In the last week, Southern New Jersey has been thrown into what amounts to a dictatorship, led by our Fuhrer, Governor Chris Christie, via a back-door deal with Stalin, aka George Norcross, to overhaul the higher education system in NJ. This is the same man who less that two years ago claimed the state spent far too much on education, and that teachers were overpaid and overrated. I start with a quote: "You all know the state cannot continue to spend money it does not have. And you all know that the appetite for tax increases among our constituents has come to an end...There's no time left. We have no room left to borrow. We have no room left to tax." This is from an article in which Chris Christie slams the need for spending more on education in this state. So, then, we have to wonder, why is this proposal even being considered? I will break this down for those who don't know what is happening.
Plans to reorganize the higher education system in NJ have been bandied about for over ten years now, but every other such plan only included changes to the medical school UMDNJ and the possibility of Rowan University gaining control of Cooper Hospital so that there would be an excellent, research orientated medical school in Southern New Jersey. The last such plan was dismissed by Governor McGreevy, presumably because of the prohibitive cost. On January 25, 2012, Chris Christie announced that a board consisting of 5 people, none of which are economists or even physicians, at UMDNJ had released a proposal outlining how they recommend the state overhaul the higher education system of Southern NJ. Actually, all of NJ. 5 people. None of them qualified to make such an assessment, but we will ignore that for now.
Cooper Medical is, for all intents and purposes, owned by George Norcross. A deal was made last year for Rowan University to buy and incorporate Cooper into their Camden campus, although keeping Glassboro as their flagship campus. This is a 28 million dollar project on it's own. Now the "plan" stands as this:
This plan began with a medical school. In fact, this entire quagmire is about a medical school. As you can see, UMDNJ would be sliced up, some absorbed by Rutgers-New Brunswick, and some allowed their autonomy while still continuing to be state owned, but privately run (read:someone is making a bunch of bank). Now look below to South Jersey. Rowan University, while boasting a nationally ranked Engineering School, is a small teaching college barely 15 years into University status. While known in the region, it has as yet not gained prestige or distinction outside the immediate area. So why, then, does Christie insist on the hostile takeover of Rutgers-Camden? Enter the medical school. Cooper Medical will now be run by Rowan, and without Rutgers, it will be the only research hospital in NJ not affiliated with a research university. And that simply cannot be allowed. However, Rowan will, if this plan goes through, also take Rutgers Law, Rutgers Business, and the Camden campus itself, and the entire facility will be under the flag of the Rowan name. Rutgers Law-Camden has seen the likes of governors, federal judges, Congresspeople, and many other notable alumni graduate for the past 61 years. The same for Rutgers Business. Rutgers University as a whole, and the Camden campus itself is a globally recognized research based State institution. Rowan began as a small teaching college until one man bought himself a college for 100 million and five years later it gained University status. So, who has the most to lose, and the most to gain?
That answer is obvious. However, while no one involved will explain the reasoning, Rowan would be the one to gain everything. Again, the only explanation truly given is that it is because Rowan will have Cooper Medical. The UMDNJ report states that the only reason Rowan is to become the flagship of South Jersey education is "because of it's ties to Cooper Medical." The report goes on to say that combining the schools is necessary "for Rowan to become a comprehensive research facility".
And I am sure that is true. Rowan does require Rutgers assets, resources, faculty, students, and prestige to become a "comprehensive research facility" because Rutgers-Camden already IS a comprehensive research facility. It only lacks a medical school. Nowhere in this report does it state why it is necessary for Rutgers to lose everything, and Rowan to possess it all. Nowhere does it explain why Rowan must also take the law and business schools to become this comprehensive research facility. Something else not mentioned is why a consortium model, used by such states as Boston (which has in its consortium Harvard University, Boston College, Boston University, UMass Amherst, and several others), to accomplish the same goal of unifying higher education in Southern New Jersey and affiliating the facility with an already established research university, but still allowing the much more prestigious name of Rutgers continue in a city that desperately needs it.
