and a college of arts and sciences that will provide an accelerated bachelor plus masters degree that will provide a bachelor's degree in a field like economics, mathematics and so on and one-year masters degree in business. so that's an accelerated process and that one-year masters degree can be completely completed online. so you can see how students in a number of different fields can graduate, go into the workplace and then complete another masters -- complete a masters degree online in obviously a very practical applied area of business, which is a skill that is always going to be sellable and marketing by our students. so we're looking at initiatives like that across the board. we have a program already that provides certificate of business on top of writing different bachelors degrees as well. and we are very mindful and i think we have a responsibility to our students to be concerned about their welfare after they graduate. i mean, we simply cannot as an institution complete a student's education and waive them good-bye and not be concerned about what happens to them then. so the programs i've described to you are really focussed in part on responding to the need for greater schools to go along with the classic kind of liberal arts education that we provide at indiana university and we're also mindful of the fact that inspite of the fact that unemployment is still relatively high, though falling, there are by some estimates 2 or 3 million unfilled positions because not enough graduates are graduating with the right kinds of skills. all of that is what we're focussed on. the final part of that is a comprehensive approach across the university to really improve career consulting, career advising, sorry. we're really focussed on ensuring that all of our students have access to top quality career advising to help to maximize their opportunities to find employment once they graduate. >> c-span bus is doing a big ten college tour. presidents are joining us on the bus to talk about issues of higher education. we're joined by the head of indiana university, michael mcrobbie. and he's here to take questions on the issue of higher education. you may specifically gone to the school or have questions generally on the issue of higher education. here is your chance to talk to him about. students, 202-585-3880. for parents 202-585-3881. perhaps you're an educated at a university, 202-585-3882. about 46,000 students at the indiana university in bloomington. 36,000 of those so are undergraduate. 10,000 undergraduate and faculty and staff of 8,300. when you talk about cost of college specifically for indiana university, how much of your cost is taken up by employee salaries, staff salaries and facilities? >> oh, personnel salaries are the largest single component of the cost of the university. it would be around 80% of the total cost of the university, personnel related salaries, plus benefits and health care and so on. we are a personnel intensive organization, like most other universities there. so, we are very much focussed on that direct interaction between students and instructors in the classroom. and although i think we're seeing a greater and greater impact of online education, i still don't think there's an enormous amount of evidence that it's going to completely replace that fundamental student/teacher relationship which has existed for as long as universities have existed which is over 25 centuries. >> the annual budget for the indiana university, 1.4 billion, endowment of $2 million in alumni approximately 370,000 worldwide as far as your annual budget is concerned, you talked about personnel. what about facilities? how much do you have to spend to keep up facilities and add facilities? >> well, this is actually been -- this is my eighth year as president. and this has been a major focus of our board of trustees over this period. like many institutions, i'm afraid we actually had a very large deferred maintenance bill. this is the kind of stuff that's not glamorous. it's the roads and sidewalks, the steam tunnels, et cetera. but there's a rule in business that every dollar that you don't spend now you're going to have to spend $4 in the future to rectify that. so, we've been putting over the last seven or odd years or so an enormous amount of effort into trying to at that level catch up with the significant burden of deferred maintenance and more recently we've had just excellent support from the state. now, on top of that, we're also looking at renovating major buildings on the campus and bringing them up to the kinds of standards and to provide the kinds of facilities that are required to support the type of research of the 21st century university. over the last seven years, we have constructed or have under construction at the moment or in planning over 50 major facilities. and we have spent about -- this is cost about $1.5 billion. what's interesting about that is that only 30% of that has come from the state. the other 70% has come from a whole variety of other areas including considerable amount of individual philanthropy. >> 202-585-3880 for students. 202-585-3880 for educators. let's start from ann from dayton, ohio, who is a parent. good morning, ann. >> caller: that's a beautiful campus and beautiful town, bloomington, but i want to talk about my direct experience as a single parent with three daughters and not much economic help with my ex. i have encouraged my three daughters all in their 30s to be excellent students and that that was their job. and they did. and i was middle income. and they qualified for great scholarships at small private schools, my oldest went to ober lin and i only ended up having to pay 4,000 a year there. and then the other one got into loyola, they all got into small private schools. and what we experienced -- the youngest decided to go to the university of colorado and they didn't give a great package. and we found out that after her first year, you know, and we went into debt for that first year, that we ran into a lot of extremely wealthy kids who were lying about being in-state status at a large school and then getting instate pay, which she did get after jumping through all the hoops of living in states after her freshman year for a year. so, do you have that same kind of thing where wealthy kids are claiming