By Richard Vedder
While doing my interview for last night's ABC nightly news special, one of my Whiz Kids, Matt Denhart, got his roommate Tyler McDaniel to give me a hand. I had a nice chat with Tyler, a freshman from a middle class family attending a typical, fairly high quality state university (Ohio University), where he is doing well academically.
Tyler had just received FAFSA based financial information for next year. We started talking a bit about his financial situation, which I will not share with you because of privacy concerns, but I was struck by Tyler's main point: his family was responsible and saved for college, and as a consequence receives little financial aid. Other kids from families with similar financial circumstances get more assistance -- often because their families were less responsible, spending more through the years and doing less saving for college for their children. Tyler, in effect, said, "my parents are being punished for being responsible." Tyler, of course, is right.
I have generally championed the concept of need-based aid, although I have been critical of excessive federal involvement and an overabundence of financial aid funding. I am beginning, however, to shift my position a bit, becoming more skeptical of much need-based aid on several grounds. First, Tyler's point is well taken, and there is a huge implicit tax on people who have saved for college. This is bad in terms of promoting economic behaviors detrimental to the nation. On macroeconomic grounds, current aid policies are suspect. Second, I am beginning to wonder if much so-called need-based aid is used to fund either submarginal students who have very high college attrition rates, or students from families that could have paid for college for their kids if they had been more responsible. Third, perhaps the best way to enhance parental responsibility is to administer tough love, that is to slowly but surely reduce the financial assistance commitments made by third parties to students, usually with government funds.
Friday, March 30, 2007
The MLA and the Spellings Commission
By Richard Vedder
The nation's best known group of academics, the Modern Language Association (MLA) is issuing a report on the Spellings Commission. The good news is that, if news reports are correct, the report appears to be on the whole moderately supportive of much of what the Commission said.
The biggest complaint is that the Spellings Commission ignored the humanities. I would agree with that, and as a Commission member I did make some efforts to instill some greater balance in the discussions, to no avail. I was insistent that Anne Neal be given a chance to speak, and she argued forcibly for a core curriculum, one that included some history, and probably other courses dear to the hearts of MLA members, such as literature offerings (although not of the kind of literature that many MLA members these days like to teach). I openly said that there were non-vocational dimensions of higher education, and that inculcating values, educating students in the things that bind us together as peoples, and analyzing the eternal questions that all adults must face are worthy in and of themselves. While a few others agreed, little of that nature was instilled in the report. The MLA criticism here is largely justified.
I was most delighted to read, however, that in principle the MLA accepts the notion that assessment of learning is desirable. To me, this is an absolutely critical recommendation of the Commission, combined with the twin objective of making transparent and readily available the results of assessments. We need to know: are students learning anything? In what ways are they better prepared as they reach graduation than they were when they matriculated? The MLA wants faculty involvement in assessment, which I accept in principle but in fact I suspect that independent (outside the university) measures of learning and competency have the most credibility, allow for more accurate inter-university comparisons, and lead to more informed customers evaluating colleges.
I do not expect much common sense to come from the MLA, a group given to rantings and ravings over the years on a variety of issues, often in a manner that shows how far that group, and many faculty, are isolated from the real world and hostile to mainstream values. Yet in this case, the MLA appears to be having taken a responsible, reasonable stand on the leading assessment of higher education in modern times.
The nation's best known group of academics, the Modern Language Association (MLA) is issuing a report on the Spellings Commission. The good news is that, if news reports are correct, the report appears to be on the whole moderately supportive of much of what the Commission said.
The biggest complaint is that the Spellings Commission ignored the humanities. I would agree with that, and as a Commission member I did make some efforts to instill some greater balance in the discussions, to no avail. I was insistent that Anne Neal be given a chance to speak, and she argued forcibly for a core curriculum, one that included some history, and probably other courses dear to the hearts of MLA members, such as literature offerings (although not of the kind of literature that many MLA members these days like to teach). I openly said that there were non-vocational dimensions of higher education, and that inculcating values, educating students in the things that bind us together as peoples, and analyzing the eternal questions that all adults must face are worthy in and of themselves. While a few others agreed, little of that nature was instilled in the report. The MLA criticism here is largely justified.
I was most delighted to read, however, that in principle the MLA accepts the notion that assessment of learning is desirable. To me, this is an absolutely critical recommendation of the Commission, combined with the twin objective of making transparent and readily available the results of assessments. We need to know: are students learning anything? In what ways are they better prepared as they reach graduation than they were when they matriculated? The MLA wants faculty involvement in assessment, which I accept in principle but in fact I suspect that independent (outside the university) measures of learning and competency have the most credibility, allow for more accurate inter-university comparisons, and lead to more informed customers evaluating colleges.
I do not expect much common sense to come from the MLA, a group given to rantings and ravings over the years on a variety of issues, often in a manner that shows how far that group, and many faculty, are isolated from the real world and hostile to mainstream values. Yet in this case, the MLA appears to be having taken a responsible, reasonable stand on the leading assessment of higher education in modern times.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Fixing Accreditation
By Richard Vedder
In talking the other day to a great educational entrepreneur, Randy Best, he said that the two magic words in reducing costs in higher education are "competition" and "transparency." I cannot disagree. He went on to say the major impediment to competition is accreditation. His efforts at inexpensive on-line education are impeded by geographic limitations imposed by accreditors that strike me as ridiculous, and by the amount of time and money it takes to meet the whims of the Tsars that control the gateways to being in the industry. Great economies of scale are being thwarted by mindless regulation.
Competition, accreditation and transparency are all interrelated. If all universities do what Randy is doing, namely having an external examiner evaluate each student to see if credit is justified, and if all the information on passage rates, attrition rates, tuition rates, etc., were public knowledge easily available on the Internet, why would we need accreditation at all? The Department of Education could simply say that it refuses to provide assistance to students attending schools performing very badly by these highly transparent criteria, and let it go at that.
The bar associations "accredit" new lawyers, and the accountants examine potential new CPAs. Underwriters Laboratories "accredits" electrical gadgets. Why can we not move to an examination form of "accreditation", supplemented by such useful information as student vocational success in the first five years after graduation, the percent that drop out of school, campus crime rates, tuition levels, and the like? Why can we not have a Consumer Reports annual analysis of colleges and universities that provides the quality control that accreditation is supposed to perform, meanwhile increasing competition between institutions?
The only reason it does not happen is that the higher education community does not want it to happen. This is where reformers should take to the barricades and start the revolution so sorely needed in American higher education.
In talking the other day to a great educational entrepreneur, Randy Best, he said that the two magic words in reducing costs in higher education are "competition" and "transparency." I cannot disagree. He went on to say the major impediment to competition is accreditation. His efforts at inexpensive on-line education are impeded by geographic limitations imposed by accreditors that strike me as ridiculous, and by the amount of time and money it takes to meet the whims of the Tsars that control the gateways to being in the industry. Great economies of scale are being thwarted by mindless regulation.
Competition, accreditation and transparency are all interrelated. If all universities do what Randy is doing, namely having an external examiner evaluate each student to see if credit is justified, and if all the information on passage rates, attrition rates, tuition rates, etc., were public knowledge easily available on the Internet, why would we need accreditation at all? The Department of Education could simply say that it refuses to provide assistance to students attending schools performing very badly by these highly transparent criteria, and let it go at that.
The bar associations "accredit" new lawyers, and the accountants examine potential new CPAs. Underwriters Laboratories "accredits" electrical gadgets. Why can we not move to an examination form of "accreditation", supplemented by such useful information as student vocational success in the first five years after graduation, the percent that drop out of school, campus crime rates, tuition levels, and the like? Why can we not have a Consumer Reports annual analysis of colleges and universities that provides the quality control that accreditation is supposed to perform, meanwhile increasing competition between institutions?
The only reason it does not happen is that the higher education community does not want it to happen. This is where reformers should take to the barricades and start the revolution so sorely needed in American higher education.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
ABC News To Highlight College Costs
By Richard Vedder
ABC nightly news with Charles Gibson (6:30 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, March 29, is planning to feature a segment on college costs, including interviews with the president of the University of Connecticut and with yours truly. Angst over rising college costs is not dissipating indeed is increasing, and ABC will offer a look at the issue. My guess is it will necessarily be a somewhat superficial look of the problem given time limitations, but a useful one nonetheless, calling more attention to the issue that is the focus of our professional lives at CCAP. Join us in watching the show.
***************
Speaking of CCAP, we are on the verge of some expansion and the beginning of several new initiatives to intensify the debate over American universities and the way they operate. I prefer do things rather than talk about doing them, so I am not going to give you a list of all we hope to accomplish. Nonetheless, we are taking steps to enhance what we at CCAP do. Stay tuned.
ABC nightly news with Charles Gibson (6:30 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, March 29, is planning to feature a segment on college costs, including interviews with the president of the University of Connecticut and with yours truly. Angst over rising college costs is not dissipating indeed is increasing, and ABC will offer a look at the issue. My guess is it will necessarily be a somewhat superficial look of the problem given time limitations, but a useful one nonetheless, calling more attention to the issue that is the focus of our professional lives at CCAP. Join us in watching the show.
***************
Speaking of CCAP, we are on the verge of some expansion and the beginning of several new initiatives to intensify the debate over American universities and the way they operate. I prefer do things rather than talk about doing them, so I am not going to give you a list of all we hope to accomplish. Nonetheless, we are taking steps to enhance what we at CCAP do. Stay tuned.
Grade Inflation and Princeton: A Report
By Richard Vedder
Of the Ivy League schools, it seems to me that Princeton has shown the most willingness to change in recent years. It decided to expand its student body by a few hundred --increasing access, a notion unheard of in the Ivies in recent times. It froze tuition levels for next fall for the first time in 40 years, although by sharply raising room and board rates, it made that innovation more symbolic than real. Most important, it has taken a tangible effort to reduce grade inflation, putting a limit on the number of "A" grades academic units can reward.
The latter was a brave move and a needed one. While the otherwise saintly Harry Lewis is partly right in saying increased grading rigor may lead students to avoid tough courses, the continued move away from distinguishing between student performance levels has reduced incentives for students to work. National data show students study embarrassingly little. When most students get "A"s in class, there is difficultly in assessing student performance, there is less effort put in by students to distinguish themselves, and we implicitly send a message that excellence is not something that needs real rewards.
A story in today's USA TODAY suggests that Princeton has had increases, not decreases, in applications as it has raised grading standards. Its graduates are not worried about getting into graduate schools or obtaining work. The public looking at grades of students realizes that an "A" at Princeton is more meaningful than an "A" at Harvard, and that a 3.5 GPA at Princeton might be the equal of, say, a 3.65 GPA at Yale or Penn. Others are still afraid to follow the Princeton example, but the evidence to date seems to suggest their fears of adverse consequences of intentional deflationary grade policies are grossly exaggerated.
Of the Ivy League schools, it seems to me that Princeton has shown the most willingness to change in recent years. It decided to expand its student body by a few hundred --increasing access, a notion unheard of in the Ivies in recent times. It froze tuition levels for next fall for the first time in 40 years, although by sharply raising room and board rates, it made that innovation more symbolic than real. Most important, it has taken a tangible effort to reduce grade inflation, putting a limit on the number of "A" grades academic units can reward.
