I had claimed I was going to finish off my higher ed series by the end of September. And then it became October. And, well, now October is nearly done, and I feel like if I procrastinate about this post any longer there won’t be a point to writing it.
But I’m actually sort of inspired. Between these two posts over at Tenured Radical’s, and Historiann’s post over at her place, people are talking all about the benjamins.
In other words, it seems like the time has come for me finally to think about the money piece of this. The problem is, it’s not just a “money piece.” It’s like a thousand tiny money pieces – shards, really – that don’t quite fit together and that compete with one another.
Rather than enumerate all of the thousand tiny pieces, though, I’ll stick with what I see as the big three that affect all schools. In no particular order:
- Tuition. As Historiann has written, the public discourse on tuition doesn’t quite reflect the reality of what most students pay for a college education. Nevertheless, it is the case that tuition costs do keep rising, and the public isn’t seeing what it’s getting for that money. Is that a problem of PR or is it that students really aren’t getting more for the money? Is it that the public doesn’t believe that education is actually something worth paying for?
- Money for the University itself. It costs money to keep the lights on. It costs money to have nice landscaping. It costs money to raise money, to find money elsewhere when the state keeps taking back the money that it used to give. It costs money to have a range of programs, computer labs, buildings, and all those things that make a college campus a college campus. Library acquisitions. All the things.
- Faculty/Staff. You’d think we’re all millionaires from the way that the public perceives us, though clearly that isn’t the case. However, we do cost money. Maybe not as much money as we’d like to cost, but money nonetheless, not only for salaries but also for things like health insurance.
The problem is, and this is why I haven’t been able to write this post, I have absolutely no ideas and no answers. Because the reality (or at the very least my reality) is that there isn’t enough money to satisfy the different constituencies represented by these three broad areas. There is not enough money, say, to convert all of the sections that are taught by adjuncts to sections taught by full-timers with benefits. There is not enough money to stop tuition from rising, particularly when people don’t want to pay taxes and when state governments think that the best way to make up for budget shortfalls is to gut higher education. There is not enough money to do all of those things that make a university all shiny and fancy and an “experience” and an “environment” that students will pay for.
At least at my university, I feel as if there is very little fat left to trim. That “feeling” is based on the fact that our state budget has been slashed by millions. And yet, the rumors are already starting about the fat that will be trimmed when we hear about the state budget, which will be slashing our funding once again.
It’s also worth noting that while all of this is happening, universities are being called to graduate more and more students, students whom they don’t have room to enroll in face to face classes and students who can’t necessarily to get jobs when they’ve finished.
I am… cynical? depressed? at a loss for what I can do to address structural problems that are so deep and wide and vast? demoralized? tired?
Yeah, at any given moment, those are the prevailing things that I am, and I think that those are the sentiments that weigh on most of us in higher ed these days. And I’ll tell you: I get irritable when people talk about unionizing as if it’s the answer to any of the above problems, because that’s not a model that is likely to have any traction in my state, and so when people hold up unions as the answer, I feel like they are closing their eyes to my working conditions and the realities of my location, applying a solution that would work for them in a one-size-fits-all sort of way that certainly isn’t going to fit where I live and work. But then I feel like a jerk for being resistant because it’s not like I have any answers either.
I suppose what I’m looking for is a leader. I’m looking for somebody with vision, somebody who presents a future to me and not just who administers our decline. I’m looking for somebody who will be honest about the fact that you can’t get blood from a stone, so legislators and politicians should stop trying. I’m looking for somebody who will tell the general public that they are getting a crappier education the more that they refuse to pay for what they’re getting. I’m looking for somebody to give a shit about what people at comprehensive liberal arts colleges and state universities have to say about these issues, because, quite frankly, it’s those institutions that together educate the vast majority of Americans – not elite slacs and research universities. I’m looking for somebody to understand that as much as our problems are about the money that our larger goals aren’t, in fact, anything to do with money. Our larger goals are about things it sounds naive to care about: knowledge, culture, innovation, a thoughtfully lived life. I’m looking for somebody to take a stand about those things mattering and being worth the price that we have to pay for them. And I fear that I am absolutely the most unrealistic and silly person in the world for wanting those things, ’cause, folks, I am not likely ever to get them.
So I know this is a bleak conclusion. But I’ve got nothing, folks. Thoughts?
Reassigned Time 2.0 
I don’t think it’s unrealistic at all. And I agree with you about a lot of the problems. But where I think you might be going wrong is looking for a leader to show up and lead the way. We can’t wait for a leader – we have to be one. Does that make sense? I haven’t made a major study of higher ed financing, but it seems to me that much of the problem seems to stem from persistent cuts in federal and state financing of higher ed. More cuts are definitely something you can fight.
