COLUMN: CMU needs to take the best, not whatever it can get
I’m surrounded by people who are perfectly content with adequacy — or worse, mediocrity — and it is no longer acceptable.
We need to be more competitive.
Michigan’s current upper-echelon universities, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, need some competition.
Average is no longer acceptable for this university.
This university has a great deal of potential — several millions have been spent on new buildings and numerous other improvements that grab headlines. While those additions are exciting, and they attract warm bodies, what do they do to actually improve this university’s reputation and supposed first priority: education?
I dream of a university that is competitive, not just in celebrity appearances, illusory medical schools or dusty trophy cases.
This university, with the amount of money injected into it by student tuition payments, alumni donations, and state appropriations, has potential to be a top-tier school.
Our rapid expansion needs to cease, and we need to redirect that money into something not necessarily visual or for an admissions catalogue.
Our admissions standards are devastatingly low and noncompetitive.
Our focus should be on quality students, the best and brightest. Quantity, while profitable, should no longer be our priority.
The new buildings exist, and they aren’t going anywhere. With them, the university has an opportunity to rebrand itself, but those opportunities should be available to those who deserve it.
And as our tuition rates grow, what are we getting with that money? Our faculty isn’t known for its research and it would be difficult to argue this university is an educational gold standard for any of our programs.
My point is, the university could absolutely survive if it made some cuts — both with the lackluster student population, and also in the impressive but futile additions they insist upon.
CMU could be attractive for something besides entertainment — something legitimate and spectacular: education.
Therefore, I challenge the university to accept a significantly smaller, more impressive freshman class, hand out more scholarships, and thereby make CMU an attractive place for students who want to be something other than mediocre.
We need to hire more full-time professors, put a bit more focus on research and make the programs stronger.
I want to say “I graduated from Central Michigan University,” and have it mean something. All that needs to happen is for students, faculty, and administrators alike to desire higher achievement.
After all, they do call it higher education.
