No wasteland of higher education

As UNLV Faculty Senate chair, I represent the university's nearly 1,000 faculty. In consultation with many of my faculty colleagues, I believe it is my responsibility to them and the quality of their work to respond to the misleading Sept. 14 and Sept. 21 Viewpoints commentaries by William Epstein, a UNLV professor of social work. His opinions certainly are not shared by the vast majority of the faculty.

UNLV is a dynamic and growing institution, one that is quite young relative to the vast majority of American research universities, as we just celebrated our 50th anniversary in 2007. Rutgers, for example, used as a comparison institution in the article, was founded before our nation in 1766. Our sister institution, the University of Nevada, Reno, had an 83-year head start on UNLV. In addition, our strong commitment to becoming a great research institution goes back only about 10 years. That being said, our growth has been remarkable in terms of enrollment, research activity and recruitment of faculty.

As for our students, preliminary numbers this fall indicate our freshmen enrollment is up nearly 9 percent, transfer enrollment is up nearly 6 percent and graduate enrollment is up more than 8 percent. Overall enrollment is up 2 percent which, after an unprecedented growth period, is desirable as we continue to focus on improving the selectivity of students. It should be noted that UNLV raised entrance standards to a 3.0 high school grade-point this fall, up from 2.5 in spring 2006. UNLV graduate students are competitive with the best graduates in the nation.

We have a strong faculty and many nationally recognized academic programs. More than 95 percent of our faculty have terminal degrees. Many of our faculty hired over the past several years are graduates from the very top research universities, with a commitment and attitude to do high-quality research. Our faculty have earned Guggenheim Awards, MacArthur Fellowships and other prestigious awards.

UNLV was the fourth fastest-growing university in the nation in output of articles in the sciences and engineering fields, according to the August 3, 2007, published study by the National Science Foundation. Publication of peer-reviewed articles in leading academic journals -- considered a key measure of productivity and excellence by a university -- grew 99 percent at UNLV between 1991 and 2001, while nationally, research productivity among top-200 universities remained flat or decreased, the study showed.

Also, UNLV ranks in the top 10 universities in the world for advertising research, according to The Journal of Advertising, which called UNLV's increase in prestige a "meteoric rise." The Atlantic, a scholarly journal, ranks UNLV's doctoral program in literature with creative dissertation and the Master of Fine Arts International among the top five programs. In addition, The National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security designated UNLV as a Center of Academic Excellence in information assurance education, indicating that UNLV is a national leader in cybersecurity education and research.

Getting published is one indicator of research quality. Winning competitive research grants from prestigious agencies and foundations, often worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, is another important indicator. The number of scholarly publications that a university produces depends on the size of research budget, the size and the mixture of teaching and research responsibilities of the faculty and whether the university has a medical school. Universities with medical schools -- nine out of 14 universities included in Mr. Epstein's analysis, such as UCLA -- have consistently higher numbers of faculty publications as well as research dollars. In 2007, 36 percent of the publications indexed in SCI for UCLA faculty had an author from the school of medicine.

Last year alone, UNLV research projects were supported by nearly $75 million in federal grants by agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, USDA, NASA, EPA and the U.S. Army. Every dollar of these grants generates $4.50 worth of economic activity in Nevada. UNLV receives these competitive grants over other universities across the nation because these prestigious agencies believe UNLV faculty represented the best investment for the nation.

Let's take a look at our sister school. UNR has a medical school. UNLV does not. The Science Citations indexes include medical school publications. UNR received about 10 percent less state funding, yet it has about 42 percent fewer students and only about 3.5 percent fewer faculty than UNLV.

While I disagree with much of Mr. Epstein's Sept. 14 article, I must agree with one concept. Regardless of the recent state budget cuts and those that may lie ahead, UNLV is severely underfunded, and the commitment to higher education by the state's citizenry is uncertain.

These factors, along with UNLV's comparatively young age and rather recent strong commitment to becoming a top research university, are challenges. Given these challenges, I believe that UNLV has come a long way in just 50 years. Many universities across the nation with similar challenges would love to be positioned the way UNLV is, and would not dream of setting the lofty goals that UNLV is determined to reach.

Nasser Daneshvary is a professor of economics and chairman of UNLV's Faculty Senate.