I wonder if some of the impetus for change on this front might come from students of public universities. At some point the anger over rising tuition costs is going to have to result in a conversation about what’s really happening (rather than just right wing ranting about overpriced faculty) – or rather people are going to have to start listening to the conversation that we’re already having. At my old uni, the students were launching a protest against proposed tuition hikes – they were taking it to the state legislature – and the involvement of some faculty got the student leaders aware of the complexities and realities of the financial situation. I definitely think there’s a communication problem/breakdown between those of us in the academic system who know what’s going on and why (roughly) and the general population who really don’t understand anything about the way universities are run or structured.
[…] has responded to yesterday’s post with a post of her own, if you’re interested, and Dr. Crazy has some further thoughts too. (All of you prospective grad students should be sure to read these beauties, fer […]
Some of the problem is buck-passing: those of us at not-top-tier state schools are, in effect, doing what ought to be done in K-12, but isn’t happening there. Any time a college professor has to teach how to write a thesis statement, or how to do algebra, is time not spent on the real work of universities: *higher* education. How can we possibly impress the general public or anyone else with the importance of what we do when it is work that could and should be done by high school teachers? I don’t have any answers either. But I would say that students aren’t getting what they pay for in college because they haven’t got what tax dollars were supposed to pay for in K-12, and we’re forced to play catch-up (in the name of retention and all that) instead of failing the unprepared and giving an actual college education to the students who are ready to think critically and learn higher skills.
I think of Marc Bousquet and Cary Nelson as leaders on a lot of this.
http://howtheuniversityworks.com/wordpress/
They might not be everybody’s cup of tea.
So yesterday it was the So You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities cartoon. Today–it was Roxie’s World and tracing the links to TR, Historiann and reading through the many comments . . . confessions of salaries, animosities, anxieties, anger. I’m a program administrator, complete w/PhD, making slightly over 50K at a southern Ivy-wanna-be. I make more now that my father ever made a year in his life . . . . and so I’m predisposed not to have much sympathy for anyone complaining about having a hard time making it on 50K–but I also know I would have a hard time making it on 50K (thank God I have a partner and no kids to send to college).
I appreciate the real numbers people have shared–which are shocking and depressing. Reading all this places me in a weird kind of limbo–feeling not as exploited as adjuncts (which I’ve also done), feeling not as exploited as some of the TT faculty elsewhere making less than me, feeling WAY exploited at my institution where there are many very well paid administrators (of which I’m not one) and many poorly paid staff and where tenured faculty are well compensated compared to many of those who have shared in all these posts. And the “stars in their fields” (SITFs)–don’t get me started on their compensation packages–complete w/research assts, research accounts, perks, and attitudes toward staff & our labor that make me want to go for the gonads.
I was shocked & surprised by how low many of the salaries people quoted in all these posts are. I would venture to say that many people–especially people outside the academy would be too. The right has done a very good job job of painting the inflated salaries of the SITFs teaching in elite universities as the norm. I would venture to say that many people out there in the general public have no idea what university humanities faculty salaries are and no understanding of the adjunct/TT rift or the low amounts of entry level salaries. Adjuncts and those making 44K, 48K, 50K really need to be public about these salaries (and it makes me shudder to think what the staff assistants and business managers in your departments are making). Of course, w/out tenure it can be scary to be public–so those w/tenure need to take every opportunity to share this information in media interviews or public discussions about their jobs, organizing against furloughs, or discussions about the state of education–plus at family reunions, churches, political precinct meetings . . . . places where we talk with people outside the academy.
We need soundbites: at Flagship State University, an entry level professor makes $XX K. In our State, median income is $XX K. Bet there isn’t that much difference . . . . . It at least puts you in solidarity range with the civil servants (teachers, social workers, court & police staff), as well as with the carpenters, plumbers, and clerks. Much of their resentment & lack of sympathy to complaints about academic salaries is that they think we all get paid like SITFs.
Also–there need to be more discussions with graduate students like the one in the depressing video. There’s a huge wall of graduate student denial. This denial is solidified by the aggressive, replication of trauma hierarchy that thrives in the academy–the insistence on the grad student-faculty distinction, on recognizing the distinctions between asst,assoc,full prof (as if they are based in some ontological reality) and especially the insistence on drawing hard lines between faculty & staff & scholars vs non-scholars. This latter means that graduate students are not taken seriously in their programs if their are friendly “beneath” their aspired stations (i.e. with staff & administrators) or openly explore non-academic career options.
