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Q&A With Bob Levey
Washington Post Columnist
Tuesday, July 2, 2002; Noon EDT

"Levey Live" appears Tuesdays at noon EDT. Your host is Washington Post columnist Bob Levey. This hour is your chance to talk directly to key Washington Post reporters and editors, local officials and people in the news.

Today, Bob’s guest is Alan Merten, president of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Merten became president of George Mason University on July 1, 1996. George Mason is a doctoral granting institution with an enrollment of over 24,000 students.

Merten was previously the dean and professor of information systems at the Johnson Graduate School of Management of Cornell University. He was dean of the College of Business Administration at the University of Florida and associate dean for executive education and computing services at the University of Michigan.

Merten has an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. degree in computer science from Wisconsin. He has held academic appointments in both engineering and business, and academic and business positions in Hungary and France. He was chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Workforce Needs in Information Technology, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Center for Innovative Technology, INOVA Health System, several information technology companies and a mutual fund trust.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Bob Levey: Good afternoon, President Merten, and thanks for joining us today. Let's begin by looking at George Mason in comparison to its local competitors. GMU is vastly younger than Maryland, Georgetown, Howard and GWU. It's also vastly better plugged into the local business community. Are you beginning to "redirect" students from these other schools as a result?

Alan Merten: Our applicant pool has grown dramatically over the last several years. One example is that this year, we had 4300 applicants to our law school for 300 positions. Similar demand for the university is coming for the undergraduate positions. We're seeing more and more people coming from outside the local area -- people who want to be in the greater Washington area but who prefer to be in Virginia suburbs, as opposed to downtown D.C.

Reston, VA: Are my three-year-old twins going to be able to afford a college like George Mason when the time comes? Is there anything we can do to make education more affordable?

Alan Merten: There are several things that you can do to help us. This fall, Virginians will have an opportunity to vote on a capital bond bill, to provide the funds for facilities at George Mason and other public universities in Virginia. Vote early, vote often and get your friends to support this important bill. Secondly, in order to keep tuition low, we are going to need more state support at the operating level.

GMU '93: A native of the area, I could not have told you where GMU was located when I left high school. I went to GMU for my MPA, on the advice of a friend who said it was the best bargain around. I was very impressed with the school. The deficiencies (library, lack of an adequate student center) have all been corrected since I graduated. Your biggest task is to keep alumni like me connected although we no longer live near the campus.

Alan Merten: The quality of our programs and of our reputation have gone up dramatically over the last 5-7 years. As a result, the value of a George Mason degree has also gone up. Our challenge now is to engage our alumni in our activities and to convince them to support us in a variety of ways. I spend a significant part of my time meeting with alumni around the United States and even outside the U.S. We now have over 90,000 alumni. Keep in touch with us, and let us know how we can help you.

Bob Levey: Any plans for George Mason to get into virtual learning? You'd be a logical bet for it, given the incredible commuting struggles of Northern Virginia.....

Alan Merten: We are doing a lot these days to improve the use of technology in the classroom. While distance learning is important, it's even more important to use the technology across our curriculum and to make sure that our students are competent in their ability to use technology in all of their activities. We are doing quite a bit now in using the Web for education, and we will be doing more in the near future. Virtual learning is important, but it will not replace direct contact between faculty and students.

Bob Levey: What's your view of a traditional liberal-arts undergraduate curriculum? I warn you that I'm an alumnus of The University of Chicago, where the common core is the envy of the world (I'll try to calm down a little).......

Alan Merten: I strongly believe that the core of the university is the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Similarly, general education is the key to ensuring that all of our undergraduates not only learn but learn to learn, which will be the key to their future well beyond their George Mason education.

Mt. Lebanon - PA: What do you think of the recent SAT decision to inflate the score by 800 points for an additional 20 minutes of work? This seems to be taking us further along the road to godhood for the concept of "one grade to sum up my potential value to society" an idea scorned at in the writings of Stephen Jay Gould -e.g., The Mismeasure of Man], and others. What's your take, Professor? Thanks much. HLB.

Alan Merten: In the past, we in higher education have placed way too much value and reliance on the SAT. It has been shown in many cases that the primary value of the SAT is that it's a good predictor of freshman grades, but is not a good predictor of just about anything else. The current discussion is giving us an opportunity and a challenge to take a broader view of our applicants and to become less dependent on one test score. We at George Mason have not relied that heavily on the SAT over the last several years and now we are glad to see that others are following our lead.

Bob Levey: Scholarships..... Easy to get at George Mason? Based on need? Easy to get even if you don't happen to be 18 and fresh out of high school?