The latter was a brave move and a needed one. While the otherwise saintly Harry Lewis is partly right in saying increased grading rigor may lead students to avoid tough courses, the continued move away from distinguishing between student performance levels has reduced incentives for students to work. National data show students study embarrassingly little. When most students get "A"s in class, there is difficultly in assessing student performance, there is less effort put in by students to distinguish themselves, and we implicitly send a message that excellence is not something that needs real rewards.
A story in today's USA TODAY suggests that Princeton has had increases, not decreases, in applications as it has raised grading standards. Its graduates are not worried about getting into graduate schools or obtaining work. The public looking at grades of students realizes that an "A" at Princeton is more meaningful than an "A" at Harvard, and that a 3.5 GPA at Princeton might be the equal of, say, a 3.65 GPA at Yale or Penn. Others are still afraid to follow the Princeton example, but the evidence to date seems to suggest their fears of adverse consequences of intentional deflationary grade policies are grossly exaggerated.
Retreat at Illinois: Stifling Innovation
By Richard Vedder
Last summer, in the early days of CCAP, I wrote enthusiastically about a new program at one of my alma maters, the University of Illinois. Energetic new president Joe White proposed starting a for-profit on-line university to better fulfill the historic "extension" mission given to land grant schools like the U of I under the Morrill Act. In the long run, profits from the venture could subsidize other educational activities on the university, or so it was argued. The for-profit status of a separate corporation would allow the new venture to avoid all the hassles, the long delays, the administrative morass, etc., that pervades modern university life. It would be unique for a major state university to experiment aggressively with the for-profit model. I was impressed that White proposed the idea.
Fast forward a few months. The faculty at the University have mobilized strongly against the idea. They want to control curriculum, the staffing of courses, etc., etc. They are furious at the for profit idea --what a nasty notion, trying to behave like the greedy capitalists whose efforts have funded the U of I, but who are viewed with contempt by many faculty. Joe White, facing campus turmoil, is forced to back down. Now the program will no longer be a for profit model. The faculty and some trustees have won --and what might have been a novel approach (called Global Campus) to offer a high quality international on-line program at very low cost is likely to end up resembling other programs of taxpayer subsidized institutions. The faculty do not want competition, do not want to have cheaper labor outperform them and make them look bad, etc. So they have fought, and won.
There is a lesson in all of this. Changing the culture of existing institutions is nearly impossible. While I am all for strategies, such as bribing faculty, to try to effect a culture of innovation and receptivity to change, I think most of the dramatic new innovations will come from institutions created from scratch outside the rubric of existing universities, private or public. We should spend some more of our effort deciding what such institutions might look like, how they can be financed, and how we can remove inane barriers to entry that prevent their growth. New competition from the outside might force institutions like the U of I to begin to change their ways. We now teach the same way Socrates did -- but with Power Point. We need to consider new paradigms -- separating teaching and research functions, perhaps separating the socialization and learning functions of universities, changing the funding mechanism, etc. Joe White had a great idea. Perhaps others unfettered by the conventions of a 13th century model will pick up on President White's good idea.
Last summer, in the early days of CCAP, I wrote enthusiastically about a new program at one of my alma maters, the University of Illinois. Energetic new president Joe White proposed starting a for-profit on-line university to better fulfill the historic "extension" mission given to land grant schools like the U of I under the Morrill Act. In the long run, profits from the venture could subsidize other educational activities on the university, or so it was argued. The for-profit status of a separate corporation would allow the new venture to avoid all the hassles, the long delays, the administrative morass, etc., that pervades modern university life. It would be unique for a major state university to experiment aggressively with the for-profit model. I was impressed that White proposed the idea.
Fast forward a few months. The faculty at the University have mobilized strongly against the idea. They want to control curriculum, the staffing of courses, etc., etc. They are furious at the for profit idea --what a nasty notion, trying to behave like the greedy capitalists whose efforts have funded the U of I, but who are viewed with contempt by many faculty. Joe White, facing campus turmoil, is forced to back down. Now the program will no longer be a for profit model. The faculty and some trustees have won --and what might have been a novel approach (called Global Campus) to offer a high quality international on-line program at very low cost is likely to end up resembling other programs of taxpayer subsidized institutions. The faculty do not want competition, do not want to have cheaper labor outperform them and make them look bad, etc. So they have fought, and won.
There is a lesson in all of this. Changing the culture of existing institutions is nearly impossible. While I am all for strategies, such as bribing faculty, to try to effect a culture of innovation and receptivity to change, I think most of the dramatic new innovations will come from institutions created from scratch outside the rubric of existing universities, private or public. We should spend some more of our effort deciding what such institutions might look like, how they can be financed, and how we can remove inane barriers to entry that prevent their growth. New competition from the outside might force institutions like the U of I to begin to change their ways. We now teach the same way Socrates did -- but with Power Point. We need to consider new paradigms -- separating teaching and research functions, perhaps separating the socialization and learning functions of universities, changing the funding mechanism, etc. Joe White had a great idea. Perhaps others unfettered by the conventions of a 13th century model will pick up on President White's good idea.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Best Advice
By Richard Vedder
One of America's smartest entrepreneurs --a risk-taker in the great American tradition -- is Randy Best, a Texan who is on a mission to offer low cost college education to the masses throughout the world. He called yesterday, and offered some good advice, as he almost always does (full disclosure: I did some work for Mr. Best a few years ago, and have a minuscule investment in his ventures).
Randy made the same point that Craig Barrett of Intel, Erskine Bowles of the University of North Carolina and others made at the follow-up to the education summit in DC last week -- keep recommendations for reform simple, promoting one or two "big ideas" instead of a laundry list of smaller changes that will not stir the emotions of the American people.
Randy says affordable education will come to America, prices will tumble, and traditional universities will reform like crazy, if just two conditions are met. First, get rid of maddening barriers to entry, especially via accreditation. Second, make higher education transparent -- give parents and students full information on the performance of colleges, how they spend their money, attrition rates, success of graduates after college, etc. If those conditions are met, you will have private entrepreneurs like Randy swarm the market, competing mightily for students and offering increasingly high quality education at reasonable prices.
I think Randy is right. To be sure, the education Randy would offer trains people for vocations, and provides information, but does little to instill values or perform the socialization dimensions of college. But the vocational/knowledge dimensions of education are most critical, and his big ideas are the right ones. On accreditation: regional associations often limit the geographic scope of colleges, in effect preventing them from operating over the entire country or the world. Randy tells me, as a consequence, other nations are surging ahead of us in innovative use of technology. We need to reform, and along the lines Randy is suggesting.
One of America's smartest entrepreneurs --a risk-taker in the great American tradition -- is Randy Best, a Texan who is on a mission to offer low cost college education to the masses throughout the world. He called yesterday, and offered some good advice, as he almost always does (full disclosure: I did some work for Mr. Best a few years ago, and have a minuscule investment in his ventures).
Randy made the same point that Craig Barrett of Intel, Erskine Bowles of the University of North Carolina and others made at the follow-up to the education summit in DC last week -- keep recommendations for reform simple, promoting one or two "big ideas" instead of a laundry list of smaller changes that will not stir the emotions of the American people.
Randy says affordable education will come to America, prices will tumble, and traditional universities will reform like crazy, if just two conditions are met. First, get rid of maddening barriers to entry, especially via accreditation. Second, make higher education transparent -- give parents and students full information on the performance of colleges, how they spend their money, attrition rates, success of graduates after college, etc. If those conditions are met, you will have private entrepreneurs like Randy swarm the market, competing mightily for students and offering increasingly high quality education at reasonable prices.
I think Randy is right. To be sure, the education Randy would offer trains people for vocations, and provides information, but does little to instill values or perform the socialization dimensions of college. But the vocational/knowledge dimensions of education are most critical, and his big ideas are the right ones. On accreditation: regional associations often limit the geographic scope of colleges, in effect preventing them from operating over the entire country or the world. Randy tells me, as a consequence, other nations are surging ahead of us in innovative use of technology. We need to reform, and along the lines Randy is suggesting.
Unholy Alliance
By Richard Vedder
I have long been uncomfortable with the power concentrated in student financial aid offices as a consequence of our massive and excessively complex system of financial aid. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, or so said Lord Acton. By administering aid financed by others, financial aid officers have the ability to tailor institutional aid offers to fit their desires, not that of donors. If donor A wants to help student B a lot, she makes a gift to the institution to support student B. If the financial aid officer, however, does not much like student B, he gives far less institutional support to B than would normally would be the case, leaving total aid no greater than if donor A had given nothing at all. So the donor's wishes are thwarted.
My sidekick Bryan reminds me, however, that Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General of New York, is investigating financial aid offices and private loan firms for unsavory practices. Make it clear: we favor private student loans, indeed vastly prefer them to government ones. But we don't like the fact that students are guided to them by the same folks who give out all other types of loans and grants. There are huge incentives for private loan providers to try to get the edge over competitors by offering bribes, either directly to the aid officers (e.g., through trips to exotic resorts for sham financial aid conferences), or to the institutions through kickbacks. Cuomo claims that is happening and he is going after the participants. Good for him (and for me to praise crusading attorneys general is very rare). Universities are losing some of their moral authority and respect for them for their role in imparting values is declining, and appropriately so. This is another example of a practice eroding confidence in universities and reducing their case for considerable institutional autonomy.
The ultimate solution is not to crack down on private lending. Rather, it is to separate the counseling and funding of student financial aid offices from the awarding of aid. Indeed, I think I would limit student financial aid offices to giving institutional aid, and any federal aid (e.g., Pell Grants) should be awarded directly by the Feds to the students. Better yet, if the government got out of giving aid through institutions altogether, the problem would go away. In a true free academic market, private lenders would advertise their wares in such a way that students could readily learn of alternative aid possibilities, just the way banks do it today with home equity and car loans. Indeed, a case can be made to criminalize university's requesting information from students on how they intend to finance college -- other than the assistance provided by the institutions themselves.
I have long been uncomfortable with the power concentrated in student financial aid offices as a consequence of our massive and excessively complex system of financial aid. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, or so said Lord Acton. By administering aid financed by others, financial aid officers have the ability to tailor institutional aid offers to fit their desires, not that of donors. If donor A wants to help student B a lot, she makes a gift to the institution to support student B. If the financial aid officer, however, does not much like student B, he gives far less institutional support to B than would normally would be the case, leaving total aid no greater than if donor A had given nothing at all. So the donor's wishes are thwarted.
My sidekick Bryan reminds me, however, that Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General of New York, is investigating financial aid offices and private loan firms for unsavory practices. Make it clear: we favor private student loans, indeed vastly prefer them to government ones. But we don't like the fact that students are guided to them by the same folks who give out all other types of loans and grants. There are huge incentives for private loan providers to try to get the edge over competitors by offering bribes, either directly to the aid officers (e.g., through trips to exotic resorts for sham financial aid conferences), or to the institutions through kickbacks. Cuomo claims that is happening and he is going after the participants. Good for him (and for me to praise crusading attorneys general is very rare). Universities are losing some of their moral authority and respect for them for their role in imparting values is declining, and appropriately so. This is another example of a practice eroding confidence in universities and reducing their case for considerable institutional autonomy.
