Chapter 15
A Unique University Design
David Bednar assumed the presidency of Ricks College in 1997, succeeding previous president Steve Bennion. Like Hal Eyring, Bednar came from a business school; since 1981 he had been at the University of Arkansas, where he served for a time as an associate dean. Bednar also resembled Eyring in his emphasis on teaching. Upon arriving in Rexburg he declared “educational leadership” his top priority. His statement of guiding principles for the college included the assertion that every person is a teacher. He introduced himself to faculty members as “a teacher who is now working as a president, not a president who used to be a teacher.”1
Notwithstanding his passion for teaching, Bednar's management and decision-making training would prove, in the long run, more vital to the evolution of the college than he or anyone else could have guessed. In fact, he quickly began to make his mark administratively. From the beginning he challenged conventions, especially those rooted in academic tradition. In an early staff meeting his vice presidents received the assignment to “tear apart the summary of Ricks' mission and goals, rewrite it, and make recommendations.” Arriving at a time when the college was turning away nearly half of all applicants, Bednar particularly wanted his colleagues to think about how to serve more students at an affordable cost.2
He built teams, delegated freely, and gained a reputation for responsiveness, typically replying the same day to email and phone messages. All-employee meetings and departmental breakfasts became a tradition, as did visits by the president to individual faculty offices and monthly Q&A sessions open to the entire campus community. Bednar and his wife Susan entertained students each Monday night; on Sundays they made unannounced visits to student apartments. Early administrative initiatives included reemphasizing the Ricks College practices of presidential participation in each faculty hire and of a common pay scale for all faculty members. With regard to the former practice, Bednar stated his belief that faculty hiring was the university's most important decision.3
Bednar also took a hard look at Ricks's marquee intercollegiate athletic teams. Paradoxically, winning national championships increased the athletic department's fiscal deficit, as it required tournament travel that wasn't fully offset by the incremental revenues. Proposals to reduce the financial shortfall through corporate advertising and sponsorships worried his administrative team, though they ultimately granted approval. They also agreed to the elimination of the men's and women's track teams; while both of those teams would take third place nationally a few months later, they involved too few students and cost too much money to justify.4
Even as he challenged his colleagues to think about serving more students, Bednar preached the board's new “zero-standard” for growth. The board had implemented this policy in response to continual requests from its higher education institutions for more faculty and physical facilities. Unable to alter the bigger-and-better tendencies of its universities and colleges, the board determined to at least contain them by capping both faculty positions and building square footage.
At his first all-employee meeting, Bednar vowed that the college would honor the zero-standard and still find ways to admit more students. He invited his colleagues to “think about how we think” and to “set goals so high that we cannot imagine achieving the results through our existing processes.” He cited the success of Sam Walton, whose Arkansas-based company, Wal-Mart, he had worked with for more than fifteen years as a business school professor. Walton met with derision when he initially proposed to double the industry standard of $50 in sales per square foot of retail space. But, Bednar reported, Wal-Mart had since achieved $300 per square foot and aspired to reach $1,000.5
In that spirit, Bednar challenged Ricks's employees to think about how its educational offerings might “impact the entire Church and its membership worldwide.” The key was to do it with existing resources, probably through the use of information technology. He spoke of the potential to serve 50,000 students globally or, in the alternative, to serve just 8,600 and be “irrelevant.” “You can't get there,” he warned, “by thinking the way you do now.”6
Before the turn of the millennium, the college had taken a few faltering steps along the path to serving more students not only in Rexburg but elsewhere. All students were required to take at least one online class to graduate. By 1999, the college had mapped out fifty-one “fast track” majors, with emphasis on highly enrolled ones such as English and business, which would allow a student to make progress to graduation during not only fall and winter but also during the traditional summer break; these included articulation agreements with state universities in Idaho and Utah where students could continue in pursuit of bachelor's and master's degrees.7
Particularly promising was a proposal to admit students on one of three academic calendar “tracks.” For example, rather than being admitted in the fall and staying for winter, a student might be invited to come on the condition of attending winter semester and the spring and summer terms, or those two terms plus fall semester. The effect of this system, if those not admitted on the traditional fall-winter schedule could be convinced to accept a nontraditional track, would be to fill the spring and summer terms to a level closer to that of the fall and winter semesters, thereby increasing the college's annual enrollment without the need to hire additional faculty or build more classrooms.8
There was also a fledgling attempt to serve students internationally. Working with a church-owned high school in Mexico, Ricks began offering technical certificates to Mexican students recently returned from voluntary mission service. The initial emphasis, on welding, was broadened to include specially developed certificates in automotive repair, English as a second language, and computer usage. A rotating set of faculty members from Rexburg provided onsite instruction of students and training of local instructors. In the summer of 1999, 101 certificates were awarded.9 Like Hal Eyring's agriculture-related initiatives, these technical certificate programs represented an effort to keep Ricks rooted in its historical mission. The certificate programs offered the prospect of educating many more students, all of them nonconsumers of traditional higher education.
