The Daily O’Collegian

The Daily O’Collegian: How do you plan to combat increasing tuition?

Burns Hargis: I do think that the price is getting to be a deterrent for a lot of people. That means we have to figure out some strategies to manage that. The challenge, of course, is we’re the best bargain in the Big 12, so we’re the lowest in tuition and fees in the Big 12.

But I think for our market place we might be reaching a little beyond where we would ideally be. So, part of this fundraising effort is to take some of the pressure off the tuition and fees. If we can raise endowed chairs, that provide funds for compensation, graduate assistants, start up costs and the like.

I want to dramatically increase the money we have available for scholarships — that will help — right now we wave, we don’t actually have the money for the scholarships, but we still provide, in effect, a tuition waiver to people, and that numbers about $30 million.

The problem is to keep our talented faculty. We’re below the Big 12 average as it is. If we were to totally bring faculty and staff to the Big 12 average, it would cost $15 million a year. Each percent point of tuition raises it about $500,000. Just for that, you would have to raise tuition 30 percent — you can’t do that.

It’s not that we are doing everything perfectly. There are things I know we could do better, and I’m working to do that just as any good manager should. People that are concerned about this have the right to be concerned about it.

DC: How can students help with that issue?

BH: Recruit. The more enrollment we have, the more we have available. Because we have a lot of fixed costs, so regardless of how many students are here, all these buildings have to be taken care of. They all have to be heated and cooled. The faculty we have available for this year at least are fixed, so we have to pay the faculty and so on.

To the extent that you bring in more enrollment, there is more people paying the cost of tuition, and it lowers the pressure for everybody because your fixed costs haven’t increased and your variable costs are fairly minor.

I think everybody here needs to get involved in the recruitment effort. If you see prospective students that would be successful here and would like it, you need to do something about it and bring the organization to bear on the effort.

DC: What impact will the endowed chairs have on our university?

BH: Financially, it won’t have any impact for at a least a year by the nature of an endowment. You’re investing that money — you’re not spending that money — and then you’re earning interest on that money. And, of course, the markets aren’t the best right now. Basically, you need a year to build. And typically, it’s 5 percent of the amount of the endowment.

In terms of overall benefit to the university and in addition to that issue — and remember I said $15 million would bring us to the Big 12 average — this would basically get us halfway there without raising any tuition. In fact, that would be a 16 percent tuition increase.

It promotes Oklahoma State as a university that is committed to academics. I think we’ve had an awful lot of focus on athletics, which are important, but I think this is a good indicator that we know we’re an academic institution.

DC: Not many students understand “endowed chairs.” How does this impact students?

BH: Think of it more as a title than a chair. With that title comes certain benefits. There’s a certain prestige that comes with holding a chair, but as I described earlier, there’s real money. If you have a $1 million chair, you’ll earn $50,000 a year. Obviously, that’s not enough to pay a top professor.

But it may be that you have someone here that is a very talented professor making below the market, and you’re really in danger of losing that faculty member to another institution that would really love to have that person. The chair allows you to supplement the compensation to be able to hold that. There really are no other funds available to do that with.

It allows us to retain and attract the best faculty, and that’s the importance to the students because the better your faculty is, the better your education is.

DC: What is OSU doing in terms of energy usage?

BH: We engaged Bill Spears’ company, who happens to be the namesake for our business school, Energy Education Inc., to consult with us on this subject, and it’s been remarkably successful. In the first five months, we saved $1.4 million.

We’re very committed to this whole notion of sustainability. We would very much like to convert our fleet to natural gas. Some would argue it’s not practical with regular passenger vehicles. But for fleets, it’s very practical. We’re in discussion with Stillwater public schools and the city of Stillwater to build a filling station.

DC: Professor salary has always been a topic of discussion. What are your plans for that?

BH: Scholarships are a big part of it. A student who could not otherwise afford to come to Oklahoma State will have the resources to do that, which increases the enrollment, which increases the funds available to address faculty pay.

