Ken Mortimer 1995 Interview
Price of Paradise · Hawaii Public Radio · aired 1995-04-23
Guests: Kenneth P. Mortimer (President, University of Hawaii)
Duration: 01:01:12

[00:00:01] Randall Roth: Good morning. This is Randy Roth, host of the Price of Paradise radio show. We're broadcast live each Sunday morning on KHPR, 88.1 FM and KKUA, 90.7 FM and then rebroadcast Sunday evenings at eight on KIFO, 1380 AM. If you're listening Sunday morning and would like to ask a question or make a brief comment, just call 9558821. The University of Hawaii has 10 campuses, almost 4,000 faculty members, another 4,000 non-teaching employees and approximately 51,000 students. Its total expenditures last year exceeded $600 million. In short, it's a big operation. My guest today is the president of the entire University of Hawaii system and chancellor of the Manoa Campus. Kenneth P. Mortimer has a long and impressive resume which I'll just highlight.
[00:00:58] Randall Roth: He's the former president of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington and served as vice president and vice provost at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Mortimer holds an AB in English from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from the Wharton School of Finance and a PhD in higher education from the University of California at Berkeley. He's a well published scholar on academic governance and policy development and has received a variety of honors, including the Association for the Study of Higher Education's Leadership Award. And perhaps most prestigious of all, at least according to our producer, is that Dr. Mortimer was a guest on our program last fall. Good morning, Ken, and welcome again to the Price of Paradise Radio Show.
[00:01:40] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Good morning, Randy. I am glad to see that you engage yourself in grandisement as well, the rest of us.
[00:01:45] Randall Roth: And thank you for wearing your Price of Paradise radio hat this morning. We we appreciate that. Uh, I'm told that you recently have completed the first two years of your stay here at the University of Hawaii, and your contract was just extended. How do you feel about that?
[00:02:01] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, I feel good. Our commitment to Hawaii was always first rate and, but the contract that I signed some years ago and board policy requires that the president be evaluated at the end of his first two years, and then every three years thereafter. So it was a routine matter, the board conducted that evaluation. We had some conversations, but apparently they want to keep me.
[00:02:23] Randall Roth: They still like you, huh?
[00:02:25] Kenneth P. Mortimer: It seems that way.
[00:02:26] Randall Roth: Well, the university is in the news a lot, most recently because of some proposed budget cuts. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
[00:02:33] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, I'd be pleased to, Randy. It's been consuming my attention since way last fall when former Governor Wahee, just as he left office, perhaps a month, called me and said he was going to give me back a million and a half dollars of the three and a half million that he had restricted last summer. So so, I was feeling very good until about the day before the state of the state address when Governor Cayetano called and told me about his $250 million problem and that the university was going to have to take $54 million of that cut.
[00:03:05] Randall Roth: 54 million and that's that's over the next two years?
[00:03:08] Kenneth P. Mortimer: That was over a 29 month period from February 1st until and through the next biennium. And one of the things that got our attention immediately is that that that 10 million of that was to be made available by July 1st. In other words, it was a mid-year cut. After talking with the governor over a couple of weeks, he reduced that cut to 35 million for the university and that was 7 million in this year and then 14.4 in the next each of the next two years. So those targeted cuts have focused my attention mightily in the last few months is to how the university can respond.
[00:03:44] Randall Roth: What what are the implications? What are the sorts of things that perhaps would go uh, if you had to cut that much?
[00:03:52] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, we'll take a very careful look at all of the things that the university does, particularly on the non-instructional side. We'll be looking very carefully at our administrative overhead and other matters of that sort, which I think is a normal and logical for the university to be asked to do. But when you get through that, you can't find $14 million worth of whatever people would call overhead. And you really have to start on the basic services of the university. And that of course is our concern. We're going to in protect instructional uh matters as a first priority. But I cannot tell the public, and I have said to students, that we're really looking at serious problems in terms of the quality of what we're able to do.
[00:04:40] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Not just the level of service we're able to provide, but the quality of that service.
[00:04:46] Randall Roth: Well now, I I read in the paper recently that you had a meeting with your deans and told them each to be prepared for cuts as deep as 50%. Um, to me that suggests that maybe the cuts won't be even across the board and uh, some of these deans might face some dramatic cuts.
[00:05:04] Kenneth P. Mortimer: That's been reported a little bit uh with a bit too much focus on that 50%. We have handed out targets throughout the system, averaging somewhere between 5 and 7%, but they haven't been across the board. So there are some targeted cuts as high as 50% of a particular unit, which essentially means that that unit has to think carefully about how it behaves. For the most part, it's not on the order of 50%, but the cuts do range from zero, not getting a cut, up to 50% and that's quite a wide range. But it is what I think the public and the legislature and the university would say is a wise course of action, that the cuts can no longer be across the board.
[00:05:52] Kenneth P. Mortimer: We've already lost 20 million dollars in the last three or four years. We've done all the easy across the board things, and now we're really going to have to take careful look at the set of priorities that affect the university.
[00:06:05] Randall Roth: The easy decisions have been made, and you're left with the tough ones.
[00:06:07] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well I think they were all made by my predecessor actually.
[00:06:11] Randall Roth: Um, according to the newspapers, in the last several days, you've been criticized by a couple members of the faculty for not being more of a squeaky wheel. They're saying you should be down at the legislature complaining more than you have, and in fact, one of them said you need to get into the face of those legislators, and you need to be organizing protests, I guess along the lines of what Herman Isawa for the Department of Education has done, and and the complaining uh publicly of of Bart Kane, the librarian. Uh, what do you think about that?
[00:06:42] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I think we're doing the right thing, but I can understand why some people might feel as though a different strategy than the one we're following ought to be taken. I have this vast imagery of the six foot faculty members down there with picket signs demonstrating against kids from the public schools that lost their lunch money. I don't think that will sell very well, frankly. And so I'm not very uh sympathetic to the cries that I ought to be down there with picket signs. I think we're working very effectively with a sympathetic legislature and executive branch of state government. There's real evidence that they've tried to help us and they're going to try to help us, and I think that we're doing a quite effective job in that regard.
[00:07:20] Randall Roth: Last week, we had a caller who suggested that that cutting back on the resources that go to the university, uh is a form of eating our seed corn, uh in the long run it would be counterproductive. What do you think about that?
