Are University Presidents Morally Superior to Prostitutes?
By Richard Vedder
Doug Lederman sent my blood pressure into the stratosphere this morning. I am not mad at Doug –who is arguably the best reporter covering higher education in America today. He is just the messenger. What was today’s message? American universities added over 79,000 new employees last year, despite rising unemployment, the recession and, at the beginning of the academic year, a huge financial crisis. Worse, less than 12,000 of the jobs were for “instruction, research, and public service” —and there are as many new executive/managerial/administrative additions as in the core areas mentioned above. Literally, a new administrator was hired for every new instructor.
That’s not all. For every new instructor/research/public service employee addition, there were three new “other professional” persons added. Only 15 percent of incremental employment had anything to do with instruction. My university, for example, added people in the area of “sustainability” and “wellness”, not to mention public relations, while more and more students cannot get into classes, in part because of poor resource allocation, and in part because the faculty don’t want to teach them and continue to lower their teaching load.
This angers me but does not infuriate me. After all, it is the continuation of a trend that has gone one for decades. What infuriates me, beside the contempt shown for the customer (the student), is the hypocrisy and lying done by university presidents. They tell their legislatures and big donors that they are really being pushed against the wall financially, that they are doing all sorts of things to get greater efficiency, etc. Mostly out and out lies –or at least gross distortions. They say one thing and do another.
I got to thinking –who is morally more suspect: prostitutes, drug dealers, or university presidents? The two former occupations involve illegal activities, which gives a moral edge to the university presidents. Yet when the prostitute sells her (or his) wares, she or he usually delivers honest and reliable service for the funds provided –you get what you pay for. Can you say the same thing about universities? And the drug dealer who tells you he is giving you X but in fact delivers Y is held accountable –often ending up dead or maimed. What happens to the University president who tells the legislature that ‘we are in tough times, things are tight” –and then turns around and hires more sustainability coordinators and multicultural specialists, meanwhile closing kids out of classes willfully so he or she can get another year’s tuition (and possibly state subsidy) out of them? Who are bigger liars, cheats and scoundrels –drug dealers or university presidents?
The mayor of Pittsburgh has it right. It is time to move from subsidizing to taxing this type of behavior. The only question is: should we criminalize it like we do with drugs and prostitution?
Now, having said all of this, I want to say categorically that there are lots of good university presidents. Some are my good friends. They do have a tough job, not even knowing who their bosses are in some cases. They play a game by morally dubious and administratively ambiguous rules. Many of them — maybe even most of them — are kind, generous, humanitarian, thoughtful and, fundamentally, rather honest (however, I am sure the same thing can be said of some prostitutes and drug dealers). But the system encourages this shameful behavior. Higher ed is in need of an extreme makeover, and sooner rather than later.
CCAP Congratulates Northeastern University for Dropping the Ball (Football, that is.)
Daniel L. Bennett, of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, lauds Northeastern University in Boston, MA, for opting to drop its football program:
Non-competitive in a Colonial Athletic Association (not exactly a football powerhouse conference) this bold move by university officials is laudable. An article appearing this morning in IHE suggested that:
Northeastern officials stressed that the decision was not simply about saving money, but about where the university should spend money.
The press release from the University indicated that:
The decision is consistent with the university’s strategic approach to prioritize programs and invest in signature strengths
These statements confirm what CCAP and other critics of college sports have long suspected, that the proliferation of “big-time” sports had been at the expense of education. Northeastern deserves a pat on the back for being audacious enough to admit this through its actions.Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend in which universities realize that their conglomerate operating model is a failure, and begin to re-focus their priorities (expenditures) on areas that they have a comparative advantage, rather than trying to be all things for all people…Continue reading Kudos to Northeastern University >>
Nevada Community Colleges Limiting Access to Preserve Quality?
David Moltz, of Inside Higher Ed interviewed Daniel L. Klaich, chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education, recently:
Trying to reconcile what he sees as an ongoing struggle between institutional access and educational quality, the chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education says its Board of Regents should consider the possibility of limiting enrollments at the state’s community colleges.
Though Daniel L. Klaich has not developed a formal proposal for such a dramatic change, he said he expects to present “strong ideas” on the subject of educational quality at a meeting of the system’s Board of Regents this week. His appeal to the board comes at time when the state system has been asked to serve increasing numbers of students with less funding: its budget was cut by nearly 24 percent, or $314 million, for the 2009-11 biennium even as its overall full-time equivalent enrollment grew by 4.3 percent this fall.
“These kinds of conversations are all brought to the surface in an extraordinary light because of the current budget crisis we’re all in, which is particularly severe here in Nevada,” Klaich explained. “But, when you have the budget of higher education cut and there is an increase in enrollments, especially at the community colleges, you can’t say that we’re doing the same kind of work.”