to be in state, actually getting money from parents, which happened at the university of colorado big time. so talk about small schools and giving, i believe, better scholarships and big funding than large state schools and i hope c-span goes and visits some of the small, private schools. so if you could address that issue, thanks. >> ann, thank you. president mcrobbie, go ahead. >> yes. firstly, let me say that we take very seriously and are acquired to by the state the distinction between in-state students and out of state students and we have pretty rigorous requirements for what the requirements are for a student to be regarded as an in-state rate. we have committees that deal with appeals and requests to be considered as in-state on a regular basis. but they are very hard-nosed about what the criteria are and we sort of pride ourselves on applying them consistently across the whole university all campuses. now, with respect to financial aid and scholarships and so on that you were talking about, i mean, we're a very large university. we have on this campus over 46,000 students. but -- and 36,000 undergraduates, but we also pride ourselves on the fact that the students with average family -- in-state students with average family incomes of 50,000, they pay almost no tuition because the combination of state, federal and university based financial aid pretty much covers the total cost of their tuition. then students of family incomes of 100,000 or less, they pay somewhere in the vicinity of about half the total cost of tuition again because of all the different sources of financial aid that are available to them. in fact, at iu on this campus, about two thirds of our students get some form of financial aid. it was a major focus of our last two campaigns. it will be a major focus of our upcoming campaign. in our last campaign for our bloomington campus, we raised over $200 million. if you include graduate scholarships probably close to $300 million in support of scholarships, fellowships and so on for undergraduate students of both need and ability to come to indiana university bloomington. >> so president mcrobbie, what qualifications do you look at in accepting potential students? >> oh, firstly we look at obviously the kind of things that all institutions do, sats or acts, their gpa at school, class ranking, what other extracurricular activities that they have engaged in. but we also use what we call holistic evaluation. that is, on the whole, most students a decision is relatively easy to make, yes or no. there's still a significant number of students who fall somewhere in the middle where you want to actually take into account everything about that student, maybe their gpa is not that great but if you look at their gpa, it started low in their freshman year at high school but by the time they got to their senior year it improved so there's clearly some sign of maturity or maybe an extracurricular activities they've been major leaders or innovators at their high school. so we want to take all of that into account and as a large state public institution that we really are doing all that we can to identity and find those students who we think will prosper at indiana university. >> what about students who may need some remedial help once they enter the university, what kind of assistance are they offered? >> well, in indiana, as a state, most of the remediation is actually carried out by a community college system. so, we actually on this campus provide very little remediation anymore and that is actually provided externally. and we find that our students on the whole arrive pretty well qualified for the courses of study that they are intending to undertake. and if they need remediation, they take that in one of the community college campuses of which there are in excess of 20 around the state. >> how many of your students are taking humanities classes or social science majors versus professional and technical majors, what's the breakdown? >> i don't have the exact figure in my head, pedro, but i think in our college of arts and sciences probably something like a third of the students there are taking courses in the humanities and social sciences. we actually are a university that is very strong in the humanities and in the social sciences with some very highly ranked departments in those areas. and i showed this is probably an opportunity to add to that that languages has been an area that we've been particularly strong on. we teach in any one year we teach somewhere between 70 and 80 different foreign languages which is probably makes us in terms of the number of languages toward one of the top institutions in the country. there are a few other universities that teach that many foreign languages. we teach foreign languages in just about every part of the world, the commonly taught ones but also a lot of the less commonly taught ones as well. we also teach the culture and politics, economics, history and so far, we have series of title 6 centers that cover the whole of the world as well. but we decided that we needed to bring all that together to try to increase the kinds of educational opportunities that we provide for our students. so, now about two years ago, our board of trustees approved the formation of a new school of global and international studies. and your colleagues will no doubt see the very large building that we're building at the moment that will house the whole of that new school. and that school will house language programs in about 70 to 80 foreign languages and all the associated programs in this culture of those particular culture, history, economics, et cetera. those particular regions of country. and we appointed a new dean of foundation dean for the school last year. and he's just commenced his position here. he's a former u.s. ambassador to poland and has worked in the white house and elsewhere in washington. so, our goal frankly in that area is really to become one of the top international study schools in the midwest. consequently provide not only specialists qualifications in international studies but to expand and enhance the kinds of majors that we can provide to our students, because in my view, it's certainly been a priority of mine and the university and our trustees, one of the most important things that we have to