[00:07:33] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I believe that wholeheartedly and I've believed it most of my professional life. I believe that American higher education and the University of Hawaii particularly, is is a very crucial part of the development of the state both intellectually and emotionally, but also from an economic development point of view. When you start restricting access of the public to opportunity to get better, then I think you really can be criticized for eating your seed corn. On the other hand, the state has a real problem and it's ballooned to 350 million if we can believe our forecasters. And nobody in the public sector can believe that with a state with that kind of a problem is going to be able to exempt the university from the solution.
[00:08:21] Randall Roth: You're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. I'm Randy Roth, and my guest today is Kenneth P. Mortimer. He's the president of the entire 10 campus University of Hawaii system, and he's chancellor of the flagship Manoa Campus. If you're listening to our Sunday morning broadcast and would like to ask a question or make a brief comment, just call 955-8821. Neighbor islanders are always invited to call collect. The number again, 955-8821. We have a caller from Waikiki. Good morning, Steve.
[00:08:54] Caller: Good morning. Good morning, Dr. Mortimer.
[00:08:57] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Good morning, Steve.
[00:08:58] Caller: Um, I'm very happy to see the President of the University, uh, willing to get up at this ungodly hour.
[00:09:04] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I wasn't willing.
[00:09:05] Randall Roth: Randy has a hold on.
[00:09:07] Caller: And and exposing himself to the slings and arrows of public inquiry because I think it really is important, uh that uh, that a person in that very important position, especially in this crucial time, be accessible to the public, and I I salute you for that. I uh, I have a question. This is a kind of a curveball. I'm, I hope it isn't too much of a curve, but it's the kind of question that people keep asking, so um, uh, let's go. The university has uh, has a lot of visible construction. A lot of things have been built in just the last year or are just coming online. A lot of very expensive facilities, including sports facilities.
[00:09:51] Caller: And some people ask themselves, in a time of crucial budget emergencies, um, do we have our priorities straight in this state and at the university spending money on what is essentially entertainment like sports. When we have a a real need for basic education, research and academic excellence and these universities are an economic engine in those areas that drives a lot of other sectors.
[00:10:20] Randall Roth: Let me break your question into to two parts and and ask Ken, what do you think of the priorities in in this state if less resources are given to the university, and then later we'll take a look at at how those resources are used.
[00:10:34] Caller: Okay. I'll get offline and listen to you on the radio.
[00:10:36] Randall Roth: Thank you, Steve.
[00:10:37] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Thank you. Thanks, Steve. It's an excellent question, and I I don't think it's logical for the public to be able to understand differences between operating and capital budgets. When they see money being spent, they just think if you just stop that construction project, you can pour that money into the classroom. The university, of course, has to spend the money the way it's allocated, and by law, we can't take capital money and spend it on operating costs. The state has its decision that it's going to spend about $180 million a year to fund capital projects. They set aside about 90 million of that for the Department of Education, and the rest of us argue our case.
[00:11:17] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I have said I was at the volleyball game last night, a very exciting kind of a thing, 10,000 people watching us take on Northridge, and it was a very exciting part of the community, but the real question is whether that's worth $32 million. And I think that's what's implied in Steve's question. The university had that project number 32 and its priorities uh for capital improvements, and that of course all happened before I got here. And now it's being built, so the faculty and students and a variety of things argue about that particular set of priorities. Fact of the matter is, the university ranks its priorities in capital budget, and then the legislature and executive branch pick and choose.
[00:11:59] Randall Roth: So they can go to the bottom of the list if they want to.
[00:12:02] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Indeed, they have many times or or well, well down into the list, let's put it that way. We're not in control of that, we are only in control of the priority of the Board of Regents put forwards on a capital budget. But the capital needs of this state are real. We talk about not enough buildings for schools and other matters of that sort. So those are real problems. The issue whether is whether it's wise for the state to continue to fund that kind of capital structure construction through bonds, and then have the operating and other budgets have to pick up, or pick up the interest cost on those bonds as well as the payments. In this particular time, that is a real question with with the public and I'd be very much interested in what the Governor and the legislature decide in that regard.
[00:12:48] Randall Roth: So with respect to to capital improvement, uh the legislature pretty much you give them a list that's prioritized and they decide what's going to be done. But with respect to everything else, they give you a lump sum and you decide how it's spent?
[00:13:02] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, essentially that's true. There are provisos on the budget and I can't shift money from one campus to another without getting the governor's approval. But the fact of the matter is that most budget goes 98% where it went last year and and so you don't have that many degrees of freedom as you move forward. But there is something called lump sum budgeting. The issue is the extent to which the legislature or others attach provisos to the way in which we spend that money.
[00:13:30] Randall Roth: Provisos. Is that another way of saying micromanage?
[00:13:34] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, it's another way of saying there's a restriction on the way in which you can spend the money.
[00:13:38] Randall Roth: Okay. Well, I want to come back to the notion of prioritization, but we've got a first time caller, Linda from Kani Ohe on the line. Good morning, Linda.
[00:13:46] Caller: Good morning. Uh, my call regards non-resident tuition, especially for foreign students. Why has it been so low and what is going to be done about it?
[00:13:56] Randall Roth: Great question.
[00:13:58] Kenneth P. Mortimer: We have uh, thank you, Linda. That that is a good question. In fact, we're analyzing substantially out-of-state tuition right now in the last two years because of things before the legislature. Effectively, the university's been in a strange position on tuition. It's among the lowest in the country. And then when you take the lowest in the country and multiply it say by two or three times, which is what we do for out-of-state tuition, it's still pretty cheap. So in order for us to raise out-of-state tuition, we'd have to really target out-of-state students and say instead of being two or three times tuition, which is normal in the country, yours are going to have to be like full cost.
[00:14:36] Kenneth P. Mortimer: There hasn't been any incentive for the university to think about that because we don't keep our tuition. We just set it and then it's a matter of this it goes into the state revenue to use, build prisons or not well not capital expenditures, but the operating dollars of other agencies. So the bills that are before the legislature now are directed towards giving the university not only the power to set tuition but to keep it. If we were to keep tuition, I can't help but believe that we would be looking very much more carefully at all forms of tuition, especially when we have budget cuts like the ones we're experiencing now.
