An Exclusive Interview with Penn President Amy Gutmann (Part Four)

Yong Tang: I have a question about reputation. I hope this would not offend you. Penn is an Ivy League member. Penn is among the top ten universities in America. But frankly speaking its reputation is far behind Harvard, Yale, Princeton and etc. Many Chinese people mistakenly think Penn is a public university and confuse Penn with Penn State University. Given its academic excellence, Penn should have been much more influential. Do you have any plans to enhance public awareness of Penn in China and in the world?

Amy: We were just named by 2006 College Guide as the hottest university here. We have been ranked No. 4 by US News and World Report in 2004 and 2005. Penn experienced an increase in applications overall this year with more than 20,300 students applying for the Class of 2010. Our international applications also increased about 7 percent to 2,913. We saw a 20% increase from Mainland China and Hong Kong.

I would love to get the word out even further. That's one of the reasons why I travel to talk about Penn and engage our alumni. But we are doing very well and we are getting too many applications.

Yong Tang: Maybe the school name should be blamed. The University of Pennsylvania sounds like a public university.

Amy: It doesn't prevent the best and the brightest students from applying to us. (Laugh). It doesn't prevent us from moving forward. (Laugh). That is our name and we are proud of it. It really would not make sense for us to change the name after so many hundreds of years. That would create more confusion. The people who need to know about what we are are the people we try more and more to inform about what we are doing.

Yong Tang: Penn is really an excellent university. You just need more PR in China. (Laugh)

Amy: I will increase the budget for that. (Laugh). I really like to talk to you and other people who are interested in Penn to make sure people who would like to come here could have excellent education we offer.

Yong Tang: I know you are responsible for the financial health of the University. How do you raise money as a private university president?

Amy: There are many ways. Our alumni body is our primary source of private funding. I am going to launch a capital campaign for private funding and it will be a multi-billion dollar campaign.

Yong Tang: According to the public figure, Penn has the largest budget within the Ivy League, with annual expenditures of $4.25 billion (including a payroll of $2.183 billion). According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Penn is one of the country's largest fundraisers; the school ranked third among all US universities in 2005, raising approximately $440 million. So the money is not a problem?

Amy: No, the money is always a problem. We are very large. We have about 10, 000 undergraduate students and almost the same number of graduate students. Our endowment is about 4 billion dollars, which is small compared to the number of students. So fundraising is an important part of what keeps Penn strong. Except the private sources, we also compete for research dollars from National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation and etc. In order to go from excellence to eminence, we need resources to make ourselves stronger.

Yong Tang: That means you also get funding from the government?

Amy: We do get funding both from the federal and the state government. At the federal level, we get money through peer reviewed research grants. At the state level, we also get money. For example, our School of Veterinary Medicine was funded by the state.

Yong Tang: How about the percentage of funding from the government?

Amy: There is a significant part of our budget coming from the public. Many people think private universities don't get government funding. It is a misconception. In fact we are very dependent upon the public investment just like Chinese universities. So that is why we are so pleased to know our President announced more funding for scientific research and science and math education in the State of the Union address.

Vast majority of our research and science programs are funded through government money that comes from the government agencies like NSF and NIH, which are peer reviewed. We are the second largest recipients of NIH founding of any university in the United States. Johns Hopkins University is the first one. So every great research university in the United States is very dependent on government funding as well as private funding.

Yong Tang: If a person studied at Penn as an undergraduate student and then studied at Harvard as a graduate student. Which university usually he would contribute more when he becomes wealthy?

Amy: Many of our alumni give both to their undergraduate and graduate university. Undergraduate education creates a lot of loyalty. But our professional school graduates are also very loyal. For example, Wharton alumni are very loyal to Wharton. Basically when people graduate from Penn, they are very successful financially. They feel they should give back to Penn.

Yong Tang: Jennifer Washburn, an American education expert recently published a book entitled The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education. The title is very sensational, isn't it? The book argues that commercial forces have quietly transformed virtually every aspect of academic life. Many problems occur accordingly in elite universities: Students rate their teachers poorly; Teaching is neglected while research overemphasized; Non-faculty employees are too many; Top and tenure professors are overpaid; Faculty members becoming too old. How do you think of those problems? Is it just a kind of exaggeration?

Amy: Our emphasis on teaching is very great. We don't allow the influence of commercialism to be overbearing. We collaborate in some ventures with companies but never to the detrimental of teaching mission. We have been commended for the quality of teaching of our faculty. We reward our faculty for great teaching. Some of our greatest researchers are also among our greatest teachers. The loyalty of our alumni is based on the quality of the teaching.

By Yong Tang, Washington-based correspondent of People's Daily Online