The ultimate solution is not to crack down on private lending. Rather, it is to separate the counseling and funding of student financial aid offices from the awarding of aid. Indeed, I think I would limit student financial aid offices to giving institutional aid, and any federal aid (e.g., Pell Grants) should be awarded directly by the Feds to the students. Better yet, if the government got out of giving aid through institutions altogether, the problem would go away. In a true free academic market, private lenders would advertise their wares in such a way that students could readily learn of alternative aid possibilities, just the way banks do it today with home equity and car loans. Indeed, a case can be made to criminalize university's requesting information from students on how they intend to finance college -- other than the assistance provided by the institutions themselves.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Bribing the Faculty to Change
By Richard Vedder
Sitting in the affordability discussions at last week's education summit, on several occasions, individuals said, "that is a great idea, but it will go no where given faculty opposition," or "unless you have the faculty on your side, nothing much happens in universities." Senior faculty have life-time appointments, they teach the students and do the research -- they are the core of the university. However, they are notoriously conservative in terms of workplace change (even while very liberal politically), and use their powers of "shared governance" often to stifle innovation and change. How do you change that? Bribe them.
I have said previously that the faculty will do almost anything for money. Give them a share of the gains from a productivity-enhancing idea, and they will likely go along. For example, suppose research shows that a combination of repetitive Internet instruction, interactive TV, and small group discussions can reach students at a lower per student cost without any loss of average student comprehension relative to the traditional lecture-discussion model. Suppose the immediate marginal costs of teaching a survey course are $1000 per student by the new approach, and $1500 by the old approach, but the faculty are resistant to the new approach. Solution? Give the department in question some amount, say $200 per student, as an addition to their budget in return for giving up the instructional resources previously used to teach the lectures. And allow that money to be distributed, at least in part, to faculty in the form of added compensation.
To be sure, tenure rules, traditions, a difficulty in measuring classroom effectiveness, etc., make it easier to propose this approach rather than implement it. But it deserves consideration. And, fortunately, the recommendations of the education summit to Secretary Spellings included wording supporting efforts to provide incentives to faculty to change. This is, in part, how the old Soviet Communist bureaucracy became reconciled to capitalism -- they went from being bureaucrats to being "oligarchs" -- getting shares in the businesses that owned the factories that they ran. A similar form of bribery might be necessary to effect needed changes in higher education.
Sitting in the affordability discussions at last week's education summit, on several occasions, individuals said, "that is a great idea, but it will go no where given faculty opposition," or "unless you have the faculty on your side, nothing much happens in universities." Senior faculty have life-time appointments, they teach the students and do the research -- they are the core of the university. However, they are notoriously conservative in terms of workplace change (even while very liberal politically), and use their powers of "shared governance" often to stifle innovation and change. How do you change that? Bribe them.
I have said previously that the faculty will do almost anything for money. Give them a share of the gains from a productivity-enhancing idea, and they will likely go along. For example, suppose research shows that a combination of repetitive Internet instruction, interactive TV, and small group discussions can reach students at a lower per student cost without any loss of average student comprehension relative to the traditional lecture-discussion model. Suppose the immediate marginal costs of teaching a survey course are $1000 per student by the new approach, and $1500 by the old approach, but the faculty are resistant to the new approach. Solution? Give the department in question some amount, say $200 per student, as an addition to their budget in return for giving up the instructional resources previously used to teach the lectures. And allow that money to be distributed, at least in part, to faculty in the form of added compensation.
To be sure, tenure rules, traditions, a difficulty in measuring classroom effectiveness, etc., make it easier to propose this approach rather than implement it. But it deserves consideration. And, fortunately, the recommendations of the education summit to Secretary Spellings included wording supporting efforts to provide incentives to faculty to change. This is, in part, how the old Soviet Communist bureaucracy became reconciled to capitalism -- they went from being bureaucrats to being "oligarchs" -- getting shares in the businesses that owned the factories that they ran. A similar form of bribery might be necessary to effect needed changes in higher education.
Variable Tuition Rates: Good or Bad?
By Richard Vedder
INSIDE HIGHER ED today discusses an emerging trend. Within universities, the tuition rate is increasingly varying with program. Critics argue this is a disguised way of raising tuition -- the institutional tuition rate goes up by, say, 5 percent, but then individual units add supplemental fees to make the real tuition increase larger.
While the overall rise in tuition costs that is aggravated by this move to differential pricing may seem excessive to many, the principle of varying the tuition between academic units is a sound one. In a non-selective institution, tuition fees are set where demand equals supply, and the supply for college services at any given price varies with the costs of providing them, absent cross-subsidies between units. Also, the demand for services can vary as well. Thus engineering and business programs might be expected to cost more -- salaries are higher for faculty in those areas, and the demand for the programs is relatively high. If universities want to obtain more usage of underutilized fixed expenses (including tenured professors), they should lower tuition charges in those areas, while increasing them in the areas where resources are strained to capacity. Thus the principle of differential tuition charges is a legitimate one, indeed one that I advocated in my book Going Broke By Degree.
At the same time, however, the rise in differential tuition fees has probably aggravated the overall rise in resources going to higher education, and may well have contributed to a short-run decline in productivity. If, for example, after a university announces a 5 percent tuition increase, the business school is allowed to tack on another 5 percent and use the money to hire a couple more assistant deans, and decides to give uber raises to some senior faculty, the differential tuition may be funding falling productivity and institutional rent-seeking more than allocative efficiency.
If market-based management (to borrow from Charles Koch and his new book) principles are going to come to higher education, individual units within institutions need to be given more autonomy with respect to their budgets, including the right to set their own tuition. Indeed, we may be moving towards a model where each major academic unit sets its own tuition fees, and pays a certain amount to the central administration to fund central administration (e.g., registration), the library, student services, and the football team. Units then control their own budgets, and can rent space to other units who are space short, and buy services from units within the university as well. While the pure market model has some imperfections, it can help lead to a more rational utilization of resources. For example, charge rent for space. Charge high rents for use of space (e.g., classrooms and labs) on Mondays through Thursday, 9 am. to 4 pm, but low rents other times --- and give away the space in the summer. Departments might start teaching more classes at odd hours and in the summer months when space is vastly underutilized. Market principles should play an ever bigger role in higher education. Charge tuition by the class, not the course, and vary it from class to class, by time of day, by the popularity of the professor, etc. And allow the productive resources to share some of the additional resources that come in as a result of being productive and efficient.
INSIDE HIGHER ED today discusses an emerging trend. Within universities, the tuition rate is increasingly varying with program. Critics argue this is a disguised way of raising tuition -- the institutional tuition rate goes up by, say, 5 percent, but then individual units add supplemental fees to make the real tuition increase larger.
While the overall rise in tuition costs that is aggravated by this move to differential pricing may seem excessive to many, the principle of varying the tuition between academic units is a sound one. In a non-selective institution, tuition fees are set where demand equals supply, and the supply for college services at any given price varies with the costs of providing them, absent cross-subsidies between units. Also, the demand for services can vary as well. Thus engineering and business programs might be expected to cost more -- salaries are higher for faculty in those areas, and the demand for the programs is relatively high. If universities want to obtain more usage of underutilized fixed expenses (including tenured professors), they should lower tuition charges in those areas, while increasing them in the areas where resources are strained to capacity. Thus the principle of differential tuition charges is a legitimate one, indeed one that I advocated in my book Going Broke By Degree.
At the same time, however, the rise in differential tuition fees has probably aggravated the overall rise in resources going to higher education, and may well have contributed to a short-run decline in productivity. If, for example, after a university announces a 5 percent tuition increase, the business school is allowed to tack on another 5 percent and use the money to hire a couple more assistant deans, and decides to give uber raises to some senior faculty, the differential tuition may be funding falling productivity and institutional rent-seeking more than allocative efficiency.
If market-based management (to borrow from Charles Koch and his new book) principles are going to come to higher education, individual units within institutions need to be given more autonomy with respect to their budgets, including the right to set their own tuition. Indeed, we may be moving towards a model where each major academic unit sets its own tuition fees, and pays a certain amount to the central administration to fund central administration (e.g., registration), the library, student services, and the football team. Units then control their own budgets, and can rent space to other units who are space short, and buy services from units within the university as well. While the pure market model has some imperfections, it can help lead to a more rational utilization of resources. For example, charge rent for space. Charge high rents for use of space (e.g., classrooms and labs) on Mondays through Thursday, 9 am. to 4 pm, but low rents other times --- and give away the space in the summer. Departments might start teaching more classes at odd hours and in the summer months when space is vastly underutilized. Market principles should play an ever bigger role in higher education. Charge tuition by the class, not the course, and vary it from class to class, by time of day, by the popularity of the professor, etc. And allow the productive resources to share some of the additional resources that come in as a result of being productive and efficient.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Higher Education Summit II: Costs
By Richard Vedder
Before the task force on "Enhancing Affordability, Decreasing Costs, and Promoting Productivity" even got started talking at the Education Summit yesterday at the Willard Hotel in DC, Eric (Rick) Hanushek, one of America's foremost educational researchers, made the important point: affordability and cost reduction are not at all closely related. The costs to students and the costs to society of an education diverge dramatically, and these are simply separate issues. Rick, as always, had a good point, but that did not deter the group from proceeding.
Lots of good, if not revolutionary, things came out of the conversation. We favored aligning K-12 and college education much more, promoting dual enrollment courses, advanced placement and the like. The senior year in high school is not very productive academically, particularly for gifted students. Another good idea is to work for common course design in survey courses, trying to reduce duplicative costs in teaching the basics. The problem, of course, is that faculty members resist such ideas. Therefore, another great idea (which I promoted) proposed changing incentives. For example, if Professor X teaches all Principles of Economics students in state universities in Illinois by interactive television/Internet, and that saves X dollars, that a fraction of X be given to promote faculty interests (maybe in the form of salary) amongst the impacted faculty. It was also emphasized that cost reduction does not equate necessarily with efficiency. Productivity improvement requires cost reduction per unit of outcomes of comparable (or better) quality -- there is both a qualitative and quantitative dimension that requires consideration.
Not everything suggested appealed to me. Both Rick and I were concerned about ideas of suspending anti-trust laws for universities, ostensibly to allow them to work together to cut costs. Both of us still believe that competition at arms length between varying providers is far more likely to serve consumer welfare than colluding at professional meetings. Yet there was a statement about suspending anti-trust laws in the document going forwarded to the Secretary of Education.
Before the task force on "Enhancing Affordability, Decreasing Costs, and Promoting Productivity" even got started talking at the Education Summit yesterday at the Willard Hotel in DC, Eric (Rick) Hanushek, one of America's foremost educational researchers, made the important point: affordability and cost reduction are not at all closely related. The costs to students and the costs to society of an education diverge dramatically, and these are simply separate issues. Rick, as always, had a good point, but that did not deter the group from proceeding.
Lots of good, if not revolutionary, things came out of the conversation. We favored aligning K-12 and college education much more, promoting dual enrollment courses, advanced placement and the like. The senior year in high school is not very productive academically, particularly for gifted students. Another good idea is to work for common course design in survey courses, trying to reduce duplicative costs in teaching the basics. The problem, of course, is that faculty members resist such ideas. Therefore, another great idea (which I promoted) proposed changing incentives. For example, if Professor X teaches all Principles of Economics students in state universities in Illinois by interactive television/Internet, and that saves X dollars, that a fraction of X be given to promote faculty interests (maybe in the form of salary) amongst the impacted faculty. It was also emphasized that cost reduction does not equate necessarily with efficiency. Productivity improvement requires cost reduction per unit of outcomes of comparable (or better) quality -- there is both a qualitative and quantitative dimension that requires consideration.