I realize these aren’t answers. But as a staff person at a relatively well off university where staff positions have been slashed and we’re all exhausted, overworked & bitter about “doing more with less”–all these conversations made me feel more solidarity with faculty than I have I have in a long time.
Hellz yeah, ladies. Preach it, Dr. Crazy! Hat tip to Dame Eleanor and Pass the Prozac. You are more articulate than I am.
If I am even half right about which region your regional comprehensive lives in, your point about misplaced anger is a good one. It is quite possible that your total cost per student (state money plus tuition) is less than what your state flagship gets per student from the state. Result: every student in freshman comp at Flagship is a direct subsidy to expensive graduate programs and labs, since their cost of instruction at that level is comparable to yours.
I know that is the case between our CC and nearby state universities. They pay a composition adjunct just a bit more than we do, but collect more than twice as much for that class from the state (not to mention higher tuition).
I personally don’t blame the state for most of the increases because I’ve worked the numbers based on solid data spanning 40 years.
http://doctorpion.blogspot.com/2008/07/inflated-inflation.html
Tuition went up $7000 (220%) while state funding dropped $1400 (20%), with all numbers corrected based on the CPI. The picture is different if you use a “service” based inflation factor, since other service industry costs also rose faster than the CPI, but the Top Faculty needed to keep research going at that Flagship have seen salaries increase faster than inflation while admin support has soared in comparison to other costs.
It would be very interesting to see a detailed study of those changes across different institution types over the past 40 years.
I think it comes down to saying: there can’t be excellence without money. But the problem is not economic as much as political, and it’s primarily outside the university.
We have to just keep saying that it is dishonest to say that we can cut taxes and not have schools and universities suffer. If that’s the result you want, fine. But those who chant the mantra of “we’re overtaxed” need to be asked repeatedly about the consequences. I don’t mind the mantra, as much as I mind the pretending that it won’t affect the education we can offer at all levels.
The college republicans on my campus have signs up saying “Come out as a Republican”. I have to resist the impulse to scribble “as long as you are an honest one”.
Is it possible that higher education has gotten too big to justify its expense? A single university can employ thousands. Some of those jobs are essential to providing students with an education and keeping the lights on. Some of them aren’t.
Are the multimillion-dollar workout facilities necessary? Do colleges really need TV channels? Does it make sense to pipe HBO into the dorms and then bundle that cost into student housing charges? Do administrators need to make 150K? Does an institution really need 32 deans?
Should student governments with discretionary budgets even exist? Does the student union need to be designed by a world-famous architect? Is the “2% for Art” proviso in the budget such a good idea when it translates into spending $300,000 for a new sculpture on campus every year? Does the university really need a fleet of 500 vehicles?
The public sees some of this waste, which makes it easier for politicians to slash budgets. Much of the blame for money troubles has to be aimed at the higher education establishment itself. It has grown bureaucratic and inefficient. Meanwhile, students pay fortunes for their educations, while the grad students and adjuncts who teach them are paid peanuts.
100 Reasons – you say a lot in your comment, and I think you deserve a response, but I think that you mix up a lot of different things in your critique of budgeting in higher ed.
So, first, I think it’s worth noting that the kind of structure you’re describing does not describe the structure of *the vast majority* of the universities with which I’m familiar. Is it the case for large, residential, flagship public research universities? I’d think it comes pretty close in that case, yes.
1. “A single university can employ thousands.” I’m not certain why that’s exactly a bad thing in an economy that is desperate for jobs. Now, you might say that thousands of those jobs it creates are part-time jobs without benefits and are exploitative. Ok. So let’s get rid of all the adjuncts who are employed at an institution.
a. That means we must shrink enrollment because we don’t have the instructors to teach more students. That means that not as many American students can come to college.
b. That also means, in states where funding is tied to retention, that universities cannot retain ever greater numbers of students, meaning that they get *even less money* than they would have gotten before, meaning that the universities need to enroll even fewer students, and so on.
2. “Do colleges really need tv channels”? Well, if they are going to say that they have a broadcast journalism degree, yes. They are an essential part of training students to become broadcast journalists.
3. The gyms, the cable tv, the amenities: This is another issue of student attraction and retention. Today’s students have, for the most part, never experienced life without cable television. Ever. They see it as a basic necessity, just like I thought having a phone in my dorm room, and not down the hall, was a basic necessity in college. Similarly, other amenities fall into the same category of essential to attracting and retaining students. No, they do not have to do directly with classroom learning. But if a school hopes to get students into its classrooms, in ever increasing numbers, and to keep them there, they need to lure them. While we all idealistically wish students would come and stay for what happens in the classroom, that is not going to get the kind of numbers of students to enroll in and to graduate from college that are expected.
