Barker leads Clemson into second decade

By Anna B. Mitchell  

MAY 10, 2010 12:18 p.m. (0)

If demand is a measure of an institution’s success, Clemson University’s star is still rising, says the school’s president of 10 years, Jim Barker.

The university has 2,900 spots available to incoming freshmen next year. So far, 40,000 people have toured the campus, Barker said, and 17,000 wanna-be Tigers have submitted applications.

“If you were a business, that says your customers are telling you they want more and are lining up to buy your product,” Barker said in a conversation with The Journal. “If you look at it in those terms, our investments have been wise because now we are in a totally different place in terms of desirability of the institution.”

When Barker took up the mantle of president in 2000, he did so with some clear goals in mind by 2010 – foremost to win a national championship in a major sport and to reach top-20 status in the U.S. New and World Report annual rankings.

They will remain on his list of goals for 2020.

There were smaller goals, too – grooming two Rhodes Scholars (hasn’t happened yet) and gaining a chapter have Phi Beta Kappa (has) – but the U.S. News piece, Clemson’s formulaic approach to increasing quality as well as its success have raised eyebrows over the years.

Barker said setting clear, attainable goals for his community is part of the Clemson way. He said everyone on campus – students, staff and faculty – all contributed to the school’s improvement from a 38th ranking in 2001 to a solid 22nd in recent years.

The first hurdle, he said, was shaking people out of the mentality that Clemson couldn’t improve. That overcome, he said, the growing concern is money.

“Pretty soon, I think, it will have an impact on rankings,” Barker said.

Much of Clemson’s climb was achieved through increasing the number of classes under 20 students and decreasing those with more than 50; boosting SAT scores and class rank of incoming students; increasing retention and graduation rates; improving faculty salaries; and increasing alumni giving (fourth highest among public universities for percentage of graduates giving).

“I had enough confidence in my alma mater to feel like we needed to identify specific targets,” Barker said. “We seem to do better when we have a mission. I don’t know if that’s our military roots or not – ‘we need to take this hill’ – but it has to be genuine, authentic and something that’s hard but doable. And it needed to have meaning.”

Sports teams have always measured progress by specific metrics and annual rankings, he said, so why not grab hold of that concept for the rest of the school, he said.

“People think competition among universities is on the field of athletics,” Barker said. “The truth is, it’s more competitive in areas of research and teaching. Really good faculty are of great value to an institution, and it becomes very challenging to keep faculty we’ve invested in and helped them to achieve.”

This costs money, Barker said, money that is not coming from state support at the same rate it was when he started. To keep faculty salaries competitive and their labs well-stocked, Clemson has opted to turn to students for support.

Clemson’s peer institutions in the annual rankings last year were Texas A&M, Purdue and Minnesota. In the low 30s – where Clemson’s ranking dwelled at the beginning of the decade – are Auburn, N.C. State and University of Vermont. To get in the top 20, Clemson would have to jump ahead of UGA and University of Pittsburgh.

Barker said his faculty and administrator salaries remain eight to 10 percent behind peer schools. Top administrators earn more than faculty, he said, but that’s the same at any university.

Annual increases in tuition have taken the basic cost of school – not including room and board – from $3,590 in 2000 to $11,476 this year (almost $2,000 more than out-of-state tuition back in 2000).

Asked whether such increases are placing Clemson out of reach to the state’s hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty, Barker said the best he can do is make sure students who come on scholarship have the means to stay on scholarship.

“The number of students in our freshman place that pay full in-state tuition? Zero percent,” Barker said.

Academic success programs on campus, he said, have helped students maintain a 3.0 GPA, required to continue receiving state lottery money towards tuition. Students at Clemson at one time retained scholarships at a 40 percent rate, it is now 70 percent.

Barker said he’s not sure what he will be doing in 10 years, but he does know where he will be. Clemson is his home, he said, and he intends to step back into the classroom full time at some point.

His only regret over the past 10 years? Not aiming for a top-25 ranking.

“We would have already achieved it,” he said, laughing.