[lbo-talk] Race to the Top Mark-2

Sean Andrews cultstud76 at gmail.com
Sat Jan 28 13:41:38 PST 2012


On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 13:45, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 28, 2012, at 2:35 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> I think you're missing the dog whistle here.  For the "colleges should be run like a business" types, efficiency is just cost per student.  Given that salary and benefits are about 80% of the budget at most colleges, it is pretty obvious what a college must do to "increase efficiencies."  --And cutting enrollment won't generate any efficiencies, because that won't lower the cost per student.  In fact, if a college cut enrollment drastically, the lowest paid instructors (adjusts and contingent lecturers) would be laid off first, a higher proportion of classes would be taught by highly paid tenured faculty, and the cost of education per student would substantially increase.
>

True. The efficiency argument is clearly aimed at increasing class sizes and decreasing the amount of time students are allowed to stay in school. Slashing faculty pay and making everyone an adjunct would suit the bean counters fine. On the other hand, as in all these crises, most often it is just an excuse for doing away with programs administrators would rather not support, for political or other reasons. I just got word that my program will effectively be eliminated despite being one of the most successful in recruiting students and seeing them through to graduation. It turns out that, when the numbers are cooked in just the right way, there is a way to show that, "resources devoted to the program must be deployed more effectively than they currently are." Who knew?! Certainly numbers can't lie...fuckers.


> There's always the revenue side. When I was out in Riverside the other night, people were talking about how UC is recruiting students in China who'll pay through the nose. The administration swears this won't reduce access for California residents - apparently they just want to add rich Chinese to the mix. One faculty member said she ran into a horde of other U.S. university people also recruiting in China.

Yeah this is a growing trend. Business Week had a piece on it earlier in the year, California figuring in centrally:

"Last December, the University of California’s Commission on the Future recommended increasing the percentage of non-California residents to help cope with budget cuts. Many California schools have listened. This fall, nonresidents make up 12.3 percent of the system’s freshman class, up from 8 percent last year. The most dramatic shifts have taken place at some of the UC system’s more popular campuses, such as UC-Berkeley, where out-of-state residents and international students make up 30 percent of this year’s freshman class, up from 23 percent last year."

http://www.businessweek.com/business-schools/the-outofstate-solution-to-college-budgets-09072011.html

The Chronicle of Higher Ed noted that China still sends the most students to US schools, though some of these numbers are faltering. For instance, click on India on the map below. China is #1 with an increase of 23% over last year. India is #2, but it has a -1% growth.

Interactive map: http://chronicle.com/article/Interactive-Map-Countries/129702/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

The related article: http://chronicle.com/article/International-Enrollments-at/129747/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en notes that, like India, 5 of the top 10 countries saw declines in the number of students they are sending. You'd think the bean counters bent on ruining the pedagogical impact of these institutions by casualizing the labor force and diluting its effectiveness would realize that this likely runs counter to maintaining a globally recognized education system. But then again that assumes they have any interest in sustaining the institution over the long term.

s

You'd think the bearers of these two strategies would



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