provide as a university is international literacy. a parent, hello. >> caller: hi, how are you doing? my question is regarding the endowment. you see the endowment at 800 plus million dollars. what is it used for? my second question, i see a lot of date rape and alcohol use on campus? what is the university doing about that? i'll take it offline. thanks. >> let me deal with the second part of your question first. there is nothing more important to us as a university than the welfare of our students. i mean, we are obviously deeply concerned about the welfare of all of our students. so, earlier this year we announced a student welfare initiative, which is a comprehensive approach to problems of sexual violence and the other kinds of issues that you have raised across the institution that is actually managed and administrated at the very highest level in the institution. two vice presidents co-chair an executive council that is actually responsibility for both the comprehensive evaluation of our present policies, their improvement and the implementation policies in this area. one of the things we're most proud of on this campus the bloomington campus on the university of indiana, is the fact that our students were not just sitting around waiting for the administration to do more to address these issues and so on. our students a number of years ago formed an initiative called cultural care, which is a student-led initiative that is completely run, managed and initiated by our students which is focussed on students helping students bystander intervention, bystander awareness and so on and as well. this is something that i have nothing but praise for the work of our students to put this program in place. and it has had a significant impact. and i know it's been widely praised and looked at by other institutions. now, returning to the first part of you question, the total endowment of the university is across all campuses is $1.8 billion. i should note that we're very proud of this. this pails compares to harvard who has a total endowment of $35 billion. but the $1.8 billion endowment that we have goes to a variety of different purposes and those are defined by the donors. for example, i'm a donor to the institution. my wife and i support four different graduate fellowships there and those graduate fellowships are defined by a formal legal agreement between me and our university foundation that's responsible for this and that's true of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other people. although it sounds like a large amount of money, the great bulk of it is all identified for specific purposes. undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, endowed professor ships. funding to support research programming and the very schools within the university and some of it to support the building and construction of new infrastructure. >> our guests joining us on the c-span bus as it continues to visit big ten schools, michael mcrobbie, the president of indiana university, a native of australia and how did you end up the president? >> how did you know i was a native of australia? i was recruited here -- i'm a computer scientist by background. i was recruited here now over 18 years ago and i came here as a vice president for information technology and computer scientist and i then became vice president for research and provost and i was appointed president. i never expected when i moved here that i would end up president of the university but i'm very honored and delighted to be in this position. and i must say, as much as i enjoy visiting my home country, i'm an american citizen now. i never regretted the move for one nano-second. this is home. indiana, bloomington, wonderful place. indiana university is a fabulous university. and i enjoy every minute of my life here. >> let's hear from lauren from pennsylvania, an educators, hi, lawrence. >> caller: hi. president mcrobbie, i would like to get into your general education program. and i would like to know kind of a followup to an earlier comment on what kind of humanities, philosophy, history, english a student -- well, all students are likely to get in those important first two years of college. thank you very much. >> yes. we have a general education program that with some variations applies all cross all of the campuses across the university, all seven campuses on the university. on this campus in particular, bearing in mind it's a large campus with many different courses, many areas, in summary, students are expected to have done a series of consecutive courses in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, and also to have done a number of years of a foreign language. and this was put in place by our faculty through their initiative now about eight or nine years ago. and has recently commenced and it is a program and the general concept of general education is something that has my complete support. it is, to me, one of the real fundamentals of american higher education, that is what's called liberal education. so you get an education in both brit of the different areas of human knowledge but you also get an education in certain areas the areas which you major or minor, you get an education in some depth. and that model, the american model of liberal education, is frankly the best in the world. and i speak of somebody who comes from another part of the world and seen a lot of other systems around the world, it is one of the most envied things about the united states is the quality of education, the liberal education that you get at an american university. i'll give you another example. i was in china now maybe five years ago meeting with some chinese university presidents and they told me, you know, we have studied your system of education and we have poured money into higher education in china and we're still not getting the right kind of graduate who is so creative and innovative as the kinds of graduates that come out of american universities and we've studied your system and we believe that the key thing that we're missing is the system of liberal education that you have in the united states. and so you'll now see that some of the major chinese universities are developing that kind of an approach because of what they see as the enormous success that this system has had in the united