The former leader of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln warns that it would be unwise for the Huskers to parachute out of the Big Ten.
Harvey Perlman, who was chancellor in 2010 when UNL left the Big 12 to join the Big Ten, said his reasoning has only a bit to do with sports and a lot to do with academics.
“The fact is that the Big Ten is much bigger than a sports conference,” Perlman, who is now on the NU College of Law faculty, said Wednesday. “And it would be unfortunate to sacrifice it to play North Dakota State in football. It would be a very significant blow to the academic reputation of the university.”
Basking in the academic glow of the Big Ten is a sweet benefit of playing sports in that conference, academics say.
Although Husker football fans are riled that the Big Ten has decided against holding fall athletics, many academicians inside and outside the state caution the Huskers against taking too much offense with the decision. UNL must avoid getting so perturbed with the Big Ten that it stomps out in petulance or gets disowned, they say.
The fact is that the Big Ten is one of the strongest groups of universities in the world, and it takes pride in meeting academically and sharing expertise among partners.
The conference oversees the Big Ten Academic Alliance, a batch of administrators and professors who organize leadership conferences, online course sharing, collaboration in library materials, combined purchasing power and other elements to maximize the strength of the conference.
Husker officials and fans have expressed their dejection over the Big Ten’s decision this week to not play fall sports because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some, including UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green, have intimated that the Husker program can compete safely and will consider putting together an independent football schedule.
“We are very disappointed in the decision by the Big Ten Conference to postpone fall football,” said Green, whose name topped that of three other university leaders who issued the statement Tuesday. “We hope it may be possible for our student athletes to be able to compete.”
University of Iowa Faculty Senate President Joseph Yockey said Big Ten schools share rare library collections and offer a joint leadership program. Merely through association, Yockey said, faculty members, graduate students and undergrads are drawn to Big Ten universities because of their prestige and research resources.
Keith Marshall, executive director of the Illinois-based Big Ten Academic Alliance, added that conference collaboration includes brain-injury research, minority graduate student and faculty pipelines, fiber-optic networking, summer research for undergraduates and many other projects.
Yockey called the Big Ten one of the biggest research enterprises on the globe — an enterprise, he said, with “worldwide currency.”
Suggesting that the Big Ten is a collection of elite research institutions is like saying Warren Buffett makes decent money. The Big Ten’s University of Michigan had the second-highest research expenditures in the country in 2018 (about $1.6 billion), behind Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Research expenditures are made with grants earned from the federal government and private entities, and with an institution’s own money. The University of Wisconsin was eighth, federal data says, and the Big Ten (made up of 14 universities) had 12 of the top 50. Only Iowa (51st) and UNL (78th) were outside the top 50 that year.
UNL has the second-smallest enrollment in the Big Ten (about 25,000), ahead of only the private Northwestern University in Illinois.
It’s not just UNL that benefits from the partnership. The NU Medical Center’s Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha, affiliated with UNL through the NU system, joined the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium in 2013.
Since jumping out of the Texas-dominated Big 12 and joining the Big Ten, UNL administrators have talked about the need to sharpen their academic game to fit in with the Big Ten. There is evidence that UNL has picked it up, too. UNL was ranked 91st in research in 2010, the federal government says.
Linda Ray Pratt, now retired as a UNL and NU system professor and administrator, said that all of the talk by sports media of UNL taking “rogue action” in the Big Ten “could endanger our membership in the Big Ten, which also has an important academic side for UNL.”
Efforts have been made “to bring UNL into the circle of action and research proposals, etc., that flourish in the Big Ten schools,” she said.
Lance Perez, dean of engineering at UNL, described “tremendous academic benefits to being in the Big Ten.” Perez said Big Ten engineering deans gather annually to discuss challenges and opportunities. “And this happens across the disciplines.”
Perez said he reaches out to Big Ten deans for advice on communication and relations, for instance, with the powerful National Science Foundation. “This group,” he said of the deans, “is amazingly collaborative, amazingly forthcoming.”
Michael Baumgartner, head of the Nebraska Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education, said he has no doubt that being in the Big Ten helps UNL recruit faculty members and engage in research projects.
The Big Ten Academic Alliance enables UNL and UNMC to meet academic leaders and participate in exchanges involving faculty, students and library material, he said. When you partner with the Big Ten, Baumgartner said, you connect with “some of the best universities in the country, some of the best universities in the world.”