By Steven J. Diner

Public policy discussion regarding the future of older cities has increasingly focused on the role of universities as anchor institutions in urban revitalization.

Urban universities attract large numbers of students. They are major employers and purchasers. They build residential and academic facilities, conduct research that can lead to new product commercialization and educate students for jobs in the local economy. They educate many low-income and first-generation students. And they work actively to improve inner-city schools and to strengthen low-income families and neighborhoods.

Rutgers-Newark, the institution I headed from 2002 to 2011, has been deeply involved in its home city’s revitalization in all these ways. A 12,000-student institution, it awards approximately 65 doctoral degrees a year, has a top research faculty and has been ranked No. 1 in the United States for racial and ethnic diversity by U.S. News & World Report for 14 years. Rutgers-Newark could do much more, but it has been significantly handicapped by the peculiarities of Rutgers governance.

Rutgers is a three-institution system — New Brunswick, Newark and Camden. However, Rutgers is unique because the administration of the New Brunswick campus also is the administration of the entire system. Tuition and state funds are distributed to each campus by the New Brunswick administration. In nearly every other state multicampus system, a president oversees all campuses and allocates resources to each one. But no other doctoral-granting university is governed as a branch campus, as are Rutgers-Newark and Rutgers-Camden.

How does this structure affect the city of Newark? First, the needs of the New Brunswick campus always take precedence over the needs of Newark. Therefore, the distribution of funds, now and in the past, has consistently favored New Brunswick.

Second, it is manifested in decisions about academic programs. In 1971, the Rutgers administration moved the School of Pharmacy, located in downtown Newark since its inception in 1892, to Piscataway. Two years ago, Rutgers-Newark opened a new building for its century-old business school at One Washington Park. This project sought not only to improve academic facilities, but also to spur revitalization of the Broad Street Station district and symbolize Newark’s status as the state’s business center.

But Rutgers’ president decided the business school in New Brunswick should greatly expand its small undergraduate program and add masters programs. The university is now in the process of constructing an $83 million business building on the Livingston campus in Piscataway.

Rutgers-Newark also has struggled for many years with the New Brunswick administration over the expansion of campus housing, which can create a 24/7 campus, and spur retail and market-rate housing downtown. Although studies found substantial demand for housing on the Newark campus, the New Brunswick administration has blocked Newark housing projects for years. One of two proposed projects finally may soon proceed. In contrast, a plan to build 2,000 new beds on the New Brunswick campus has gone forward without any of the scrutiny demanded in Newark.

Gov. Chris Christie has recently endorsed the recommendations of the advisory committee on medical education that would merge the elements of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in New Brunswick/Piscataway with Rutgers, and combine Rutgers-Camden with Rowan University. As these proposals are pursued, it would be appropriate to look at Rutgers' unfortunate structure.

The issue certainly warrants attention as New Jersey considers the future of its public research universities. But if the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the School of Public Health are incorporated into Rutgers, the New Brunswick administration will face significant fiscal pressures that will undoubtedly result in even greater inequity in funding for Newark.

Some attribute this inequity to the shortsightedness of the present university administration and look to a new Rutgers president to remedy the situation. But the root cause is not the action of any particular president, rather the inherent anti-urban bias of Rutgers’ structure. Restructuring Rutgers to eliminate the subservient status of Newark (and Camden if it remains part of Rutgers) would not only bring equity to non-New Brunswick students, but would enable Rutgers-Newark to serve much more effectively as an anchor institution in Newark’s revitalization.

Steven Diner was chancellor of Rutgers-Newark from 2002 to 2011 and served as president of the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities in 2009 and 2010. He is a historian specializing in the history of American urban universities.