Metro Pulse/Insights/John Shumaker

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by Joe Sullivan

Performance has become John Shumaker's mantra since assuming the UT presidency last June. In his new scheme of things, everything from compensation of senior administrators to increases in state funding would be tied to achievement of performance goals that Shumaker has spent the past several months establishing.

These goals are now embodied in a UT scorecard that quantifies heightened expectations for 2010 in five broad categories. Those range from student and faculty achievement to attracting more research grants, augmenting the university's fund raising, and enhancing its contribution to the state's economy. No other university of which Shumaker is aware has gone so far in making its goals measurable. And despite the state funding constraints that have shackled UT for the past decade, he has set the bar high.

"We want the University of Tennessee to be a preeminent international research university that focuses primarily—but not exclusively—on the people of Tennessee," he says. And he goes on to disparage bench marks, such as those embodied in the Tennessee Higher Education Commission's funding formula, that make the average of other southeastern states the norm. "THEC and some others in the state only want us to compete with other universities in the southeast because, bless our heart, we don't have enough money to compete against the big boys. But if we don't start saying we're going to compete against the big boys," we won't. "So we're looking at national benchmarks," Shumaker proclaims.

Take student achievement standards, for example. The UT scorecard sets a goal of raising graduation rates on the Knoxville campus from 55 percent presently to 65 percent by 2010. "The average rate of our peers is about 60 percent nationally, and we want to be above average," Shumaker says.

A point of departure in achieving this goal is making admissions more selective by raising the average ACT score of incoming freshman from 24 to 26. This, too, would put UT above the national average (though still well below such pace setters as California, Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia). One means of achieving the increase would be to reduce the size of the freshman class from the 3,700 to 3,800 range to the 3,400 to 3,500 range. But Shumaker also stresses attracting top students who are presently going out of state to college.

"We've got to be the public university of choice for a greater proportion of Tennessee's best and brightest students," he asserts. To that end, he places a great deal of emphasis on strengthening UT's identity. "To be candid about it, if we're known as Tennessee's pretty good public university that has one result... but if we're known as Tennessee's really exciting university, and people say wow that has a very different result."

The scorecard addresses ways of making UT more impressive, if not exciting, in a variety of areas. For one, it calls for raising the number of nationally recognized academic programs from eight at present to 20 by 2010. The College of Pharmacy, the Department of Physical Therapy, and programs in logistics, nuclear engineering, and nursing head the current list. While Shumaker generalizes about a "rigorous process of analysis" in the selection of other fields to target, he ventures that, "a lot of these things will emerge from Oak Ridge." And he gets especially excited about the potential for a cancer center in Memphis. "If we get the designation that we're seeking from the National Cancer Institute, we will have one of the top programs in the country."

Attracting more research grants is at the top of the list of goals for enhancing UT's stature and its contribution to the state's economy. The scorecard calls for increasing total research expenditures from $177 million in 2001 to $275 million in 2010. The 2010 goal for federal expenditures, as a component of this total, calls for an increase from $79 million in 2001 to $130 million in 2010.

In academic circles, these federal research dollars are widely considered to be a key measure of the quality of an institution. Indeed, the rankings of research universities in which Shumaker places the most store—those compiled by the Lombardi Center at the University of Florida—consider federal research expenditures to be "the most important indicator of research competitiveness."

As one indicator of UT's stagnation over the past decade, these expenditures have declined from a peak of $84 million in 1994, even as the national total was escalating. If the rest of the world stood still, an increase to $130 million would vault UT from 43rd place in 2000 to the top 25 public research universities. But the rest of the world has ambitious goals as well. "The competition is every bit as fierce as in football or basketball or any other sport," Shumaker says.

The biggest question overhanging all of Shumaker's lofty goals is how to get the funding to achieve them. The scorecard calls for a doubling of UT's endowment to $800 million by 2010. But the annual yield on endowment assets in only five percent, so even an increase of this magnitude wouldn't generate nearly enough income to meet the university's additional revenue needs.

Despite this year's state tax increases to cover a humongous budget deficit, the state remains strapped for revenues as well—at least where support for funding increases are concerned. But Shumaker believes his performance-based approach to making the case for additional state support will be more compelling than UT's entreaties of the past. And he has some strategies in mind for relating them to Gov.-elect Phil Bredesen.

"I'm going to suggest that the state give UT a certain sum of money each year that we don't get unless we match it with private dollars." And he goes on to predict what almost amounts to a role-playing conversation with Bredesen.

"You're Phil Bredesen, and you're saying I don't have a billion dollars to give you. I might be able to squeeze out some marginal funds, but let's do a contract. If I give you this money, what are you going to do with it that helps the state of Tennessee?

"I'll say here's the way to measure it. Here are the categories that are important. I would focus on the research category. If you give me $100 million and say it's going to be an endowment, but I can't get access to it unless I match it solely for the purpose of attracting and retaining the best professors in key fields. So I'll match you, and then I'll see you...in terms of the measurable research productivity that those faculty members bring to Tennessee."

Performance-based budgeting has become the vogue among state legislators, so Shumaker's strategy should play well with them as well. Indeed, his scorecard could be the vehicle for getting UT the additional resources it so sorely needs.