Not everything suggested appealed to me. Both Rick and I were concerned about ideas of suspending anti-trust laws for universities, ostensibly to allow them to work together to cut costs. Both of us still believe that competition at arms length between varying providers is far more likely to serve consumer welfare than colluding at professional meetings. Yet there was a statement about suspending anti-trust laws in the document going forwarded to the Secretary of Education.
The Higher Education Summit
By Richard Vedder
I have a ton of things to say about the Higher Education Summit, over several blogs, I suspect. Let me give you the bottom line: the summit was a clear success, if the criterion used to evaluate success is: "Is Higher Education likely to be better in America relative to what it would have been in the absence of the summit?"
Some, of course, would ask the follow up questions: HOW much better will higher ed be? Or, did anything come out of the summit that will profoundly and importantly change higher education for the good in the foreseeable future? Using those criteria, the results were more ambiguous. Certainly no Big Ideas (to use Charlie Reed's, czar of the Cal State University system, phrase) came up -- or at least were adopted. The proposed changes were incremental things. Neal McCluskey of Cato, for example, would no doubt think it was tinkering at the edges, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and, in a way, he would be right. But in dealing with government, I accept small, slight incremental improvements as better than none at all. And Spellings is to be commended for being determined to change the culture of universities for the better. She certainly has got their attention, and that is good.
I am off to breakfast with Secretary Spellings to discuss (along with, no doubt, 25 others), "where do we go from here?" I may know more after that meeting. And in future blogs I will add some specifics as to what went on.
******************
One little incident occurred that was both unfortunate and so unnecessary. Doug Lederman, the aggressive but superb reporter/editor of INSIDE HIGHER ED, attended work sessions to discuss action items. He sat in on the session I was involved in on affordability for a good hour, then moved on to one of the four other groups --but was told to leave, that he was not permitted to attend. I don't know what the federal open meetings laws say specifically, but all of these meetings SHOULD have been open to the press. I wish the press had, in a unified fashion, demanded the right to attend. This is the people's business, and lots of $$$ were being spent on fancy receptions (including one at the White House for selected attendees, including yours truly), customized notebooks, etc., and the deliberations should have been a public forum. Period.
Speaking of the White House, I am enormously amused by the fact that it is far easier to go through security at the White House than it is at the Department of Education, where they seize your driver's license while in the building.
I have a ton of things to say about the Higher Education Summit, over several blogs, I suspect. Let me give you the bottom line: the summit was a clear success, if the criterion used to evaluate success is: "Is Higher Education likely to be better in America relative to what it would have been in the absence of the summit?"
Some, of course, would ask the follow up questions: HOW much better will higher ed be? Or, did anything come out of the summit that will profoundly and importantly change higher education for the good in the foreseeable future? Using those criteria, the results were more ambiguous. Certainly no Big Ideas (to use Charlie Reed's, czar of the Cal State University system, phrase) came up -- or at least were adopted. The proposed changes were incremental things. Neal McCluskey of Cato, for example, would no doubt think it was tinkering at the edges, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and, in a way, he would be right. But in dealing with government, I accept small, slight incremental improvements as better than none at all. And Spellings is to be commended for being determined to change the culture of universities for the better. She certainly has got their attention, and that is good.
I am off to breakfast with Secretary Spellings to discuss (along with, no doubt, 25 others), "where do we go from here?" I may know more after that meeting. And in future blogs I will add some specifics as to what went on.
******************
One little incident occurred that was both unfortunate and so unnecessary. Doug Lederman, the aggressive but superb reporter/editor of INSIDE HIGHER ED, attended work sessions to discuss action items. He sat in on the session I was involved in on affordability for a good hour, then moved on to one of the four other groups --but was told to leave, that he was not permitted to attend. I don't know what the federal open meetings laws say specifically, but all of these meetings SHOULD have been open to the press. I wish the press had, in a unified fashion, demanded the right to attend. This is the people's business, and lots of $$$ were being spent on fancy receptions (including one at the White House for selected attendees, including yours truly), customized notebooks, etc., and the deliberations should have been a public forum. Period.
Speaking of the White House, I am enormously amused by the fact that it is far easier to go through security at the White House than it is at the Department of Education, where they seize your driver's license while in the building.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
FAFSA News
By Bryan O’Keefe
While CCAP’s fearless leader is off attending the Department of Education’s summit today on higher education reform, I wanted to briefly note an interesting development related to the FAFSA form. As readers might remember, it has long been the view of this blog that the FAFSA form is an absolute mess and should be whittled down significantly. Some private consultants that we are friends with have even suggested that most of the information that the FAFSA provides can be found in other federal documents such as tax filings.
That’s why it’s good news that legislation has been formally introduced in Congress that would greatly simplify the FAFSA form and that the Department of Ed is going to put online a new calculator that will allow families to figure out ahead of time what their FAFSA forms will probably tell them.
Now, I am not familiar with the specifics of the legislation shortening the FAFSA, nor do I know much about whether this proposed calculator will work, be effective, etc. But at face value, both proposals seem to be steps in the right direction and address concerns that we have had about the FAFSA form being overly complex, cumbersome, and a stumbling block for the people that it is intended to help. It’s refreshing to see our political leaders in both the Legislative and Executive branches enacting reforms that will make life easier for real people.
That all being said, these are still baby steps. Reforming the FAFSA and allowing parents more information about the form are both solid policy proposals. But let’s not kid ourselves. These are not broad, imaginative, or daring reforms of higher education. For that, we will have to wait for another day.
While CCAP’s fearless leader is off attending the Department of Education’s summit today on higher education reform, I wanted to briefly note an interesting development related to the FAFSA form. As readers might remember, it has long been the view of this blog that the FAFSA form is an absolute mess and should be whittled down significantly. Some private consultants that we are friends with have even suggested that most of the information that the FAFSA provides can be found in other federal documents such as tax filings.
That’s why it’s good news that legislation has been formally introduced in Congress that would greatly simplify the FAFSA form and that the Department of Ed is going to put online a new calculator that will allow families to figure out ahead of time what their FAFSA forms will probably tell them.
Now, I am not familiar with the specifics of the legislation shortening the FAFSA, nor do I know much about whether this proposed calculator will work, be effective, etc. But at face value, both proposals seem to be steps in the right direction and address concerns that we have had about the FAFSA form being overly complex, cumbersome, and a stumbling block for the people that it is intended to help. It’s refreshing to see our political leaders in both the Legislative and Executive branches enacting reforms that will make life easier for real people.
That all being said, these are still baby steps. Reforming the FAFSA and allowing parents more information about the form are both solid policy proposals. But let’s not kid ourselves. These are not broad, imaginative, or daring reforms of higher education. For that, we will have to wait for another day.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Big Labor vs The Higher Ed Establishment
By Bryan O’Keefe
The intrepid reporters over at Inside Higher Ed have a very interesting story this morning about colleges' and universities' reaction to the Employee Free Choice Act. In another hat that I wear, I have written about the EFCA, which would fundamentally change labor laws to favor unions and their leaders. For example, the bill would eliminate secret ballot elections for unionization votes and would also allow government officials, through binding arbitration, to determine wages and benefits for employees in first contracts. With its allies now running Congress, the bill passed the House last month and will probably come up for a vote sometime this spring in the Senate. President Bush has already said he will veto it, but passing both chambers of Congress would be a success for labor leaders. If we have President Obama or Hilary in 2008, you can bet the farm that the bill will become law.
The Inside Higher Ed piece is fascinating because hardly anyone from the college/university side wants to talk about the issue. That’s because privately schools oppose the bill and fear the effects that it would have on their workforce. But they also know that labor has a foothold on college campuses, especially amongst the left-leaning faculty and students, and coming out against the bill would probably do some PR damage.
Here’s hoping that some colleges and universities however decide to stand up and fight for what’s right. There is nothing wrong with colleges and universities supporting democracy via secret ballot elections and also advocating for negotiating contracts with their employees without government intervention. Having worked in public relations for a short time, I understand their concerns, but this is an issue where having some members of the higher education establishment take a more public role might actually help derail the legislation – which even colleges and universities agree would be a good thing.
The intrepid reporters over at Inside Higher Ed have a very interesting story this morning about colleges' and universities' reaction to the Employee Free Choice Act. In another hat that I wear, I have written about the EFCA, which would fundamentally change labor laws to favor unions and their leaders. For example, the bill would eliminate secret ballot elections for unionization votes and would also allow government officials, through binding arbitration, to determine wages and benefits for employees in first contracts. With its allies now running Congress, the bill passed the House last month and will probably come up for a vote sometime this spring in the Senate. President Bush has already said he will veto it, but passing both chambers of Congress would be a success for labor leaders. If we have President Obama or Hilary in 2008, you can bet the farm that the bill will become law.
The Inside Higher Ed piece is fascinating because hardly anyone from the college/university side wants to talk about the issue. That’s because privately schools oppose the bill and fear the effects that it would have on their workforce. But they also know that labor has a foothold on college campuses, especially amongst the left-leaning faculty and students, and coming out against the bill would probably do some PR damage.
Here’s hoping that some colleges and universities however decide to stand up and fight for what’s right. There is nothing wrong with colleges and universities supporting democracy via secret ballot elections and also advocating for negotiating contracts with their employees without government intervention. Having worked in public relations for a short time, I understand their concerns, but this is an issue where having some members of the higher education establishment take a more public role might actually help derail the legislation – which even colleges and universities agree would be a good thing.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Arthur Beroz
By Richard Vedder
I was greatly saddened when Marc Beroz, son of Arthur Beroz, sent me the obituary of the passing on March 9 of Arthur at the age of 80. Over the past year and one-half, I had continued contact with Arthur as he pushed me to promote his "grant/loan" proposal to revamp the college lending program.
Arthur was a pioneer in promoting a rational college lending program. He told me how, in the mid-1960s, he had seemingly convinced Joe Califano, then Lyndon Johnson's Secretary of Health Education and Welfare, that we needed something akin to his grant/loan program, and that Califano indicated he was going to testify before Congress in favor of it, but was relieved of his responsibilities by LBJ the day before he was scheduled to testify. Arthur continued to promote the plan, most recently on his web site, and through cajoling persons such as myself, fellow members of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, and no doubt others.
Arthur had a good idea, and we at CCAP gave it some publicity on our web site and through this blog. He believed there was a way that the loan/grant system could be made more affordable to college students, that loan repayments could be tailored to the ability of loan recipients to repay, and he was indefatigable in promoting the scheme. I hooked him up with our very good friend and ally George Leef as well.
Arthur had severe handicaps that we did not know about until late in our relationship. He was legally blind. He literally worked his way through Harvard. He worked and provided for a family while going to school. He worked hard and promoted his ideas despite his great disability. As I calculate it, he was nearly 40 years old when he graduated from Harvard, and made his living by working at upholstering and as a public assistance bureaucrat, carrying on his real love for economics on the side.
I tried to get Arthur to testify at a field hearing of the Spellings Commission in Boston last year, when he first revealed to me that he had a disability that made it difficult for him to appear. When I offered to come visit him, he politely suggested I not come, ostensibly to maintain a pure professional relationship between us, but I suspect also because he did not want me to see him in frail health and with limited functionality. He called me briefly while out of the hospital a few months ago, and I sensed his health was very precarious. I grew to admire and respect Arthur a great deal, as a person who deeply wanted to help people realize their potential, and who pursued his objective with integrity, shrewdness and determination. He will be missed.
