Dr. Michael Adams, the president of the University of Georgia, recently visited with Journal reporters and editors and commented on a wide range of issues, including the future of UGA, the first chartered school in the nation; his proposal to create an engineering college at the university; and recent headlines generated by UGA’s athletics department.

Dr. Adams was born in Montgomery, Ala., and attended public schools in Albany, Macon and Atlanta, graduating from high school in Chattanooga in 1966. Adams has been president of UGA since 1997, and under his leadership, the University of Georgia has been recognized as one of the nation’s top 20 public research universities for eight out of the past 10 years by U.S. News & World Report.

Q. What is the difference in the incoming freshman class at Georgia today compared to when you came to Athens 14 years ago?

A. Oh, boy. They’re brighter, their board scores are better, their grades are better, they’re more focused, and they’re more in touch with the outside world, particularly with the impact of the international programs. Probably a third of them say on their essays that the international programs that we started had an impact on their decision to come. They’re certainly more technologically savvy. They have a broader view of the world and the state than they did. It’s hard for me to believe that this year’s freshmen were about to start kindergarten when I took this job.

Q. What percentage of the HOPE scholarship goes to UGA students?

A. I don’t know what percentage of the total HOPE, but I know that among our freshmen, 97 percent of the in-state students are on HOPE. And the other three percent are on some other kind of financial aid. So it’s a major factor for us.

Q. Do you think the HOPE scholarship should be means tested or capped?

A. I would be in-clined to support an evaluation each year where a student gets some percentage of tuition based on available funds. I think if you mean test it, the political support for it would go away pretty quickly. I think I know what (Gov. Zell Miller’s) original intent was and it was to be a reward for students who worked hard and excelled. I also think it helped re-engage a lot of parents in the education of their children, because of the value it brought to both. So I think there are some adjustments that can be made reasonably and make the system continue to work. I think the side benefits — the books and fees and those sorts of things — will probably go, but I think we ought to be able to maintain a very high percentage of tuition for the foreseeable future.

Q. What percentage of your student body is out of state?

A. Across all programs, it’s about 80/20 (in-state/out-of-state). This year’s freshman class, it’s at 85/15. That’s the highest percentage since World War II of in-state residents.

Q. Is the full tuition rate for out-of-state students a subsidized rate?

A. No. The out-of-state people are actually subsidizing the in-state people now. They’re paying the full cost, including the cost of borrowing on capital. In fact, the regents estimate they’re paying between $5,000 and $6,000 more than full cost. My view all along has been that out-of-state should pay full cost. I don’t think we ought to take advantage of them, but I don’t think the taxpayers of the state ought to subsidize them. Right now, that pendulum, in my opinion, has swung too far towards them subsidizing us.

Q. The University System of Georgia Board of Regents interprets Georgia law to allow illegal immigrants to attend our public universities as long as they pay out-of-state tuition. South Carolina law clearly prohibits illegal aliens from attending their public universities. Which law do you prefer?

A. Well, first of all, I don’t think it’s anywhere near the problem it’s been made out to be. Under the worst of circumstances, it’s no more than one half of one percent of our students. In fact, we just finished a study and right now, out of 35,000 students, we have less than a dozen who are not yet documented. And I want to draw a distinction between not yet documented and undocumented. Now it’s down to one. And I also want to make the point that what the Regents have asked all the schools to do, we’ve been doing for years.

My general view as an educator is I want to teach people who want to learn, but I also am committed to the University of Georgia following state law. So whatever the legislature of Georgia tells me is state law, we’re going to follow. But the numbers at the outside … undocumented students attending college in Georgia is a very, very small issue relative to the whole deal, number-wise. Now, philosophically, it may be a big issue for a lot of people and, you know, I’ve talked to legislators who’ve told me they’re going to drop in the hopper a South Carolina-type law in January. My general view is, I’ve been happy, historically, when Georgia has not gone the way of South Carolina or Alabama.

Q. So many South Georgia parents complain that too many students from the suburbs like Cobb, Gwinnett and North Fulton are disproportionately accepted in UGA’s freshman class. In Texas, the top 10 graduates of every Texan high school are admitted to the University of Texas, ensuring a better geographic balance. How do you view this issue?

