The matching grant program naturally leads one to think about the graduate programs on which "match" allocations are based. The sum made available to each college for matching is determined by its graduate enrollment, and Brooklyn lags behind its sister schools. Because we have a very small percentage of the University's PhD candidates (only Lehman and COSI have fewer) we have been allocated the same $36,000 since the matching program's inception. Unless the College actively recruits PhD students and clarifies its thinking about which academic areas it wishes to emphasize, it is unlikely the Library will ever receive more money from this program (though we could certainly receive less, if graduate enrollment declines).
CUNY PhD CANDIDATES 2003 City 396 Hunter 196 Queens 141 John Jay 112 Baruch 108 Brooklyn 60 Lehman 28 Staten Island 26
At present, Brooklyn does not have a flourishing doctoral program. Our candidates as of the close of 2003 were:
4 Biochemistry 10 Biology 8 Chemistry 2 Earth and Environmental Sciences 9 Physics 27 Experimental Psychology
Other campuses compete with Brooklyn in psychology, where we have our largest concentration:
Brooklyn College 27 Experimental Psychology City College 91 Clinical Psychology Hunter College 38 Bio-psychology Queens College 61 Neuropsychology
All of this leaves us asking:
What are Brooklyn's flagship programs?
Where should the Library be putting its scarce dollars?
At a recent meeting of the faculty of the sciences, there seemed to be great floundering about what areas Brooklyn could develop that had not already been claimed by other schools. Similarly, at a planning session to discuss academic excellence as one of the college's strategic areas of activity, a prominent faculty member remarked that PhD candidates did not matter--that they "only take up room," Brooklyn is a liberal arts institution, and we should sell the college as such.
This makes Brooklyn College somewhat schizophrenic. Are we a research or a teaching institution, and do the faculty and the administration agree on this question? And if we are a "combination institution," what does that indicate for the Library's collecting priorities? If dollars were flowing into the Library's coffers, perhaps we would not find this lack of clarity so discomfiting, but in times of shrinking budgets and growing demands our stake in this matter seems great.