Also strangely missing from the UMDNJ
Then we examine the claim of stimulating the economy. Well, we've already addressed how much more debt the state will be in, so I don't see much stimulation. Perhaps in about ten years that will be the case. But not now. A friend has told me I am not looking at "the big picture" and how "sometimes a lot of money must be spent now to create money in the future". This is hilarious to me, considering the Republicans view on that notion. The nation's president has been doing that very same thing, and he is being lambasted for it. Go figure. What remains to be the truth is that Camden, NJ is a depressed city, and Rutgers University's presence there has been one of the few shining lights in the area. Not only are there several community projects within Rutgers to make Camden a better place, graduates often return to give back to their alma mater's community, feeling a sense of responsibility to the city. Make no mistake, Christie, Norcross, and Rowan couldn't care less about Camden and what it needs. Removing a prestigious university from Camden and replacing it with a plan that will require an astounding (read: over a billion dollars) amount of money will only depress it further, and limit the options for it's residents.
Which brings me to the more options part of Christie's claims. No matter how you do the math, removing one option from the two options in the area equals one LESS opportunity, not more. In addition, the faculty from Rutgers-Camden, largely tenured and all powerful forces in their respective fields (all fields, not just the engineering field Rowan focuses on) have shown their outrage at the threat to their careers and some may choose to move on to greener pastures-perhaps to a University whose name means something beyond the borders of the tri-state area. Students have said they may not return either. Administration officials in RU-C have said they are already experiencing difficulties in hiring new faculty, because these new applicants do not want to enter into an unknown facility-this would lessen their positions in their fields and rob them of their affiliation with a globally known university. With only one option that has not had the time to develop into the same caliber as Rutgers, more students than ever will flee the state and go across the bridge for their education, taking away money and opportunity from our state, not bringing it in.
The residents of Camden who seek an excellent education at Rutgers, counting on the name to help them open doors for them, allowing them the opportunity to rise from a depressed city and create a name for themselves, may not have that opportunity at all if this proposal continues. The Rowan-Camden campus houses 500 students, as opposed to the roughly 6500 of Rutgers-Camden. How would any of the Camden students get into the Camden campus of this merged facility? And when they can't, will they be able to go elsewhere? Glassboro is twenty miles away from Camden, a distance that may be too prohibitive for some to overcome. What happens to their futures? There has been a rumor of a future light rail line made to go between Camden and Glassboro, but again, where is all this money coming from?
Rutgers-Camden students, alumni and faculty have not been taking this lying down. The movement against this shady and fuzzy proposal was swift and immediate, with a petition accumulating more than 7500 signatures in a little over a week, endorsements of support from highly placed alumni, and wide-spread media coverage. Rowan's interim president and a couple of members of the supposedly independent Board of Governors and Trustees (the boards who need to vote to pass this bill-but also who consist of no less than five individuals involved in the creation of the bill itself, in flagrant disregard for the conflict of interest) have at turns dismissed the movement, and the State Senate President (who, again, is supposedly objective) has called the protest a "lynch mob". The former have claimed that Rutgers students will "calm down once they realize they will still have a degree from the State University". Strangely, the students at Rutgers DO understand that, and yet the movement is only gaining steam. Senator Sweeney of West Deptford somehow saw the peaceful protest of around 700 students (almost double that in total for the forum meeting following) as an "irresponsible lynch mob" in the same breath as claiming he wouldn't support the proposal if he didn't like it. Having been at that rally, and also having the evidence of several media news outlets to back me up, there was nothing "lynch mob" like about the protest. And it is patently irresponsible to to dismiss the First Amendment rights of the students, when, regardless of the details Sweeney says have not even been ironed out yet, we at Rutgers-Camden have everything to lose and nothing to gain. I may get my Rutgers degree, but I was going to attend Rutgers Law, and why would I do that now? The American Bar Association says that the newly formed facility would be required to be re-accredited. On top of that, why would I go to a law school no one has heard of unless I have no intention of actually getting a job in the field? Rutgers Law would have allowed me to go out of state with a brand-name law degree in my hand, giving me a leg up in an economy and job market that is dismal at best. Now my only real option is to leave the state to get my law degree, joining the other masses of potential lawyers and businesspeople who would rather have their piece of paper they spent tens of thousands of dollars earning actual be worth the paper it's printed on outside of a two hundred mile radius.
At this moment, the "lynch mob" of Rutgers students, faculty, and alumni are massing outside Trenton, NJ at the Senate meeting to show the state, the governor and George Norcross that we will do whatever it takes to prevent the hostile takeover of our school and our reputation. We will not take this lying down. We are fighters. We are Rutgers.