A. No. The top 10 percent are accepted somewhere in the UT system. Let me speak to that because we just did a study two years ago and what you said, I know it’s out there, but frankly, it’s a myth. And I don’t know how you dispel myths. Our student body is almost an exact reflection of kids in this state, wherever they’re located, that take college preparatory programs. The kid that takes auto shop and welding in the eighth grade and ninth grade is probably not going to get into the University of Georgia. That’s not to disparage them – we need good welders and I can’t find anybody to work on my 2000 Ford Ranger pick up truck.

But if you live in Quitman County or Dougherty County or Lowndes County, the study showed you frankly have a slightly better chance of getting in than if you lived in Cobb, Gwinnett, Fulton. Cobb, by the way, right now, is our third-largest feeder county. We have about 3,700 students from Cobb. We have about 14,000 alumni in Cobb County. Cobb is a county that is very important to us. Gwinnett’s number one, Fulton’s number two, and I believe Forsyth has moved into fourth. And it’s very close. About 60 percent of the people in the state of Georgia live in greater Atlanta. About 60 percent of our student body, if you count those 18 counties that make up greater Atlanta, come from there. So we are almost a mirrored image reflection of the state, despite what I hear from your friends and my friends. I hear from superintendents all the time, “why are you mistreating us?” Well, let’s look at the numbers. I know there’s no intent to mistreat anybody and I think the data would bear out that we are pretty much a reflection of population trends.

Q. What are the current challenges facing higher public education and what will be the challenges in the future?

A. Well, the biggest one in Georgia is funding. There was a recent study out, our neighbors to the east in North Carolina, the average subsidy per student is now $11,200 and actually has gone up the last two years. In Georgia, it’s $7,200. So we start out $4,000 a student behind North Carolina. And I can assure you, that has terrific economic impact on the state. I have personally been involved in the recruiting industry that has ended up in North Carolina because the people running the industry thought they had a better prepared workforce. So I think this whole business of providing adequate pay for faculty, adequate support for students, that then leads to satisfactory development of a workforce … I think that’s a very important issue for the state of Georgia and for UGA going forward.

A second issue that we educators have to come to grips with is the whole preparation issue. And all of the evidence is that we have a substantial number of people, maybe a fourth or fifth of college students in the system today who are unprepared to do college work. And long-term, whether or not the citizens of the state ought to be asked to subsidize great numbers of students who are unprepared to do college work. Should there be enrollment caps, which nobody, including me, wants to deal with? But there are institutions in this state with graduation rates no higher than the teens.

I think the third issue is, what role do we want to have in supporting research in this state? Most university research today is sponsored by the federal government. The state of Georgia has done a pretty good job in that area, in doing its part as far as matching certain grants from the NSF and NIH and all that you have to match. Most people think the world is going to evolve to where there are really only 50 or 60 major research universities in the country because that’s about what the federal government is going to be able to support. I think we need two of those in this state. And I really do think Georgia and Tech combined hold a whole lot of the future of this state in their hands.

And I’ll mention one other thing you’ve heard me talk about before — and I almost hesitate to do it in a week where football is starting; it’s no secret I’m a big fan — but we haven’t made as much progress as I would like to in this state of getting young people and parents to understand, as I say in my typical Rotary speech, that a 1200 SAT is more important than being able to run a 4.4 40. But we’ve got to do some work on the general populace on priorities in this state. It was sort of ironic last week, you have this whole business about the test scores in Atlanta and everyone’s sort of wringing their hands, and then I’ve never seen such a flurry of news stories about the opening of high school football. I don’t know that those two are mutually exclusive; I don’t think they are, but we still seem to get more excited in this state about football than we do about physics. We still have some work to do in changing the attitudes of the body politic about what really is important.

Q. What was your first reaction when you learned that the Princeton Review had named UGA the No. 1 party school in the nation?

A. I’ll be honest with you – I don’t take that as seriously, they won’t tell you what their methodology is. By any measurement standard, their research is flawed. And if you look back at the past history, once you get to be third or fourth, as we were two years ago, they’re going to put you number one some year. It doesn’t even bother me if we’re the whole package. In fact, I sort of like that. I want young people to be able to come and to, within reason, have a good time, blow off some steam … do all the things that most of us did as college students and I guarantee you my children did. What I want to be known for preaching is moderation. It’s in our seal. I think it’s a good way to live. And I realize young people are going to be young people, but this is also a growth time in their lives and there are some of them that establish unfortunate patterns that they never recover from. So what I continue to plead for is common sense and moderation and I think that’s really the long-term answer.

