Brown charts own educational course

CONNECTING IDEAS: Christina H. Paxson took over last year as president of Brown University, becoming the 19th person to hold the position. She said her goal is to better help connect what students are learning at Brown with “the world around them.” / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
CONNECTING IDEAS: Christina H. Paxson took over last year as president of Brown University, becoming the 19th person to hold the position. She said her goal is to better help connect what students are learning at Brown with “the world around them.” / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Christina H. Paxson settled smoothly into the role of Brown University’s 19th president and after getting to know the school over the past year is now looking toward its future. Like other elite colleges, Brown is growing. But unlike some of its competitors, Brown has not rushed to build far-flung satellite campuses, take over new city neighborhoods or become an online education behemoth.
An economist and staunch defender of the traditional liberal arts education, Paxson said Brown will grow in Providence and online in the years ahead, but the undergraduate experience will remain deeply rooted in classrooms on College Hill.

PBN: Your inaugural speech defended the liberal arts education from the push to become more career-oriented. With that core principle in mind, is Brown changing at all to include more areas of skill-specific training?
PAXSON: What we are trying to do at Brown is do a much better job with career services and helping students connect what they are learning here at Brown with the world around them. The career lab has been growing at Brown. This is a great organization connecting students with all types of careers, from education to business to local global opportunities. Over the coming year I will be focusing on developing a new internship program that places our students, with a lot of help from alumni, in jobs during the summers, domestically, internationally.

PBN: Do you think that the level of debt students are leaving college with is inhibiting them from taking chances?
PAXSON: One fact that is very important for people to recognize is that the average level of debt is just that; it’s an average. When you look at students across the United States, there is a lot of variation in how much debt students take on. And it turns out that a very small fraction of students are leaving college with the crippling levels of debt that would prevent them from doing anything but trying to meet monthly payments. At Brown, the average level of debt for students who have financial aid when they leave is $20,000. That is less than a new car loan. When you put it in perspective, the monthly payments are not that high and that level of debt is not significant enough to change people’s career choices. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry about debt – we should. But it’s more a question of deciding what an acceptable level of debt is than going to a system of no debt.

PBN: Some Ivy League schools have been very aggressive with financial aid. Is Brown determined to follow them?
PAXSON: Brown is very much in line with our peers. Everybody does it in a slightly different way, and universities that have higher endowments are generally a little more generous than universities with lower endowments, but we are all taking the same approach. That approach is that low-income families are eligible for a full ride. Then as family income goes up, the burden shifts more to families and students. One thing I am concerned about is the affordability for middle-income students. If you look at the statistics for Brown, families [who make] $150,000 per year and less have actually seen declines in net tuition in real terms over the last decade. Where we have seen real increases in net tuitions – sticker price minus financial aid – is in families [earning] about $150,000 to $225,000 per year and over.

PBN: Is Brown looking to compete with schools, such as Stanford, that are aggressively rolling out new online education products?
PAXSON: Brown is involved in the online world. We are a member of Coursera. We have three [Massive Open Online Courses] in progress as we speak, and we have been developing some blended online master’s programs. Those are programs where students spend part of their time in person on campus and then do online work and collaborate virtually during the course of the program. I like that model a lot, and I think that is one we will continue to push on. I think of this online world as still being in a very experimental stage. We need to think carefully about the quality of the education that’s being delivered.

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PBN: How is technology changing the physical demands for colleges, the need for large buildings and traditional campuses?
PAXSON: Technology is changing our facilities needs in many ways. One is it is changing the whole way we think about libraries. Of course it is very important to maintain libraries that are archival, that have the manuscripts and materials you can’t find anywhere else. But much of the material that is in libraries now is in digital form. So you look at Brown’s science library, and we have been clearing off floor after floor because the scientific journals are no longer in print. What that gives us is the opportunity to use that space and think about ways to bring students to the library … to engage in very innovative, educational experiences.

PBN: This spring people took the decision to build the new engineering school next to the old one, and the findings of the facilities study, as a sign that Brown would not be a major source of investment in Providence outside College Hill. Is that an accurate impression?
PAXSON: We have been involved in strategic planning all year and a big component of that was campus planning and taking a look at where we expand. We know we are going to expand, but in what parts of the city should we expand and how should we do that? The planning effort was fascinating, and we came away from that with principles we will use in the future. One was that core academic functions that involve lots of undergraduates belong on College Hill. … That said, we are very committed to development in the Jewelry District. We have 1,000 people there now. Our medical school is there, administration is there, continuing education, which does a lot of these innovative master’s programs, is there, and we have research facilities there [and interest in doing other things].

PBN: Any you can mention?
PAXSON: A conclusion that came out of the planning was that some of the research enterprises that don’t tie tightly into undergraduate education would be great candidates for the Jewelry District. The Jewelry District is halfway between College Hill and the hospitals, so things that are health-related will be prime candidates for placement there.

PBN: Some schools have aggressively built satellite campuses around the world. Does Brown have any interest in that?
PAXSON: Brown has decided not to go the satellite-campus route. … That doesn’t mean we won’t be more involved in the international market. Brown has an increasingly international faculty. We are building the Watson Institute for International Studies, so these links abroad are very important. The strategy that fits Brown better is to develop partnerships with organizations around the world. •

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