I was greatly saddened when Marc Beroz, son of Arthur Beroz, sent me the obituary of the passing on March 9 of Arthur at the age of 80. Over the past year and one-half, I had continued contact with Arthur as he pushed me to promote his "grant/loan" proposal to revamp the college lending program.
Arthur was a pioneer in promoting a rational college lending program. He told me how, in the mid-1960s, he had seemingly convinced Joe Califano, then Lyndon Johnson's Secretary of Health Education and Welfare, that we needed something akin to his grant/loan program, and that Califano indicated he was going to testify before Congress in favor of it, but was relieved of his responsibilities by LBJ the day before he was scheduled to testify. Arthur continued to promote the plan, most recently on his web site, and through cajoling persons such as myself, fellow members of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, and no doubt others.
Arthur had a good idea, and we at CCAP gave it some publicity on our web site and through this blog. He believed there was a way that the loan/grant system could be made more affordable to college students, that loan repayments could be tailored to the ability of loan recipients to repay, and he was indefatigable in promoting the scheme. I hooked him up with our very good friend and ally George Leef as well.
Arthur had severe handicaps that we did not know about until late in our relationship. He was legally blind. He literally worked his way through Harvard. He worked and provided for a family while going to school. He worked hard and promoted his ideas despite his great disability. As I calculate it, he was nearly 40 years old when he graduated from Harvard, and made his living by working at upholstering and as a public assistance bureaucrat, carrying on his real love for economics on the side.
I tried to get Arthur to testify at a field hearing of the Spellings Commission in Boston last year, when he first revealed to me that he had a disability that made it difficult for him to appear. When I offered to come visit him, he politely suggested I not come, ostensibly to maintain a pure professional relationship between us, but I suspect also because he did not want me to see him in frail health and with limited functionality. He called me briefly while out of the hospital a few months ago, and I sensed his health was very precarious. I grew to admire and respect Arthur a great deal, as a person who deeply wanted to help people realize their potential, and who pursued his objective with integrity, shrewdness and determination. He will be missed.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Take the High Out of Higher Education
By Richard Vedder
A new study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse shows that a very significant minority of college students are drug and/or alcohol dependent. Almost half have a substance abuse problem. The drinking culture has expanded everywhere, but is now increasingly supplemented with other forms of abuse. Harvard now tells its students to obey the laws and drink moderately --but then opens a pub so it can be "with it" and soften its hard core academic image. My university in the past year saw nearly 20 football players arrested on alcohol related charges, not to mention the football coach --who was not punished by the university for his actions. Similar things are happening elsewhere. Yet when Ben Wildavsky appropriately pointed this out in his landmark first draft of the Spellings Commission report, it was met with a firestorm of protest. When a prominent American (former Notre Dame President Rev. Edward Malloy or former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joe Califano, depending on which news account you believe) said that college presidents are acting like Pontius Pilate, he was savagely attacked by one of the leaders of the Higher Education Establishment, Peter McPherson. But Father Malloy and Joe Califano are right.
The facts are a lot of our students have a substance abuse problem of varying proportions, that they study typically vastly less than 20 hours a week, and that the academic duties of students therefore rarely take more than 1,000 hours a year or so to perform (compared with close to 2,000 hours for adult workers). With grade inflation, expectations of professors are modest. Kids have tons of time on their hands, and often a lot of money, some of it borrowed from taxpayers at low interest rates.
Residential colleges, despite their high costs, exist in part because there is a legitimate non-academic dimension to higher education -- learning to be mature, to lead, to be disciplined and develop interpersonal communication skills. College is a somewhat protected sanctuary where kids grow to be adults and to learn right from wrong. They go to college to learn the business of life, and a lot of that business cannot be learned inside the classroom or in books. Yet colleges have some obligation --arguably a major one -- to temper the passions of students, to provide them with limits on their behavior, and to encourage good moral and ethical standards. Yet schools seem to want to subsidize hedonism, giving the kids bars, hot tubs, and, proposed for Carnegie Mellon university --co-ed roommates. College is a place to get drunk, to fornicate, to get high --and, occasionally, to study. At most campuses, students have to pay for textbooks, but get "free" condoms. Why should taxpayer dollars be used to buy condoms for affluent oversexed college kids who do little studying? Why should tax exempt dollars and government subsidies be used to promote hedonism? Why don't universities teach students values such as honesty, moderation, and tolerance? And, mostly, why does the public put up with it? Is it because Americans are going the way of 4th and 5th century Romans, wallowing in moral decay and making their civilization vulnerable to conquest by the barbarians at the gates?
A new study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse shows that a very significant minority of college students are drug and/or alcohol dependent. Almost half have a substance abuse problem. The drinking culture has expanded everywhere, but is now increasingly supplemented with other forms of abuse. Harvard now tells its students to obey the laws and drink moderately --but then opens a pub so it can be "with it" and soften its hard core academic image. My university in the past year saw nearly 20 football players arrested on alcohol related charges, not to mention the football coach --who was not punished by the university for his actions. Similar things are happening elsewhere. Yet when Ben Wildavsky appropriately pointed this out in his landmark first draft of the Spellings Commission report, it was met with a firestorm of protest. When a prominent American (former Notre Dame President Rev. Edward Malloy or former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joe Califano, depending on which news account you believe) said that college presidents are acting like Pontius Pilate, he was savagely attacked by one of the leaders of the Higher Education Establishment, Peter McPherson. But Father Malloy and Joe Califano are right.
The facts are a lot of our students have a substance abuse problem of varying proportions, that they study typically vastly less than 20 hours a week, and that the academic duties of students therefore rarely take more than 1,000 hours a year or so to perform (compared with close to 2,000 hours for adult workers). With grade inflation, expectations of professors are modest. Kids have tons of time on their hands, and often a lot of money, some of it borrowed from taxpayers at low interest rates.
Residential colleges, despite their high costs, exist in part because there is a legitimate non-academic dimension to higher education -- learning to be mature, to lead, to be disciplined and develop interpersonal communication skills. College is a somewhat protected sanctuary where kids grow to be adults and to learn right from wrong. They go to college to learn the business of life, and a lot of that business cannot be learned inside the classroom or in books. Yet colleges have some obligation --arguably a major one -- to temper the passions of students, to provide them with limits on their behavior, and to encourage good moral and ethical standards. Yet schools seem to want to subsidize hedonism, giving the kids bars, hot tubs, and, proposed for Carnegie Mellon university --co-ed roommates. College is a place to get drunk, to fornicate, to get high --and, occasionally, to study. At most campuses, students have to pay for textbooks, but get "free" condoms. Why should taxpayer dollars be used to buy condoms for affluent oversexed college kids who do little studying? Why should tax exempt dollars and government subsidies be used to promote hedonism? Why don't universities teach students values such as honesty, moderation, and tolerance? And, mostly, why does the public put up with it? Is it because Americans are going the way of 4th and 5th century Romans, wallowing in moral decay and making their civilization vulnerable to conquest by the barbarians at the gates?
Should Academics Have The Right to Strike?
By Bryan O’Keefe
Our friends over at Inside Higher Ed wrote a story the other day about the most recent labor dispute to shut down a college campus, this time at the Community College of Philadelphia. I just checked out their website which shows a big message reading “Classes Have Been Suspended Until Further Notice” which I suppose means that the strike is still ongoing.
First and foremost, this strike and others like it are an absolute travesty for students. At the school in question, students pay about $3,500 for a years worth of instruction, a cost which is significantly higher than most other two-year colleges. The bare minimum that these students should expect is to at least have a teacher in the classroom. The problem becomes even greater when you take into consideration that many students at two-year colleges are hoping to transfer to four-year colleges someday and pursue other academic endeavors. I am not quite sure what the college is going to do to fix this in the short-term, but suffice it to say that the spring semester is officially a mess and many students may have to reevaluate some of their plans, through no fault of their own.
Having done a great amount of research and writing myself on labor issues, I fully understand that labor disputes often times boil down to a he said/she said situation. It’s usually hard to figure out who exactly is telling the truth and who’s bluffing, and most of the time the disputes are solved by splitting the difference.
That being said, if Inside Higher Ed’s story is accurate (and I have no reason to think that it’s not), it’s very clear that the faculty, staff, and labor union are the ones being unreasonable in this instance. It’s true that the university has offered pay increases which are only slightly below the rate of inflation. But the school has also said that the employees can receive health care at no cost to themselves. Given that health care premiums and cost continue to rise, far above the rate of inflation, this translates into an economic benefit of several thousand dollars a year. In fact, this type of benefit is nearly unheard of in the private sector, especially for rank and file employees. It’s hard to see how the university is in the wrong when they are offering these types of packages.
This whole situation brings me back to an earlier point I made some time ago when another faculty labor brouhaha was in the news – should faculty have the right to strike at all? For the most part, we do not allow firefighters, police officers, transit workers and other important public servants to strike. While the work itself is not exactly critical or life threatening, academics are being paid by students to perform a task. This is not simply an employer/labor union fight – there is a critical third party (students) and they are the ones who are primarily footing the bill. If we are going to ask students to continue to stretch themselves and take out student loans and the like, perhaps we should also ask faculty members to give up certain privileges too – like the right to strike. At the very least, students should know that their faculty will show up for work.
Our friends over at Inside Higher Ed wrote a story the other day about the most recent labor dispute to shut down a college campus, this time at the Community College of Philadelphia. I just checked out their website which shows a big message reading “Classes Have Been Suspended Until Further Notice” which I suppose means that the strike is still ongoing.
First and foremost, this strike and others like it are an absolute travesty for students. At the school in question, students pay about $3,500 for a years worth of instruction, a cost which is significantly higher than most other two-year colleges. The bare minimum that these students should expect is to at least have a teacher in the classroom. The problem becomes even greater when you take into consideration that many students at two-year colleges are hoping to transfer to four-year colleges someday and pursue other academic endeavors. I am not quite sure what the college is going to do to fix this in the short-term, but suffice it to say that the spring semester is officially a mess and many students may have to reevaluate some of their plans, through no fault of their own.
Having done a great amount of research and writing myself on labor issues, I fully understand that labor disputes often times boil down to a he said/she said situation. It’s usually hard to figure out who exactly is telling the truth and who’s bluffing, and most of the time the disputes are solved by splitting the difference.
That being said, if Inside Higher Ed’s story is accurate (and I have no reason to think that it’s not), it’s very clear that the faculty, staff, and labor union are the ones being unreasonable in this instance. It’s true that the university has offered pay increases which are only slightly below the rate of inflation. But the school has also said that the employees can receive health care at no cost to themselves. Given that health care premiums and cost continue to rise, far above the rate of inflation, this translates into an economic benefit of several thousand dollars a year. In fact, this type of benefit is nearly unheard of in the private sector, especially for rank and file employees. It’s hard to see how the university is in the wrong when they are offering these types of packages.
This whole situation brings me back to an earlier point I made some time ago when another faculty labor brouhaha was in the news – should faculty have the right to strike at all? For the most part, we do not allow firefighters, police officers, transit workers and other important public servants to strike. While the work itself is not exactly critical or life threatening, academics are being paid by students to perform a task. This is not simply an employer/labor union fight – there is a critical third party (students) and they are the ones who are primarily footing the bill. If we are going to ask students to continue to stretch themselves and take out student loans and the like, perhaps we should also ask faculty members to give up certain privileges too – like the right to strike. At the very least, students should know that their faculty will show up for work.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
War Against US News & World Report
By Richard Vedder
I read that Sarah Lawrence College is declaring war against US News & World Report (USNWR). I have somewhat mixed feelings about this, but am more on the side of USNWR than against them. I do not think Sarah Lawrence will win its battle in any case.