Alan Merten: We provide both need-based and merit-based financial aid. Aid is available to both the traditional student and the non-traditional student. This gives me an opportunity to comment on the changing nature of what we mean by a "traditional" student. We used to believe that undergraduates were primarily 18 to 22 years of age, were full-time and lived on campus. Recently, we have learned that this group accounts for somewhere between 17 and 20 percent of today's undergraduates in the United States. That's why we've had to change our policy toward financial aid, as well as a variety of other aspects of the university.

Frederick, MD: Why are colleges like George Mason so stingy about accepting transfer credits? I've completed 23 credits toward an MA in English - with a GPA of 3.95. I had to give up on school for personal reasons, but I'd like to finish my degree. But every college I talk to says they will only accept 6 credits of transfer work. (The original college was in Maine.) What's the reasoning behind that policy?

Alan Merten: As far as I'm concerned, we're quite generous about accepting transfer credits. I urge you to contact our Department of English and I think you might be pleasantly surprised. Tell them that the president told you to contact them.

Bob Levey: George Mason is well-known as a place that has recruited "star faculty." Why did you go this route? What have the benefits been?

Alan Merten: George Johnson became president of George Mason University in 1978. He properly recognized that one way to get the attention of the world was to bring in star faculty and give them the opportunity to both shine and do things differently than they had done in traditional universities. The star faculty were required to teach undergraduates, and they both loved it and thrived in the classroom. Our challenges over the last six years have been to build up the faculty at all levels, from the most junior to the senior faculty. Given the nature of the institution and our location, we have been very successful at bringing both the best full-time faculty and the best part-time faculty into the George Mason classroom.

DC: What are town gown relations like between Mason and Fairfax? We've heard a lot about relationship troubles at GW and Georgetown, but not with Mason per se.

Alan Merten: We have campuses in Fairfax, Prince William and Arlington. We have been very successful at developing and maintaining good relations with our communities. The key has been to communicate and constantly consider both our needs and that of the community around us. In Arlington, we not only have the support of the community in general, but have benefited from two Arlington County bond issues to help us build buildings. One of our recent successes in Prince William was the decision by Eli Lilly to build a large manufacturing plant adjacent to our campus. Town gown relationships require time and effort by the university's administration, and you can never take anything for granted.

Bob Levey: Forgive my "Wow!," but only 17 to 20 percent of today's undergraduates are traditional 18-to-22-year-olds? Who are the rest? Returning Moms? Former military? And what does this change in demographics mean for the nature of university faculties?

Alan Merten: Our challenge in today's university is to support both the traditional student and the non-traditional student. For example, we have to offer classes not only throughout the day time, but long into the evening. A busy time on our campus is between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., when we are serving both the day students and the night students. Our full-time students work part-time, and some even work full-time. And our part-time students are almost always employed full-time. The average age of our undergraduate is 24 years of age.

Alexandria, VA: Why don't your students support the basketball team on a consistent basis? I go to games and find it discouraging for the Patriot Center to be filled with maybe 3,000 fans, mostly adults and families.

Alan Merten: We need more support from students, alumni and the community for our basketball team. Jim Larranaga, the basketball coach, has brought a quality program to George Mason. I will do all I can to get more support from our various constituencies for this program. We need to do a better job of marketing the program both on and off campus.

Bob Levey: The high-tech bubble hasn't exactly burst in Northern Virginia, but it's leaking a bit. The effect on George Mason's curriculum and fund-raising has been.......?

Alan Merten: Our students did not appear to be affected by the slow-down in the high-tech economy. In the traditional university, the students start looking for a job sometime in their senior year. In our case, most of our students have been working either part-time or full-time throughout their college experience. We believe that our curriculum in the high-tech area is what it should be. We have recently added a program that combines the best of management education with the best of information technology education. We have not seen any fall-off in fundraising.

Dupont Circle: Hello, and thanks for joining the chat today! I will be starting grad school at GMU this fall. On a recent visit to the campus I was struck and impressed by how diverse the student body is. Coming from a large midwestern state school, this made a great impression on me. Can you give me a sense of the demographic breakdown of the university?

Also, I know GMU is muchly a commuter campus (I will be commuting from DC.) Is there still a strong sense of community among students, and lots of on-campus activities, etc. I hope to be involved even though I will be leaving Fairfax at the end of each day. Thanks for your thoughts!

Alan Merten: We have a truly diverse campus. Over 1/3 of our students are either ethnic minorities, foreign students or first-generation Americans. This diverse culture affects not only what happens in the classroom, but what happens outside the classroom.
My advice to you is to get involved in student clubs and organizations. This is the best way to become part of the campus community. Also, make a concentrated effort to get to know your faculty members outside the classroom.

