Plan B Forum

Our newly-elected R governor, Tom Corbett recently released his long-awaited austerity budget, with predictable responses from the various stakeholders. The cuts in higher education are indeed massive - think, HALF - and in today's climate it is hard to imagine that state (and state-related, like Pitt) colleges could get away with significant tuition increases.

After doing a little checking, I was surprised to find that the tuitions at our state schools are quite reasonable ($7,500-8,000 per normal school year), but I have the general impression that most colleges and universities could truly do a lot better, cost-wise, but the culture of higher education prevents any serious re-thinking of how the institutions run.

For example, a typical "Professor" is expected to be teaching only 9-12 hours a week (and only while school is in session), and for this they get fairly handsome compensation. Is this realistic? High school teachers are in class and teaching for, say, more than 20 hours a week, under much more trying circumstances than a college professor. For example, the HS teacher must deal with laggards, students with learning disabilities, and behavior problems, while a professor has none of that. Further, college students are responsible to a much greater extent than high school kids for their learning outcomes.

It may be that there is not a lot of money to be saved by increasing teaching loads on professors, as my impression is that much of the teaching load has been shifted in recent years to non-tenured faculty, which is paid at a much more modest rate. And one cannot completely discount a Professor's need to "stay current" in her field.

Do we still have large numbers of classes with very few students? Are they looking at cost-effectiveness in this area?

Most college athletic departments run at a significant loss. As of 2009, according to the NCAA, there were a total of FIVE division I-A schools with athletic departments that were paying their own way. In the former division I-AA, there were NONE. Is college athletics a costly and pointless diversion that could be maintained on a "Division III" basis (i.e., no scholarships, limited coaching staffs), to save a significant amount of cost?

How much of college budgets is spent on recreation (opulent student unions, fitness facilities), and non-educational pursuits (counseling centers, clinics, recreational clubs)?

Again, what could be done to significantly cut costs without compromising the educational mission of the institutions?

Unfortunately, I'm not close enough to the situation to have any tangible ideas. All I know is that similar "challenges" have confronted businesses where I worked many times over the years, and in each case we were able to get all of the necessary work done with fewer people and fewer resources. Often, 6 months later you would wonder what we needed all those people for. Indeed, the company that laid me off in 2009 was able to cut 20% staff without really losing any capabilities.

Any thoughts from those who are closer to it than I am? Or are they already being as efficient as one could reasonably ask?

dgs49 wrote: Most college athletic departments run at a significant loss. As of 2009, according to the NCAA, there were a total of FIVE division I-A schools with athletic departments that were paying their own way. In the former division I-AA, there were NONE. Is college athletics a costly and pointless diversion that could be maintained on a "Division III" basis (i.e., no scholarships, limited coaching staffs), to save a significant amount of cost?

One or two sports at a good number of large colleges pay their way and subsidize the rest of the athletic departments. As the study notes, at most colleges, the net revenue sports do not create enough extra income to fully pay for all other sports. Sports drive a lot of giving to a college (when a school is successful in football or basketball, general donations go up), so it is hard to figure out whether sports make or lose money in the aggregate. Based on my experience, if you look only at the non-net income sports at large schools, they look a lot more like the D-III sport than they look like a big time D-1 program. Based on all of that, I doubt there would be any net savings at most schools by down grading the entire sports program.

Colleges, public and private, have gotten much more expensive and do not necessarily provide a better product than when they were more affordable. The main reason for college-inflation (like health-inflation) is that someone else is picking up the bill for all or part of the cost. Like you, I am not close enough to know where the money goes. My guess is that like most service businesses, the vast majority goes to pay for people, and compared to the past, there are more people who are better paid.

What hope for the country if its brightest are not getting the education they deserve?

Gob wrote:What hope for the country if its brightest are not getting the education they deserve?

The question indeed.

Gob, I think the brightest in this country are getting a fantastic education. For those who have the intelligence and the drive, the possibilities are almost limitless. And one would hope that financing, while a burden to be sure, does not impede too many at right tail of the bell curve from getting what they need in the way of education. It is not for nothing that so many foreigners with unlimited resources come to the U.S. for higher education.

The question is really about how colleges and universities are working for everyone else, including those who are simply paying many of the bills (the federal and state tax payers).

Before Vietnam, only the relatively wealthy and the top 25% of the "working class" went to college. Getting into just about any college was a challenge that required good grades, a good SAT score, and decent recommendations. And because college was academically challenging, most college students did not graduate. When I entered the University of Pittsburgh in 1967 I was told that only one-third of the starting Freshman class would graduate (it took me a couple tries).

Vietnam changed all that. Now average and mediocre high school students, particularly if their families are "middle class" believe they have a God-given right to spend four or five years recreating at some college or university. And the universities recruit them to fill empty seats at exhorbitant cost - funded largely by government grants and loans. Failing out has become rare. All colleges have extensive fall-back provisions for students who are failing indivual classes, or can't cut it in their first-choice major, or don't have the academic bona fides to succeed in any coherent major. Where in 1930 only 1/4 of the U.S. population graduated from high school (which included rigorous math, science, and humanities study), now almost half are graduating from college.

And we demonstrably are not any smarter than we were then.

So the question is, if the public resources for "higher education" are drying up, what can be done to provide what is needed within the available funding? Or: Can things be done differently without compromising the educational mission? Or: Are we now wasting a lot of money (that we no longer have) on nonsense that has no real educational value?

As I said above, I am no longer to the campus enviroment, so I can't really assess those issues intelligently? I can only make guesses based on what I know.

Hmm. The enrollment rate from 1959 to 2009 hasn't moved much. From 50% to 70% of high school graduates enrolling in college.

Now as for actually completing a degree, that number has gone from 10.1% in 1967 to 29.4% in 2008.

Here is a pdf file from the Census Bureau's site. It shows a steady increase in college graduations from 5% in 1940 to 25% in 2000.

So that's a far cry from "half are graduating from college".

dgs49 wrote:So the question is, if the public resources for "higher education" are drying up, what can be done to provide what is needed within the available funding?

That is the question that those who run America's right wing -- people who bear very little resemblance to the ordinary Americans who are deluded into voting Republican -- want people to ask. Because it diverts their attention from the real question:

Why are funds that should be going to higher education for those Americans who are suited for it being diverted into the pockets of those who want Americans to remain as uneducated as possible?

An interesting article on the cost of college and why.

Over the last 30 years, the average sticker price at public and private American universities has accelerated upward. Since 1981 the list price level of tuition and fees has risen sixfold while the consumer price index has only increased two-and-a-half times. This fact is well-known, and it fuels much of the talk about a crisis in higher education.

And don't just take this quote from it and run with it, read the whole article as it presents a few interesting points on why.