Contact
Higher education reform is urgent
Paul J. Gessing
There are many paths to reform, but the path must be taken. Our higher education system is in need of more than just cosmetic reforms.
The Rio Grande Foundation has spent a lot of time recently discussing reform and transparency in New Mexico’s higher education system.
According to a recent audit, problems include nepotism, millions of dollars of unbudgeted spending, lack of control of cash deposits, untracked student loans, and material weaknesses and substantial deficiencies in internal financial records.
The Martinez Administration assigns blame to the prior administration, but higher education is a sprawling bureaucracy that spends nearly $3 billion annually. Even the most sincere efforts to reform the system face intractable challenges.
In FY08, about $17.39 per $1,000 of personal income was dedicated to higher education in New Mexico, while the national average was about $7.00. Our state is second highest in terms of state and local support per $1,000 of personal income.
What are taxpayers getting for their money?
What are the taxpayers of New Mexico getting for their money? Not much, according to CollegeMeasures.org. According to the site, the state’s institutions underperform relative to other states.
New Mexico is ranked 46th when it comes to student graduation rates, and its first-year retention rate is the worst in the nation. This points to issues both in student preparedness and whether we as taxpayers are spending too much on higher education relative to other priorities (possibly including improvements to our K-12 system that result in better-prepared students).
At this point, it is worth questioning the premises of massive state subsidies for higher education. The justification is usually that it is worth it for taxpayers at large to use government to promote education for the future leaders of our society and to promote the existence of an informed populace in general.
These sound great, but the primary beneficiaries of higher education are the students and families of those who actually obtain the degree. Currently, about 25 percent of New Mexicans have such degrees. While not universally true, it is generally accurate to note that these are the highest-earners in our society and come from families of higher-than-average wealth.
Unfair to lower-income taxpayers
This is by no means a knock against higher education, its benefits, or those who spend the time to attain it. We at the Rio Grande Foundation want New Mexicans to work hard and earn high salaries. The problem, of course, is that it is unfair for taxpayers of lower incomes to be subsidizing the educations of wealthier citizens. More importantly, at least in the area of cost-containment, asking students, not taxpayers, to pay a greater percentage of the bill for higher education could restrain the out-of-control cost of a diploma.
According to a report in Forbes, over the past quarter-century, the cost of higher education has grown 440 percent. That is nearly four times the rate of inflation and double the rate of health care cost increases.
Obviously, the rapid increase in the cost of higher education is unsustainable. The dustup over rapidly-growing student debt is one manifestation of the problem of out-of-control inflation in higher education. Once that financing tool plays itself out (and every indicator is that parents and students are no longer willing to pile up mounds of debt for school), the schools and state governments will have to do something to restrain spending.
The path must be taken
What specifically might be done to constrain costs in New Mexico higher education is an in-depth topic needing its own discussion, but there can be no doubt that room for improvement is both available and, as the audit discussed at the outset illustrates, essential.
Technology must be leveraged in ways that increase student access at lower costs. This could have the salutary effect in New Mexico of reducing the proliferation of branch campuses. Alternatively, subsidies might be targeted at students themselves as opposed to the institutes themselves or targeted at those areas in science, technology, engineering and math that are in greatest demand in today’s economy, but where talent is in short supply.
There are many paths to reform, but the path must be taken. Our higher education system is in need of more than just cosmetic reforms.
Paul J. Gessing is the president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.
8 comments so far. Scroll down to submit your own comment.
Leave a response
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Here is further clarity of the wrong direction that Gessing is advocating here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/24/uva-teresa-sullivan-ouster-_n_1619261.html
UVA Teresa Sullivan Ouster Reveals Corporate Control Of Public Education
“Members of the board, steeped in a culture of corporate jargon and buzzy management theories, wanted the school to institute austerity measures and re-engineer its academic offerings around inexpensive, online education, the emails reveal. Led by Rector Helen Dragas, a real estate developer appointed six years ago, the board shared a guiding vision that the university could, and indeed should, be run like a Fortune 500 company.