Arlington, VA: Given the glut of PhDs, why has GMU decided to expand the number of programs that issue doctorates (e.g. History)? It strikes me that institutional vanity is at work here, rather than trying to address the needs of the academic world.

Alan Merten: We have added very few Ph.D. programs, and we add them only in areas where we know there is demand. With respect to the new program in History and New Media, this program is responding to demands for a program that prepares faculty to teach history through the use of information technology -- in particular, the World Wide Web. In addition to adding programs, at each of the levels we are constantly deleting programs.

Bob Levey: Has Title IX (the requirement that spending on women's sports be balanced with spending on men's) produced problems at George Mason?

Alan Merten: George Mason University does not have a football team. Consequently, we find it not only feasible, but desirable to be in compliance with Title IX. I personally am a strong supporter of women's athletics, and I am glad that we can provide first-class programs to both our men and women.

Fairfax: It seems a given that the best universities in the country receive significant financial contributions from alumni. Yet, GMU has never had alumni who have given large amounts of money. What's being done to change this?

Thanks,
GMU Class of '92 alumnus

Alan Merten: As a young university, our alumni are relatively young. We need to get our alumni to get in the habit of giving soon after they graduate. We need small gifts when you're young and much bigger gifts when you get older. We have to communicate to our alumni the nature of our programs, and the nature of our needs. We also need to make sure the university gets better every year, so that the value of their degree goes up.

Bob Levey: How did George Mason's law school climb so far so fast in the U.S. News and World Report rankings?

Alan Merten: George Mason's law school is 22 years old. The law school caught people's attention as early as the late 1980s, when it emphasized the importance of economics as part of the education of a lawyer. Approximately five years ago, we decided to add technology as another dimension of the law school. Our students in the law school are required to understand the role of technology in legal work, and to understand the issues related to the protection of intellecutal property created through the use of technology. We continue to make efficient use of the high quality part-time faculty that are available to our law school. During the last 18 months, we added Ken Starr and Charles Robb to our law school faculty.

Arlington, VA: Dr. Merten,

At the risk of sounding cranky, I’d like to ask you about the dilution of standards in higher education. For the record, I have a humanities PhD from a “prestigious” university, for which I learned foreign languages, spent years in distant archives, and wrote a substantial dissertation. Given my background, I cringe every time I see or hear an advertisement from a university that seem to promise “no sweat” advanced degrees, usually masters in business or public administration. (“We’ll fit your schedule!” “Credit for life experience!” “Most graduates finish in less than 18 months!”)

I know that the fiscal realities of the twenty-first century university are such that many probably rely on the tuition from these programs to stay afloat. But isn’t there something lost when universities become shopping malls for dubious career credentials?

Alan Merten: I am probably crankier than you are on this matter. We cheapen education when we claim that we can give someone credentials for a minimal amount of work. I'm particularly disturbed by programs that give massive credit for related work experience and allow the rest of the degree to be gotten over the Web without any personal contact to other students or faculty. We have a responsibility to respond to students' needs, but this does not imply that we have to turn the institution over to them.

Bob Levey: Do Virginia's very best high school graduates go to college outside Virginia? If so, how do you fix that? Money?

Alan Merten: We are in the midst of facing a major challenge in Virginia. Multiple studies indicate that in 2010, there will be 32,000 more Virginians wanting to attend a public college or university than there were in 2002. If we don't expand our Virginia colleges and universities to meet this demand, these people will leave the state and, as has been shown in the past, will not return. We will have given them a K-12 education and not benefited from it.

Bob Levey: You've been president of GMU for six years. The average tenure at a major American university is seven. It's clearly time to ask Alan Merten, "What's next?"

Alan Merten: I love what I am doing. Being a university president in the greater Washington area is at times frustrating, but most often is challenging and fun. To succeed as a university president today, you need to truly enjoy the various constituencies that you have to deal with. I need to deal with students, faculty, staff, government officials, alumni and the media. I enjoy them all, and will find something else to do when I know longer enjoy these different groups.

Washington DC: In what disciplines is GMU developing new master's and graduate programs?

Alan Merten: The historical strengths of George Mason have been in information technology, public policy, visual and performing arts, law and economics. We will continue to build on the programs in these areas with additional degrees. In the last several years, we have put significant effort into the sciences, particularly the biological sciences. We recently announced degrees in these areas, and there will be more to come. Check out www.gmu.edu for more information.