Educational standards at the state’s community colleges have not fallen, Klaich insisted, but he admitted that they are in danger of dropping if the institutions are forced to further stretch their resources to accommodate increasing numbers of students. Even now, he argued, the system’s community colleges are not doing enough to graduate their students in a timely manner…Continue reading Access to What? >>
University at ‘Front Line of Economic and Social Change’ Hits Wall of Economic Reality
Nick Anderson, of WaPo, reports Arizona State University and other state schools across the country are having a hard time finding the funds to pay for their ambitious goals:
… The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities reported this monththat 85 percent of its members have been hit with state funding cuts. For nearly half, the cuts were 10 percent or more. Federal stimulus money has filled some gaps but not all. And the stopgap funding will run out soon. Last week, University of California regents voted to raise student fees 32 percent in response to state funding cuts.
“There is a disconnect between the high aspirations of the [Obama] administration and the reality of what’s going on in our states,” said William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland. “We’ve got to overcome that. We can’t just sit back, wring our hands and close the doors to students.”
ASU belongs to a class of four-year public research universities with campuses akin to mid-size cities. Reports show the next largest campus after ASU in Tempe is Ohio State in Columbus, with 55,000 graduate and undergraduate students. Others in the 50,000-plus range include the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities and the University of Texas at Austin.
The University of Maryland in College Park, the largest in the Washington area, has 37,000 students.
In his eighth year at ASU, Crow is known as an innovator, although skeptics say he overreaches… Continue reading Fiscal straits test ambitions of fast-growing Sun Belt university: Arizona State trimming staff, programs in face of state budget cuts >>
Universities: We Aren’t raising Tuition (We’re just raising the fees.)
Brittany Anus, of The Daily Camera, reports that CU-Boulder has found that fees a less ‘transparent’ way of raising tuition:
University of Colorado sophomore Anne Salter pays a mandatory $400 construction fee for four new campus buildings, but she’s never been inside them.
She pays another $177 in activity fees for the recreation center, which she doesn’t use.
“I don’t like it, but it’s what you’ve come to expect,” said Salter, an integrative physiology major who transferred from the Metropolitan State College of Denver and is paying for her education with grants and loans. “We have to pay to be on a campus that gives us more than just an education. It’s about being able to interact with your peers.”
While some university leaders say growing student fees are needed to give students a true college experience, others are concerned the fees are being used to essentially raise tuition.
Regent Tom Lucero, a Republican, has pressed the board not to look at tuition alone during budget discussions — but to factor in the larger “total cost of attendance.”
“It’s always been a concern of mine that we are using fees, and room and board and other avenues, to further fund the university on the backs of students and tuition-paying parents, and we’re not being transparent.”
Continue reading CU-Boulder student fees soar 60 percent in five years >>
Universities Giving Preference to Out-of-State Students for Higher $$?
Daniel De Vise reports today on WaPo, and PilotOnline, that some Virginia Universities are accepting more out-of-state freshmen now than previously, because of the higher tuition rates:
…Many of the nation’s top public universities accepted nonresident students in greater numbers this year, hoping to increase – or at least sustain – a pool of incoming freshmen who pay two or three times the tuition charged to locals. At some schools, the push for nonresidents has made it harder for residents to get in.
Public universities with the cachet to attract out-of-state students have courted them for decades. But universities are looking harder at nonresident students and their tuition dollars during the recession as other revenue sources dwindle.
State funding has eroded by 10 percent in Maryland and by 20 percent or more in Virginia since the start of the downturn, accelerating a long-term nationwide decline in government support for higher education. Out-of-state students generally pay the full cost of their education, effectively subsidizing their in-state classmates…Continue reading Virginia universities tilt toward nonresidents for higher tuition >>
It’s Time to Face the Music
“The reduced stimulus money means that the general fund appropriation for higher education will have to increase to $555 million, the same amount the state provided in 2005-06 and the point below which the state can’t cut funding and still receive stimulus funds.” -Tim Hoover, The Denver Post, November 22, 2009.
American colloquial language has some pithy phrases that reflect the common sense that the American people have learned from experience—not books in gilded classrooms at expensive public colleges and universities.
“It’s time to face the music,” is one of those phrases as is “Fish or cut bait” meaning “are you going just to sit there or are you going to start fishing?” Another favorite is “A stitch in time saves nine,” which I attribute to Ben Franklin’s Farmer’s Almanac. A Google search reveals that the originator of that phrase was first recorded in Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia, Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British, 1732.
Another favorite of mine is “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
I could come up with a lot more of these phrases, but it’s time to face the music.
Colorado higher education is poorly organized, too expensive for its own good, outfitted with accouterments we can’t afford and costing more—not less—every year. Raising donations for a state run institution goes only so far to close the budget gap. And raising tuition—even if only for wealthy out of state students—defeats the purpose of a “public” education. A “public” education should provide an education at costs the general public—meaning the lower middle class and the poorest—can afford. So something has to be done to reduce operating costs.
What can be done?
In essays published at the Yorktown Patriot and in private communication with at least two presidents of state universities in Colorado and numerous members of the Colorado state legislature, I have argued that Colorado higher education needs a workout and radical reforms.