[00:15:13] Randall Roth: Are you in favor of um, keeping the tuition at the university?
[00:15:17] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I am indeed. I I have raised issues about whether that would force us to raise tuition and I have some reservations about that, but I believe that another card for the university is to give it control over more of the funds that it has, to get rid of those provisos, if you will. But also, that tuition and fee money really ought to come to the university and the university should depend uh, decide how that money should be spent.
[00:15:43] Randall Roth: If it's shifted to the university, isn't it probable that the legislature would would cut back dramatically, especially in tough times like these and simply point to your ability to set and keep tuition and and wouldn't it be almost inevitable that tuition would go up substantially?
[00:16:01] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I don't know whether substantial because that would be the board of regents and I sense that there's a real reservation on the part of this current board to be more aggressive about pricing. We have raised tuition 5% a year for the next five years. So that is the regent's policy to price itself a little bit more aggressively in response to these things. There's a fine dance involved in your question and that is it is now the case that the legislature decides what the size of the university budget's going to be and further that the governor can restrict those expenditures and he has done so. So, we're going to have to do that anyway. And it's always a question of how much money we're going to get from the legislature and the governor, and that won't change.
[00:16:45] Randall Roth: But at least if if you kept the money, then you would have an incentive to uh to set that tuition at a level both in-state and out-of-state tuition at a level that quote makes sense.
[00:16:54] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, I think that that is when you say makes sense, I think if the university sets the tuition as that occurs around the country, usually it gets priced a little more aggressively.
[00:17:04] Randall Roth: What do you think the community wants? Does the community want low tuition, um ready access, uh obviously there are social implications to to that approach or is the community saying, hey, these are tough times, our taxes are high already, uh those kids ought to be paying a lot more for their education?
[00:17:22] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I think the only voices you'll hear in this situation are the students who don't want to pay more tuition. I'm not sure what the community feels. I know they want accessibility, but they also want high quality education. Mhm. And the high quality thing in the current budget state is really what's at stake here.
[00:17:40] Randall Roth: You're listening to Kenneth P. Mortimer, who's the President of the University of Hawaii. Our topic today is higher education in Hawaii and we're especially interested in the possible impact of the so-called budget crisis. If you'd like to ask a question or make a brief comment, please call 955-8821. Ken, a little bit ago you used the word um prioritization and indicated that within the university there is a process that you go through trying to figure out uh, what's high on the list and what's low on the list. Could you tell us a little bit more about that process?
[00:18:18] Kenneth P. Mortimer: It's going to require some restraint on my part to make this a short answer because uh the prioritization process takes a lot of time and people spend a lot of time during the spring of every academic year on that issue. And my uh, this my starting my third budget round if you will, we've been through two basic prioritization processes. Each year we sit down and hand out budget targets and ask the deans and provosts to make assessments of how they'll handle that situation. So if I might use a uh just an example or two. We have determined that we're going to try to maintain access to uh instruction as a first priority. means I've handed out targets and said we will not accept proposals to restrict access.
[00:19:06] Kenneth P. Mortimer: So if you're a Dean or a Provost sitting there, you have the charge not to restrict access. Within that set of priorities, you've got to make all these other decisions. At Manoa, last year's group advised me that in order to protect access, we needed to give differential priority to the five or six colleges where 85% of the undergraduates are. That happens to be the four arts and sciences colleges, education and business and and engineering. So as a matter of priority, we've tried to protect those colleges. Now, they don't understand that because they see their budget cuts at 4 or 5% and they say, that what it means to be a priority? But it uh, that's where the action is and that's why we have moved ahead.
[00:19:50] Kenneth P. Mortimer: We've also said quality is a very important product at the University of Hawaii and we've exempted the law school from cuts. We're very much worried about how the law school's accreditation stacks up. So, uh, I'm going in in Annapolis next week and talk with the ABA. And we're simply telling them that the University of Hawaii law school will be exempt from cuts this year because of these qualitative questions that have been raised.
[00:20:14] Randall Roth: Mhm. Well, now, some people have suggested that that maybe if things stay bad or get worse, that wholesale changes would have to be made. Uh Akwahn Mcrath, who has been nominated to be a new member of the Board of Regents was quoted in the newspaper the other day as suggesting that maybe uh entire units should be terminated. I believe she mentioned the the school of public health and the law school. Um is there a real reluctance to terminate entire units or how does that fall into this prioritization process?
[00:20:47] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, there's always a reluctance to take a decision as stark as that one. Uh you can use either of those examples or some others, but it's very clear that under these kind of scenarios, the University of Hawaii will be different two years from now than it is now in terms of its programmatic configuration. Using the Manoa campus as an example again. It has 18 schools and colleges. Some of them are small, with six faculty, six and a half faculty members and a Dean. The question really is whether or not the university can afford the luxury of that kind of programmatic depth, or it's breadth perhaps, the better word. So clearly when we've handed out budget cuts this year, we've anticipated that some of those changes need to be made.
[00:21:31] Randall Roth: Mhm. How's uh the university community uh taking all of this? I I know you have studied crisis management that was a a specialty of sorts some years ago. We've we've talked at length about that. Uh how is the University of Hawaii community dealing with this this crisis and this prioritization process and these very, very difficult decisions that are being made?
[00:21:54] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, there's uh in any times like this, the first stage of the problem is it isn't true. It isn't true. And it's the death and dying cycle, it's called denial, and then you go through anger and other matters of that sort. And I think right now we're trying to come to grips in the university community, is it true? Is it really going to happen? And when we handed out the cuts a few weeks ago, there was at least again some skepticism that this kind of a scenario was actually going to happen. And there's some truth and justification for that because in past years people have talked about it, but it hasn't been done. My own opinion is this year it's going to be done and so what's happening now I think is some very realistic discussion about how to handle the situation.
[00:22:39] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And that realism is I think a is a maybe a dash of cold water, but I think it's a very healthy thing.
[00:22:47] Randall Roth: Well, now, a little bit ago you mentioned that if the cuts are are too deep and uh if this is is something that is more than just temporary, that it really could affect the quality of the education at the University of Hawaii. Uh related to that, are we ready for the 21st century? And can we be ready for the 21st century if um if we have more budget cuts?