However, at what appeared to be the heights of success, the board directed that the effort be turned over to the local Mexican high school. Before Ricks could grow outward, it would have to grow upward. That was soon to happen, to the surprise of all but church president and board chairman Gordon Hinckley.
On Tuesday, June 20, 2000, the employees and students of Ricks College received an invitation to a meeting scheduled for the next morning at 8 o'clock. A crowd of several thousand gathered at the appointed time in the school's basketball arena. David Bednar opened the meeting and introduced ninety-year-old church president Gordon Hinckley, who appeared via audio/visual feed from Salt Lake City, where he stood before the news media. Hinckley made a startling announcement:
The First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Board of Trustees of Ricks College announce that Ricks College will change from its present two-year junior college status to a four-year institution.
At this news, the throng in Rexburg erupted. Bednar, a former football quarterback, drew on that experience as he waved to quiet the crowd. Hinckley paused before proceeding, but when he continued his voice could hardly be heard in the arena over the slow-to-subside roar of approval.
The new four-year school will be known as Brigham Young University-Idaho, with the name change designed to give the school immediate national and international recognition. The memory of Thomas E. Ricks will continue to be appropriately honored and perpetuated.
This change of status is consistent with the ongoing tradition of evaluation and progress that has brought Ricks College from infant beginnings to its present position as the largest privately owned two-year institution of higher education in America. With some additions and modifications, the physical facilities now in place in Rexburg are adequate to handle the new program. Undoubtedly, some changes to the campus will be necessary. However, they will be modest in nature and scope.
BYU-Idaho's move to four-year status will be phased in over a period of time and accomplished in such a way as to preserve the school's autonomy and identity. Adjustments to its mission will be minimal. The school will have a unique role in and be distinctive from the other institutions of higher education within the Church Educational System.
By this time, the crowd was more subdued. The loss of the Ricks name surprised everyone and disappointed many. They listened more intently as Hinckley went on.
BYU-Idaho will continue to be teaching oriented. Effective teaching and advising will be the primary responsibilities of its faculty, who are committed to academic excellence.
The institution will emphasize undergraduate education and will award baccalaureate degrees; graduate degree programs will not be offered. Faculty rank will not be a part of the academic structure of the new four-year institution.
BYU-Idaho will operate on an expanded year-round basis, incorporating innovative calendaring and scheduling while also taking advantage of advancements in technology which will enable the four-year institution to serve more students. In addition, BYU-Idaho will phase out its involvement in intercollegiate athletics and shift its emphasis to a year-round activity program designed to involve and meet the needs of a diverse student body.
Of necessity, the new four-year institution will be assessing and restructuring its academic offerings. Predictably, the school will need to change and even eliminate some long-standing and beneficial programs as the school focuses upon key academic disciplines and activities.
Specific programmatic details about and time lines for the change are presently being worked out. These details, which will be discussed with and approved by the Board of Trustees, will be announced at appropriate times in the future.10
After Hinckley signed off, Bednar said to those gathered, “Now it would be appropriate to cheer.” They did so, but not uniformly. The athletic coaches sat stunned, wondering if they had just been fired en masse. No one had been briefed in advance. Bednar himself had known for only a matter of weeks. Everyone had questions about what would happen next, and there were few answers.
The Weight of Hinckley's Pronouncement
As Gordon Hinckley announced the creation of BYU-Idaho, he was perceived by its employees both as their boss and as their ecclesiastical leader. For the faithful, to argue with the proposed design of the institution would have been to question more than just an administrative decision. Few academic leaders, if any, could make institutional pronouncements with such authority.