“Making a lot of money does not demonstrate that you are very smart,” says Arras, the Bioethics Program professor. “And even if you are very clever, there are different types of intelligence. A successful real estate empire is not at all like a university. These people are talking about cutting classics — Greeks and Romans, the foundations of Western thought — because it’s not profitable enough.”
The controversy, which threatens to seriously damage one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious public universities, has implications beyond its own idyllic, academic refuge. For some, it is emblematic of how the cult of corporate expertise and private-sector savvy has corralled the upper reaches of university life, at the expense of academic freedom and “unprofitable” areas of study.
“There is this sort of shift in the zeitgeist,” says Tal Brewer, chair of UVA’s Philosophy Department. Brewer sees a new, heightened cultural “adoration of the business mind as capable of bringing clarity, organization and efficiency to any kind of institution…I just think that’s a deep mistake.”"
”
In an era in which the best and the brightest financiers laid the groundwork for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the Supreme Court allowed corporate sponsors and wealthy donors to upend the political system with unlimited campaign contributions, Brewer says he sees the upheaval in Charlottesville as more of the same.
“What’s happening at other kinds of institutions around the country is now coming home to roost in higher education,” Brewer says.”
“This emphasis on the for-profit education sector has been particularly dismaying to UVA faculty, especially within the context of the budget cuts Dragas reportedly sought in programs including the Classics and German departments. For-profit schools are not well-regarded in the academic community, and have been embroiled in scandals in the past few years for exploitive practices that include recruiting students eligible for federal loans and grants, but graduating fewer than half the enrollees.”
If you’re going to mention UVA you absolutely have to link to this explanation of the salutary impact of private donor money on higher education:
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/06/20/the-declaration-of-independence/
Is this the ALEC backed “reform” that Gessing is promoting?
Teresa Sullivan University Of Virginia Ouster Led By Political Donors Lacking Academic Experience
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/teresa-sullivan-university-of-virginia-_n_1614148.html
“More and more boards come from non-academic backgrounds, and one consequence of that is a lack of appreciation for and understanding of the academic enterprise,” said Robert Kreiser, Senior Program Officer at the American Association of University Professors, the UVA debacle is only the most extreme example of an ongoing phenomenon in which those “who don’t appreciate what higher education is about and who are more concerned about corporate interests and corporate considerations” come to govern academia.
When public-private partnerships are finally, openly discussed in the main street media, realize that the plan was in the works for years.
https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/ppp
https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/political-translation
https://sites.google.com/site/erikhawkes/Home/alarming-markets-outlook
The most basic reform, in higher ed and in every other branch of government, is to eliminate waste; whether it flow from corruption or from simple incompetence. The most basic reform is to make all government as transparent as the law will allow, and thereby, make corruption and incompetence impossibly difficult to hide.
Why isn’t ending public corruption and incompetence the top priority, except that we the people don’t set the priorities?
The priorities are established by people who have no immediate interest in ending either public corruption or incompetence in politics or public service; and therefore, no immediate interest in making government as transparently accountable to the people, as the law will allow.
It is a shame, that no one can drawn up legislation that will move transparency to the limits of the law. It’s a shame such a bill will not be the issue in the upcoming elections; candidates either pledging support or loosing to candidates who will.
Imagine if we elected a majority of legislators willing to make transparent accountability in government, the first legislative priority; next after the feed bill.
It could be dealt with easily in those beginning weeks when legislators pass no bills at all.
… if only
Misleading us again, I see.
In FY08, about $17.39 per $1,000 of personal income was dedicated to higher education in New Mexico, while the national average was about $7.00. Our state is second highest in terms of state and local support per $1,000 of personal income.
Of course we’re high on that measure, and we should be: we are a poor state.
Being a poor state means:
- we have lots of poor people, so the denominator ($k of personal income) will be small
- we have lots of poor people, so the need for educational spending will be greater and thus the numerator should be larger.