[00:23:11] Kenneth P. Mortimer: It's a hard question, of course, one never knows exactly how well a university should be funded and exactly how many students it can educate for the $350 million that the state gives us. I can't believe, however, that as we think more carefully about how this profile fits, that the state of Hawaii is going to be able to compete in an international or global economy if it continues to think that higher education is something you can cut whenever there's a downturn in the economy. I simply believe that the university is much more crucial to the overall health of the state than I guess most of my colleagues do. So the thing that we're trying to call to people's attention is you can't have expectations that are unreal in terms of the university.
[00:23:58] Kenneth P. Mortimer: If class sizes go up, and people complain about whether or not students can communicate, the almost inevitable consequence of larger class sizes is less opportunities for students to learn how to write. That's an inevitable consequence of that, and you just don't have the time to do the work that's necessary with the student, to correct writing and to give them more experiences and how to write well. Now, that's what everybody says when they say they have concerns about the quality of American higher education. And yet that's an inevitable consequence of larger class sizes in my opinion.
[00:24:36] Randall Roth: Okay, well I I want to uh come back to that notion of uh the 21st century and and whether there are different sorts of universities that uh will exist in the future as compared to the past, but first we have a caller from Aiea, Dick. Good morning, Dick.
[00:24:50] Caller: Yes, I two concerns that the lady that says we should raise uh tuition for foreign students and mainland students. My I have had four kids attend the university and we're very happy with the results. They all doing very well. The concern is we in Hawaii like to be a bridge to Asia. And we have the most uh courses uh in in Asian studies of any university in the country. But what we need because we're isolated is the presence of these foreign students and mainland students for the benefit of our students. That's my first concern and I hate to see uh the situation change dramatically and close the door in effect because coming to Hawaii is so expensive anyway, but we need, I think, these students to that will benefit our kids who go to university.
[00:25:46] Randall Roth: Dick, let me let me get Ken's reaction to that and then I'll come back to you in just a moment. Ken?
[00:25:51] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I think Governor Kaytano agrees with you. He doesn't want to close the door to out of state and uh students from uh other countries because of the diversity and the opportunities it gives us. So we need to take that into account on the one hand, on the other hand, many of them come here and are supported by Hawaii taxpayers and uh if the uh tuition breaks are too low. Actually the thing that's usually calling my attention is the great success that Hawaii Pacific universities had with foreign students, charging them full freight.
[00:26:20] Caller: Uh but but even that's a problem because the full freight makes it prohibitive for most many foreign students. Now, that okay, for rich Japanese, maybe. But any case, the second subject completely unrelated and that is the need for research support because my impression is a dollar of state into research sometimes can get $3 or $4 from other places. So I think uh the need the university not to cut research severely is another critical one that sometimes gets lost, while I do agree teaching is the primary role, but I hope research doesn't get lost in in this crisis of uh cutting.
[00:26:59] Randall Roth: What what about that, Ken, that classroom teacher doesn't generate any bucks for the state, but the researcher does?
[00:27:06] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, that's an excellent observation, Dick. We now are in the situation where the university brings in about 120 to 130 million in federal research and training dollars. And we clearly believe that's an important part of what the university's all about, particularly uh on some of our campuses, which specialize more specialize more carefully in research. In fact, some of our units, Dick bring is in as much as $10 million for every million dollars we spend on them. So there are some direct implications for that. I hope I can assure you that we're trying to protect in a prioritization process those units that are most productive in that terms. So, we've given the Institute for Astronomy, the Cancer Center and the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences, the smallest of the cuts on the research side, largely because we're trying to protect that aspect that's implied in Dick's question.
[00:27:59] Caller: Thank you very much.
[00:28:00] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Thank you, Dick.
[00:28:02] Randall Roth: Uh before Dick called, we were talking about getting ready for the 21st century and uh some people would say that uh the industrial age is behind us, that uh the information age is either here or or almost here. And um some people say that the university of the future is going to have to be different than the university of the past, that the one of the past was was one of bricks and mortar mortar and the one of the future is going to somehow be different because of all the computers and telecommunications and that sort of thing they're at the heart of of the information age. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:28:40] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I agree. I don't think we'll ever replace bricks and mortar, by the way. They'll always be a patina uh to being in a place and going to college, but the uh major thing is the tools of learning have changed remarkably in my lifetime. I am uh computer illiterate and I'm afraid of email, but everybody around me has it, and they're probably going to drive me to it before I'm done as a as a president of the university. We are working very assiduously on how we can provide some of our neighbor island colleagues access to better quality and more and broader a scope of offerings largely through distance learning and technology. So interactive television, uh internet, and a variety of those things are very high on our priorities as we think about how to provide access to educational programming.
[00:29:29] Kenneth P. Mortimer: But the point of the matter is that those people are going to have to learn how to use or be taught about that technology and that the state is going to have to invest in it. It's very expensive to get started.
[00:29:41] Randall Roth: You're listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. I'm Randy Roth and my guest today is Kenneth P. Mortimer. He's the president of the entire 10 campus UH system, and he's chancellor of the flagship Manoa Campus. If you're listening to our Sunday morning broadcast, you can ask a question or make a brief comment by calling 955-8821.
[00:30:34] Kenneth P. Mortimer: ries here in Hawaii. And what we're concerned about is with budget cutbacks, the public library will start to erode its book budget and maybe the university library and although we got online services, it's um we still need to look at hard cover books sometimes and we've got Hamilton is our main research resource.
[00:30:57] Randall Roth: Desmond, stay on stay on the line. Stay on the line, I want to get Ken's reaction to that.
[00:31:02] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Now, nobody asked the question, but I'm going to ask Randy to stop calling Manoa the flagship. That uh it is of course our research university and our largest campus, but a number of my colleagues throughout the system just object violently to the term flagship. Uh Desmond, uh would you have me uh lay off people in order to protect the library?
[00:31:26] Randall Roth: I don't know what the you know, the offsets and all, but I I feel as when Tom Hamilton dedicated that extension of the library, uh what the question the question
[00:31:37] Kenneth P. Mortimer: You have to deal with the forced choices that are being paid out. I happen to agree with you by the way, and so you you we're talking to uh on the same thing, but if you were sitting in my shoes, you have to make the judgment that I just asked you. So I mean, I'm in a world of forced choices and most of the conversations I have with people are about a single issue like the library or, and you pick the issue. And so I always have to say, I'm I happen to agree with you. I really do the library, particularly in a state where we are 2500 miles from the nearest opportunity to borrow another book.
