Innovation and Imagination Needed in Approach to Higher Education
The headlines in higher education’s public colleges are all the same: large budget gaps are ubiquitous. Arizona, California, and Florida face huge cuts in higher education. “The current recession and a convergence of other pressures on states and the American economy have eroded the ability of states to rebuild their financial support for higher education,” Paul Lingenfelter, executive director of the State Higher Education Executive Officers, wrote in an essay on state finances.
Will this economic crunch necessitate belt tightening? The answer is, of course. But more significantly, retrenchment should be the catalyst for imaginative thinking about higher education.
For example, most of the spending, approximately 80 percent of college expenditures, are allocated for faculty members who teach four courses a year, two in the fall and two in the spring. Suppose one course were added to this teaching load, reducing overall expenditures significantly.
Suppose as well, that many of the public institutions that duplicate courses were replaced by private online universities that can reduce costs because bricks and mortar do not have to be maintained. There isn’t a law against the substitution of electronic universities for buildings with ivy on them.
There is no reason why a university program need to remain devoted to a four-year schedule. Capable students should be encouraged to earn degrees more quickly than has heretofore been the case.
A means test for tuition payment may make sense since many parents who can afford the tuition at private universities seek the discounted and subsidized public alternatives, saving personal funds in the process yet relying on other taxpayers to cover the full payment.
It seems to me that if public colleges and universities cannot revamp their structures and create new ways of learning, state governments will continue to limit spending. Michael Richards, president at the College of Southern Nevada, argues that the financial crisis is so chronic that “we’re trying to take a systematic approach, but it’s all in the negative.” He added, “You’re really not planning forward — you’re planning forward for the survival of the institution.”
Hold the raises of professors to that of inflation is one way to keep costs down. Another is to decouple the staff including professors from the unions they belong to and bring their benefit package in line with that of private industry. Use college endowments to hold down tuition increases; and force book publishers to hold down their price increases as well; no book should cost $300 unless it is gold plated. And since most professors are lefties, with hold an extra 50% above $100k of their salary and use that for tuitions.
$300 textbooks are not the norm except in Computer Science
As a student worker I once–and this was $15 years ago–worked in a college bookstore during rush and had to endure the rightly outraged comments of students forced to buy a $450 comp sci book AND other works for one class.
I am now a prof at a Masters I university and I can tell you that PhD or not, salaries for profs vary widely across disciplines. My colleagues in Mathematics can barely eat. But, regardless of discipline, raises are infrequent and never, ever, at a par with inflation.
I would love my benefits package to be on par with private industry….
Why don’t they just sell off the “climbing walls” and other nonsense at the student unions that they spent our money on (instead of study carrels) over the fat years?
And fire the hundreds of dipstick administrators and “gender studies” voyeurs they’ve wasted upper ed on for the last 50 years.
And sell the real estate used for training NFL farm teams at our expense while dumbing down their supposed products — STUDENTS!
To the wall with academics!
Just four classes a year? Tenured faculty in Japan often teach 4-6 classes per term at public universities and more at private ones, in addition to a ton of bureaucratic nonsense. It’s past time for US faculty to earn their keep.
I recommend taking a close look at City University in Seattle (http://www.cityu.edu/). This private institution has a no-nonsense business model that translates into lower costs for the students and degrees that matter. Some important facts:
1. Many clases are offered online. Even classroom-based courses may be held half in-person/half online. Therefore, a significantly smaller physical infrastructure to maintain.
2. No sports teams, band, or cheerleaders. Therefore, no “athletic fees” that exceed the cost of tuition. (See Southern Illinois University’s tuition and fees page if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)
3. No residential housing, students live at home or on their own. Therefore, no huge capital outlays to build/maintain dorms that provide slightly more living space than prison cells. Also, no “student life” staff to pay. Note to parents: if your 18 year old is incapable of living responsibly on his own, perhaps he should go to a local school and live at home, or get a job to gain some maturity before further education. IMO, it shouldn’t be up to the school (and therefore the taxpayers and those paying tuition out of their own pocket) to finish raising your child.
4. Many of the professors are part-time, having been hired to teach from the fields in which they are, or have been, employed. Therefore, or example, students learn accounting from professional accountants.
Downsides:
1. City University will never, in any way, be considered a party school.
2. No team to root for during the college bowl games.
3. No post-graduation slacking off back at mom and dad’s house because you can’t find a job with that gender studies degree. Instead, you’ll be too busy working to know how oppressed you are.