Sarah Lawrence is mad because, when it announced it was dropping requiring the SAT exam, it led USNWR to announce that it would have to estimate a student quality of Sarah Lawrence's students, and it would have to be cautious in the evaluation of them, with the implication that the rankings may fall. Sarah Lawrence doesn't like standardized tests, apparently, and doesn't want people ranking it. While clearly they have the right to do what they wish, they are trying to shut down one of the few "bottom lines" in higher ed. They are taking a step against transparency, full information, etc., showing an arrogance and contempt for consumers and donors which is commonplace these days in the academy.
On the other hand, the USNWR rankings are based on dubious criteria and contribute to the rise in college costs. So the one side of me is sort of happy that USNWR is being taken on. But what we need are more rankings, not fewer. We need evaluations based on what students learn in college, on student success rates in getting jobs, on their ability to get through college in a timely manner, etc.
I also worry about this tendency of some schools to abandon the SAT. I think it is a reasonably reliable predictor of student academic success, and not considering it leads to subjective evaluations of students that may lead to less emphasis on academic quality and merit, and more on meeting whatever the fashionable thing of the moment is in terms of the nature of student bodies.
I read that Sarah Lawrence College is declaring war against US News & World Report (USNWR). I have somewhat mixed feelings about this, but am more on the side of USNWR than against them. I do not think Sarah Lawrence will win its battle in any case.
Sarah Lawrence is mad because, when it announced it was dropping requiring the SAT exam, it led USNWR to announce that it would have to estimate a student quality of Sarah Lawrence's students, and it would have to be cautious in the evaluation of them, with the implication that the rankings may fall. Sarah Lawrence doesn't like standardized tests, apparently, and doesn't want people ranking it. While clearly they have the right to do what they wish, they are trying to shut down one of the few "bottom lines" in higher ed. They are taking a step against transparency, full information, etc., showing an arrogance and contempt for consumers and donors which is commonplace these days in the academy.
On the other hand, the USNWR rankings are based on dubious criteria and contribute to the rise in college costs. So the one side of me is sort of happy that USNWR is being taken on. But what we need are more rankings, not fewer. We need evaluations based on what students learn in college, on student success rates in getting jobs, on their ability to get through college in a timely manner, etc.
I also worry about this tendency of some schools to abandon the SAT. I think it is a reasonably reliable predictor of student academic success, and not considering it leads to subjective evaluations of students that may lead to less emphasis on academic quality and merit, and more on meeting whatever the fashionable thing of the moment is in terms of the nature of student bodies.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Blog 200: Pay for Performance
By Richard Vedder
Yesterday, it was revealed that one of America's largest corporations is going to be making a very large ($100 million +) commitment to supporting the Advanced Placement Test. Part of the money will go to reward good performance on the tests, with checks cut to those kids who, for example, get a grade of "5" on math tests.
Some people have been critical of this. They think it is perverse to pay people to do well, and note, correctly in some cases, that good performance would have come without the payment. In economist’s parlance, economic rent will be distributed to some good students.
So what? Our society is one of rewarding excellence, and giving rewards for superior academic performance strikes me in general as a good thing. Good students are rewarded by admission to Harvard, poor ones are turned down -- and that is the way it should be (although, perhaps we go too far in denying access). Moreover, more aggressive use of Advanced Placement makes college far more affordable. Training more teachers to teach Advanced Placement (and bribing them to do so) is a great idea, even though the teachers unions are nervous if -- God forbid --some teachers making a few more bucks than others. The crazy way we pay K-12 teachers, on which I have previously written in a pre-CCAP life, is a major factor in explaining the poor quality science and math instruction in U.S. high schools, turning kids off to these subjects. Exxon Mobil deserves credit for its move, which, by giving funds more to individuals than institutions, is a move towards more rational use of educational funds. High schools can offer learning for far less per credit hour than our bloated universities, and where the capability exists on the part of teacher and student, why shouldn't they?
**********************
Blogger.com tells us this is blog number 200. CCAP has come a long way from our primitive beginnings last summer, and we are poised for new breakthroughs, not only in blogs but in other ways. We hope to do more state-specific analysis, beginning with North Carolina (thanks to the Pope Foundation) but hopefully other states as well (we are doing some work on Michigan as we speak). We hope to focus more on entrepreneurship in higher education (I have been reading with interest Charles Koch's new book on that subject, and thinking about how Charles's ideas can mesh with the higher education milieu). We hope also to expand our web site capabilities, which are now severely constrained by a lack of in-house web expertise. Finally, working with the American Enterprise Institute, we plan to do conferences -starting tomorrow-- on higher education topics. Bryan and I have great hopes for the future. Stay tuned.
Yesterday, it was revealed that one of America's largest corporations is going to be making a very large ($100 million +) commitment to supporting the Advanced Placement Test. Part of the money will go to reward good performance on the tests, with checks cut to those kids who, for example, get a grade of "5" on math tests.
Some people have been critical of this. They think it is perverse to pay people to do well, and note, correctly in some cases, that good performance would have come without the payment. In economist’s parlance, economic rent will be distributed to some good students.
So what? Our society is one of rewarding excellence, and giving rewards for superior academic performance strikes me in general as a good thing. Good students are rewarded by admission to Harvard, poor ones are turned down -- and that is the way it should be (although, perhaps we go too far in denying access). Moreover, more aggressive use of Advanced Placement makes college far more affordable. Training more teachers to teach Advanced Placement (and bribing them to do so) is a great idea, even though the teachers unions are nervous if -- God forbid --some teachers making a few more bucks than others. The crazy way we pay K-12 teachers, on which I have previously written in a pre-CCAP life, is a major factor in explaining the poor quality science and math instruction in U.S. high schools, turning kids off to these subjects. Exxon Mobil deserves credit for its move, which, by giving funds more to individuals than institutions, is a move towards more rational use of educational funds. High schools can offer learning for far less per credit hour than our bloated universities, and where the capability exists on the part of teacher and student, why shouldn't they?
**********************
Blogger.com tells us this is blog number 200. CCAP has come a long way from our primitive beginnings last summer, and we are poised for new breakthroughs, not only in blogs but in other ways. We hope to do more state-specific analysis, beginning with North Carolina (thanks to the Pope Foundation) but hopefully other states as well (we are doing some work on Michigan as we speak). We hope to focus more on entrepreneurship in higher education (I have been reading with interest Charles Koch's new book on that subject, and thinking about how Charles's ideas can mesh with the higher education milieu). We hope also to expand our web site capabilities, which are now severely constrained by a lack of in-house web expertise. Finally, working with the American Enterprise Institute, we plan to do conferences -starting tomorrow-- on higher education topics. Bryan and I have great hopes for the future. Stay tuned.
Colleges and the Business of Life
By Richard Vedder
Tomorrow, an important higher education mini-conference is taking place at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, keynoted by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, in which I am playing a role as organizer (with sidekick Bryan O'Keefe and friend Anne Neal of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni). One of the many great speakers is Harry Lewis, former Dean of the College at Harvard, whose book Excellence Without a Soul is one of the great higher education reads of modern times.
Beyond teaching facts, ideas, and, hopefully, universal values, residential colleges, if they are doing their job well, help students become good citizens, and serve in an extra-parental role of advising them regarding the problems that accompany the transition from childhood to adulthood. Students need honest, mature, and wise advice on matters of vocational and graduate school selection, with issues relating to family and friends, even sometimes with dealing with romances and sexual feelings, and more broadly, with issues relating to right and wrong. As Lewis points out, many faculty members are so absorbed in their professional research specialties that they are disinclined and maybe even unequipped to advise youth on the broader business of the adult life to come. But many faculty members with years of working with youth and good life experiences of their own can serve as role models and advisers to students. Yet as Lewis emphasizes, the "system" does not promote that. Untenured assistant professors are not rewarded for talking to students. A paper given at an obscure professional meeting is worth more than 1,000 hours of advising kids about their future. That is wrong, it is a shame, and Harry Lewis has done a great job of exposing the problem as it has evolved at Harvard.
At a policy level, we need to change the system of rewards and incentives. The biggest problem, as I see it, is that research is measurable and recognition is national or even international in scope, while good advising (and to a lesser extent, good teaching) is much harder to measure and define, and recognition is merely local in nature. Therefore, national labor markets get information on research quickly and reasonably accurately, but much less on teaching. That may be one reason why the teaching/advising role in comparatively neglected, but not the only one. Nonetheless, we need to seek to evaluate professors more imaginatively and comprehensively than we do now. Why not ask graduating seniors, for example, to tell us "what professors have made the most positive difference in your life, either through their teaching, advising or other contact?" Why not reward teachers who are highly regarded more? Why does not rateyourprofessor.com or other Web-based site develop a national instrument that might provide national recognition for superstar professors in terms of helping students? It is not a perfect solution to the problem, but it may be a start.
Tomorrow, an important higher education mini-conference is taking place at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, keynoted by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, in which I am playing a role as organizer (with sidekick Bryan O'Keefe and friend Anne Neal of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni). One of the many great speakers is Harry Lewis, former Dean of the College at Harvard, whose book Excellence Without a Soul is one of the great higher education reads of modern times.
Beyond teaching facts, ideas, and, hopefully, universal values, residential colleges, if they are doing their job well, help students become good citizens, and serve in an extra-parental role of advising them regarding the problems that accompany the transition from childhood to adulthood. Students need honest, mature, and wise advice on matters of vocational and graduate school selection, with issues relating to family and friends, even sometimes with dealing with romances and sexual feelings, and more broadly, with issues relating to right and wrong. As Lewis points out, many faculty members are so absorbed in their professional research specialties that they are disinclined and maybe even unequipped to advise youth on the broader business of the adult life to come. But many faculty members with years of working with youth and good life experiences of their own can serve as role models and advisers to students. Yet as Lewis emphasizes, the "system" does not promote that. Untenured assistant professors are not rewarded for talking to students. A paper given at an obscure professional meeting is worth more than 1,000 hours of advising kids about their future. That is wrong, it is a shame, and Harry Lewis has done a great job of exposing the problem as it has evolved at Harvard.
At a policy level, we need to change the system of rewards and incentives. The biggest problem, as I see it, is that research is measurable and recognition is national or even international in scope, while good advising (and to a lesser extent, good teaching) is much harder to measure and define, and recognition is merely local in nature. Therefore, national labor markets get information on research quickly and reasonably accurately, but much less on teaching. That may be one reason why the teaching/advising role in comparatively neglected, but not the only one. Nonetheless, we need to seek to evaluate professors more imaginatively and comprehensively than we do now. Why not ask graduating seniors, for example, to tell us "what professors have made the most positive difference in your life, either through their teaching, advising or other contact?" Why not reward teachers who are highly regarded more? Why does not rateyourprofessor.com or other Web-based site develop a national instrument that might provide national recognition for superstar professors in terms of helping students? It is not a perfect solution to the problem, but it may be a start.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Who Needs Universities?
By Richard Vedder
The great universities of our nation have largely neglected undergraduate teaching while emphasizing research instead. This is an extension of the German university model developed in the 19th century that took over U.S. higher education in the 20th century.
