When academics were only 'selectively excellent'

By Julie O'Connor

These days, President Richard Levin, GRD '74, has chosen to retire a certain catch phrase that he coined in the mid 1990's to describe his academic vision for Yale: "selective excellence." In 1997, this somewhat ambiguous title for his pledge to concentrate the University's financial resources only on its largest and strongest departments—history, English, and political science, to name a few—caused a negative stir of among students and faculty. As an April 1997 article in the The New York Times indicated, members of departments that Levin identified as small and specialized—such as the physical sciences—worried that in a financial pinch, they would be shortchanged by Levin's "selective" policy.

But with recent developments such as Levin's announcement that the bulk of the $70 million dollar gift from the Class of 1954 will go to the new chemistry building and the Environmental Science Center (as part of the $500 million Science Hill renovation project), most of those fears have been put to rest. Whether or not "selective excellence" still stands behind Levin's financial strategy remains as questionable as its original significance. Among many faculty and administrators, the term has perhaps faded into selective memory.

Caught up in catch phrases

"We certainly haven't heard those words in a while," Astronomy Director of Undergraduate Studies Charles Beilyn said, referring to selective excellence. As for Levin's recent financial allocations to the Science Hill project, "It doesn't matter to me what we call it, as long as these buildings are getting done...I couldn't tell you if it's a real change in policy or if we're calling it something different."

Indeed, whether or not the administration has made this change from selective excellence to a new policy is unclear. In December 1996, when Levin first introduced the term in "Yale's Fourth Century," the document that outlined his vision for the next 100 years, this was just as difficult to determine. It was here that Levin pledged that University resources would be devoted mainly to departments in which Yale was already a powerhouse—the arts and humanities, biological sciences, and medicine—to strengthen its stance relative to other Ivy League schools. As a result, certain areas in the physical sciences, engineering, and management would be given less attention—and, perhaps more importantly, less money. In other words, Yale would strive to be the best in very particular divisions of individual departments, rather than attempt to excel in all possible categories.

Essentially, Levin presented the policy as an economically necessary choice of depth over breadth in certain academic fields—with the University just digging itself out of substantial debt, it had to decide how to best direct its resources. But administrators maintained that selective excellence was really just a frank affirmation of the course that Yale had already been following for many years, one which had also been followed by many other top universities.

Still, Levin's catch phrase was met with considerable concern by those who wondered if being departmentally "selective" might lead to changes that would compromise Yale's reputation for excellence. Many questioned whether certain science departments would falter to the benefit of humanities programs that were already relatively strong. Beilyn himself told the Yale Daily News in 1997 that "the danger of selective excellence is that if you screw up in predicting or in picking people, then you're half as good instead of half as big. If you're half the size, then you better be twice as good."

Today, however, not too many Yalies have even heard of selective excellence. Since the student body is constantly turning over, those who were around when controversy arose over the policy have now graduated. As a result, the University has an advantage over its students, able to file memories of the program into its administrative archives. Still, many members of the Yale science community no longer see selective excellence as a potential threat. Gaboury Benoit, an associate professor of environmental chemistry who is moving into the new Environmental Science Center, said that he and his circle of colleagues were not too disturbed by the program in 1997. He remembers that "it caused a little flurry at the time," but viewed it as "just a general policy guideline."

A policy shift?

Certainly, there is less cause for concern now that Science Hill is undergoing a $500 million dollar renovation. While the Class of 1954 had originally planned to make its $70 million dollar donation at its next reunion—by which time the $70 million could have ballooned to $90 million—it was convinced by Levin that the University needed to improve science and engineering as soon as possible, and donated the funds immediately.

Indeed, with the University's $1 billion commitment to the sciences and medicine, it is clear that the Administration is no longer shortchanging the departments selective excellence once seemed to neglect. President Levin, however, disagrees that the controversial policy overlooked certain departments at all, and said that the intent behind the program was unclear to some people. "There was some misinterpretation at the time [selective excellence] came out," he said. "People were concerned I was saying we shouldn't try to be first-rate. It's true that we weren't going to invest in having a 110-person electrical engineering department like MIT or Berkeley has, but that didn't mean you couldn't have excellence [in those areas]."

Still, some have wondered whether the University's $1 billion commitment to the sciences represents too sudden of a policy change, contending that just three years earlier, the Administration would never have devoted so much energy to departments that weren't Yale's strongest.

According to Levin, though, his actions with regard to Science Hill are not a reversal of the selective excellence policy. He refers to the program in terms of faculty issues. "We have a 15-person electrical engineering department," he said. "To endow 100 new positions in engineering would cost, in real terms, three or four hundred million dollars. We are trying to expand our departments not so much by having great growth, but by increasing the quality of the faculty and graduate students we attract."

Pierre Hohenberg, the Deputy Provost for Science and Technology, also defines selective excellence as a policy primarily concerned with the issue of faculty numbers and views the Science Hill initiative as separate and unrelated to the selective excellence policy: "It is basically neither for or against [selective excellence]," he said. "[The Science Hill initiative] is more about supporting the building program. It's sort of independent of what we decide about faculty development."

Money talks

Whatever the case, it is undeniable that Yale has now determined to advertise itself as a powerhouse in the area of science. Indeed, one of the first things prospective students now hear after leaving the Admissions Office for a campus tour is not a story about Yale's residential college system, but a description of the University's billion-dollar commitment to the sciences. Indeed, administrators hope that with such a large financial pledge, Yale will ultimately get the reputation it deserves in engineering and the sciences.

And whether or not the intention of selective excellence was misconstrued, the potential danger behind Levin's use of the term was an indication to prospective students, and the world, that Yale was not fully committed to departments like engineering. Still, University Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer, LAW '77, believes that the Science Hill project is "very consistent" with the actual idea behind selective excellence. "The idea was that we should stake out areas where Yale could maintain excellence," Lorimer said. "Science is clearly one of the areas where Yale should have unmistakable strength."

While Levin's actions surely speak greater volumes about his financial policy than does his past phraseology, he upholds his statements on selective excellence as both consistent and accurate. "Some people on campus I think reacted to the [April 1997 New York] Times article thinking it meant some sort of de-emphasis on these subjects [like the physical sciences]," Levin said. "But the whole idea was to set a higher aspiration level for quality in these fields. We're a small university, one-sixth the size of Berkeley. We never going to have departments as large as Berkeley's."

Carl Bialik contributed to this article. Graphic by Sarah England. Photos by Rebecca Rosenthal and Livia Demarchis.

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