That’s really where I’ll be focused over the next, well, maybe the whole time I’m here — to increase scholarship money and endowed chairs and program support.

At the assistant professor level, we’re pretty competitive. It’s when you get to associate professor and full professor that we being to lag.

I’ve been in business long enough to know that you can’t be below your peers and not competitive if you expect to grow your organization.

DC: Do you have any improvements you plan to put into place for health care?

BH: Nobody’s got health care figured out. I think we could do a good job for this campus by increasing not only the universe that accesses our clinics, but also the services that are provided. I would like to come up with a system where we could provide clinical services to faculty, staff and their dependents.

Last year, we were the only school in the Big 12 that did not provide any coverage for dependents, which isn’t very family friendly. Most of the schools in the Big 12 provided 70 percent of dependent health care coverage. So this year we are paying 60 percent, and that was a cost that, unfortunately, the tuition raise provided.

DC: What feedback have you heard about the smoking ban — not only from people on campus, but also from people at other universities?

BH: So far, I haven’t really gotten much feedback. The feedback from the community as a whole, by that I’m including the whole state, has been very positive. This is an initiative that really rose out of recommendations from students and faculty and staff. This wasn’t something we thought up one afternoon and said, “Let’s go do this.”

It makes a strong statement that if we’re going to be truly healthy campus, then we don’t sanction litter and other nuisances against our community here. And, walking into a building through a fog of smoke isn’t very pleasant, never mind it isn’t very good for you and the person who is doing it.

Hopefully, the abstinence that this requires will, I hope, affect some in a positive way.

DC: How does OSU plan to become the “healthiest campus in the nation”?

BH: One of the important messages we need to send at this campus is that this is important, and we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to give people the ability to access the kind of information they need and the facilities to take advantage of it. The Colvin Center does that, and it’s great. But in the end, it all starts with the individual.

Once the individual decides they want to pursue being as healthy as they can, we need to be there to support that. Frankly, the healthier you are, the better you do.

I think things like trans fats, and all that, are kind of confusing and you really need somebody to speak to you in plain English about what it is.

DC: With the present state of the economy, do you think December and May graduates should be concerned about getting jobs?

BH: I think that by May hopefully, according to everything I’m hearing and reading, we should see a little movement out of the trough.

The advice I would give you — I’ve hired a lot of people over the years — start early and get your resumes out.

One thing I want to make available to our graduates — I want to network our alums in the areas our students are interested in. So if you’re graduating in architecture or journalism or the like, you’ll have the contact information available to you for OSU alums in that field. And they’re going to know a lot about the state of the field in terms of how many people are being hired and so on.

DC: We all agree that the living cost in Oklahoma is relatively low comparing with other states. However, due to the recent increasing of the prices (oil, UA rent, grocery..), while the assistantship remaining the same, it is getting very hard for international students to pay all the bills. Therefore my

question is: Is President Hargis aware of the difficulty that the international students are facing? And does he have any plan for it?

BH: Again that’s a big part of the endowed chair effort, and it’s not a quick fix, but those can be used for grad students. And I think the international presence on this campus is a tremendous asset for us.

I want them here, and I want to do all we can to support their presence here. I hope we’re able to improve graduate assistant salaries just like we need to improve our faculty salary.

DC: What kind of legacy are you hoping to leave when you look back at your time at Oklahoma State?

BH: When I leave, I want this university to have all the resources it needs to accomplish its mission. I want it to be an even more beautiful campus than it is. I want the city of Stillwater and the partnership with the University and the amenities around the university to be much more complete. I would love to see the area bordering our campus as a tremendous asset to our students, our staff and our faculty. I would like it to be recognized nationally as what we are — a great university.

DC: Is there anything you would like to add?

BH: I want you to buy tickets to the football games. We‘re up to 60,000 seats now, and we didn’t fill all the seats last year. Full stadiums are exciting stadiums, and they translate into victories. It really is important — especially to have students there. The students bring an energy that we old, beat-up alums can’t do.