Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is proposing to cut $300-million from the state’s university system over the next two years. Across the Great Lakes, his fellow Republican governors in Michigan and Ohio are pushing for increases in their states’ higher-education spending.
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s budget would cut more than $200-million from higher education. But in Tennessee his fellow Republican governor, William E. Haslam, has recommended appropriating the full amount requested by the state’s higher-education commission along with some $260-million for campus construction.
Judging from their budget proposals, GOP governors are all over the map on their levels of support for higher education. But look past the conflicting budget numbers, and a more-unified approach to higher-ed policy begins to emerge. Republicans, who now lead 31 states, are building an agenda around holding public colleges more accountable for how they spend their money and how they prepare their students for the workplace.
“I would say there’s a focus on productivity: How much are we spending, and how many degrees are we getting?” said Andrew P. Kelly, director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “Governors and policy makers have a right to ask what is happening here.”
In some cases the resulting policies redefine states’ roles in financing colleges—and institutions’ roles in meeting the needs of residents. But they also raise new concerns about a familiar trope: the anti-intellectual conservative, undermining higher education with a singular focus on its economic benefits.
Jenna A. Robinson, president of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, another organization that tilts right, said conservatives were not out to destroy academe. Instead, she said, they want higher education to sharpen its focus on skills and knowledge that are necessary in the marketplace, like critical and analytical thinking and written communication.
“A lot of conservatives think that what students are learning is out of the normal range of what is necessary to be a successful citizen,” she said.
Money Matters
Tensions between Republican lawmakers and public colleges are nothing new. But they have intensified in recent years as the GOP has won partisan control in a majority of state legislatures and well over half of governors’ seats. Those election gains have given fiscal conservatives control of the purse strings at a time when states have struggled with budget deficits.
In some states, Republican leadership has coupled tax cuts with already falling tax revenue. Wisconsin’s Mr. Walker, for instance, signed a $541-million tax cut in June, when state revenues were expected to produce a $1-billion surplus. Instead, the state now faces a nearly $2-billion deficit, and the governor has asked to cut about 13 percent of the state’s appropriations for the University of Wisconsin system. He has also proposed a two-year tuition freeze.
In Louisiana corporate tax breaks and falling oil prices have pushed the state’s budget shortfall to about $1.6-billion—a key reason that Moody’s Investors Service changed the state’s financial outlook to “negative” in February. Moody’s later warned that the state’s public universities could face downgrades in their credit ratings.
“After five years of the deepest funding cuts to public higher education in the nation and significant expense reductions, these universities are ill equipped to face additional credit stress,” the ratings agency concluded last month.
Higher education makes an easy target because most state spending is already dedicated to other sources, said F. King Alexander, president of the Louisiana State University system. Mr. Alexander said state legislators were trying to impose further cuts by eliminating some business tax credits. “We hope that legislators understand that budget cuts will undoubtedly impact our performance,” he said.
It’s worth pointing out that budget cuts are coming at the hands of Democratic governors as well. In Connecticut, for example, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has asked lawmakers to trim nearly $80-million from the state’s two public higher-education systems. And as Mr. Kelly has pointed out, governors in both parties made deep cuts in higher education during the depths of the economic downturn, with reductions for public colleges in all but three states from 2009 to 2012.
The latest figures from the Grapevine Project at Illinois State University show that half of states are still appropriating less for higher education than they were five years ago. Of the 10 states that cut higher-education spending from the 2014 fiscal year to 2015, four were led by Democratic governors—Delaware, Kentucky, Vermont, and West Virginia.
“People tend to harp on budget cuts by conservatives because it fits with their narrative,” said Mr. Kelly, of the American Enterprise Institute. But there should be a way for higher education to become more efficient over time, he said. “My question to people always is: In what universe is it rational for per-pupil funding to always increase? Is there no economy of scale?”
All About the Jobs
But just as important as the amount of state money going to higher education is what Republican lawmakers want in return. Governors in both parties want to increase the number and rate of college graduates, said Iris Palmer, a senior policy analyst with New America, formerly the New America Foundation, but Republican governors have been more willing to tie state money to such outcomes. Democratic governors, on the other hand, have been more likely to link increased appropriations to tuition freezes in an effort to keep college affordable, she said.
Thirty-five states have put in place or are developing budget measures to give public colleges money based on academic outcomes, like credit-completion and graduation rates, according to a study released in February by HCM Strategists, a public-policy consulting firm. In most cases, the states that have enacted the farthest-reaching policies—including Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, and Nevada—have done so under Republican governors.
That approach is quickly spreading to states with Democratic governors, including Colorado and Oregon, which are now developing similar measures tying state money to student outcomes. “It’s fair to say that Republican governors have been out front on the issue of outcomes-based funding,” Ms. Palmer said.
GOP governors have led efforts to bring higher-education offerings in line with their states’ work-force needs. In Louisiana, for example, Mr. Jindal spearheaded an effort to encourage more students to enroll in two-year colleges, saving the state money and encouraging students to seek the growing number of jobs that require more than a high-school education but less than a bachelor’s degree.
Last year the governor worked with the state’s public colleges to create a $40-million pot of money to reward universities that commercialize research or state colleges that graduate students ready to work in high-demand fields.
Outrage in Wisconsin
But the question for many in higher education is where economic development ends and academic freedom begins. Mr. Walker sparked outrage recently with comments questioning the workload of faculty members. And he aroused anger with his original budget proposal, which would have replaced the ideals of “knowledge,” “truth,” and “public service,” all ensconced in state law as part of the university’s mission statement, with a demand for meeting the state’s work-force needs.
Four years ago, Gov. Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, questioned the value of a degree in anthropology. “If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education, then I’m going to take that money to create jobs,” Mr. Scott said. “So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state. Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”
Many of the efforts to improve academic performance and work-force preparation are just about getting faculty members back into the classroom, spending less time on public service and humanities research, said Ms. Robinson of the Pope Center. “Students aren’t learning enough of what they need to learn to be successful,” she said.
Mr. Kelly of the American Enterprise Institute said many questions about faculty workload and classroom teaching would disappear if more students could earn their credentials in a reasonable amount of time, without accruing crushing debt.
“The higher-education system is set up to serve the public,” he said. “If there’s frustration with the fact that students can’t expect to finish the degree in the right amount of time, then questions are natural.”
College leaders are definitely getting the message about improving outcomes, and in many cases they have been able to tout achievements that would seem to satisfy lawmakers from either party. At Louisiana State University’s main campus, Mr. Alexander said, resident undergraduates pay an average of $900 per semester in tuition and fees after financial aid. And only 30 percent of students graduate with any debt, he said, owing an average of $15,000—more than $10,000 below the national average.
If stats like that aren’t good enough to increase state support, then LSU, like the University of Wisconsin, will very likely try to cut as many ties as possible to state regulation, eventually giving lawmakers little or no leverage to enforce accountability.
“I hate this idea of privatization,” Mr. Alexander said. “But we’re put in a position where it’s the only option.”
Correction (10:03 a.m., March 5, 2015): This article originally misstated actions taken by Moody’s Investors Service in response to Louisiana’s financial outlook. The agency did not lower the state’s bond rating; it changed the state’s outlook to “negative.” The article has been updated to reflect the correction.
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs.You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.