Posted on: Friday, October 12, 2001
UH-Manoa entry standards to be raised, Dobelle says
By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer
The University of Hawai'i will consider offering domestic partner benefits, trimming the administration at Bachman Hall and raising the admission standards to the system's flagship Manoa campus.
UH President Evan Dobelle spoke with Manoa faculty members yesterday afternoon about the future of their campus and some systemwide goals, among them redirecting non-instructional money to pay better faculty salaries — a sore point for the professors at Manoa who earn salaries in the 20th percentile compared to their counterparts at research universities nationwide.
"I'm glad that you agree we are underpaid because we are," said Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, director of Hawaiian studies at UH.
Pay was the major sticking point of a bitter faculty strike in April. Dobelle yesterday said it could have been avoided, blaming former President Kenneth Mortimer's administration for the strike. Dobelle said the governor and the faculty union were misled about the amount of money available for pay raises.
"I think they were put at odds by an administration that was not accustomed to sunshine," he said. The money for the pay raises was within the university's reach all along, Dobelle said, but the Mortimer administration was reluctant to let anyone scrutinize how much money it had available.
In his first address to the faculty since the start of the school year, Dobelle also outlined in more detail his plans for the Manoa campus and for the development of UH-West O'ahu.
Along with 5,000 to 10,000 new dorm rooms created through public-private partnerships along University Avenue and King Street, Dobelle said the creation of a college-town atmosphere at Manoa and the elevation of the campus's reputation depends on the development of UH-West O'ahu.
West O'ahu would become the more open-access school that could take many of the state's older, nontraditional commuter students, Dobelle said.
"Quite honestly, the Manoa of the future is gong to be harder to get in to, and that's not inappropriate," Dobelle said.
The average age of a student at Manoa is 26, and the school has a 45 percent attrition rate that for years has indicated a problem with the undergraduate experience there. "
We're taking kids we shouldn't take, and when we take them we aren't helping them," he said.
The idea of offering domestic partner benefits will be brought to the Board of Regents in November and voted on in January.
Dobelle also said he will diversify and streamline the administration at Bachman Hall. Many are expecting a reorganization and revamping across the system sometime after an independent audit is completed in December.