[00:32:15] Kenneth P. Mortimer: It's very very crucial, but these are very hard choices to make and for I'm glad to have this conversation this morning because it's it's the kind of choice that I wish I didn't have to make.
[00:32:28] Randall Roth: Okay?
[00:32:29] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Yeah, I'm buying too many books.
[00:32:31] Randall Roth: Well, that's probably good. Now, if you would agree that you'd give the money the University of Hawaii Foundation, I will make sure that that money goes directly to purchases in Hamilton Library.
[00:32:40] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Okay, good.
[00:32:43] Randall Roth: Thank you, Desmond.
[00:32:45] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Okay, Randy.
[00:32:45] Randall Roth: We have a caller from Kailua, Al. Good morning, Al.
[00:32:49] Caller: Good morning. My question concerns the student loans. Do the student loan uh program, does that help to bring uh money as well as students and so forth to the university? Uh second part of that is are the student loans being repaid quite well? Do we have a problem there? And is there such a thing as ensuring student loans in terms of the student taking out certain amount of insurance and then um if he defaults or if he dies or something, it's it's paid for him.
[00:33:18] Randall Roth: Yeah, I'm I'm curious about that. Uh do we have a lot of uh uh deaths that aren't collected?
[00:33:25] Kenneth P. Mortimer: We don't actually, but it is a public uh concern and I recognize the legitimacy of it. Uh a lot of the loan programs are federal loan programs and that does bring money to the state in terms of our students apply for those. I don't know the technical answers to the question and if you drop me a note or so on the office, I'll make sure you get uh questions. The federal government has been very much worried about the default rate on the federal loan program and and indeed have come up with cures sometimes that are worse than the disease. Those default rates tend to be very high in proprietary institutions and very low in universities and colleges.
[00:34:04] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And yet it's all been lumped in together. And the more uh at-risk population you serve, the the higher the default rate is on loans. University of Hawaii is well in the single digits on that particular matter. I think it's like 4 or 5%, but I really could get the accurate number if somebody would drop me a note. But some of the uh other institutions that uh come to our play that would say come and get your cosmetology program and then you can get a federal loan and other matters of that and people that don't finish those often default on their loans. So that's the big problem nationally.
[00:34:40] Randall Roth: But it's not been a problem at the University of Hawaii.
[00:34:42] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, it's always a problem when you don't collect $1 that somebody owes you. But the question of the default rates tend to be well well within tolerable ranges.
[00:34:52] Caller: Well, I just a question, does the default then uh go against the university or does it go against the federal government?
[00:35:01] Kenneth P. Mortimer: No, the they default on the loan in the in the Feds, and that's where if we to the extent to which we have private loan funds our internal uh problems then it's a problem for us as well.
[00:35:14] Randall Roth: We have a caller from the Big Island, Brian. Good morning, Brian.
[00:35:18] Caller: Good morning, Randy. Good morning, Dr. Mortimer.
[00:35:20] Randall Roth: Or it's it's Byron, right?
[00:35:21] Caller: Yes, that's right.
[00:35:22] Randall Roth: Good morning.
[00:35:24] Caller: A question for Dr. Mortimer, please. Dr. Mortimer, since 1991 of course here in Hilo, cuts have been a common practice especially for the performing arts. And it seems like when when times are difficult, the performing arts are are the first to undergo these cuts. Now, there's been some very interesting work done at the University of California at San Diego in terms of the effects of spatial relationships in the sciences and mathematics through the study of music. And this is something that is going to come uh more and more into the consciousness of educators as we do move into the next century. Would you please comment on the on the the funding for performing arts in in in your proposed cuts, please?
[00:36:16] Caller: I'll get off the phone and listen to you. Thank you.
[00:36:20] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Byron, I'm at the stage of having maybe as many as 100 different units being receiving these cuts. I'm not really able to respond about the performing arts in Hilo. Uh the University of Hawaii at Hilo has received about a $650 to $670,000 cut out of a budget of a $21 million. It's been protected differentially in those cuts. I don't know what's going on on that specific campus or in the Hawaii Community College campus there relative to the thing that you're mentioning. If you're not talking about the university and you're talking about, for example, the NEA and National Endowment for the Arts debate nationally, I think that is a real issue and I am concerned that the federal government seems to regard those programs as dispensable.
[00:37:05] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I do not.
[00:37:08] Randall Roth: Uh what about the other neighbor islands, specifically there are uh community colleges on Kauai and and Maui and I'm told that there's uh a lot of increasing demand on those islands and concern for having a a baccalaureate degree granting program. Um what's going on on the neighbor islands generally with respect to the university?
[00:37:29] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, of course, we have uh campuses on four islands and the neighbor islands have a particular patina if you will in the way in which they are served. For example, on Maui and Kauai, they're the only opportunity for higher education on the island. And therefore we tend to give them special status, for example, their budget cuts are much less than everywhere else. And last year we were almost able to exempt except for a modest situation, them from major cuts of any sort in recognition of the fact that that there are all there is. And without that particular opportunity, they're they're shut out of higher education. In several of our locations in the neighbor islands, there is increased demand for baccalaureate and graduate education.
[00:38:16] Kenneth P. Mortimer: On West Hawaii, there's just increased demand for a variety of things from our learning center there because they don't even have a community college they have a learning center there. On Maui, we offer baccalaureate and liberal studies and there's great demand for that. We offer MBAs and Masters in Social Work around in the neighbor islands out of the colleges here at Manoa. There's almost an insatiable demand for more higher education services in the state of Hawaii, particularly on the neighbor islands. We have elevated that in our priorities for the university as as I've mentioned. I don't um I'm hoping that this uh concentration on distance education will be an effective response to that demand.
[00:38:59] Randall Roth: And distance education meaning telecommunications?
[00:39:02] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And a variety of other matters of that sort. It's just as non uh classroom with a lecturer standing in front of you, forms of education. Uh, we've recently received control of Hawaii interactive television, for example, and we need to redo its technology in order to make it more accessible. Now the old technologies and you can only get four lines going out. So the variety of things like that that will be high on our priorities as we move forward in the next three to four years. The neighbor islands are are in my opinion underserved and deserve to have a higher higher education profile on some of the islands. Well, I've indicated a few times, I don't believe that we're going to be able to put a four year university on Maui in the next 10 years.