Arlington, VA: Can you give us a thumbnail sketch of how GMU is funded, i.e, how much from the state, tuition, private contributions, business partnerships?

Alan Merten: Our budget is approximately $390 million per year. Approximately a third of this comes from the state, a third from tuition and a third from a variety of other sources. Those other sources include gifts from alumni, friends and corporations, and federal contracts and grants.

Bob Levey: It isn't hard to imagine a very large university being developed from scratch in Loudoun County? Should it be a branch of George Mason or a wholly separate institution?

Alan Merten: We have been very pleased with the success of our Prince William campus, our newest campus. This has been successful because of the strong partnership between George Mason University and both the business and government communities of Prince William. We have had discussions, both on-campus and with community leaders, about other campuses. There have been several discussions with groups from Loudoun. We think it is more cost-beneficial for Virginia to look at the potential of us adding another campus, as opposed to starting another university.

Bob Levey: Georgetown University hosts presidential speeches. George Washington hosts "Nightline." Will George Mason ever get into the high-visibility media game?

Alan Merten: We are very pleased with the high-visibility we get from our participation in National Public Radio and public television programs. I want us to do more with these two outlets. We recently hired Frank Sesno from CNN -- stay tuned to see where this may lead.

Bob Levey: Your school (and others in Virginia) didn't get a whole lot of help from Richmond during the Gilmore Administration, to put it mildly. Will things be better under the current governor?

Alan Merten: We have high expectations for Governor Warner. He comes from northern Virginia and has spent his life in the knowledge-based economy. Hopefully we can get through this financial crisis as soon as possible, and then get both the governor and the General Assembly to not only better support our current student population, but also allow us to meet the needs of the students we know are coming our way. Gov. Warner has pointed out that Virginia's institutions of higher education need to do a much better job at getting federal research dollars. We agree, and we will work together to help make this happen. But the Commonwealth of Virginia has to provide funds to support our current research efforts. Our competitor states are investing in both facilities and programs that aggressively position their universities to get the big federal bucks. Virginia can't afford to do any less.

Arlington, VA: What do you think about university presidents (i.e. Stephen Joel Trachtenberg of GW) who run the university like a business instead of focusing on education?

Alan Merten: My background is as a computer scientist and a business school professor. This is going to sound a little like a cliche: I believe that you should not run the university like a business, but you run it in a business-like fashion. All administrators should be aware of where the money comes from and where it goes. Administrators and faculty should be held accountable for their programs and for the funds that they are allocated. On the other hand, we need to often do things at the university that don't make good traditional business sense. We have a broader set of responsibilities than just short-term financial viability.

Bob Levey: If I snapped my fingers and said, "Ok, Alan Merten, I'll give you an Orange Line subway spur right to George Mason's front door," you would say.......?

Alan Merten: I would be ecstatic if you got the Orange Line to go significantly farther west than Nutley Road. A large percentage of our students, faculty and staff travel long distances to come to our campus. We need better public transportation. We also need better roads in northern Virginia. Just as it is important to pass the higher education bond bill this November, it is equally important to pass the transportation bond bill. Northern Virginia has a transportation crisis, and we better get to solving it, or it's going to affect everything we do, including our higher education system.

Bob Levey: Everyone knows who George Washington was. But I'll bet a lot of people--including many at George Mason University--have no idea who George Mason was. What's your answer to that question?

Alan Merten: George Mason's major claim to fame is he was the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Portions of the Virginia Declaration of Rights appeared in the Declaration of Independence, and later in the Bill of Rights. I like to say that Thomas Jefferson did an excellent job of text-editing some of George Mason's work. George Mason was at the Constitutional Convention, but refused to sign the Constitution because it did not contain a Bill of Rights. He was also a relatively reluctant politician. He would serve in government for a while, and then return to his farm and family. He believed in term limits. We are all ecstatic about the new George Mason memorial on the Mall. It is strategically placed between the Jefferson Memorial and the FDR memorial.

Bob Levey: Most university presidents spend at least 75 percent of their time raising money. Do you?

Alan Merten: I spend a lot of time off campus. As president of a public institution, I do fund-raising with both the private sector and with the state government and the federal government. I probably spend as much time friend-raising as I do fund-raising. It's the case that I spend a lot of time, but it's not 75 percent. The rest of the time, I'm on campus, working with vice presidents and deans to ensure that our programs increase in quality and deserve the funds that we want from both the public and private sectors.

Bob Levey: Many thanks and best of luck to Alan Merten. Next week on "Levey Live," our guest will be Michael Kaiser, chief executive officer of the Kennedy Cenmter. That discussion will begin at noon Eastern time on July 9.

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