4. Do administrators really need to make $150K. Let’s go back to your first point, in which you complain about how many people colleges employ. I don’t know. I think, if an administrator is supervising hundreds of employees then yes, he/she should be making a 6-figure salary. He or she would be making that in any other professional context. Why do we think that people shouldn’t be paid adequately in higher education for the work that they do?
5. In terms of number of administrators, I think it’s possible to trim some fat, BUT with greater reporting requirements (for accreditation, for funding at both state and federal levels), with the bar being set higher on things like retention and assessment, with greater pressure on institutions to spend time, money, and manpower proving their rights to exist and to raise funds and to lobby for funds in order to continue to exist, yes, you need people to administer all of that. And yes, they need to be paid.
6. As for the art budget, I’ve got no idea what to respond because I think all of the art on my campus was donated in the 1970s…. As for buildings, the budget for buildings does not come out of the regular operating budgets of universities, and so it has absolutely nothing to do with what adjuncts are or aren’t paid or what students learn in the classroom.
I am not at all saying that there are not problems in higher education. This whole post is about how I think that there are problems in higher education. I just think it’s important to understand how funding actually works, and why the current structures work in the way that they do, before one goes on the attack.
The big issue for me, and I think this responds to everyone’s comments, is that if we are expected always to increase enrollments, to get “every student” in the country a college education, that will, by necessity, drive costs upward. We can artificially keep costs down with the use of adjuncts, but that system is reaching a breaking point with this current recession. So, in some respects, the question is this: do we believe in open access to education? If we do, we need money to make that happen. That money will either come out of students’ pockets directly (and, at least at my institution, tuition has not been going up at the rate of inflation or at the rate of other universities in the state), it will have to come from taxpayers.
Dr. Crazy,
I do have a major state flagship university in mind, but I think that at least some of these issues affect colleges of all kinds.
As for jobs, public universities have (in many places) come to be used as job-creation machines for white-collar workers (and perhaps, to some degree, for blue-collar workers). I think that you could argue that, because these are jobs funded by taxes, they are actually a drain on the economy.
A major university today can have hundreds of non-academic and quasi-academic departments… from parking enforcement to an endless array of “student services.” Eventually, the university becomes more about the thousands of people whose livelihoods depends upon it than upon the thousands of students who move through it every few years.
Wouldn’t college be more accessible if it were affordable? Even if it didn’t offer cable TV, a rock-climbing wall, an office for intramural sports?
By the way, why are university “operating budgets” and “building budgets” distinct from each other? And why isn’t this artificial distinction erased in times of economic stress?
[…] complain about their job prospects. Unionization is tossed around as an idea. Experienced heads disagree with unions as a solution. I still maintain that there’s nothing special about […]
“By the way, why are university ‘operating budgets’ and ‘building budgets’ distinct from each other? And why isn’t this artificial distinction erased in times of economic stress?”
Because of the way appropriations work. Universities are not businesses and are not structured like businesses, and some of the reasons for this are good — good for long term stability, good due to the interface with state budgets. And: if you start to use the building budget as something you can tap, pretty soon the legislature will say you don’t need your regular operating budget.
“Eventually, the university becomes more about the thousands of people whose livelihoods depends upon it than upon the thousands of students who move through it every few years.”
This is more applicable to, let’s say, the arms industry/military industrial complex: whose overinflated existence makes militarism economically necessary.
I’ve seen it be true of some individual cases — we’ve got a $35K per annum instructor too out of date to be useful, and it is sometimes as though we were working for him and not the other way around; yet he needs the money and has been here for years and the chairs/deans don’t have the heart to retire him, they are just trying to encourage it. But this is the exception, not the rule … truly.
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Great post, Dr. Crazy, and I concur completely.
[…] feel the need or the right to complain. You can read a few different views: Historiann, Dr Crazy, another post by TR, Squadratomagico, and […]
I know it isn’t productive to complain about how much TR makes, but seriously? My salary is $35,000. I would be thrilled to make six figures as a 50-something. Granted, I am a young scholar so my salary reflects that, but with student loans due (no more deferment!) I actually have *less* spending money than I did as a graduate student.
Like you, Crazy, I have no good answers, but I think that keeping open dialogue (as you’ve done here) can at least make us feel like we aren’t alone in the world.