Poor people need more public spending on education because poor parents are less likely to be able to pay for tutors for their own children, less likely to be well educated and thus help educate their own children, and less able to provide other support for their children’s schools
So a poor state such as NM is going to have a larger numerator and a smaller denominator, leading to a higher overall number on this measure.
Thus, Mr Gessing is trying to imply that we’re spending a lot on education, when all he’s shown is that ‘were a poor state.
First of all, the Higher Education Audit that you site is regarding the Higher Education Department. NOT the higher education system. The higher education system implies universities and colleges, this audit is has nothing to do with them.
Secondly, if you want a true comparison of Higher Education and rankings, you should use the IPEDS system (Inter Post-Secondary Data System) not a website with an agenda. Or at a bare minimum, use the NCES data base.
Well, Mr. “Guessing” was doing far better than usual this time… up to a point. Is it true that New Mexican’s are paying far more than average for our higher education system? Absolutely. Is it also true that we are seeing no real results from these expenditures? Yes. Unfortunately, very little written in the above commentary after that actually stands up to scrutiny.
Mr. Gessing claims that approximately 25% of New Mexican’s possess college degrees; this is untrue. The actual figure is 33%. It is worth noting that this is not the first time he has made a similar mistake and been corrected for it ( http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2012/05/why-congress-must-keep-student-loan-rates-low/comment-page-1/#comment-25528 – apparently he really likes that 25% figure, no matter how often it turns out to be completely bogus). This is also the second time that he’s made the positively bizarre claim that lower-class New Mexicans are paying for upper-class New Mexicans to go to college. This too is patently false; setting aside the fact that many of those non-degree-earners are effectively paying no income tax at all (something I’m sure Mr. Gessing knows, since he tends to complain about it frequently), the reality that degree holders earn more than non-degree holders only applies (as anyone with an elementary grasp of logic could point out) after they actually receive their degrees. Prior to that, college attendees compose, on average, a very large percentage of the lowest wage earners in our society. It is, in reality, the highest wage earners who are paying these costs – after they have their degrees – just as the degree holders before them paid some of their costs; This is how a little something called “society” actually functions. Meanwhile, Mr. Gessing is quoting raw dollar figures to demonstrate college costs without once bothering to examine the sources of that money, nor does he apparently possess the basic abilities of self-reflection that would allow him to realize that his column is self-contradictory when he first claims that lower-income taxpayers are magically paying for the educations of higher-income taxpayers and then claiming that degree earners are struggling with student debt – which, though true (indeed, cost is the main reason cited by the 26% of our fellow New Mexicans who start college but never finish for why they never finished), wouldn’t really be a factor were their educations truly subsidized by someone else.
That our higher education system is in dire need of reform is a premise that we can agree on, though obviously we disagree vehemently over the methodology. Considering his ability to quote raw dollar figures that goes unaccompanied by a contributory ability to examine the nature of spending, it is unsurprising that Mr. Gessing makes no effort to examine why we are receiving so little return on our investment. It is, however, obvious to even the most casual of observers with any sense of perspective; higher education money is not actually being spent on higher education, nor is it even being spent on academia’s necessary and symbiotic bedfellow, research. It is instead being spent on athletics, corporate partnerships (which also show a disappointingly low rate-of-return on investment, very likely because we’re treating universities like glorified trade schools rather than institutions of higher learning), public image through public relations (rather than, say, public image through actual prestige), and ever-increasing administrative costs. UNM – New Mexico’s supposed “flagship” university – is an excellent example of this last; in the past decade alone, upper administration positions have actually tripled in number, and their collective salaries have increased by nearly double even that rate.
Frequently, you will hear elements of our economy proposing “reforms” for our universities that are exactly the same as the “reforms” of the past forty years; when in doubt, encourage more degrees for very specific jobs with no real variety, deviation, encouragement of broader university learning, nor development of critical thinking and reasoning skills. It is no wonder that such proposals are commonplace despite being so lacking in the innovative imagination that this country used to be known for; after all, for decades now we’ve been turning our boilerplate copies of the same archaic ideas.