states. >> 202-585-3880 for students. for parents 202-585-3881 for educators, 202-585-3882. >> i'm sure you've heard the argument that you should go to college, get an education that will guarantee you a job. >> well, i would go back pedro, to what i said before about the fact that we're certainly aware of that concern. and as i indicated and gave an example of a major new initiative in the university that we just recently announced which provides both a bachelor's degree of the classic kind that i was just describing with a one-year masters degree in business and provides it on an accelerated basis, normally that would take six years or so and we provide this in five years and also provide the opportunity for that last year to be online. and that's in direct response to that concern, which i think in some cases is a legitimate one. as i also said, we are -- have already looked at and are looking at expanding that across all of our schools. so, for example, our school of mathematics and computing is in the process of developing this same kinds of accelerated bachelors degrees plus masters degrees and so on that provides somebody with a qualification in inframatics and computing on top of a bachelor's degree of a more classic kind. we're very much aware of that, as i said. but we think that there are enormous benefits of the classic liberal education, the kind i was just describing, but then when coupled with an additional qualification, business and so on really well positions and well qualifies a student to be successful in the workplace. >> what competition does the university get from for-profit universities? >> i don't see very much competition at all, frankly, from for profits. very little. i think our major competition is from the rest of the big ten. all my colleagues you're visiting around the midwest. we all compete among ourselves in general and very healthy way for the best students and the best faculty. i mean, the universities you're visiting are in some ways i think one of the real unharolded strengths of this country. people may think more of the west coast than the east coast, but the big ten universities that you're visiting of which of course there are now 14, but the big ten universities that you are visiting, collectively, do an enormous percentage of all of the research, enormous percentage of the graduate students, ph.d. students in the united states, something of which in the big ten we're very proud. >> what do you think of the quality of for-profit universities? >> sorry. could you say that again? >> what do you think of the quality of for-profit universities? >> oh. i would leave that to others. but obviously there's been quite a bit of controversy about that question, but i think the key thing as i said is we see -- we see -- for-profit, you're obviously not talking private institutions which are not for profits but different to a public university, but we see very little competition from them. >> lou from virginia beach, he's the parent, hi. >> caller: hi, how are you doing? >> go ahead. >> caller: yeah, i'm trying to ask a question about, he explained it, mr. mcrobbie explained got being a liberal education, how does he mean liberal? what does he mean by liberal? hopefully it's basically in english, okay? and that basically, he's teaching the foreign languages for basically understanding, but not teaching in the foreign languages. >> we'll let our guest respond. >> yes, i quite often have to say that when i talk about a liberal education, i do not mean in the political sense, i mean in the classic sense of both breadth and depth of education, and that does involve, as i said, in response to one of the other questioners, to be able the have done courses in indicative areas of the great breadth of the humanities and biological sciences, the mathematical sciences and the languages. >> the question about academics from twitter, saying a viewer asking, should college athletes be paid something beyond scholarships bringing in millions to the university budget. >> oh, i think that this is an area where we really have responded vigorously and i would like to think that we have become a national leader, we, earlier this year, we announced our student athlete bill of rights and there are some fundamental things in that student athlete bill of rights, initially we will cover the full cost of attendance for our student athletes so everything involved in their education is covered through the kind of scholarships we provide. and ion more importantly, we are now going to provide full four-year scholarships, so a student athlete comes to iu and starts, and even for performance reasons or other reasons they are no longer competing in athletics, we will guarantee them a scholarship for the full four years. so that completely removes any worries about the future of their education. and on top of that, we're also mindful for reasons that are family related, sometimes other reasons, the student may leave before they graduate, we will guarantee that at some point in the future, that that student, we will cover the remaining cost of that student assuming they're still in good economic standing. a student comes to iu, he or she has been a -- they don't finish their degree, they break their leg achkd they can never play again, what are they left with? probably very little. we will guarantee the cost of their education at indiana university to finish their degree to kind of re-establish themselves in another area of study. there are ten major components to it. but it's very much focused on really comp hence sif approach to improving all aspects of our engagement with stuchbdent athls at the university. >> what do you see as the future of universities, not just yours, but universities as a whole. what do they think as the future continues? >> well, i have a particular interest in the histories of universities and i am often fochb of saying that universities are the longest lived human institutions on the face of this planet. from's a university in china that's claimed to have been founded in with 1483. so universities really have the seeds of being very long lived within them. now that doesn't mean that there aren't fundamental changes in terms of them already being here. as i said, i'm an information technologi technologist, i have seen the impact of