- Start by commissioning a Core Curriculum of general education for credit college level courses delivered via the Internet at cost to Junior and Senior high school students. Enable them to earn up to two years of college credits while in high school and give them preferred admission to any four year public college or university in Colorado.
- Four years in to this effort when the first high school students who earn college credits online begin to arrive as full Sophomores, close admissions at four year colleges to new Freshmen and begin to grow our four year colleges into Senior colleges. In fifteen years, every four year college will only offer Junior and Senior level courses.
- Place all Faculty on a two tier compensation program. Lower compensation for those with tenure and lesser compensation for the non-tenured. Grant no more tenure.
- Place all Faculty on term contracts with Bench Marks at 3, 5, 10 and 15 years that must be met if their contracts are renewed.
- Commence annual outcome based audits that evaluate which programs are self-supporting and which programs exist at the sufferance of taxpayers or are supported by other programs or research grants rather than tuition. Shut down those programs not deemed absolutely necessary for a college education.
- Apply the principle “every boat on its own bottom” to the graduate divisions of all postgraduate institutions. If a program cannot manage and support itself, shut it down. Those that can support themselves should be free to manage their own programs without central administration interference, but each will contribute 60% of its income to the general fund.
- Make a public commitment, call it the “Education Contract for Colorado,” to lower tuition costs at public institutions by 5% annually for the next fifteen years.
These steps will enable Colorado to provide a college education for every citizen qualified for college level work. Though these steps will radically change the face of Colorado higher education, remember that there are an equal number of non-public institutions licensed to operate in Colorado. They will be challenged to meet market demand for football, cheerleading squads, basketball teams, climbing walls, gourmet food courts and provide those niceties to those willing to pay for them. All the others will hunker down and start lowering their tuition costs in order to compete with the state university system. Many more Internet programs will become available and Colorado’s very good Liberal Arts colleges will continue to offer a superb classical education to those who want an education as opposed to a degree.
Here’s the bottom line: Colorado’s public education costs are out of control, the leadership of state colleges and universities and their Faculty are living in the past, and Coloradans have no more money to support the costly and unnecessary ways that Colorado state colleges and universities do business.
It’s time to face the music.
Students, are you scared?
David Moltz reports on Inside Higher Ed today on a new book by Rebecca Cox, The College Fear Factor, why students are afraid, and what professors can do about it:
Cox believes a mismatch exists between many students’ expectations and those of their professors, and that some of the current pedagogical norms used in the classroom may be furthering this learning gap.
“Students can easily arrive at college without understanding what is expected of them and how to meet the expectations,” Cox writes. “Being unprepared to meet certain expectations, however, is not the same as being unable to meet them. When students fail to follow, or even violate, rules that are taken for granted, instructors may easily interpret the source of the problem. If a student’s style of participation is different from the norm, for example, an instructor may believe that the student is not as capable as the other students. Similarly, when a student fails to take the initiative to ask questions or seek assistance, an instructor may simply assume that the student is not motivated to learn.”
Through her interviews with more than 120 community college students — typically first-generation — Cox notes that a “coherent picture emerged” of their professors.
“Students admitted to feeling intimidated by professors’ academic knowledge and by teachers’ power to assess students and assign grades,” Cox writes. “Essentially, students were afraid that the professor would irrevocably confirm their academic inadequacy.”
This nervousness was particularly concentrated among those students taking mathematics and composition courses, often the “portal to more exclusive classes.” Citing an “underlying fear” that they would be “exposed” in front of their peers and professors “as too stupid for college classes,” many of the students observed by Cox “exhibited very low tolerance for feeling confused or making mistakes” and often did not seek extra assistance to understand new skills or information…Find out what Dr. Cox recommends professors do to help students on Inside Higher Ed >>
A Grass-Roots Reformation in Higher Education
Jane S. Shaw has a great article today on The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, explaining that in order to truly reform education, we need to, “empower students and alumni, shed light on what’s good and bad on our campuses, develop alternatives to current institutions, Support faculty, and light a fire under trustees.”
To read the details, see How to Reform from the Ground Up: Fixing higher education won’t come from top-down government mandates, but from grass-roots innovation.
The Birth of Blackboard
Michael Chasen has a great story in the Jobs section of The New York Times this weekend on what inspired him to create Blackboard, the technology many schools use to host their online courserooms:
WHEN I was about 10 years old, my father, an endodontist, bought a Radio Shack-brand TRS Model III computer in order to track billing. At first, it stayed in a guest bedroom that doubled as an office. Within a few months, I had moved it into my bedroom.
My friend Billy Berger and I began to write programs and were soon writing them for local businesses. We got clients by word of mouth. Working on my own in high school, I charged as much as $25 an hour for computer consulting for local companies. I was always interested in technology and knew I wanted to run my own computer company one day.
I got an undergraduate degree in computer science at American University. Then I decided to get an M.B.A. with a specialization in accounting and follow that with a law degree.
I found the college application process tedious and thought it would be easier if people could apply electronically…Continue reading Big Ideas in a Small Room >>
