[lbo-talk] Disappoint With #125

Sean Andrews cultstud76 at gmail.com
Wed Mar 10 19:43:11 PST 2010


On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 20:21, Chuck Loucks <lbo at hvgreens.org> wrote:
> Doug,
>
>   Speaking about UofM which is probably a top poster child when it comes to
> outrageous tuition hikes over the last 30 years; the loss of state funding
> is a dog that just does not hut when it comes to explaining those increases in tuition.
> First off, if UofM is a research institution, why should the undergrads have to shoulder the
> complete burden of state funding cuts?  The U can always higher fewer tenure track profs and
> hire more adjuncts and TA's who will teach more classes than professors (and often
> times do a better job of it too if my experience is any guide.)  In other words, the U
> can cut back on research funding if the state cuts back (tell me "research" is not a
> euphemism for corporate welfare.)

Now it's clearer what you consider "research costs." So having tenured professors is your version of an inflated research budget? Leaving aside the fact that adjuncts are some of the most exploited labor in the country, by making this statement, you show that you obviously have no clue how a university works. Tenure track faculty might get paid more, but they also usually are responsible for a good chunk of the administrative labor in departments--the hiring process for new faculty, organizing events for the students, designing the curriculum and managing any changes therein. More than this, there is institutional memory and experience in the process which many adjuncts may not be able to provide--which isn't to say that they wouldn't like to. It would be much better for students if there were more of these kinds of faculty but in any case, your little scenario where things would be better has been happening across the board in academic labor for the past 20 years. I don't know the numbers for UofM, but the general percentage of change from teaching done by tenured faculty vs. that done by adjuncts is quite significant. What this means is that students get less face time with faculty, have faculty who are far more overworked and overburdened (teaching something like 5 or 6 courses to make ends meet) and faculty who are more inconsistent--not necessarily by any fault of their own, but because they don't get hired back or move to another school where they can find more work. In other words, what you're advising has already been happening and all that it means is students get less value for their dollar. That there are some great adjunct professors is no reason despite what they're up against is no reason to make that model more prominent--and, in any case, since it's been especially pronounced over the past 20 years, it is nonsensical to claim that doing that would have prevented said tuition rise: it was done and tuition has risen.

I don't know what else you mean by research costs but I really think you're totally talking out of your ass here. While I can see the point your making about Doug's analysis--and have no clear answer for why the costs rise so fast other than the lack of state funding--I don't think you are getting anywhere close to diagnosing the problem any better. I will note that, in the current climate, one of the main reasons tuition has gone up at the two universities I've been at in the last three years has been the decline of state funding in Virginia and Illinois. When you ask why students should have to pay for research at the university they are attending, are you assuming the students aren't doing the research? That they aren't part of that learning process and gaining something from their participation in that research process? If that is the case, then why are said students going to the school at all? For credentialing alone? Anyway, the category of "research" you are claiming to be so central to the problem seems to be tautological if it can encompass both tenured professors (i.e. people who are required to do research) and, for instance, the provision of research materials such as laboratories or books. If anything can be this "research" that is causing tuition to mysteriously spike (is there suddenly more of this "research" going on?) than it is a completely useless category of analysis.


>
>    I'm surprised you missed the effective gentrification going on in higher
> education. The families in the top of the income distribution are bidding up the cost
> of higher education; the families in the top 5% of the income distribution have way
> more money today than they did in 1980.

I'm pretty sure this was the main point of the article--and its something many others have mentioned in the discussion.

There are no effective controls on how
> public universities can allocate their money, so they just raise tuition at
> twice the rate of inflation.

Why is this suddenly about public universities? What difference does it make if they are nominally public if you think it's okay to deprive them of public funds? What is "public" about them if there is no "public" money helping subsidize those costs? You sound like some sort of deficit hawk--which makes your complaint weird since more people with this mentality are actually in charge of nominally public institutions than ever before, making them hyper aware of where they can charge people more and cut services (or create a more "flexible" workforce.) Further, these two premises are totally separate: neither are proven individually and together they do nothing to support one another. Allocation of funds within the U is a matter of managing money that flows into the institution; tuition is something that comes from outside (at least financially) and, in many public contexts, they have to get permission of some kind from the legislature (even if that legislature is also cutting their funding) before it can be raised at the public institution.

There is no valid justification for why a college
> education at a public institution should cost what it does today.

Well I don't know the numbers as well as Doug (and evidently you) but one justification would be that there is not a whole lot of public financial support so the idea that it should be less expensive because public only makes sense from the adolescent perspective of entitled libertarians--e.g. people who don't want us to raise taxes to pay for health care but are angry at the possibility of cutting medicare payments because we lack the public funds to pay for them.

s



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