By Steve Babcock

After the Academic Investment Plan was presented last Wednesday, promising to pump $75 million into the classroom, students and administrators spent the week questioning how the initiative would play out.

Provost Ahmed Abdelal said while the full 100 professors will not be brought on this year, the plan, as it currently stands, would include a goal of bringing in 20 professors a year over the next five years.

“That is the beauty of this initiative,” Abdelal said. “Unless you’re going to graduate right now, you will see the benefits of this plan. Once you have [set the plan in motion], you know what is going to happen in year one.”

President Richard Freeland said he hopes the plan will make Northeastern “competitive” with other universities in terms of research capabilities.

“This plan is not just faculty. It is about increasing our academic resources,” Abdelal said. “There will be more funding provided in almost every field, allowing colleges to have more supplies, and the 100 faculty will be more for students to connect with.”

The type of professors Northeastern is looking to gain is what is described in the proposal as “star hires,” or professors that have already made major contributions in their field of study. Such hires, according to Freeland and Abdelal, would increase the value students are getting out of Northeastern.

Already, Northeastern has hired a former director at the National Institute of Health, Michail Sitkovsky, who made a major discovery in regard to inflammation, a condition that is common among many bodily disorders, effectively making them harder to treat.

The university plans to announce the second major hire in March. The professor, who, according to administrators is a known name in biotechnology, will bring with him a research team of about 20, along with over $2 million in grant money that he has received prior to coming to Northeastern.

Already, the university has research centers set up in, among others, biotechnology, nanotechnology (a type of production that looks to conserve energy) and urban public policy. Freeland said bolstering these areas would be a major focus of the plan because it would set Northeastern at the top of these fields.

Abdelal said student demand would also be a focus of where to hire professors.

“These [increases in certain areas] are to build on what we have — where we have majors or where majors are growing,” he said.

Some targeted areas in that category, according to the plan, are engineering, political science and biology, all of which are involved in the aforementioned research initiatives. Areas of growing demand, which the university has been bolstering in the hope of hiring more professors, are communications and nursing.

“I am going to be a senior next year so I won’t reap the benefits of [the new professors],” said Kurt Zimmer, a junior communications major. “If you are a freshman, you will actually see the results [of the tuition increase].”

An effective increase in these areas would give Northeastern major standing among research universities.

The national norm, Freeland said, has many universities looking to part-time faculty more and more.

“Instead, we want to bring on more tenure-track faculty who are experts in their field and contributing to research,” he said.

And, at the same time, Northeastern will continue to operate on the premise that teachers are as active in the classroom as they are outside, Abdelal said.

“The notion that we would hire someone just to do research is not tenable,” Abdelal said. “I don’t think many universities have done well with balancing [teaching and research]. I happen to believe that teaching is necessary to contribute to the academic quality of a university. Regardless of how we present this information, the new faculty is going to be involved in all levels of programming.”

For many students, though, there are mixed feelings about a plan that would get the university closer to reaching the coveted top 100 status on US News and World Report’s list of the best colleges and universities, which has also been used as a justification for this year’s tuition increase.

Northeastern currently resides in a group made up of 5 percent of the universities nationwide where students pay over $25,000 for tuition. With the Academic Investment Plan, though, some said it was a necessity in order to provide some sort of return on the high tuition.

“In the long term this was a good decision,” said Andres Vargas, a Student Government Association Senator. “[The increase in academic resources] needed to happen. If not, we were going to fall into nothing.”

SGA Vice President for Student Affairs Allyson Savin said Northeastern already has many resources to invest in that would not create tuition increases for students.

“I worry that if we hire more tenure-track professors, that costs will keep going up,” Savin said. “Maybe something can be done with the professors we already have. I feel like there are a lot of resources that could be used that we already have [to bolster academics].”

Abdelal said the return to students was built into the investment plan because of its increased engagement with top faculty.

“Anytime you have more faculty engagement, more resourc-es being made available for education, that is a return on what students pay,” Abdelal said. “There are a lot of schools that we compete with that don’t offer as rich of an education. For instance, Fordham [University] is not as good as we are; American [University] is not as good as we are.”

Northeastern falls into the median for tuition costs in a list of universities it mainly competes with in terms of educational offerings. The list includes Boston University, Fordham University, George Washington University and American University, among others.

“I think the school is already thousands of dollars out of line with most other higher education institutions. It seems like [the cost] keeps getting jacked up so that [Northeastern] can get on that top 100 list,” said Sean Reilly, a junior business major. “When you look at tuition, we are on par with the other top 20 schools in the nation but without the academic backing to prove it.”