Speeches

University Commencement Address 2008

John B. Simpson, University at Buffalo
Sunday, May 11, 2008

Good morning, and a warm welcome to all of the friends and family here with us today. Most of all, congratulations to our Class of 2008!

I’d like to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers in the audience. As our gift to you, we’re sending you your sons and daughters back, and the tuition bills will end as well!

Also, a congratulations to our UB Bulls Women’s Tennis team, which just won our school’s first-ever Mid-American Conference team championship and a trip to the NCAA finals!

“We need a far-sighted national educational policy that provides the world-class research and education opportunities needed to maintain our competitive advantage, and we need to ensure equitable access to these opportunities for all of our citizens” John B. Simpson President

To our graduates, today you are joining a family of nearly 200,000 UB graduates living in all fifty states and in 120 countries around the world.

Your Class of 2008 continues a long and uninterrupted thread dating back to the first class of physicians who graduated from UB in 1847. Your University will always be here for you, and I hope you’ll join the UB Alumni Association, remain a Bulls fan, and come back often.

After four years, and for some of you a little more, each of you is about to create your own future. Both you and your university are different for your having been here. And perhaps never more so than in this time of dramatic technological change. Some of the parents here might share my scant recognition of the “digital nomads” our children have become in the last few years. Always connected, always communicating. And always draining batteries of some type.

When the Class of 2008 entered UB there were perhaps a few hundred thousand blogs in existence. Today there are over 112 million, with about 100,000 new ones being added each day.

More telling still is a statistic that reveals the complexities of our “flat world.” Lest you think the U.S. dominates this digital domain, the most popular language for blogs is Japanese, even though Japan has less than half the population of the U.S.

Learners young and old are embracing networked tools and technologies. You create, you share, and you explore in ways that our society is only beginning to understand. But we all must work harder to understand how these new ways of sharing – online courses, podcasts, wikis, blogs, and social networking sites – can serve a broader purpose rather than becoming merely high-tech distractions.

That is one of the reasons why research universities like UB are so vital. University faculty are, to be sure, at the forefront of creating new technologies, such as those our “digital nomads” employ. Less apparently, others are helping to understand what they mean for our society.

Indeed, in the specifics of communications technologies, but also in a far broader sense, research universities deserve much of the credit for the innovations of recent decades, and therefore much of the economic vitality that America has enjoyed.

We cannot, though, assume the future will be the same. Keeping ahead of technology and innovation becomes harder every year. I share the concern of other higher education leaders that our nation genuinely runs the risk of losing the competitive edge that has fueled the American economy.

Today, approximately one-third of our young people fail to earn a high school diploma. And among the 30 richest countries in the world, American high schoolers rank 16th in math and science scores.

The issues signaled by these two observations should fuel an urgent and ongoing national debate, a problem that the full force of American ingenuity should be brought to bear on solving. Our way of life may depend on this.

There was a time when the United States reacted to moments of dramatic global technological change by committing itself to ambitious national goals, especially if it was perceived that we were falling behind our competitors. One very notable example was during the aftermath of the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, when many Americans felt that this event signaled that the U.S. had lost its technological advantage to the U.S.S.R.

When I was a graduate student I benefited enormously from a committed and focused federal policy to support scientific research. This was a result of something called the National Defense Education Act by which the Congress allocated ample resources to produce the world’s greatest scientists and engineers.

Moreover, as the name “National Defense Education Act” suggests, our society didn’t regard education simply as a personal benefit, but rather as a public good that would maintain our scientific leadership and preserve our national security.

Granted, this was during the Cold War, and so the stakes for our country, rightfully, seemed very high. But I would argue that when it comes to education, the need for national goals, national plans, and national resources has not waned.

I see the challenges we now face as twofold. We need a far-sighted national educational policy that provides the world-class research and education opportunities needed to maintain our competitive advantage, and we need to ensure equitable access to these opportunities for all of our citizens.

My fear is that without leadership toward the goal of regaining national educational and research leadership we will lack focus and lack funding.

Without focus and funding, America will lack the degree of innovation needed to keep our nation competitive. And if we lose our innovative edge, the ripples will be felt throughout all areas of our economy. As a result, many future lives will be poorer for our failure now to find consensus, to plan, to prioritize, and to implement.

Our elected leaders at all levels bear a great responsibility. Many want to do the right thing, but elements of our political system, as we in New York increasingly recognize, do not make it easy. One thing we know is that they listen to us. And they must hear from us that we believe that education is the key to our nation’s future.

While the U.S. muddles and argues about its educational policies, other nations are committing to the kind of sustained national educational strategies that will make them global leaders.

In Singapore, where UB maintains a campus, their strong and committed national higher education plan is a source of great cultural pride. And in case we think that catching up takes generations, consider the example of South Korea, which now has some of the most innovative companies and best school systems in the world. That same country until just a couple decades ago labored under an oppressive, authoritarian government and was a major recipient of foreign aid.

It is imperative for our leaders from all parts of society to agree to seek a national consensus on the future of education, of where we need to go, and then to implement the necessary steps to get us there. This is clearly a required investment in our collective future. My guess is there is probably far less disagreement on goals than we might think. But it’s simply too important to let either partisan politics, the expediency of the moment, or the weaknesses of the current system keep us from succeeding at this.

So while you are thinking big about your own futures, consider asking the people who represent you to think big as well about our collective future, and about the fact that education is key to it for all of us. There are plenty of great challenges out there, and I can assure you that here at UB we will be tackling many of them. But we can’t do it alone!

As soon-to-be diploma-carrying members of society, I invite you to join the effort to better your community. By seeing the achievement of both your personal goals, and those of the communities around you, as part of the same challenge, you will make the most of your education. Let’s ensure that our children and our children’s children enjoy the same opportunities, and live at least as well as we do. By committing to this, the pride we all feel today will only grow.

Congratulations on your great achievement, and best wishes for many more to come.