Rutgers University yesterday tapped a native son and former Rutgers professor known for his outspoken defense of public higher education to be its next president.

Richard L. McCormick, 54, president of the University of Washington in Seattle for the last seven years, will take over at Rutgers on Dec. 1. Rutgers gets a history scholar familiar with the struggle Rutgers faces as state financial aid dwindles amid enrollment pressures.

In Seattle, McCormick saw state aid for the university decline as growing enrollment strained facilities and budgets.

Sixty-two faculty jobs at Washington went unfilled this year, and students have been faced with larger classes and problems getting into courses they need even as tuition rises - the same issues Rutgers students face.

McCormick has been blunt about Washington's failure to maintain its financial commitment, a stance he said he would continue in New Jersey.

"What has become of the 'public' in public higher education?" he said in a recent speech. "What has happened to our collective sense of the public sphere and the common good?

"Where is the political leadership for giving higher education - the trustee of the state's future - a guaranteed seat at the funding table, instead of its present sorry role as collector of leftovers?"

Those could be fighting words in New Jersey, where the recession and reduced tax revenue led Gov. McGreevey to cut state money to Rutgers and other state universities by 5 percent. Rutgers then raised tuition 10 percent, the largest increase in a decade.

In Seattle, McCormick told the university to fight back, and trustees took the bold step of telling state lawmakers they would not increase enrollment to accommodate the state's growing ranks of high school graduates until there was a significant increase in university funding.

McCormick said yesterday that he was not yet familiar with Rutgers' current financial and enrollment situation, but that a similar action by Rutgers "has to be taken under advisement."

McCormick at first turned down Rutgers' offer when McGreevey this month announced plans to merge Rutgers with two other state institutions - the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. But the more he thought about it, "the less it felt right, in my head and in my heart," McCormick said.

Given McGreevey's bid to merge Rutgers with the state's medical university, McCormick's experience running a university that includes an academic medical center with two large hospitals likely enhanced his appeal to Rutgers trustees.

McCormick has strong ties to Rutgers. He was born in New Brunswick and graduated from Piscataway High School. His father, Richard P. McCormick, was a prominent history professor on campus, and a student dormitory is named in his honor. The new president's mother, Katheryne, spent a long career as a Rutgers administrator.

McCormick began teaching at Rutgers in 1976, after earning a bachelor's degree from Amherst College and a doctorate from Yale. His specialty was American studies, and he has written three books on progressivism in 19th-century American politics.

He chaired Rutgers' history department in the late 1980s and became dean of the arts and sciences faculty in 1989.

He moved to the University of North Carolina in 1992 as provost, the top academic post, then became president of the University of Washington, which, like Rutgers, is a large, state-run research institution.

He will be Rutgers' 19th president, succeeding Francis L. Lawrence.