Photo by Glenn Asakawa

I know CU’s switch to the Pac-10 athletic conference is absolutely the right move for our university, but I still have mixed emotions about it. When I was a student in Boulder in the early 1960s, just after the Big 7 conference became the Big 8, rivalries with Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri (long before Coach Bill McCartney drew a bull’s eye around Nebraska) were intense.

So it is bittersweet to know we will soon leave behind decades of rivalries and tradition. I suspect many alumni share this feeling.

But you can’t help but be excited about our prospects. We will become a proud member of “The Conference of Champions,” as the Pac-10 is known. Its teams have won more NCAA championships than any conference in the country. We know the competition will be fierce and we will have to step up our competitiveness. We are ready for the challenge.

More importantly, we will be aligned with some of the finest academic institutions in the world. If you are known by the company you keep, CU alumni should be excited by their alma mater joining the likes of Cal, Stanford, Washington, UCLA and the other fine institutions in the Pac-10. We have much in common. There are dozens of academic partnerships in place with conference schools and more on the horizon. Additionally, conference schools have an international outlook, which is an increasing focus for us.

Shortly after we announced the move in June, I had dinner with the president of one of the conference universities. As CU considered the switch, there was a lot of speculation about what schools would end up in which conference. It was reminiscent of a junior high dance, with nervous teens lining the wall. The president told me CU was the unanimous, hands-down top choice of conference universities because we so closely match their academic and athletic values.

And the conference is a perfect fit for us in additional ways. Along with academics and athletics, we have considerably more alumni in Pac-10 states than in Big 12 states (36,000 compared with 11,000). Also, California is traditionally our largest source of nonresident students.

While difficult, our move is not unlike that of Colorado’s pioneers, many of whom left behind deep roots and traditions to seek opportunity out West. Some of those pioneers founded our great university in 1876. I think they would be proud of what it has become and excited for the new opportunities that await us under the Flatirons.

Bruce D. Benson (Geol’64, HonDocSci’04) is president of the University of Colorado. Please contact him at (303) 860-5600 or at OfficeofthePresident@cu.edu.

Perhaps the most overworked phrase in the recent election campaign was the “bridge to nowhere,” a reference to a proposed project in Alaska that became a metaphor for everything from crazy ideas to poor decisions. It’s getting new life as politicians and pundits debate the federal economic stimulus package, with proposed infrastructure projects as part of the discussions.

These projects are important to Colorado and the nation, both to strengthen our systems and to create jobs. To a limited extent, higher education is moving up the priority list in stimulus discussions, but it should be more prominent. While bridges certainly matter, they stop stimulating the economy the moment they are completed.

Higher education, on the other hand, is an investment that provides a critical, ongoing return. It allows us to produce the human infrastructure that will drive us out of recession and ensure our long-term success. Colleges and universities, particularly research universities, offer critical components of an economic recovery and future prosperity.

The University of Colorado is a perfect example. Our alumni contribute to communities around Colorado and across the country in myriad ways, from education, health care and business to the arts, elected office and nonprofit work. CU research drives new ideas in areas critical to our state and nation, including biomedicine, health care, renewable energy and space sciences. Universities are engines of economic activity and innovation. We create good jobs and educated workers to fill them.

Given our significant role in economic development and long-term prosperity, it’s puzzling to see the value that Colorado and other states place on higher education. Across the country, public colleges and universities are bearing the brunt of the poor economy. Just as we were beginning to recover from Colorado’s last recession, we will have to take more reductions. CU is bracing for tens of millions of dollars in cuts over the next 18 months.

Yet we must control our fate. We must convince the public and lawmakers of the value of higher education. We must show them that universities are economic engines that also produce the skilled work force we need. Each of us has a role in that endeavor. We have to spread the message with our friends and neighbors, with legislators and business leaders, in our communities and across the state.

And the message is that higher education is the bridge to economic stability and quality of life.

“Give us the opportunity to control our destiny, especially if you’re not going to give us the money to run the place,” President Benson told the Denver Post.

Colorado consistently ranks 48th in the country for state support for higher education.
As it stands, tuition increases must be approved by lawmakers, which Benson and others feel limits their ability to manage their institutions — especially this year when the state may slash higher education funding to cover the projected $600 million budget shortfall.

If CU and other state institutions became privatized, however, some critics worry low-income families would suffer, since the governor and lawmakers wouldn’t weigh in on tuition increases. Yet, others feel it’s not fair to simultaneously underfund higher education institutions while overburdening them with rules and regulations.

“We have three research institutions — Colorado, Colorado State and Mines — and frankly, every year we erode the quality of those institutions,” Rep. Jack Pommer (Phil’86), a Boulder Democrat, told the Rocky Mountain News. “If you have a house and can’t maintain it, why not just move instead of letting it deteriorate?”