Charge:  Review the Proposal to Establish Rutgers University College of Applied and Professional Studies (RU-CAPS), dated February 14, 2001, from the Office of the Vice President for Continuous Education and Outreach.  Report to Executive Committee by April 6, 2001; report anticipated for Senate action on April 27.

I. Overview and Goals of the School

The proposal to establish the College of Applied and Professional Studies raises important questions about future directions that Rutgers University might take. The critical question is whether the University should be more proactive in filling the lifelong professional learning niche that is projected to develop, and if so, how? Adult learners, both those who seek to finish a liberal arts degree and those who seek professional training, have long been a part of the pool of potential students. However, over the past decade the rapid growth of technology has made it necessary for workers in many fields to pursue additional training as they continue to work full-time, increasing the potential number of adult students.

Rutgers University has provided an educational environment tailored to the needs of adult students pursuing liberal arts and some professional degrees for many years. University Colleges were founded on all three campuses in 1934, offering a variety of liberal arts and professional degrees based in the existing faculties and schools. Other units throughout the university offer continuing education courses in their areas of concentration; for example, FAS-NB offers an Internet Institute through the Department of Computer Sciences. Many universities offer adult and continuing education in a variety of formats, and many have increased their offerings in recent years through internet technologies.

In addition to the national trend toward increasing need for adult and continuing education, the NJ Commission on Higher Education has identified several areas of particular need, including the Ocean/Monmouth County region and the northwestern region of the state. Adult learners place-bound by their jobs and families in these areas do not have easy access to public higher education.

In considering this proposal, the Governance Committee believes that there is increasing need for adult education and continuing education, both nationally and within New Jersey. As the state university, Rutgers can and should take an active role in filling this need, and the Governance Committee therefore supports an increasing role for Rutgers University in the area.
 

Recommendation 1.  We approve the concept that Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey take a more proactive role in the delivery of professional and technical educational programs for adult learners beyond the age of traditional campus-based students.
 

II. Concerns

The original CAPS proposal provided the rationale for creating a new school whose role will be to provide programs for adult learners outside the traditional programs already existing at Rutgers. Although it is important to provide such programs to the adult-learner community in fields where there is a strong demand for them, the structure of the proposed new school and its connections with existing University academic programs were not specified in any detail in the original proposal. These details need to be addressed formally prior to the approval of CAPS because the new programs and structure that are developed for CAPS could have a significant impact on presently existing programs.

One of the most important issues to be addressed is how to maintain the quality of a Rutgers degree. This issue is linked with many other concerns discussed in this report, but should be an overarching concern. Mechanisms must be in place that will ensure the quality of the teaching faculty in CAPS programs, including both how faculty will be hired and retained. These concerns have also been forwarded to the Senate in a resolution from the New Brunswick Faculty Council (Appendix C). Furthermore, since most of the programs of CAPS will be delivered at various off-campus sites, the physical facilities at these sites must be maintained at a high level. This would include not only the physical plant but also the electronic infrastructure for distance learning.

The Committee has discussed these concerns extensively with Vice President for Continuous Education and Outreach Raphael Caprio, who has addressed some of these concerns in the revised proposal and some in a question/answer format. The Revised CAPS proposal is included in Appendix A and the Questions and Answers in Appendix B; and the discussion below is based on these documents. In this section we discuss our concerns and how the revised draft meets them and where we still have concerns.

Structure and Faculty

The Governance Committee had a number of concerns about the structure of the school, primarily based on the lack of specificity in the original proposal. We had particular concerns about maintaining academic freedom and program quality in a unit staffed wholly or primarily by non-tenured contract faculty. We understand that there will be a need to use adjunct faculty to be responsive to market concerns. However, the experience of programs at Rutgers and elsewhere is that it is very difficult to maintain high or even uniform quality when relying primarily on part-time faculty, even with the best of intentions. In all other schools and colleges of the University, academic oversight is by a faculty or faculty fellows who are tenured or tenure-track faculty and who have a vested interest in the quality of the programs offered. Further, tenured faculty are not subject to pressures concerning continued employment in making academic decisions, and programs can be evaluated on their own merits. We have agreed that the revised proposal addresses these concerns with the following mechanisms:

Issues of academic freedom become less absolute in an environment that is conditioned and protected by collective bargaining. The committee was encouraged by VP Caprio’s assumption that the non-tenure track faculty would probably have collective bargaining representation (see Questions and Answers in Appendix B).

Programs to be Offered and Relationship to other Schools/Colleges

The original proposal stated that the new school would not duplicate programs that already exist at Rutgers, but did not give examples of what programs would be offered. In particular we were concerned about maintaining the quality and identity of existing liberal arts and professional programs. In addition we were concerned with the relationship between CAPS and existing schools and colleges. Many of the existing units now offer on-campus degree programs and continuing courses which have established reputations. The University Colleges of the three campuses are also dedicated to serving the needs of adult learners, primarily in providing liberal arts degrees. Several key issues have now been addressed in either the revised proposal or VP Caprio’s Q&A. In particular, we note the following:

The original proposal offered no information on admissions and the Committee had a number of concerns in this area which have now been addressed in the new section on Admissions in the revised proposal.

Finances/Budget/Support Services:

The Committee had a number of concerns about finances, some of which were addressed in broad outline in the Q&A (see appendix B). In addition, we have serious concerns about the provision of high-quality library and other support services to CAPS students. Students at remote locations will certainly need library services and although these can be provided electronically (at least in part) this in itself raises several questions. If electronic access to on-line reference services are provided by subscription, the University collections will not benefit. Many on-line resources now available through the University libraries limit the number of simultaneous users, so that extending their use to off-campus locations would require additional licensing at additional cost. The revised proposal stipulated that these concerns would be addressed by the advisory board.

III. Summary

The Governance Committee received the original CAPS proposal from the Central Administration and solicited comments broadly throughout the university community. We have worked with the Administration over the last few weeks to try to address concerns. The proposal has been significantly modified to address many of the concerns we voiced. We regret the lack of time to consider such an important issue in greater detail and we expect that most of our remaining concerns can be addressed by a strong advisory board.

Recommendations

Appendix A:  Revised Proposal to Establish the Rutgers University College of Applied and Professional Studies
Appendix B:  RU-CAPS Q&A
Appendix C:  New Brunswick Faculty Council Resolution on RU-CAPS