But there are other models of research that also work, as the great research labs and occasional university-based, quasi-independent research centers (e.g., the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton) demonstrate. To me, the most exciting development has been the growth of truly independent think tanks, particularly in the social sciences.
Yesterday, I was in DC for the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI's) annual dinner, and also attended a luncheon. I heard absolutely brilliant, riveting talks by Charles Murray and Bernard Lewis. To be sure, Lewis, the West's foremost scholar and interpreter of Islam, is Princeton-based, but AEI sponsored a marvelously illuminating lecture bringing to light a historical perspective on the challenges of future conflicts of religions and civilizations. And Charles Murray offered startling and controversial remarks on the future of liberty -- profound, provocative, and stimulating.
Two things strike me. First, it is not altogether clear that the university is always the best setting to do high level research and thinking. By trying to force most persons into a combined teaching-research role, we may not be doing justice to either important mission. Think tanks aside, the private sector is doing much cutting edge research, including basic research, and I suspect they are doing this with at least the same efficiency of universities. Second, in this day of political correctness, some things are difficult to say at a university. Murray is an absolutely world-class scholar, a political scientist educated at the best schools (i.e., a Ph.D. from M.I.T.), but I doubt any of the great universities would hire him -- he is controversial, and not a member of the fashionably left-wing establishment. Universities achieved their greatness by challenging conventions, by saying the unsayable, by using creativity and ingenuity to change the status quo for the social good. Some of that is gone now, as intellectual diversity is shunned while skin color diversity is praised. It is a shame. Thank God for competition and institutional diversity. Thank God for think tanks. Thank God for AEI
The great universities of our nation have largely neglected undergraduate teaching while emphasizing research instead. This is an extension of the German university model developed in the 19th century that took over U.S. higher education in the 20th century.
But there are other models of research that also work, as the great research labs and occasional university-based, quasi-independent research centers (e.g., the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton) demonstrate. To me, the most exciting development has been the growth of truly independent think tanks, particularly in the social sciences.
Yesterday, I was in DC for the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI's) annual dinner, and also attended a luncheon. I heard absolutely brilliant, riveting talks by Charles Murray and Bernard Lewis. To be sure, Lewis, the West's foremost scholar and interpreter of Islam, is Princeton-based, but AEI sponsored a marvelously illuminating lecture bringing to light a historical perspective on the challenges of future conflicts of religions and civilizations. And Charles Murray offered startling and controversial remarks on the future of liberty -- profound, provocative, and stimulating.
Two things strike me. First, it is not altogether clear that the university is always the best setting to do high level research and thinking. By trying to force most persons into a combined teaching-research role, we may not be doing justice to either important mission. Think tanks aside, the private sector is doing much cutting edge research, including basic research, and I suspect they are doing this with at least the same efficiency of universities. Second, in this day of political correctness, some things are difficult to say at a university. Murray is an absolutely world-class scholar, a political scientist educated at the best schools (i.e., a Ph.D. from M.I.T.), but I doubt any of the great universities would hire him -- he is controversial, and not a member of the fashionably left-wing establishment. Universities achieved their greatness by challenging conventions, by saying the unsayable, by using creativity and ingenuity to change the status quo for the social good. Some of that is gone now, as intellectual diversity is shunned while skin color diversity is praised. It is a shame. Thank God for competition and institutional diversity. Thank God for think tanks. Thank God for AEI
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
R and R for Faculty
By Richard Vedder
A recent experience I had reminds me of the waste and inefficiency of academia, not to mention what us economists call rent-seeking--which in this context means taking dollars provided by governments and private sector "sugar daddies" and using them for conspicuous consumption.
I was asked to give a paper before a group of free market academics at their annual convention. The whole idea of people traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to hear a paper is terribly antiquated, in an era when we email papers or put them on the Web in nano seconds upon completing them. To be sure, there are personal interactions at meetings of an intellectual nature that are sometimes rewarding, but the very rationale of academic gatherings has diminished sharply in the computer age. Except for one thing: we have a lot of fun at these meetings, at cocktail parties where we trade gossip and hatch up new ways of ripping off taxpayers and other donors further. At some meetings, there is the added legitimate function of interviewing and recruiting new faculty.
The group I am speaking before next month, the Association of Private Enterprise Economics (APEE), goes a step further than most groups. It schedules most of its meetings in, should we say, academically challenged locales, usually resorts where there is gambling, golf, or the beach. This year's gig is in Cancun, Mexico. Registration fees are literally in the hundreds of dollars (partially to pay for a party and some meals), and most people are going for 3-5 days for what is essentially a meeting that could be conducted in a day and a half. I am going because a great friend of rational, efficient higher education, Art Pope (a supporter of CCAP) is receiving an award, and I will also be speaking about the research vs. teaching issue in a panel with several friends, especially Florida State's Jim Gwartney. But the issue is: why should third parties, especially governments, spend probably $1,500 each for scores, maybe hundreds of individuals to attend the conference? It is great R and R, a nice tax sheltered way to increase the income of faculty, but is it an efficient way of disbursing higher education resources?
A recent experience I had reminds me of the waste and inefficiency of academia, not to mention what us economists call rent-seeking--which in this context means taking dollars provided by governments and private sector "sugar daddies" and using them for conspicuous consumption.
I was asked to give a paper before a group of free market academics at their annual convention. The whole idea of people traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to hear a paper is terribly antiquated, in an era when we email papers or put them on the Web in nano seconds upon completing them. To be sure, there are personal interactions at meetings of an intellectual nature that are sometimes rewarding, but the very rationale of academic gatherings has diminished sharply in the computer age. Except for one thing: we have a lot of fun at these meetings, at cocktail parties where we trade gossip and hatch up new ways of ripping off taxpayers and other donors further. At some meetings, there is the added legitimate function of interviewing and recruiting new faculty.
The group I am speaking before next month, the Association of Private Enterprise Economics (APEE), goes a step further than most groups. It schedules most of its meetings in, should we say, academically challenged locales, usually resorts where there is gambling, golf, or the beach. This year's gig is in Cancun, Mexico. Registration fees are literally in the hundreds of dollars (partially to pay for a party and some meals), and most people are going for 3-5 days for what is essentially a meeting that could be conducted in a day and a half. I am going because a great friend of rational, efficient higher education, Art Pope (a supporter of CCAP) is receiving an award, and I will also be speaking about the research vs. teaching issue in a panel with several friends, especially Florida State's Jim Gwartney. But the issue is: why should third parties, especially governments, spend probably $1,500 each for scores, maybe hundreds of individuals to attend the conference? It is great R and R, a nice tax sheltered way to increase the income of faculty, but is it an efficient way of disbursing higher education resources?
Monday, March 05, 2007
Saint Kathy of Las Vegas
By Richard Vedder
My wife Karen and I have a good friend named Kathy who is a veteran high school English teacher in Las Vegas. She is of the old school, expecting students to follow rules, learn material, and be evaluated rigorously on it. She has been fighting a losing battle to maintain standards in her school, and therein lies one of the major problems for higher education.
Kathy told my wife yesterday that her boss effectively told the teachers to not be too demanding of the kids, not to give low grades copiously, etc. The boss (who was upset with this herself)in effect said the central office did not want too many calls from irate parents, and that virtually all parents think their kids are wonderful students who should not be reprimanded, ordered to do a lot of work, or given low grades.
The recent reports of high school grade inflation are consistent with this, as are the results showing declining literacy amongst both high school and college graduates. We are dumbing down the curriculum in many cases, lowering our expectations, and getting the expected results. The American public basically does not want high standards or too much homework for their kids -- it might lower their self esteem and interfere with sports.
All of this strengthens my conviction that maybe we should NOT be educating so many kids in college. Too many college kids enter unprepared, partially through no fault of their own. But why should we waste additional resources trying to educated ill-prepared kids with little sense of academic discipline? Of course, we need to whip our high schools into shape, perhaps, but given parental, teacher union and administrative attitudes, that is easier said than done.
To be sure, my own children (including daughter-in-law) who teach at the public secondary level are less pessimistic about the future than Saint Kathy of Las Vegas. I fear, however, that Kathy's lament has much truth to it in many school systems around our country.
My wife Karen and I have a good friend named Kathy who is a veteran high school English teacher in Las Vegas. She is of the old school, expecting students to follow rules, learn material, and be evaluated rigorously on it. She has been fighting a losing battle to maintain standards in her school, and therein lies one of the major problems for higher education.
Kathy told my wife yesterday that her boss effectively told the teachers to not be too demanding of the kids, not to give low grades copiously, etc. The boss (who was upset with this herself)in effect said the central office did not want too many calls from irate parents, and that virtually all parents think their kids are wonderful students who should not be reprimanded, ordered to do a lot of work, or given low grades.
The recent reports of high school grade inflation are consistent with this, as are the results showing declining literacy amongst both high school and college graduates. We are dumbing down the curriculum in many cases, lowering our expectations, and getting the expected results. The American public basically does not want high standards or too much homework for their kids -- it might lower their self esteem and interfere with sports.
All of this strengthens my conviction that maybe we should NOT be educating so many kids in college. Too many college kids enter unprepared, partially through no fault of their own. But why should we waste additional resources trying to educated ill-prepared kids with little sense of academic discipline? Of course, we need to whip our high schools into shape, perhaps, but given parental, teacher union and administrative attitudes, that is easier said than done.
To be sure, my own children (including daughter-in-law) who teach at the public secondary level are less pessimistic about the future than Saint Kathy of Las Vegas. I fear, however, that Kathy's lament has much truth to it in many school systems around our country.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Rethinking Higher Ed: A Conference for You
By Richard Vedder
I recently blogged about a day-long conference the Department of Education is putting on for 300 members of the Higher Education Establishment and their most intimate friends, the so-called Higher Education Summit, being held in Washington March 22. It is by invitation only. However, a shorter and more user-friendly conference is going on in our nation's capital on March 13, and I am inviting you -- at less than a zero cost (a free lunch is being provided).
On March 13, the American Enterprise Institute is sponsoring a conference entitled Higher Education After the Spellings Commission. It takes place at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on March 13 at 12:30 p.m. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will start things off, followed by a panel on the Spellings Commission results including Bob Zemsky of Penn, a Commission member skeptical of the group's accomplishments; Judith Eaton, the head of CHEA, the organization of accreditors (a topic on which the Spellings Commission devoted a fair amount of time) and Gene Hickok, former Undersecretary of Education, former Pennsylvania education commissioner, and now a reform-minded scholar at the Heritage Foundation.
Sparks may fly in the second panel. Author of two books on rising tuition, Ron Ehrenberg of Cornell and myself (of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, AEI and Ohio University) will each make what I expect will be rather different presentations. Discussing our remarks and adding some of their own will be Sandy Baum of the College Board and AEI's Charles Murray, who has written provocatively suggesting too many kids go to college (Charles, co-author of the Bell Curve, has undergone more controversy in his lifetime than the rest of us on the various panels combined).
The third panel will get into curricular content and the role of governing boards. Moderated by CCAP's good friend Anne Neal, panelists include Mark Bauerlin, an Emory University English professor; SUNY Trustee Ed Cox, a New York lawyer known to many as Richard Nixon's son-in-law, and Harry Lewis of Harvard (and former Dean of the College), whose great book last year on higher education is must reading for all concerned about the undergraduate educational experience in America. Click here to register for this event. Attendance is limited, so get your reservation in now.
