Rowan plan is wrongheaded

By Dan Cook

Gov. Christie recently endorsed a plan to subsume the Rutgers-Camden campus into Glassboro-based Rowan University. The plan is framed as a merger that will streamline and bolster both entities. However, it seems much more like a hasty takeover that will sap current strengths.

The stated goal for this action is to create a major higher educational research institution in South Jersey that would, in the main, support the Cooper Medical School - itself having recently merged with Rowan. The proposal appears as a minor part of a committee report (the "Barer Report") that deals largely with another merger between the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey with Rutgers' North Jersey campuses.

This brief section of the report contains some presumptions: first, that there is no higher educational research institution in South Jersey, and second, that severing the Camden campus from Rutgers and then suturing it to Rowan will somehow magically produce the kind of institutional juggernaut imagined. As the report makes clear, the focus and impetus of the merger is to "meet the [Cooper] medical school's future needs." Almost as if an afterthought, the authors mention students, faculty, and programs not related to the medical school: "Over time the expanded university can become an additional comprehensive public research university in service to the State and region."

The report conjectures that the greatness of this new university will be realized only "over time," indicating the short-sightedness and myopia in the approach to this issue.

Rutgers-Camden already serves as a research university - one with significant value, reputation, resources, and strengths that have been painstakingly developed and assembled over the last decade. The campus is experiencing unparalleled quantitative and qualitative growth, with the largest undergraduate and graduate enrollments in its history. Three new and unique doctoral programs have already attracted significant scholars and have helped to draw national and international attention to the campus with associated conferences and research initiatives.