[00:39:46] Kenneth P. Mortimer: In other matters of that sort, I do not believe that the demands for increased access, however, are illegitimate.
[00:39:52] Randall Roth: You're listening to the Price of Paradise radio show. I'm Randy Roth, and my guest this morning is Kenneth P. Mortimer, the President of the University of Hawaii. If you'd like to ask a question, or make a brief comment, just call 955-8821. Ken, something else that's been in the papers lately has to do with student activity fees. Uh, evidently there's a million or so dollars that uh is in an account called the Student Activities fee account. And according to these reports, uh you've um uh suggested that maybe that money ought to be used to help solve some of the budgetary problems of the university as a whole. What's going on there?
[00:40:32] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Randy, we have something like $69 to $70 million in special revolving funds. That includes athletics, the summer school, the college of continuing education, and community service. Those are authorized by the legislature. And it allows the university to collect a fee and then put it in a special fund to be used for that program only. I don't, as university president, have the authority to touch that money. However, when we received our budget cut, the governor's office told us that if we did an analysis of special funds before they did, that we'd be allowed to credit that towards the $7 million that we have to come up with by July 1st. I stress again, I don't have the authority to touch that money.
[00:41:20] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And they said they're going to do it if I don't.
[00:41:21] Randall Roth: Right, they they they were telegraphing something to you, I think.
[00:41:24] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, they have the authority to do it, but I do not. Right, so they said if you'll go take a look at that stuff and make recommendations to us, then we will credit that towards the $7 million you owe us.
[00:41:36] Randall Roth: They wanted you to take the fall, I think.
[00:41:38] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, I wouldn't actually, I think it's wise for the university to do the analysis. I really do, even in this case, Earl and I were laughing the other night about who's going to get hanged for this.
[00:41:48] Randall Roth: And Earl is Earl Onzai.
[00:41:49] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Earl Onzai, that's correct. So we ordered an an analysis of all those funds. And in that analysis, the students were part of a committee considering the analysis and they looked at this and said you can't possibly do it. And I said, I didn't say, but one of our vice presidents, well, we haven't decided to do it. All we're doing is analyzing, and what I read in the paper hadn't gotten to me yet. It was still in the analysis stage. I met with the Regents this week, and when then I met again with the students and we came to an agreement that the $48 that students pay in special fees or special student activity fee, should be exempt from that analysis.
[00:42:28] Kenneth P. Mortimer: So what I've said is that I will not recommend to the Regents next month that they touch that money. I cannot guarantee them that the people downtown won't touch it. And so, I believe I got some informal agreement in that regard yesterday at a cocktail party, but we'll have to wait and see whether that holds over the weekend.
[00:42:46] Randall Roth: Well now you've made me curious, what uh what are you referring to? Can you tell us?
[00:42:50] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Sure, I I was uh happen to be at a reception at the Japanese consulate Friday night. I ran into Earl and I said, look out Earl, here they come, because I just said it's your problem, not mine. And he had indicated uh that uh he would be unlikely to touch that money as well, although he also indicated he's going to cut my budget by more on Monday. So we'll just have to wait and see.
[00:43:11] Randall Roth: Tomorrow morning?
[00:43:12] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Tomorrow morning, Monday, uh I'm supposed to get another phone call about the next shoe because you remember since they gave us the cut of it was when they had a deficit of 250 million. Now they think it's 350 million and they're going to cut hand out additional cuts.
[00:43:26] Randall Roth: So the the cuts we've been talking about up until now, um that's old. As of tomorrow, you're looking at a bigger proposed number?
[00:43:34] Kenneth P. Mortimer: That's my belief.
[00:43:36] Randall Roth: Oh boy. We have a caller from Honolulu, Mark. Good morning, Mark.
[00:43:40] Caller: Good morning. Um, I'm just uh going to ask you a question you probably heard before about, I guess, merit services and also the marble signs. I guess a lot of university funds have have gone into those and and I was wondering kind of how did that happen and what kind of effects those uh may have caused uh as far as the budget cuts are concerned.
[00:44:02] Randall Roth: Let let's ask first the the marble signs, for people who haven't been to the campus lately, at the two main entrances there's some very, and I'll say nice, some people say they're atrocities, I guess it's it's art, right? It's a matter of opinion. But fairly large marble signs announcing that this is the University of Hawaii. Um, Ken, what do you think?
[00:44:23] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, I've been concerned for some time about the fact that we don't have quote entrances that are dramatic in fact. But the fact of the matter is that those decisions were made some time ago and uh they get made through a series of things having to do with the operations and plants. As uh physical plan, I mean not to green plants. As a result of those kind of incidents, we're commissioning a review to find out how such decisions get made about signs and what uh and all kinds of signage that's on the university campus. Uh so, I can't uh report to the public that I actually know how that decision was made and uh I know the people that made it.
[00:45:00] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And that it was in the mill for some time and um, but I was quite surprised by it all in terms of not having been informed about it. There would be no reason that I would be informed about things like that by the way.
[00:45:13] Randall Roth: And I'm not sure if if this is part of Mark's question, but uh according to Kaleo, the student newspaper, there are some misspellings on these signs, and when I first saw those headlines, I thought, oh my goodness, we we have the wrong letters or whatever. Uh could you tell our listeners what that's referring to?
[00:45:30] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Yeah, that the the the word Hawaii has uh uh is not diacritical as they say not done right. And of course, that's going to be fixed, it's my understanding. We're looking at that and trying to find ways to fix that. But I think the basic issue is the public is asking is how can you spend something like $170,000 on signposts? And I would say again that that has been in the mill for some time. And the question that the university needs to come to grips with is how does it decide to do such things. And uh there is a process now that is internal pretty much to the uh physical plant people at the Manoa campus.
[00:46:05] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And the issue is whether or not there ought to be some oversight about the art and uh signage criteria, and we will be moving ahead to try to create such uh standards and criteria in the future.
[00:46:16] Randall Roth: So you're saying there there is some concern about uh how this came to be and you're you're taking a close look at it.
[00:46:21] Kenneth P. Mortimer: That's right.
[00:46:22] Randall Roth: Okay.