Q. UGA raised more than $100 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010. In this down economy, can it be done again this year?

A. I think so. We’ve done it five years running. I must tell you, it was harder this last year than any of the other four … and I take my share of that, but Tom Landrum and his staff are really the people that deserve the credit. I think we worked harder, I hope we worked smarter; we used a whole lot more shoe leather, which is what big-time fundraising is about. It’s not all the stuff you hear about like phone banks and computers and direct mail. Another thing, though, that makes me happy, is that in addition to hitting the $100 million mark - and I’ve given them a $110 million goal for this year - we had about 800 more donors than we had a year ago. I think our general alum has watched what’s happened in state support and we’ve had a lot more $100, $150, $50, $200-type donors than we used to have. I’m convinced that this group of young people who graduated the last 15 to 20 years is all out, many of them are doing pretty well, and I think they know the university needs their help and I think most of them want to help. So I believe the fundraising future of UGA is really pretty bright – maybe the best it’s ever been.

Q. Some of our friends at Southern Poly tell us UGA would like to start an engineering program, presumably on the basis that many pre-engineering students unable to get into Georgia Tech are going to Auburn. What can you tell us about this?

A. First of all, we already have five engineering degrees. That’s lost on a lot of people. So we have a pretty substantial engineering effort to start with. What we need for research purposes are the core offerings of civil, electrical and mechanical that we don’t now have and that I believe the state needs. What’s happening at Tech on one hand is laudatory because on one hand they’re producing young people who want to build the world’s next great nanotechnology experiment or write the world’s next great software package. But if you talk to the people at AT&T or Georgia Power or Lockheed, they can’t get their basic core engineer to run the power systems, build the bridges, run the industry in the state. And we know there are kids with 1250 to 1350 board scores that might not even want to go to Tech, or get into Tech, that are leaving the state in droves and are going to Auburn and Clemson and Tennessee, primarily. And we’d like to keep those students in the state. So I do have a proposal pending with the Regents, which they are studying. And I’m hopeful that we can get that approved. It would greatly enhance our research. Eighty percent of federal research money goes to either medicine or engineering. And when you don’t have full-scale medicine or full-scale engineering, you’re playing with two hands tied behind you. I’m pushing for civil, electrical and mechanical. I don’t want to try to be Georgia Tech. It’s probably not full-scale, but they’re the core-engineering subjects.

Q. How many engineering students are you talking about down the road?

A. Probably 700 or 800. And we’ve got about half that now. We’ve got about 400 now. That would probably be a new college.

Q. With your new rules on tailgating first being implemented this year, do you think fans and students will actually stay off of the lawns on North Campus after so many years of it being the popular spot to tailgate? What do you hope the new rules will accomplish?

A. The last four or five years, it’s been the most popular. That’s a pretty recent origin. We’re not going to run a Gestapo. We’re going to ask people to comply with the rules. I think the rules have been pretty widely disseminated and everybody knows what they are. I also, and it’s a factor of the schedule, with the first three games being noon or 1 o’clock kickoffs, I think that has an impact. It’s not one of those things I could have predicted but I think that will help some. And I’ll tell you what turned that issue, was the alumni. The alumni of this place don’t want to see North Campus destroyed. We were hurting buildings, destroying trees and wildlife and trampling whatever, we had too many people in too small of a space with too much equipment piled on it. This plan was put together by a committee that had students, alumni, policemen, game day management people, athletic people; it was a broad representation that said, “OK, how do we manage this?” It won’t be perfect, but I really think that there are going to be more advantages than disadvantages. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll tweak it.