technology and education for the last 48 years of my career. and information technology is having a major affect. but it has had a major affect for the last 40 years. and to me that effect is more incremental. and i do think it's going to keep changing, the chairman of our board keep saying and i think he's quite right, that all of our administrators should wake up a little scared every day about where these changes might go. first of all what we're seeing is incremental as opposed to constant change compared to a complete paradime change within the information. >> one thing you would say universities have to do to stay competitive, what would that be? well, i think, clearly, where we started the interview, they have to remain affordable. i give an example of that, the fact that we last year had our lowest ever or at least in 40 years tuition increase and we're very much focused on keeping an iu education affordable. but i think the other thing is, we also at the same time have to be able to compete for the very best intellectual talent out there, and if by universities, you mean american universities, it is a white hot competition for the very best intellectual talent out there. we compete now, i have seen this happen in recent years, very good faculty from asia, from europe, who probably would not have considered going back to their home countries ten years ago, who have returned to their home countries because they have simply got better offers there. and that's -- and it is the very best faculty, doing the very best research and the great teachers, the great -- it's these people who are really fundamental to our institution in both retaining and recruiting, and to us to indiana university is just a critical part of what we do. >> before we go, let's hear from kathy, indiana residents, we're just about to go to the house kathy, so if you can jump right in with your question, go ahead. >> caller: yes, sir, i'm a co-signer for all my daughter's student loans, and it's actually crippling to our family what's happening to us. i have been served seven times from the sheriff's office because we have been late on our loans. what can be done about this? we find out about the scholarships, we did everything that was supposed to be done, and when it was time to go to college it all fell through, now her american drem is not -- she will never be able to get married, buy a home, we are so far in debt, the job she has no, has nothing to do with her degree, the economy tanked achkd we're just --- >> i think the kind of story you tell, is, i'm afraid, all too common and we are very much focused on trying to reduce that kind of problem in the future. and that was, i think earlier in the interview, what i described was a comprehensive approach to financial literacy at indiana university and an approach that both educates students in personal financial management, it actually educates them in the consequences of taking loans, it helps to educate them in understanding what they really need money for, as opposed to just being given, what's the equivalent of a credit card with a big limit on it. and we certainly anecdotally are aware of the fact that a lot of students are getting loans beyond what they need for their education. so getting a handle on and managing student debt, again, is one of the most important things that we're doing as an institution, and i think the impact of this, as i indicated before, 11% reduction in the amount of money borrowed by indiana university students last year, a $31 million reduction is at least the beginning of a way to reducing the kinds of problems that you have just described. all of what i described is in place or continue in place, we will enhance on it, we will build on it and so on. and i expect us to see a continued decrease in the amount of student debt at the university combined with an increasing amount of funding for scholarships, fellowships, student financial aid, coming through things like campaigns in the institution and as i said, it will be a major focus of our next campaign which we'll be announcing shortly. >> when do you meet with the student body, how muoften do yo meet with them directly? >> just last friday, i met with a group of student advisors to the president. we have had this group of student advisors to the president for nearly 100 years. i meet with them on a regular basis, it's one group i meet with, later today, i have lunch with all of the student leaders on this campus, so i'm probably interacting on a weekly basis with student leadership in some form, i have a number of student interns who work in my office on a variety of different areas, but i should add that we are a very large institution, and we have certain campuses across the state. and with 150,000 students in total for indiana university. so comprehensively keeping in touch with all of them is difficult. but i get a good sense of the field from the student body. and i have to say, that the kind of work that has come out of students, i mentioned the culture of care, the initiative before, the group, the advisory group that i talked about, they provide me with annual reports on a variety of different areas that we agree on and so on, and the call of work that comes from our students is as good as any work coming out of any faculty. >> i apologize, we'll have to leave this conversation with you, michael mcrobby of indiana university, mr. president, thank you. college athletics will be the topic of a forum tomorrow at the national press club, cspan's live coverage begins at 1:00 p.m. eastern with remarks from olympic committee ceo scott blackman, later in the day, conversations with sports reporters on the money being spent on today's college athletic programs. that will be live at 3:00 p.m. and then a discussion on whether or not student athletes should be compensated, based on the theory that they're employees of the institution they play for. be part of cspan's campaign 2014 coverage, follow us on twitter and like us on facebook to get debate schedules, video clips of key

Related Keywords

United States , Australia , American University , District Of Columbia , Dayton , Ohio , Bloomington , Colorado , China , Indiana University , Indiana , Pennsylvania , Poland , Washington , Chinese , American , Scott Blackman , Ober Lin , Michael Mcrobbie ,