[00:46:23] Caller: However, what about the Marriott services? I kind of heard rumors that the university was going to get stuck with the bill in in certain sense and uh
[00:46:31] Randall Roth: What bill are you referring to, Mark?
[00:46:32] Caller: I mean the building that's uh going up between uh the Hamilton and Moore Hall.
[00:46:37] Randall Roth: Okay.
[00:46:39] Kenneth P. Mortimer: University has a master plan and uh these things get on schedule. Some years ago we set uh we signed an agreement, know um and I say like a decade ago. And as the price for signing a long term agreement with the Marriott Corporation to have almost in a monopoly on university housing and dining and concession services. They made certain contributions to the capital construction of the university. And so Marriott is participating in the construction of that snack building in back of Hamilton Library which eventually will if Hamilton Library project actually gets done, create a complex there. So that's a long time agreement with the Marriott Corporation, I don't know why somebody would think they wouldn't honor their commitments.
[00:47:21] Randall Roth: Okay. Thank you, Mark.
[00:47:22] Caller: Thanks a lot.
[00:47:23] Randall Roth: We have a caller from Honolulu, Oscar. Good morning, Oscar.
[00:47:26] Caller: Good morning, Randy.
[00:47:28] Randall Roth: Is this Oscar Kern?
[00:47:29] Caller: Yes, it is.
[00:47:31] Randall Roth: When we when we have a former guest uh call in, we always have to identify.
[00:47:34] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I wondered whether you needed me here at all, you seem to have a good conversation.
[00:47:37] Randall Roth: Only the ones who've been guests here in the past. What can we do for you, Oscar?
[00:47:41] Caller: Well, this question Dr. Mortimer, um uh, I've been involved in inner justice-merit education, particularly in rural areas for many years on a campus. Um, and uh, it's been my experience that the professional schools really have a pretty much followed gun barrel vision and developed training courses, educational courses for their professions. Um, I'm mindful of the fact that many of these courses are equal concern to other professional schools. Like research and and information on and human behavior and growth and etcetera. Now, in with the budget cuts they're undoubtedly coming down the road, uh to what extent are you giving serious consideration to an interdisciplinary framework for uh approaching common concerns that come cover uh like a cut across the many areas of um uh professional activity in education?
[00:48:37] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Uh, that's an excellent You're just talking about the public school education or just education in general?
[00:48:42] Caller: Particularly the health professions.
[00:48:44] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Oh, I see, yes. Uh, I think that's an excellent suggestion. As we uh ratchet down, if you will, the availability of these separate schools and colleges to operate independently, the natural outgrowth of something like that is, let's get together and think more carefully about those things that we do that we're able to uh do in concert. And particularly, are we beginning to get good conversations in the four health science colleges at Monora about issues of that sort. The participation of the medical school and teaching physiology and anatomy. Uh, there is a debate going on between the school of Nursing and the college of natural sciences about who's going to teach some of these basic physiology courses as well.
[00:49:27] Kenneth P. Mortimer: So I believe that that will occur more frequently, but I do also want to tell you that there's a lot of it going on in all of our campuses now. That interdisciplinarity is the basis on which the School of Hawaiian and Asian Pacific studies was uh created. That the basic core of that school tends to be in language and literature and in the social sciences and in the other arts and science colleges. So that is a basic tenet. We can always do better, I know, but I think the university is moving very directly to try to encourage interdisciplinary treatments, especially at the undergraduate level.
[00:50:04] Randall Roth: Oscar is part of your question whether the university should focus more on trying to address specific problems in the community as opposed to to being purely academic or or did I hear that?
[00:50:18] Caller: Uh uh, I'm both, both on a campus and in the community. Now, all the professional schools have organized practicums or field training experiences and to increasingly they need to develop an organized strategy for bringing together your physicians, your nurses, your psychologists, uh
[00:50:41] Randall Roth: And and you feel as though that's not being done at the university to the extent that it should be?
[00:50:45] Caller: It we could do a great deal better in that area. It's very limited right now, and then and the only major effort that we have underway is really federally financed, and when that stops, um I think the university will have a real problem.
[00:50:57] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I don't know, Oscar, I believe that the projects in the school of medicine that are working directly with community health centers are seminal in their character and they're going to have a real impact on the way in which we deliver health services here in the state. And that's interdisciplinary and it involves nurses and doctors and public health people all working on the same basis.
[00:51:16] Randall Roth: Thank you, Oscar, we appreciate your call.
[00:51:18] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Thank you.
[00:51:19] Randall Roth: In case you joined us late, you're listening to the Price of Paradise radio show. I'm Randy Roth, and my guest today is Ken Mortimer, the President of the UH system and Chancellor of the Manoa campus. If you're listening Sunday morning, you can call us, ask a question or make a brief comment. Our number is 955-8821. We have a caller from Kaimuki, William. Good morning.
[00:51:42] Caller: Good morning, Randy. Good morning, Dr. Mortimer. Excuse me. I have uh a question regarding the Hamilton Library. Uh I'm an alumnus of the UH and um I learned as much in the library as I did in the classroom. Um and in your response with Desmond earlier in the in the program, I was somewhat dissatisfied to to and correct me if I'm wrong, but the sense of your answer was that there's sort of a trade-off between improvements in Hamilton and layoffs. And I'm having a little trouble with that because this problem in Hamilton has been going on for so many years and over this long period of time, we see you know, tremendous improvements made for example in the athletic complex, where tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of dollars of improvements have been made there.
[00:52:36] Caller: To my mind, the library is the most important uh aspect of the university and I just have a sense that there hasn't been enough emphasis upon making those improvements that are vitally necessary. So my question is, uh how do you respond to criticism when people bring up the obvious criticism of all these improvements being made in the athletic complex and then also can you respond as to uh what you are doing now to fix Hamilton Library and also to expand it with the proposed addition? Okay, thank you.
[00:53:15] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Thank you, William. I appreciate that. Actually in talking to Desmond, I I know he has a history on the issues so I might have been a little glib in trying to give him a a sort of a forced choice.
[00:53:25] Randall Roth: I know you've talked to Desmond a number of times.