Yet Hinckley had more than ecclesiastical authority on his side. His plan for BYU-Idaho made it, for all but the athletic staff, a more attractive employer. That was obviously true relative to what Ricks College had been—BYU-Idaho would offer new intellectual opportunities and enhanced institutional prestige. But the new university was also designed to be a more stable employer than its peer institutions. Hinckley didn't cite that selling point, though it was built into the university's DNA. The economic efficiencies attendant to year-round operation and the application of online learning technology would allow BYU-Idaho not only to grow its student body at low cost but also to pay its faculty better. In 2010, McKinsey would find that those faculty members made an average of $92,439 in total compensation, compared with $80,867 for their institutional peers.11 Hinckley's ecclesiastical mantle and the faithfulness of Ricks College employees decreased his need to make the rational, self-interest-stimulating case for change. However, it was there to be made in economic terms all the more convincing now, with disruption at the door.
Hinckley himself didn't have an implementation plan for the university. But he knew that the genetic structure was right. The exigencies of the Great Depression and an offer of employment from the church kept him from pursuing his boyhood dream of a graduate degree in journalism. Still, he had gained a thorough understanding of the traditional higher education model through twenty-five years as a member of the board. He particularly knew the university tendency to expand and climb.
It was Hinckley who had implemented zero-standard, realizing that the only sure way to contain the costs of a university or college is to limit faculty hiring and office space. Yet while Hinckley was concerned about creeping costs, he desperately wanted more young church members to have the opportunity to attend one of its higher education institutions, especially the flagship, BYU. In the mid-1990s, as both Ricks and BYU turned away applicants in record numbers, he tasked a team of analysts to study options for serving more students. One of the scenarios analyzed was building an entirely new campus. The required capital investment staggered the board, and the option of building a new university was quickly ruled out. At the same time, however, the study team produced unexpectedly compelling data on the value to the church of its higher education system. The team found that, relative to church members who went to other universities, students who attended its sponsored schools graduated at higher rates, earned more, and donated more time and tithes.12 Even in purely financial terms BYU and Ricks generated a positive return on investment, in the way that states hope their higher education systems will do.
The question in Hinckley's mind, though, was how to serve the most new students at the lowest possible cost. He knew that BYU, with its faculty committed to scholarly research, had a substantially higher cost per student than Ricks. He was impressed by the recent innovations at Ricks, especially the proposed track system for operating on a year-round basis. He also admired David Bednar's leadership skill and commitment to thinking outside of the box. In fact, Ricks College had held a special place in Hinckley's heart for years. At Bednar's inauguration in 1998 he had said:
Of the very many problems with which the Board deals … very, very few concern Ricks. This school just seems to go along with its wonderful responsibility of educating those who come to learn. We do not hear of difficulties with the faculty or with the students. Both bodies know why they are here, and they steadfastly pursue their objectives to accomplish that purpose.13
One day in early 2000, after a meeting of the board, Hinckley asked Hal Eyring to come to his office. Eyring was then the commissioner of education, directing all church schools the way Ernest Wilkinson had done. After inviting Eyring to close the door, Hinckley said, “Hal, couldn't we serve more students at a lower cost by making Ricks a university?” Caught off guard, Eyring fumbled for a moment and then began enumerating the additional costs of granting bachelor's degrees at Ricks. Even if the new year-round program worked, he pointed out, adding junior and senior level classes would require more faculty. They would need offices, and that would mean adding buildings; so would providing classrooms for the additional students. “No, President Hinckley,” Eyring concluded, “it will cost you more, not less.”
“No it won't,” Hinckley shot back, “it will cost me less per BYU graduate.” Hinckley's reply revealed that he'd been thinking deeply about the matter. Already, before consulting with Eyring or anyone else, he had the idea of applying the much more recognizable BYU name to Ricks College. He also demonstrated in the “per BYU graduate” phrase his understanding of marginal economics, a concept about which Eyring had known nothing before arriving at the Harvard Business School. Ricks College faculty members, whose professional activities centered on the classroom, could provide instruction less expensively than BYU faculty because they spent more time doing it. Therefore, each new salary dollar invested in Rexburg would yield, on the margin, a greater return in terms of students served. That would be especially true as the school added online learning opportunities to its traditional face-to-face classroom instruction.
