We’d like to think we’re not naïve. Although our book, Higher Education?, mentioned much that needed fixing, we didn’t expect universal agreement, let alone concerted action. Indeed, anyone who publishes a work that criticizes indifferent teaching, unconscionable costs, abuse of contingent faculty, and the sacrosanct status of tenure ought to expect some pushback.
In the year since the book appeared, we’ve continued to visit campuses and have heard from readers informally. What has struck us is how many issues are off the table, as if there are placards saying, “Not Open for Discussion.” We find this particularly distressing in a scholarly community supposedly devoted to freewheeling inquiry. Most of our critics are fellow academics, some of whom seem to find us guilty by association, since we happen to hold a few views in common with conservative commentators. For the record: Our ideology is rooted more in Paul Goodman than Allan Bloom.
We have brushed off blogs calling us “anti-intellectual,” even one warning us to “stay off drugs.” More typical was, “If tenure is so bad, how did American higher education become a model for excellence in the world?” This last, we found, was the default response to any questioning of the status quo. A more formal analysis complained that we “showed little understanding of the intellectual richness and variety that have made American universities the envy of observers around the world.” That is much like answering critics of health care by citing the Mayo Clinic and its international clientele. Does the clinic’s success mean we can’t mention that millions of uninsured must resort to emergency rooms? We can’t see how the triumphs at Caltech give Michigan State a pass for jamming 587 freshmen into Economics 101.
For the most part, the senior professors and administrators we have spoken with seem quite content with how things are. And those, notably junior faculty, who believe that things have gone wrong tend to stay silent. Even presidents, who often told us privately that our critiques were overdue, stick to bromides in public.
We wrote our book as the country was staggering through a drastic downturn, with some college endowments approaching dips of 30 percent, and students and their families having less wherewithal for college bills. When real people are tightening their belts, we wondered if some of the outlays we cited last year—nonacademic amenities, metastasizing bureaucracies, seven-figure salaries for presidents—would be examined and altered. Sadly, we have found no sign that higher education is any more willing to scrutinize its role and responsibilities than are mortgage-bundling banks. Here is an update on some areas we still find especially troubling:
Ever-higher tuition. Yale’s endowment fell by 28.6 percent in 2009. To cover the shortfall, for the 2010-2011 academic year it upped its tuition by 4.8 percent, well over the national inflation rate. At the same time, Yale was increasing its athletic budget to $35.8-million. Recession or not, tuition continues to skyrocket. At state colleges, it’s at least responding to decreased public financing; at private colleges, tuition goes up simply because administrators know that students or their families will find a way to pay. Some have opened a $40,000 tier—more than many families earn in a year. Of course, colleges proclaim that they offer financial aid, but it’s not really that at all. If Wesleyan lops $4,000 off its $43,404 tuition this year, it is giving a discount like the one a car salesman takes off the so-called sticker price. Claudia recently attended a faculty meeting at a well-known school where a series of expensive projects and a 5-percent tuition increase were announced. Not a single professor rose to question those decisions, nor did anyone seem to give a thought to how their students would pay.
Students going into hock. Student debt has topped that for credit cards and is soon likely to hit the trillion-dollar mark. As families have seen jobs and savings vanish, colleges’ cash flows are increasingly reliant on students’ taking out loans. At Birmingham Southern, 79 percent of students borrow, while at Ohio Northern, it’s 82 percent. At Simmons College, over half are leaving with debts exceeding $45,000. Interest and penalties can double the tab. Nor are public institutions much different. At the University of Maine, three-quarters borrow; living away from home doesn’t come cheap. A few years ago, Dartmouth proclaimed that no admitted student would have to take out loans. But when the college’s investments soured, that promise was rescinded, leaving the least affluent students to take the hit. By way of contrast, full professors’ salaries, which average $157,700, weren’t touched. Economists are forecasting defaults akin to those of the subprime-loan/housing-bubble disaster. Our question: When will colleges see themselves as culpable?
Inflated executive pay. Currently, 31 university presidents receive more than $1-million a year, including one who heads a public institution, E. Gordon Gee, of Ohio State. At Vanderbilt, where Gee previously served, 10 administrators are paid more than $1-million, including one in health affairs who was paid $5-million in his final year. Of course, we’re told that top talent comes at a cost, a maxim copied from Wall Street. But we’re still waiting for evidence that alpine executive pay, while it makes a handy study in contrasts, actually enhances educational quality.
Overvaluation of research and publishing. The status race among colleges goes well beyond the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings, and winning sports teams don’t enhance academic stature. No, what brings the recognition colleges really seek is research. Faculty promotions have long been tied to publication; even when nods are made toward teaching, it rarely brings a raise. Many small colleges now expect their faculty to produce conference papers and journal articles. We suspect that if more colleges could, they’d mimic Amherst and Williams, which offer faculty some form of paid research leave after three years. So students shouldn’t assume that their professors will be around to supervise their senior theses. At one point, we praised Earlham College for putting students first and playing down research; the college’s reaction was immediate and incensed. We don’t oppose scholarly research and development of new ideas, but when it’s done to bulk up résumés and reputations, we’re not ready to hand plaudits to everything that’s printed.
Inequity among faculty. All of us have come to rely on low-paid foreign workers for everything from fresh produce to electronic goods. Higher education has its counterpart in adjunct faculty, who teach the same classes as professors but at a fraction of the pay. Just under 90 percent of college mathematics classes are taught by untenured or nontrack faculty, and more than half of all faculty teach on a full- or part-time contingency basis. A reputable college we visited offers $1,200 per course, with no shortage of takers. Contingents drift in and out like wraiths, while regular faculty barely acknowledge their existence. Even if it sounds utopian, we’re waiting for someone to say that every instructor should have the pro-rated pay and benefits of at least an assistant professor. Higher education isn’t just any employer; we expect it to have higher principles. But its general abuse of a contingent caste makes a mockery of our expectations.
The dropout dilemma. We are also disturbed by a general unwillingness among faculty to grant that they may have a role in the high dropout rate. About three million freshmen start in two- and four-year colleges, and each June 1.6 million receive bachelors’ degrees. True, some seek no more than an associate degree or reach their goals without diplomas. Still, enough freshmen flunk out or otherwise don’t return to raise questions about what does and doesn’t happen in their initial year. Sad to say, many professors prefer to agree with Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, authors of Academically Adrift, who fault the students for putting in too little work. But might that be because they rarely see a regular professor? So here’s another suggestion: Faculty who apply for sabbaticals must show they teach at least one introductory course a year.
The sacred tenure track. What unnerved us most over the last year—and here we were naïve—was the virtual impossibility of having a dispassionate discussion of tenure. Among professors who have or hope to get it, there simply aren’t two sides. Sometimes we wondered if we were at a college or a creationist convention. All we ask is that those adamant tenure defenders visit, as we have, colleges that do very nicely without it. At Evergreen State College and Florida Gulf Coast University, professors are as vibrant and unorthodox as any we’ve seen. At Hampshire College, no one holds back from questioning administration policies. An apparent unwillingness even to take a look concerns us. After all, it’s called the empirical method.
Whether one feels that a little or a lot needs fixing, what is missing are signs that colleges and universities see themselves as part of the problem. That is what’s most disheartening of all, because if today’s higher-education leaders won’t take steps on their own, they shouldn’t be surprised when outside forces step in—and that won’t augur well for academic freedom. The responsibility is theirs to take.