I am not a CityU employee. I am the parent of a college-bound daughter. The more I research various colleges, the more ticked off I get. Tuitions are high, professors don’t teach, and the focus at many institutions is more on indoctrination and teaching young adults to think. Our family makes too much money to qualify for need-based financial aid; we’ll have to see how the merit-based scholarships work out. This is a blessing in several ways, in that our daughter knows that she must work hard at her studies and we are careful shoppers for the best deal for our dollar.
I understand that many people consider the “big university” experience with all the trimmings is important for their child. For us, a good degree with no/low debt upon graduation is the goal. We think that CityU, or something similar, is a close match. YMMV.
How about the taxpayers just subsidize the courses the country really needs such as nurses, teachers, engineers, etc? Let the other majors pay the full un-subsidized tuition.
I read an article a while back about Robert Strange MacNamara when he got out of the army after WWII. He went to Berkeley for $50 a semester, understood even then to be dirt cheap. What happened?
I was in the bookstore at ASU (AZ State) a few months back because I love books and wanted to see what was on the course lists. Fine Trade Paperbacks that sell new for $15 in a bookstore were being sold ‘used’ for $30! Who decided that? And as far as $300 books, there aren’t any except in some professor’s dreams.
Has anyone had experience with on-line education? What do you think?
Before online courses, I earned my Masters degree through “distance education”, which meant that the instructor sent me a syllabus, textbooks, and recommended reading list. Rather than sit in class and listen to lectures, I spent my time reading, researching, and writing papers, and I am sure that I learned more than the students at my daughter’s brick and mortar state university. At least my daughter has grown tired of wasting so much time on campus, so she has taken enough classes to finish her undergrad degree in three years and will do virtually all of her fully accredited Masters degree online.
Online is the future. And universities are just beginning to realize this. I was an early adopter–a matter of adapt and survive. Now that universities are hip to this, the sad thing is that they are beginning to regulate this just as much as they try to regulate what I do in a face to face classroom. Online promised to finally offer students choice and wider range of perspectives, aside from the standard liberal puff. Now the assessment Nazis are getting their hands on this too.
I’m back in industry (software dev)2 years after 6 years as a university computer science instructor. There are many courses that could work online, but there are many that cannot, or do not translate as well.
What you must watch our for, even with institutions accredited in your specific field, is that the value of the degree is in danger of being watered down because of the total blind eye to cheating in the name of whoring for the almighty $$. They refuse to have straightforward, sensible requirements like requiring you to meet your professors in person at the beginning of the semester, and to take the final exam on site (not a terrible hardship for students living up to a few hours away.) Instead the schools sacrifice the integrity of the entire program in order to not give that one student from Timbuktu a reason not to enroll.
The other disgrace is public universities encouraging grossly under qualified students to enroll (always with big loans and/or grants paid/subsidized by taxpayers) who have little chance of graduating (at least in useful fields). Worse they waste semesters if not literally years in remedial courses before realizing its not for them.
One other disabusing factoid — schools pretty uniformly charge a big *premium* (for the convenience) for their online courses, even as, as the author states, less capital is needed for buildings and classrooms.
Tenure-track faculty are a joke for the most part — they only have 2 courses per semester so they have time for ‘research’ — most of which is a near fraud of insignificant ‘how many angels on a pin’ word and/or statistical games, hand waving that no one gives a crap about (except for score keeping purposes), that doesn’t advance the body of real knowledge one whit.
Also, as instructors (no PhD, no tenure possible) we had 4 courses per semester, and were looked at under a microscope by the dean, because it was impossible to apply pressure to the tenured guys to bring the dept’s scores up, and the tenured guys got away with murder.
Cut pensions, increase the number of classes taught per instructor (reduce class size while we’re at it), eliminate affirmative discrimination, repeal the laws that require some individual to administer them, and no more college loans of any kind for undergraduate education. Then we’d get costs under control. What we have now in public higher education is a scam.
How many sociologists, political scientists and social workers do we need? And please, donk’t import any more French philosophers.
The grand scheme of the Democrat (socialist/communist) party, is to;
1. Reduce education to gain leverage with the young voters;
2. Create fear in everyone that wants to try to discuss “race” in any fashion;
3. Create fear in anyone whom wants to discuss politics in any manner unflattering to the “Party”;
4. Undermine all capitalist activity, and promote “dependence on government”;
5. Create fear in anyone wanting to cause dissent with the “Democrat Agenda”.