But that conclusion about the economic efficiency of Ricks revealed another of Hinckley's presumptions about the DNA of the new university: there would be no typical research mission, and no up-or-out tenure or rank based on scholarly publication. In going from junior college to university status, the institution's educational mission would not change in the way typical of the Carnegie climb. BYU-Idaho's faculty members would stay focused on student instruction, just as they had been in Ricks College days. BYU-Idaho would be a single-minded enterprise, serving students exclusively in its teaching and scholarship.
The new university would also award only associate's and bachelor's degrees; there would be no graduate programs. Hinckley knew the price of graduate programs through his oversight of the main BYU campus in Provo. Its professional schools were well regarded but increasingly more expensive to operate at a high level of quality. Maintaining top-fifty rankings for its MBA program and law school required large annual outlays in support of faculty scholarship and student career placement. Graduate programs in arts and sciences were likewise expensive, because of their low student–teacher ratios and high research costs, including capital outlays for scientific laboratories and equipment.
Having considered the full cost of graduate programs and the alternative means for reaping some of their benefits, including engaging BYU-Idaho undergraduate students in mentored research with their professors,14 Hinckley determined to confine the graduate education mission to the church's flagship BYU campus. In so focusing BYU-Idaho he followed the lead of Clark Kerr, effectively designing it as the Carnegie equivalent of California's four-year colleges (which later became its state universities). BYU would pay the price of selective admissions, scholarly research, and competitive athletic teams and professional schools. The campus in Rexburg would benefit from these brand-building investments while keeping its costs lower and its access wider.
Hinckley's proposal for the new university built on much of the DNA of Ricks College but also changed some of it dramatically, especially in the case of intercollegiate athletics. As shown in Table 15.1, his design represented a substantial reengineering of the DNA of the traditional university.
Table 15.1 BYU-Idaho and Traditional University Traits
| Traditional University Traits | BYU-Idaho Copied? |
| Face-to-face instruction | Mixed with online learning |
| Rational/secular orientation | No |
| Comprehensive specialization, departmentalization, and faculty self-governance | Yes, though with focus on “key” disciplines |
| Long summer recess | No |
| Graduate schools atop the college | No |
| Private fundraising | Yes |
| Competitive athletics | No |
| Curricular distribution (GE) and concentration (majors) | Yes |
| Academic honors | Yes |
| Externally funded research | No |
| Up-or-out tenure, with faculty rank and salary distinctions | No |
| Admissions selectivity | No |
In his role as church commissioner of education, Hal Eyring expounded on Hinckley's design for the new university, both privately in the succeeding days and publicly in the months and years to come. In a 2001 address in Rexburg, he reminded those affiliated with the new university of the shortest sentence in the public announcement of Ricks College's becoming a university: “Adjustments to its mission will be minimal.”15 He noted with approval that the mission statement submitted that year to the school's regional accreditation body remained unchanged. Referring to that statement, which emphasized undergraduate education, he said, “These could be the words of Thomas Ricks or Jacob Spori or any of the leaders from the beginning.” This was a compliment to the fledgling university for staying close to its roots rather than embarking immediately on a ladder climb.
Of course, Eyring knew that the move to university status would require adding faculty and facilities; he and the other members of the board had already approved substantial outlays for both. Appreciating the tendency of such expansion to become habitual in higher education, he applauded David Bednar's commitment to frugality, as manifested in a motto Bednar often cited, “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.”16 Eyring identified institutional and individual frugality as not only financially commendable but also a source of advantage in “turbulent times.” “We will depend more upon inspiration and perspiration to make improvements than upon buildings and equipment,” he declared. “Then hard economic times will have little effect on the continuous innovation that will not cease at this school, even in the most difficult times.”
Eyring also knew the academic tendency to measure excellence mainly in terms of research publications; he had felt the publish-or-perish pressure as a tenure-track professor at Stanford in the 1960s. Thus, he quoted and commended a post-announcement statement Bednar made about scholarship, one that defined the term in an untraditional way:
We should be excellent scholars, and our scholarship should be focused on the processes of learning and teaching. We will not be a recognized and highly regarded research institution in the traditional sense of that term. We will, however, emphasize a wide range of scholarly endeavors and excel in and play a pioneering role in understanding learning and teaching processes with faith and hard work, and in the process of time.17
Finally, Eyring recalled the announcement's reference to “focus[ing] upon key academic disciplines.” “Now,” he explained, “President Hinckley has long experience in education—long experience—so he knew how remarkable it was to pay such a tribute to this place. He said there would be focus, not a growth and spread in the academic offerings.” In fact, Eyring may have spoken these words less by way of commendation than of exhortation. Just one year after the announcement, the first BYU-Idaho course catalogue made reference to nearly forty bachelor's degrees, and more were planned.18 The bigger-and-better tendency was already at work in the new university's curriculum.
