Look good or actually educate

David Akadjian of the Daily Kos community explores the crisis in higher education. The well known symptoms are higher tuition and record student loan debt as well as lower graduation rates. The fix, according to one narrative, is that universities should be run more like a private business.

A coalition of students at the University of Cincinnati (enrollment of about 46K in 2019) studied the ways it was being run like a private university. Their report is titled Boldly Bankrupt, a play on the UC marketing campaign of Boldly Bearcat. The report shows who benefits – management, administrators, athletics – and who doesn’t – students and faculty. While the report is specific to UC these issues exist at a majority of universities.

Nearly every state has shifted costs to students. Lower state funding and tuition goes up. Schools are encouraged to be open to market forces and competition. But that creates a race to the bottom. Money is shifted to athletics, which has a high status but loses money. Undergrad programs are used as cash cows to fund graduate programs and research, which increases school ranking. Full time faculty are replaced with poorly paid adjuncts. There is a push to online courses, which are both cheaper and less effective. Athletic directors and top administrators are overpaid.

The students see a discrepancy between how UC presents itself to the public and how it actually functions. Education is pushed aside for things that make the school look good.

Faculty are caught in performance-based budgeting. A college is given a revenue target, say $7 million. If it exceeds that it gets more money. If it makes for example $5 million, it is considered to have a deficit – even if it costs only $4 million to actually run the college. Failure to meet the $7 million target results in a debt at the start of the next year. A college is required to cut its expenses even though their expenses are already less than their income. College deans never stay long – they can’t function under such a budget model.

The students in the Boldly Bankrupt team suggests fixes. See students as more than their tuition money. Create a democratically run student union to be a check on administrative power. Don’t have the governor appoint the Board of Trustees, rather allow students, faculty, and citizens elect them.