Q. Where are you preparing for them to go?

A. Well, they’re going to be spread out more fully on the campus. I think you’ll see more people on the periphery. I think you’ll see more people on Legion Field, I think you’ll see more people out on the intramural fields, I think you’ll see more people on east campus. You’re probably going to see people a little further south down Milledge Avenue and all. The people around Dougherty Street area tell me that they’re expecting greater parking and whatever. The management of over 100,000 people – and that’s what it is every week now because there’s 15,000 to 20,000 people who come and have no intention of going to the game. And I would also remind you that all-in, all-out, we’ve got about 65 public safety people at the University of Georgia. We do get some help from the city and some help from the state highway patrol, but we coordinate it. So we’re managing all of this with a relatively small number of people. It’s really hard to get arrested on game day. You have to work at it. And some are successful. We remind our police people that they’re dealing with students, not criminals, most of the time. And we want it to be that way. But some of the behavior gets so far out of line that you have to deal with it.

Q. It is said if we do not learn from our mistakes we are doomed to repeat them again. What mistakes can UGA learn from the Damon Evans resignation?

A. Rarely do I say that we don’t make mistakes because we all do; but I don’t know how we could have done anything differently in that regard. The record shows I was on leave … my wife and I were sitting in a room at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville and had just ordered room service for breakfast when Damon called us on July 1st, thinking we had four free days with friends in Nashville and after that phone conversation of about 20 minutes I looked at her and she looked at me and I said, “You know, we’re going to have to go home.” We finally ate breakfast and went home. It’s a very tragic situation. But let’s analyze that. In a four-day period, where I called Tom Jackson back from vacation, I called Tom Landrum back from vacation, Frank Crumley back from vacation … we worked at my house all weekend. From July 1st to July 4th, we reached the agreement with Damon and his lawyers on an exit strategy, we accepted his resignation, we appointed a search committee and named an interim. That’s a pretty good weekend’s work. We worked almost around the clock for four days. We then, on the following Tuesday, we held a press conference, we announced the acceptance of the resignation, we announced the interim, we announced the search committee, and we got moving. I don’t want to sound like Tony Hayward because I don’t work like that, but it changed my whole summer. I’ve done nothing but work nights, days, weekends since July 1st trying to get this done and I think we’ve got a good new AD, and we’re ready to go. And in a set of circumstances like that, I would put that record up against most anybody’s. And once I began to realize fully the level of emotions and the need and the hurt and the anger, I said, “you know, folks, we need to fix this.” And I think we have about as quickly as you could ask for.

Q. In light of numerous arrests in Athens of UGA athletes, there is a pervasive view among many UGA students that the UGA campus police and Athens-Clarke County police seek out athletes to arrest them, even if it is for minor violations such as jaywalking to add a “notch on their belts,” so to speak. Do you share in their views?

A. Absolutely not. If you get in a car without a driver’s license and run into a parked car anywhere in this country, you’re going to get picked up. I put that in the stupid category. And I’m pretty well tired of stupid mistakes by people who ought to know better. I’m going to go you one more on that one. I think we’ve got a new athletic director who’s going to be less enamored with that than some others have been. I don’t want to give Florida too much credit, but they haven’t had these kinds of problems at this level. And they’ve had a policy down there that if you’ve got something pending – you’re not through student judiciary, for instance – you don’t play. And to represent the University of Georgia is a privilege, not a right. We have some other quarterbacks and running backs and split ends, and I think we’ve got to do better in that area.

Q. How many more years would you like to serve?

A. Well, between the conditions of the stock market and a desire to get a few things done, I think I’m good for another four, five, six years. I don’t want to set an end pattern for people to long for, but, you know, thankfully, I’m in good health. I’ve had chances to do other things, but this is sort of a mission for me. I came back here, at the time my mom and dad were both still alive, my dad still is, thankfully, at 86; my sister and her family are all in greater Atlanta, even though she married a Yankee, and I think we have nine Georgia degrees in the immediate family. So this is all in my blood. And after being out of the deep South for about 30 years, the chance to come back here and to sort of make this the last round has been a great opportunity.

Q. So that would make you here for about 20 years. Dr. Fred Davidson (a Marietta native) served how long, 19?

A. Yes. I tell you, I miss Fred. We benefit everyday from stuff Fred did.

Q. Do you have any desire to end your career in higher education in Georgia as chancellor of the University System?

A. I have turned down a number of opportunities to head systems. I think Mike Adams is a campus guy. I still like the students, I like the faculty, I like the give and take, I like the hoopla. I think this is the best job in higher ed in the state of Georgia.