Eyring had hoped there would be, at least in the beginning, no more than a dozen majors; having relatively fewer majors would help the university keep its costs low and educational quality high. In hindsight, a rapid expansion of four-year offerings may have been inevitable, given that Ricks College had 125 associate's degrees and that many of these were being eliminated in the transition to university status.19 Also, there was a good argument that educational quality required a sufficiently broad range of majors for students to choose from.
However, the plan for BYU-Idaho had actually been to be more Harvard-like than the traditional university in terms of the number of majors offered. Harvard, ironically, has been more careful in its management of subject matter than most of the universities that emulate it. Though the size of its course catalogue might still provoke James Conant to declare, “This is ridiculous,” the college has managed to keep its majors, or concentrations, to less than fifty.20 The typical research university has several times that number; even BYU-Idaho now has more. Moreover, Harvard concentrations typically require fewer hours than their equivalents at other universities. These choices—to have fewer majors and require fewer major hours—spare the institution and its students significant cost.
Both Eyring and Gordon Hinckley appreciated from experience that undergraduate majors are a powerful driver of increased intellectual and organizational fragmentation as well as financial cost. Some new majors are interdisciplinary, but most represent a slice of an existing one. The subdivision of majors allows for greater specialization and depth of subject matter. Faculty members favor this, as they do a growing number of required major hours, because it facilitates introduction of their specialized research into the undergraduate curriculum. As Eliot, champion of the elective system, knew, that makes instruction more engaging for them and their students.
But greater subject matter depth comes at the expense of breadth, as Lowell, creator of Harvard's distribution system, recognized. While the increased specialization of majors serves future academics well, these students comprise a small fraction of the undergraduate population. Even at Harvard only 5 percent of seniors report the intention to immediately pursue doctoral studies in the arts and sciences; more than half, by contrast, plan on graduate study in business, medicine, or law.21 Specialized majors can leave students underprepared both for this kind of graduate study and for entering the workforce with just a bachelor's degree. Additionally, they make four-year graduation more difficult.
Eyring had also seen how new majors and graduate programs can create increased institutional costs. Astute proponents of a new major or program will tout their ability to create it with few new courses and no new faculty or physical facilities. But these requests almost invariably come later, as the proponents—who in the meantime may have won independent departmental status—argue the need for increased quality, in the form of specialists to teach cutting-edge classes and offices and lab facilities to house them. The “bigger” request, which leads to the introduction of a new major, often presages a subsequent plea to make the major better.
The Easy-to-Create and Hard-to-Eliminate Major
Majors tend to proliferate in universities for the same reasons that courses do. They are easily proposed—the main hurdle is a demonstration that the faculty are qualified to teach the courses that comprise the major at other institutions. Questions such as what the degree will cost the university to confer and what economic return a graduate can expect to make receive only secondary consideration.
As with new courses, fellow faculty members and academic administrators are reluctant to challenge their colleagues' proposal of a new major. In the academic spirit of collegiality and experimentation, the inclination is to “give it a try,” particularly because programmatic comprehensiveness correlates with Carnegie ladder status. Yet eliminating a major is immeasurably more difficult than dropping a course from the catalog. Not only are many faculty members invested, rather than a few or only one, there are students in the pipeline who must either be allowed to finish or forced to choose another specialty. There are also graduates of the major who might find the value of their degree impaired by the major's elimination. Even more than courses, majors must be created with care.
Eyring had hoped that BYU-Idaho would, like the for-profit educators, eschew such major-driven cost creep by offering a limited range of practical majors, such as business and teacher education, that could be delivered at high volume—in other words, with double-digit student–teacher ratios even in the advanced courses. This would not only produce low instructional cost per student but also increase the likelihood of placing graduates in good employment. Subject matter focus was a critical element of the BYU-Idaho DNA that the new university could not afford to lose. It was one of many elements of Gordon Hinckley's unique design that would require both innovative implementation and careful preservation.