Success Versus Access in Higher Education
by P.D. Lesko
IN NOVEMBER OF 2003, Detroit’s Wayne State University President Irvin Reid addressed a group of 15 state university presidents. In that address, which was a protest against coming higher education budget cuts, Reid said that every dollar of investment in state universities generates a $26 output for Michigan. At the same time, Reid noted that the legislature cut 10 percent of state university funding in 2002.
Appropriations for state universities in Michigan have declined from 75 percent in 1975 to less than 50 percent in 2003. During that same period, tuition at public universities in the United States has risen almost 160 percent. Meanwhile, median family income has risen only 23 percent.
The higher education industry in the United States is overdue for a serious overhaul. Over the past 35 years, college Presidents have become well-dressed panhandlers, and public money has become an increasingly scarce commodity. As public money has become less available to them, however, colleges have taken to fleecing large numbers of American families. How? By convincing state and federal legislators, high school administrators, and the American public that access to higher education in more crucial than success in higher education. In 1970, 44 percent of high school graduates went on to college and 50 percent of them graduated. Today, 60 percent of high school graduates go on to college and 28 percent of them graduate four years later.
During the past three decades, overall undergraduate graduation rates have decreased. A system of higher education has developed in our country under the auspices of which 72 percent of incoming college freshmen in America spend, on average $11,400 per year (financed primarily through loans versus grants) to discover that college is too difficult, not the right fit, or just too expensive.
Why not develop and fund a system of higher education that recruits 35 percent of high school graduates, and awards undergraduate degrees to 80 percent of them four years later? Every dollar of investment in state universities would generate substantially more than the $26 output heralded by Wayne State President Reid in his speech to his colleagues. That output is based on the current 28 percent rate of college graduation. Raise the rate of college graduation to 80 percent, and output would certainly increase.
Make no mistake. The stakes are high. A college degree means a big payoff over the course of an individual’s lifetime. For example, using information from the U.S. Census Bureau, a high school graduate can expect to earn $1.2 million dollars over the course of a lifetime, whereas an individual with an undergraduate degree can expect to earn $2.1 million dollars over the same period of time. A graduate degree will boost potential earnings to $2.5 million dollars, and a professional degree will send lifetime earnings skyrocketing to $4.4 million dollars.
Given the proliferation of colleges two-year, four-year, on-line and other, as well as the skyrocketing cost of tuition, perhaps it is time for federal and state governments to rethink public funding of higher education. Just because there are more colleges doesn’t mean the public should be asked to spend more money to keep all of them in the black. Why not reallocate 50 percent of the current $112 billion dollars of higher education funding to primary and secondary education?
Ask the average adjunct and s/he will tell you that college students are increasingly unprepared academically. Why not put the majority of tax money toward better educating the majority of the public?
What would happen? Many colleges would go out of business; other colleges would slash the size of incoming freshman classes, unprofitable academic programs, faculty, staff, spending and, perhaps, the cost of tuition. Many high school seniors who would have normally been recruited by colleges would go directly into the workforce. Such a solution would force scads of college administrators and faculty (part-time and full-time alike) out of higher education. Ultimately, however, college Presidents would be forced to head smaller institutions that lived within their means.
Such an overhaul may seem draconian, but the current system is already forcing out students, after plunging them and/or their families into thousands of dollars of debt. It might also mean that an undergraduate college degree would be less of a glorified high school diploma accompanied by inflated grades given to customers who expect to pass because they’ve paid their money.
Right now, education tax dollars fund multi-million dollar college football teams, campus sprawl, super-sized salaries for top administrators and faculty, and a system which replies on huge numbers of poorly paid temporary faculty. In America, higher education has become a Ponzi scheme. Administrators spend more than their institutions earn through tuition and other institution-based sources of revenue, and taxpayers are asked to make up the difference all in the name of furthering access to higher education, as opposed to success in higher education.
There is no debating the fact that higher education in American is big business, and that education is crucial to our society. Last year, federal and state governments and individuals spent $700 billion dollars on higher education. Much of that money went to subsidize top-heavy administrations, and a mind-boggling duplication of academic programming. The unchecked expansion, and current recruitment practices of higher education, as well as the political lobbying efforts of college administrators to persuade legislators that a 28 percent graduation rate is worth a $112 billion dollar investment, keep colleges afloat. However, such practices also undermine the overall quality and, in some cases, viability of education in America.
