There's no question that college, graduate school, and professional school tuition has risen substantially over the last few decades, outpacing the rate of inflation. One obvious possible culprit is reduced taxpayer support for public education at the state level. In last Sunday's (04/05/15) New York Times, Paul F. Campos denies that cuts in state funding are the problem. Instead he blames swelling administrative costs, suggesting near the end of the piece that "seven-figure salaries for high-ranking university administrators" are largely at fault.
Today the Times published several letters responding to Campos's piece, including my own. In my letter, I note some legitimate reasons for rising administrative costs at colleges and universities, reasons that have nothing to do with "seven-figure salaries," which are very far from the norm. (Kurt Schmoke, current president of my school (the University of Baltimore) and surely one of the most qualified leaders in higher education today, earns around $300,000 per year.) One reason is increased regulation of higher education, such as student-privacy requirements and standards for disability accommodation (to name just a few examples); these mandates necessitate administrators and staff to implement and oversee them, jobs that didn't even exist several decades ago.
Another reason is the increasing complexity of the educational mission in today's economy. College degrees are now the norm, not the exception, in the job market, making jobs for graduates harder to come by -- and pushing schools to develop sophisticated career development programs to help their graduates get those jobs. American K-through-12 education also is not what it once was -- many students come to college unprepared for the basic analytical and communicative tasks they are asked to perform -- requiring colleges to maintain extensive academic support programs. (The recent and overdue push to enroll more students from low-income families makes these programs even more essential.) Of course, these necessary student services require administrative personnel to run them.
So the problem is not just -- indeed, not primarily -- the salaries of university administrators. Higher education is a lot more complex, and thus a lot more expensive, than it was fifty years ago. The question is who is going to pay these increased costs. I personally think taxpayers should pay the lion's share of them through increased financial support for public colleges and universities. The alternative, which has taken hold in most states by default, is for students and their families to bear the brunt of these costs through increased tuition. There are tough choices to be made here, and Campos's article obscures them by suggesting that fat-cat university administrators are to blame.
Campos's piece is misleading in another way as well: he points out that overall public spending on higher education has increased over the last few decades, but downplays the fact that it actually has decreased on a per-student basis. (Exhibit A is another letter in today's Times, from the CFO at the University of California, who points out that California's higher-education system currently is funded at the same level as in 1999, despite the influx of 83,000 more students since then.) Public universities are now providing more services to their students than they were a generation ago but receiving less taxpayer support per student. In real terms, that's a decrease in public support for higher education, no matter how you slice it. (Here's an interesting blog post breaking down some of the ways in which Campos's assertions to the contrary are misleading or poorly supported.)
Campos, who is a law professor at the University of Colorado, has been a vocal critic of the current system of legal education. He now appears to be broadening his target to higher education in general. He's surely correct that there are many problems with the system as it currently stands. He's also right to demand that arguments on all sides be "intellectually rigorous." Unfortunately his recent piece in the Times fails to live up to his own standard.
No comments:
Post a Comment