A startling admission from the President of the University of California has me wondering about the future of not only Higher Education in America but also the impact of this new harrowing future on American politics. This would be too big a diary if I were to consider the impact it will have on knowledge, research, critical thinking, etc., so for now I'll limit the diary by buying in, totally, to the idea from conservative circles that Higher Education is a bastion for liberals.
Here's a startling article about cuts in the Higher Ed. system in California
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I would highlight a few quotes, even though I could go on and on about some of the implications of the policy changes (for instance, an emphasis on "entrepreneurial" projects).
Here's the first:
Financing for the University of California system rose only 2 percent from 2001 to 2008, a period when enrollment grew 30 percent, and financing for state prisons, K-12 public schools and health and human services each grew by more than 40 percent according to a report from the outgoing chairman of the Board of Regents, Richard C. Blum.
Why have tuitions gone up so much in the last 20 years, you ask? This is the primary reason right here: lack of government funding. Consider that, in 1998, the US Congress established a commission to determine why costs had risen so much. To the dismay of conservative legislators, the commission investigators came back with this admission: the university budget system--though a non-profit system--was highly efficient, and there were very few real areas that might be cut to lower the rate of tuition rise. The report was then glossed over by the conservatives and they presented a bulleted version full of demands for changes in Higher Ed (only one of which seemed reasonable, and that was transparency for all costs and investments).
This report was controversial, and the responses to it firmly pointed to the fact that tuition was rising because of lack of public support for higher education:
http://www.highereducation.org/...
Our intuition about cost and price is based on the profit sector, where price must cover cost, with any surplus on a unit basis being profit. In higher education, however, price never covers cost, and the difference is made up by subsidy, either from the state or from endowment and private giving. Thus, price + subsidy = cost. If subsidy falls (when, for example, states reduce their appropriations), then either cost must decline or price (tuition) must rise.
Because cost is viewed by most participants as an index of quality, it is easy to see why administrators, faculty, and indeed students and families resist cost reductions, for no one wants to see quality decline. This pattern also explains why institutions aggressively seek private gifts as a way to enhance subsidies.
The dilemma occurs, however, when the nation is engaged in shifting a higher share of the costs from the general taxpayer to students and families, as it has in recent years, in the absence of a clear policy statement to that effect. Then the stage is set for a disingenuous game in which governors and legislators condemn institutions for raising prices at the same time that state subsidies are being cut.
This article here makes a similar point:
http://findarticles.com/...
Professor Gordon Winston argues that the public has misapplied business lessons to higher education and that this error leads to the conclusion that all tuition increases are driven by cost increases (Winston 1998). His point is that tuition can rise as a result of either an increase in cost or a decline in third-party support, either private or public subsidies. Business does not receive third-party support, so rising costs, or declining competition, cause price increases among for-profit firms.
Breneman makes the point that even with the cost of tuition, each university subsidizes the actual cost of educating each student so that the tuition you pay does not cover the cost of the service provided. This presumably means that the tuition can rise to the level of the actual cost of service (a cost ameliorated only by research grants, endowment returns and public support).
Similar points are made in this article (which I will not address directly):
http://www.aaup.org/...
The commission went in assuming inefficiencies because universities are non-profit, and then it came out saying there was little fat to cut. Not without a substantial loss of quality. The second biggest reason for tuition cost was the rise of need-based financial aid, which basically means that in the face of cuts in public support, universities wanted to continue to provide scholarship aid for worthy poor and lower middle class students. Note the word "worthy" here. By raising tuition on affluent students, universities were in effect redistributing the wealth to poorer students, in a most transparent and direct way. They were doing this in order to maintain the historical 35-40% redistribution of tuition funds in the form of scholarship aid. And to maintain a need-blind admissions policy. Worthy poorer students could continue to be admitted. More affluent students could more easily be admitted (a reverse affirmative action policy if there ever was one).
Now, if indeed we've hit the end of the line as the Cal President would have it, that means an erosion in scholarships and need-blind admissions. We're already seeing an influx of upper-middle class students into public universities (clearly, most private schools can no longer continue to raise tuition). So now wealthier students are beginning to crowd out others at low cost institutions.
The net effect, from the Cal President once again:
"The impact of this cut is devastating," Mr. Yudof said at a press briefing. "There is no way that we are going to be able to look every student in the eye and say, ‘Tomorrow, the University of California will be just the way it was yesterday.’ "
Yudof is gutting the university system. He has to. The system has only seen a 2% rise in public support over the last decade (not even taking into account inflation) while costs have exploded 30% as more and more students attend university. Now the state is cutting $1 billion in support from the system. Yudof has to gut it. Staff furloughs (I love where he says he hopes that faculty don't take furlough days when they are supposed to teach, as though faculty ever take sick days already allotted to them), elimination of departments, layoffs, programs, classes with under 100 students, seminars, majors, "liver transplant programs," etc. [One wonders how the athletic programs at UCLA will get along?]
So, now, what to do about this state of affairs?
At the briefing, the current chairman, Russell Gould, announced creation of a new University of California Commission on the Future, which he and Mr. Yudof will head. The commission will consider how to maintain access, quality and affordability in a tough economic climate, what delivery models for higher education make the most sense, how big the university should be, and how to maximize traditional and alternative revenue streams.
"We’re going to have to change the way we do business," Mr. Yudof said.
In an interview after the briefing, he said he would like the new commission to look into the possibility of an online University of California and alternatives to the current system of majors.
I'm not going to speculate much on this other than to say, almost certainly the quality of education will be hit hard. Almost certainly the Humanities will be the first centers hit AFTER the libraries (which are already taking it on the chin in a very scary way). Almost certainly the experience for students will be diminished so that questions about the efficacy and nature of a higher education will certainly arise. An entirely online system at the University of California? For working people, that has value, but any professor will tell you that student interaction figures hugely in student learning.
Whereas in 2002 Breneman said "Almost no one is arguing for a reduction in quality," we are now facing the reality of a reduction in quality. With the Humanities faculty increasingly pressured into becoming essentially teaching or service professionals (i.e. much less emphasis on research), this will inevitably impact the so-called liberal lean of Higher Education, not to mention some of the spirit and interest in learning that takes place.
I see this as practically dehumanizing, and consider myself lucky to have come from a poor family, and have gone to a university in the "old style." That same opportunity may not be there in the future. It would be one thing to say, "We can't afford the greatest university system in the world anymore"--(and indeed, the US has the greatest university system in the world)--and quite another to say, "We're wasting so much money on prisons and Iraqi wars and $10k toilet seats that we are now dumbing ourselves out of existence." Universities got by for a couple decades, hiding the problem by easily admitting the rich, taking their money and redistributing it to the poor.
That can't happen any more.