EDITORIAL: Kansas City needs a first-tier university

Published 4:00 pm Sunday, November 25, 2018

The controversy surrounding a University of Missouri-Kansas City professor who allegedly abused his students is shocking students come to UMKC to learn, not to cut a professors grass or wait tables at a garden party.

For a university trying to make significant improvements, this scandal is also a setback and an unneeded distraction that will divert attention and resources from ambitious plans for the future.

Everyone in the region has a stake in a better UMKC. Kansas City urgently needs a first-tier urban university. And it still lacks one.

Kansas City is almost alone among important American cities in not having in its midst a world-class comprehensive research university, an outside study committee wrote eight years ago.

UMKC has made enormous strides since that report and is a better institution now than it was a decade ago. But efforts to elevate the university to an internationally-known research school must be renewed and redoubled.

To his credit, Chancellor Mauli Agrawal, who took the helm in June, told us hes pursuing an aggressive strategy to make UMKC a first-tier university during the next decade. He wants to increase undergraduate enrollment by 50 percent over that period, through enhanced curricula, off-campus study options and improved student housing.

Enrollment is too low, Agrawal said.

Hes correct. Undergraduate enrollment has actually slipped at UMKC, from 8,585 students in 2014 to 7,995 in 2018. Graduate enrollment is down during the same period.

Scandals at the pharmacy and business schools are blemishes on the universitys reputation. There are worries about substandard student housing at UMKC, a situation Agrawal wants to address. Neighbors are still leery of major expansion plans. Parking and tuition costs are perennial concerns.

No chancellor can overcome those hurdles on his or her own. If UMKC is to become a first-tier American university, it will need serious, sustained support from the state legislature, the governor, the University of Missouri board of curators and the local community, including philanthropists and politicians.

In this context, finalizing plans to build a new on- or near-campus performing arts conservatory is an important first step. The current facility is still substandard and potentially dangerous, the student newspaper reports.

But thats only a start. State officials must stop cutting the budget for higher education when tax revenues drop. UMKC will only become a first-class university if the state fully commits to making it one.

Kansas City must play a role, too. Mayoral candidates should outline their plans for improving UMKC, including the relationship between the university and area high schools. Private interests should renew their promises of financial support.

And the curators could help by ending their whisper campaign against UMKCs athletics program. Agrawal said a new athletics director is taking a close look at costs but that the school remains committed to a presence in Division I NCAA sports.

Reviewing the cost of sports is important for UMKC and for every university. But enrollment will never grow if the campus shuts down after 5 p.m. UMKC should be able to teach students and provide them an attractive on-campus experience at the same time.