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Retiring from UB, but not work
Johnstone remembers a varied career
By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor
SUNY Distinguished Service Professor D. Bruce Johnstone says he is looking forward to retiring this summer so he can get some work done.
The Graduate School of Education will pay tribute to D. Bruce Johnstone, who is retiring from UB this spring, during a breakfast tomorrow in the Center for Tomorrow.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI
"What I really need to do and I need to do it desperately is to clear this desk off," said Johnstone, professor of higher and comparative education in the Graduate School of Education, during a recent interview.
A former chancellor of the State University of New York system and current director of UB's Center for Comparative and Global Studies in Education, Johnstone announced this spring that he will retire from the University at Buffalo, but will continue his decades-long work in international comparative higher education finance and governance.
He may be busier than he is now. In addition to writing another book (he's written several groundbreaking ones), Johnstone will continue his research, teach overseas and mentor his remaining 16 doctoral students. And he's accepted a new position as distinguished scholar leader for the Fulbright New Century Scholars program.
"People tend to snicker when I talk about retirement and I think with good reason," he said with a laugh.
Johnstone, a native Minnesotan with all of the expected qualities of a true Midwesterner, has always had trouble saying "no."
For example, his nearly 40-year journey in higher education did not begin immediately upon finishing his doctorate. Handpicked for a "real plum job" at Penn State's then-new center for higher education, Johnstone instead went to work for then Sen. Walter "Fritz" Mondale of Minnesota.
"As I had the (Penn State) papers on my desk, I had this telephone call from Sen. Mondale's office saying that he was looking for a staff director.
"It was an extraordinary experience. I do remember it vividly, and I have great respect for the man I still call 'the senator,'" Johnstone said. "But I really wanted to get back into higher education, so after two years, I called Penn State to see if that old job was still open."
But the Ford Foundation called, asking Johnstone to head a new, in-house study looking at tuition postponement. Out of that experience came not only his first book, but a new direction for his career. Johnstone looked forward to—at last—working in academics.
"But then I thought it was not judicious to go back to Penn State," he said.
Instead, he answered the call of former UB president Martin Myerson, then University of Pennsylvania president, who was looking for an executive assistant. Later, in 1979, Myerson recommended him for the presidency of Buffalo State College, a position he held until 1988, when he was named SUNY chancellor.
During a brief sabbatical while at Buffalo State, Johnstone wrote his first book on international comparative higher education finance, a topic that has been at the center of his work ever since.
Which country does the best job with public higher education?
"My somewhat-glib shorthand about that used to be if you're a really good student, you want to be British, because at that time they had no tuition and extensive but very selective financial assistance. If you were a parent, you wanted to be Swedish, because there still is no expected official parental contribution anywhere in Scandinavia. If you were a taxpayer, you'd probably want to be French because it really spent the least on higher education. And if you were an average or below-average student, you probably ought to be American because there was the most extensive financial assistance that had the least to do with academic preparedness or merit.
"The latter is still the case. I think in many respects, the American system stumbled into a very good pattern," he said, noting other countries have adopted U.S. practices for course credits and degree schedules, as well as channeling governmentally sponsored research through universities.
Today, public higher education has met several enemies, and one of them is "us," according to Johnstone.
"We exacerbate things by our own success. One of the things that we tend to do—presidents and chancellors and such—we don't like to acknowledge that we've been damaged; we brag. We aspire not simply to maintain our rank and position, which actually is pretty good, but we want to be better. We want to jump the next six ahead."
That's why strategies such as the current UB 2020 planning process are "necessary," he said.
"UB would like to have a little more funded research, would like to have a little more national a student undergraduate body than we now do, would like to do a little better in fundraising and all of these are appropriate aspirations, as long as they are held in a kind of perspective that we're not going to jump 11 places in two years. But if we don't aspire, then someone behind us is going to jump over us."
The Graduate School of Education will pay tribute to Johnstone from 8:30 to 10 a.m. tomorrow in the Center for Tomorrow on the North Campus. The cost, including breakfast, is $15 ($5 for students). Tickets may be purchased at the door.