I recently blogged about a day-long conference the Department of Education is putting on for 300 members of the Higher Education Establishment and their most intimate friends, the so-called Higher Education Summit, being held in Washington March 22. It is by invitation only. However, a shorter and more user-friendly conference is going on in our nation's capital on March 13, and I am inviting you -- at less than a zero cost (a free lunch is being provided).
On March 13, the American Enterprise Institute is sponsoring a conference entitled Higher Education After the Spellings Commission. It takes place at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on March 13 at 12:30 p.m. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will start things off, followed by a panel on the Spellings Commission results including Bob Zemsky of Penn, a Commission member skeptical of the group's accomplishments; Judith Eaton, the head of CHEA, the organization of accreditors (a topic on which the Spellings Commission devoted a fair amount of time) and Gene Hickok, former Undersecretary of Education, former Pennsylvania education commissioner, and now a reform-minded scholar at the Heritage Foundation.
Sparks may fly in the second panel. Author of two books on rising tuition, Ron Ehrenberg of Cornell and myself (of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, AEI and Ohio University) will each make what I expect will be rather different presentations. Discussing our remarks and adding some of their own will be Sandy Baum of the College Board and AEI's Charles Murray, who has written provocatively suggesting too many kids go to college (Charles, co-author of the Bell Curve, has undergone more controversy in his lifetime than the rest of us on the various panels combined).
The third panel will get into curricular content and the role of governing boards. Moderated by CCAP's good friend Anne Neal, panelists include Mark Bauerlin, an Emory University English professor; SUNY Trustee Ed Cox, a New York lawyer known to many as Richard Nixon's son-in-law, and Harry Lewis of Harvard (and former Dean of the College), whose great book last year on higher education is must reading for all concerned about the undergraduate educational experience in America. Click here to register for this event. Attendance is limited, so get your reservation in now.
The Higher Education Summit
By Richard Vedder
Margaret Spellings, our Secretary of Education, has on balance been a very positive force in higher education, and her efforts to push reform have been welcomed. My regard for her has strengthened, not weakened with time. She is now bringing together a good sized (around 300, I think) group to DC on March 22 to discuss the next steps in higher education reform, how the recommendations of the Spellings Commission can be implemented, etc. I will be there, both for the full meetings and a couple more intimate meetings of a smaller number of persons with the Secretary.
While I favor radical reform, including the privatization of higher education and the reduction of the government's role, realistically her summit is likely to focus on smaller, less fundamental changes. Two are worthy of special attention. First, colleges need to be pressured to provide more information to consumers and policymakers in an easy to use, transparent manner. Some indicators of student progress while in school should be available to consumers readily - information from the National Survey of Student Engagement, Collegiate Learning Assessment, or other instruments.
Second, we need to get more specific about how to reform student aid. If I were czar, I would simply go to one program --an augmented Pell Grant program, doing away with 15-18 other forms of assistance, including such popular middle class "entitlements" as 529 Savings plans. I would get the government out of the student loan business (I bet Sallie Mae would love that idea!!) I would also give grants directly to the students, and cut off the student financial aid offices of individual colleges from administering the aid. But there are less radical options that might make sense:
1) Radically simplify the FAFSA form;
2) Reduce upper middle class support in the form of tax credits, etc. as a way of funding expanding Pell Grants
3) Make Pell Grants into vouchers issued to students directly
There may be other things that could be agreed upon by nearly everyone. With 300 in the room, even with the use of task forces and committees, I am not expecting any tangible immediate outcomes, but I might be surprised. I am going to be trying to push for more far-reaching solutions than the Establishment wants, I am sure. Stay tuned.
Margaret Spellings, our Secretary of Education, has on balance been a very positive force in higher education, and her efforts to push reform have been welcomed. My regard for her has strengthened, not weakened with time. She is now bringing together a good sized (around 300, I think) group to DC on March 22 to discuss the next steps in higher education reform, how the recommendations of the Spellings Commission can be implemented, etc. I will be there, both for the full meetings and a couple more intimate meetings of a smaller number of persons with the Secretary.
While I favor radical reform, including the privatization of higher education and the reduction of the government's role, realistically her summit is likely to focus on smaller, less fundamental changes. Two are worthy of special attention. First, colleges need to be pressured to provide more information to consumers and policymakers in an easy to use, transparent manner. Some indicators of student progress while in school should be available to consumers readily - information from the National Survey of Student Engagement, Collegiate Learning Assessment, or other instruments.
Second, we need to get more specific about how to reform student aid. If I were czar, I would simply go to one program --an augmented Pell Grant program, doing away with 15-18 other forms of assistance, including such popular middle class "entitlements" as 529 Savings plans. I would get the government out of the student loan business (I bet Sallie Mae would love that idea!!) I would also give grants directly to the students, and cut off the student financial aid offices of individual colleges from administering the aid. But there are less radical options that might make sense:
1) Radically simplify the FAFSA form;
2) Reduce upper middle class support in the form of tax credits, etc. as a way of funding expanding Pell Grants
3) Make Pell Grants into vouchers issued to students directly
There may be other things that could be agreed upon by nearly everyone. With 300 in the room, even with the use of task forces and committees, I am not expecting any tangible immediate outcomes, but I might be surprised. I am going to be trying to push for more far-reaching solutions than the Establishment wants, I am sure. Stay tuned.
Would You Buy A Used Car from a University President?
By Richard Vedder
While University presidents, like all humans, vary enormously in terms of honesty and integrity, increasingly they condone deceptive and unethical practices in order to advance their university's mission. Aside from being morally wrong, in the long run, I think it contributes to declining public support for higher education.
That was driven home to me twice in the past 24 hours. A prominent editorial person at a major American newspaper recounted to me in an email how he had met with several university presidents recently, and had asked them if they were familiar with my book Going Broke By Degree. They all professed ignorance of the book. In reality, I had seen copies of the book on the office bookshelf of one of the attending presidents and am almost certain that I had talked about it with a second president present. They simply lied to the newspaper -- because they did not want to discuss what Al Gore would call "inconvenient truths" raised in the book. This may be what the Catholic Church once called (and probably still does) a "venial sin."
Daniel Golden, my favorite investigative reporter on higher education issues, raises another scam in today's Wall Street Journal that might come closer to what the church would call a "cardinal sin." Colleges lie and distort numbers to raise the reported percent of alumni who contribute to the institution. Using Albion College as the main example, Golden shows how graduating seniors who give, say, $25, to the school, see their gift spread out in $5 annual increments over five years for book-keeping purposes, all to raise the giving rate for those five years, years in which the graduating student is still in grad school and desperately worrying about accumulating student loans. Why bother to engage in this deception? The alumni giving rate is a factor in the all-important US News & World Report (hereafter, USNWR) rankings. Nationwide, alumni donor giving rates have surprisingly not declined a good deal over time, but you wouldn't believe it reading the numbers reported in USNWR.
All of this is doubly upsetting. It is bad that the college lies. Their defense is that they are following "industry standards" (translation: all of us lie), or standards created by CASE, a trade association (cartel?) of university money hustlers. It is morally bankrupt, and helps explain why Americans are increasingly failing to see the distinction between universities and used car dealers. We subsidize the former, and tax the latter -- why, when both have similar ethical standards regarding the goods and services that they sell?
Beyond that, however, is the other issue --why is giving money --a resource --considered a measure of how good a college is, or whether it is performing its missions? Colleges do not give us information on what kids learn in schools, so USNWR and others reach out for other data, but data that really measures inputs, not outcomes. We are engaging in a silly, expensive, and morally degrading game to distort alumni giving rates, when there is not a scintilla of evidence that those rates mean anything with respect to whether universities prepare our youth for better citizenship, make them economically more productive, make them more knowledgeable about the world in which we live, or even make them happier consumers while in school.
By the way, Dan Golden has a long career ahead, as there are many other scams he has not touched. One big scam he has missed is the tendency for universities to grossly overstate the amount donated in their major capital campaigns. For example, I recall that my university's last campaign bragged about raising $221 million, when the actual cash received, I am told by inside sources, was somewhat less than 20 percent of that amount. I suspect, to varying degrees that too is "industry standards," counting as a gift every vaguely promised penny pledged by alums, and then using some of the phantom money to hustle real dollar matching gifts.
Should we throw the liars in jail? Probably not. Governmental policing of university morality is a cure worse than the disease. However, should we remove special tax status and government subsidies for universities engaging in such deceptive practices? That is an idea whose time may have come.
While University presidents, like all humans, vary enormously in terms of honesty and integrity, increasingly they condone deceptive and unethical practices in order to advance their university's mission. Aside from being morally wrong, in the long run, I think it contributes to declining public support for higher education.
That was driven home to me twice in the past 24 hours. A prominent editorial person at a major American newspaper recounted to me in an email how he had met with several university presidents recently, and had asked them if they were familiar with my book Going Broke By Degree. They all professed ignorance of the book. In reality, I had seen copies of the book on the office bookshelf of one of the attending presidents and am almost certain that I had talked about it with a second president present. They simply lied to the newspaper -- because they did not want to discuss what Al Gore would call "inconvenient truths" raised in the book. This may be what the Catholic Church once called (and probably still does) a "venial sin."
Daniel Golden, my favorite investigative reporter on higher education issues, raises another scam in today's Wall Street Journal that might come closer to what the church would call a "cardinal sin." Colleges lie and distort numbers to raise the reported percent of alumni who contribute to the institution. Using Albion College as the main example, Golden shows how graduating seniors who give, say, $25, to the school, see their gift spread out in $5 annual increments over five years for book-keeping purposes, all to raise the giving rate for those five years, years in which the graduating student is still in grad school and desperately worrying about accumulating student loans. Why bother to engage in this deception? The alumni giving rate is a factor in the all-important US News & World Report (hereafter, USNWR) rankings. Nationwide, alumni donor giving rates have surprisingly not declined a good deal over time, but you wouldn't believe it reading the numbers reported in USNWR.
All of this is doubly upsetting. It is bad that the college lies. Their defense is that they are following "industry standards" (translation: all of us lie), or standards created by CASE, a trade association (cartel?) of university money hustlers. It is morally bankrupt, and helps explain why Americans are increasingly failing to see the distinction between universities and used car dealers. We subsidize the former, and tax the latter -- why, when both have similar ethical standards regarding the goods and services that they sell?
Beyond that, however, is the other issue --why is giving money --a resource --considered a measure of how good a college is, or whether it is performing its missions? Colleges do not give us information on what kids learn in schools, so USNWR and others reach out for other data, but data that really measures inputs, not outcomes. We are engaging in a silly, expensive, and morally degrading game to distort alumni giving rates, when there is not a scintilla of evidence that those rates mean anything with respect to whether universities prepare our youth for better citizenship, make them economically more productive, make them more knowledgeable about the world in which we live, or even make them happier consumers while in school.
By the way, Dan Golden has a long career ahead, as there are many other scams he has not touched. One big scam he has missed is the tendency for universities to grossly overstate the amount donated in their major capital campaigns. For example, I recall that my university's last campaign bragged about raising $221 million, when the actual cash received, I am told by inside sources, was somewhat less than 20 percent of that amount. I suspect, to varying degrees that too is "industry standards," counting as a gift every vaguely promised penny pledged by alums, and then using some of the phantom money to hustle real dollar matching gifts.
Should we throw the liars in jail? Probably not. Governmental policing of university morality is a cure worse than the disease. However, should we remove special tax status and government subsidies for universities engaging in such deceptive practices? That is an idea whose time may have come.
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