[00:53:26] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And in in in good uh good good conversations as well, but William has raised the issue in a more serious light and. First, I was responding on the operating side that is buying books as opposed to, and those are operating questions and all your questions were seem to be directed at the physical plant side or the construction of buildings. Hamilton Library now is among the university's top 10 physical plant priorities. That's the first time the university's been able to say that for decades. I'm told by the librarians that sometime back in the 70s it was among the top 10 priorities and got slipped because of for whatever reasons. So one of the things we've done is to get it into the top 10 and it's the top priority for construction at Manoa.
[00:54:14] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Unfortunately, the numbers for that project are pretty big. I mean they start with the $30 million uh construction of that and to John and his colleagues have done a lot to get that project within feasibility range if you will. So we've made it our top priority at Monoa and are trying to persuade people that it should receive the attention that William suggested it should, that's from a physical plant point of view.
[00:54:42] Randall Roth: Right. How are we how are we doing on books?
[00:54:44] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, books are part of the operating budget and I happen to be reading uh quickly in the last few days the response to the budget cuts on the part of Hamilton Library, which I believe they'll be having a budget hearing sometime in the next week or so. And the real issue there is how they can maintain their acquisition schedule when they're taking budget cuts, at the same time, they want to keep the library open so people can use it. That's not unlike a Bart Cane problem if you will about the library's restricted hours.
[00:55:11] Caller: Dr. Mortor, could you respond to my earlier concern about, for example, the special events arena, and this may have been before your watch because these monies were probably already allocated in that area. But can you tell me why, for example, that special events arena was which costs more, I believe than the addition to Hamilton Library, was built before these needed improvements to Hamilton?
[00:55:37] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I can speculate before you, William, it did happen before I was there. It was number 32 on the university's priority list the year it was funded. So, uh we sent down a priority list as I indicated earlier in the show and then uh things happened to it and that one happened to be number 32 but it was elevated to where it was built. Further and and there was a great debate about whether it ought to be a 4000 seat arena, a 6000 seat arena or 10,000. The price tag that we set on it was 42 million, they appropriated 32 million, so we're still $10 million short. So that gives you a sense of the fluidity, I guess, or the ambiguity involved in the capital construction budget.
[00:56:20] Randall Roth: William, I think you need to be talking to your representative uh in the legislature on this one.
[00:56:25] Caller: Okay, thank you.
[00:56:26] Randall Roth: Thank you. Bye bye. We've had a whole bunch of first time callers, another one today, Eric from Honolulu. Good morning, Eric.
[00:56:33] Caller: Good morning, hi, this is Eric Seitz. I'm an attorney here in town, Dr. Mortimer, and I came to Hawaii some 23 years ago, originally to teach at the law school which had just been founded by a good friend of mine, Michael Heyman, and the Dean was uh at that time a man by the name of David Hood, who was the first Dean. And you know, the the law school's been the source of a good deal of controversy recently, but to me it epitomizes some problems about the university, which I'm I'm very sorry about. Because the law school was set up with
[00:57:00] Randall Roth: was then a very innovative plan to provide particular needs to people in Hawaii who couldn't afford to go to law schools on the mainland. And over the course of its history, unfortunately, ever since I got here, it's become a political football, as I think has been the university to too much of an extent. And I would like your comments upon how the university possibly can rise above the what I consider to be the small-town politics of this community, which have been reflected in some of your comments this morning about the budget problems, and become an exemplary kind of university, which can provide culturally and intellectually for this community, the certain kinds of needs which the legislature perhaps is not wise enough in its own wisdom to be able to give leadership to.
[00:57:44] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, Eric, you mentioned Mike Heyman, who's an old Dean of the law schools now, uh, the Smithsonian guy. So, that's...
[00:57:50] Randall Roth: Actually, he wasn't the Dean. He was the person who set it up with William Richardson. He was offered the Deanship and had the wisdom to turn it down.
[00:57:56] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Well, I think wasn't he one time Dean of the Berkeley Law School? I know he was Chancellor, so...
[00:57:58] Randall Roth: He was the Chancellor at Berkeley.
[00:58:00] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Yeah, thanks. It's a good question. In my inaugural speech here two years ago, I said one of my priorities was to raise the public confidence and trust in the university to the extent that those people external to the university would give us increased room to make basic judgments about the kinds of questions that you raised. And I believe in the last and I've been coming here for 30 years, Eric. I got married to my my wife and I got married way back in the 50s and I've had in-laws and all that sort of stuff here. So I've had an opportunity to watch the university evolve on this issue, and we are a lot better off now than we were 20 years ago on the issues you raised.
[00:58:42] Randall Roth: Less political interference.
[00:58:43] Kenneth P. Mortimer: Less, yes. We have for example, lump sum budgeting now, and have very fewer legislative provisions than my predecessors tell me about. So I I believe that the the state, through constitutional conventions in the 70s and 80s, has made substantial progress in recognizing that a first-class university can't be run by the separate interests involved in the state, that there needs to be some distance, if you will, between decision makers and the public, that is everybody who wants their kid to get into law school or medical school or whatever. And I believe we made a lot of progress. I think we have some distance to go, but that will only come when the university gains the confidence of the public that it's able to make wise decisions.
[00:59:29] Kenneth P. Mortimer: I mentioned to a number of folks that this week one of the disappointments about our budget situation is that a number of our colleagues on campus, when they receive budget cuts, rather than take them in ways in which they can be creative about it, their first response is to go downtown and try to get the legislature to put proviso on the university's budget that I can't do make that particular budget cut. So a lot of the problems that we have are internal to the institution as we look to outside groups to intervene in the university to solve their special interests. So I believe we've got to get our own house in order, and then we've got to build levels of trust with the state, with the legislature and the public that we are operating in the public interest.
[01:00:17] Kenneth P. Mortimer: And when those things happen, I believe we'll get more distance between us and those who would do all those provisions on us.
[01:00:23] Randall Roth: Okay. And with that, we're we're out of time. Thank you, Eric. I want to thank you, Ken, for coming in this morning and talking to us for the last hour. Our guest has been Kenneth P. Mortimer, President of the University of Hawaii system. Our producer is Suzie Roth. Hawaii Public Radio's director of operations, and the technical director for Price of Paradise radio show is Jeff Ilardi. Tune in next week, when Orson Swindle and Dean Neubauer will be discussing the contract with America and its possible impact on the people of Hawaii. You've been listening to the Price of Paradise Radio Show. I'm Randy Roth. Aloha.