Statement of President Richard L. McCormick, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Governor Kean and all the members of the New Jersey Higher Education Task Force deserve great thanks for the most comprehensive and visionary report on New Jersey higher education in recent memory. Their thoughtfulness and their boldness clearly reflect Governor Christie’s leadership and long-term commitment to higher education across New Jersey.

New Jersey’s higher education system is complex; so are the recommendations in the task force report, which covers important issues such as governance, mission, financing and affordability, and economic growth and workforce development. The Rutgers governing boards, the members of my administration, and the Rutgers community will discuss these recommendations with both care and urgency.

The report also calls particular attention to the high responsibilities placed on Rutgers – New Jersey’s only comprehensive public research institution.  As the report observes, “for a state to be great, it must have a great state university.” To achieve that goal, the authors of the report include nine recommendations that are specific to Rutgers, and issue “a call to action” to university and state leaders to work together to make Rutgers “among the best research universities in the country, indeed in the world.” At Rutgers, we embrace that challenge.

I want to acknowledge immediately the strong merits of one of the task force’s most important recommendations, which is to reunite Rutgers University and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Virtually every prominent medical school in the nation is affiliated with a top research university. These institutions attract the finest faculty and students, develop cutting-edge multidisciplinary initiatives, and are effective catalysts for economic growth and new jobs. Universities that are affiliated with medical schools also attract the highest levels of research funding and channel significant dollars into their states.

Rutgers currently brings to New Jersey more federal research funding than any other university in the state, and more than all of the public colleges and universities combined. The reuniting of Rutgers University and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School would propel New Jersey’s state university into the top ranks of all American universities in total research funding. Such a union would create a national academic powerhouse that would significantly enhance the quality and profile of New Jersey higher education and would benefit residents across the entire state.