With Kobe out of the NBA Playoffs and nobody following the LA Mayorial Election, the LA Times has devoted a front page article to the "big story" that two excellent brain scientists have moved (and taken their huge labs) from UCLA to USC. Two thoughts.
1. Competition is a good thing! When I was an Assistant Professor back in the 1990s, I taught at Columbia University. Back then, Columbia was a complacent place celebrating that it was the only Ivy League school in the world's best city. This perceived monopoly power allowed it to coast along. An unintended consequence of the rise of NYU starting in the early 1990s was that Columbia shaped up and became a serious place again. The fear of being upstaged by the upstart NYU nudged Columbia to wake up from its stupor. The rise of USC may trigger a similar effect at UCLA. During the recent ongoing budget crisis, it does not appear that my esteemed school has not thought hard about our priorities. What do we really want to be excellent at? Can we do everything? If this discussion has taken place, I haven't heard it.
2. All faculty are replaceable. The two faculty members who have moved to USC are ages 60 and 41. There always is a silver lining to losing faculty. This is an opportunity for this unit to become younger and perhaps more diverse. Were these guys really such monopolists that there aren't at least three other rising 35 year olds who can use the resources that are now available to do something big? As I argued in an earlier blog post, every university faculty must aspire to become younger not older!
Here are the Chancellor's remarks on this issue. I would simply have wished them goodbye and good luck and used the freed up resources and space to pursue a new initiative.
