Merger plan will harm Camden's effort to recover

Editor's Note: This column, part of a point-counterpoint package in Sunday's Inquirer, was inadvertently left off Sunday's website.

Howard Gillette is professor emeritus of history at Rutgers-Camden, author of the prize-winning book Camden After the Fall, and co-editor of the online Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, which is based at Rutgers-Camden.

Camden doesn't need another blow to its always fragile efforts to recover from decades of decline. The proposed merger of Rutgers-Camden with Rowan University is being touted by its supporters as a move that could help reverse that pattern by creating an outstanding research institution. Unfortunately, under the current plan, such a move would almost certainly have just the opposite effect.

One of the few tangible successes of the municipal recovery legislation that put Camden under state control for some seven years is the investment in the city's "eds" and "meds." Rutgers and Cooper Hospital were beneficiaries, and both have capitalized by expanding their presence in the city. Moreover, with additional resources, they can deepen the unequaled services they provide the region.

The strategy of investing in such "anchor institutions," so-called because they are rooted to the places where they are situated, has been embraced by the Annie E. Casey and Knight Foundations, which have made significant investments in recent years in Rutgers-Camden. If this plan helps Rutgers-Camden and Cooper, those investments, and those from the state, certainly will be aggregated.

But what is more likely under the current plan, starting with the elimination of the Rutgers name?

The number of students who choose to come into Camden to study will surely decline, given the choice of only one degree, from Rowan. Declining enrollment in Camden would reverse a pattern of growth, which, when combined with investments in waterfront housing as part of the municipal recovery legislation, has promised downtown revitalization.

The Rutgers future scholars program, which prepares children for college in each of the university's host cities, would be another casualty of consolidation. Other examples of the commitment of Rutgers personnel to improve the city - as scholars, students, and volunteers - might continue, but such efforts would be absent the core commitment that Rutgers-Camden has made to civic investment.

There is no doubting the desirability of forming a partnership between Rutgers-Camden and Cooper Hospital. Many universities have done this in other cities through consortium arrangements. Together these two "eds" and "meds" could generate additional grant money, most notably from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Rutgers faculty members have an admirable record of accomplishment in this regard, and they would not have to rebuild the infrastructure of a great university to remain competitive, as they would have to do at Rowan.

Imagine if Cooper decided in the next few years that because Rowan was the administrative center for a new university, it had to leave Camden for Glassboro. Pulling up that anchor would have terrible repercussions. It would be just as bad if the government dictated that Cooper fold into one of the suburban hospitals. So why Rutgers-Camden?

There's a chance to be constructive here. Camden's continued high level of distress adversely affects the whole region. We have a chance to invest in the core part of the city and make it stronger. Let's do it in a way that has a chance of working, not by undercutting Rutgers-Camden and all that it contributes. Let's find a more effective way to tap those resources in the goal of improving both the quality of care and the quality of education in this once mighty city.