Where are academe's big thinkers?

A retiring professor ponders the rise of academic professionalism/careerism and the parallel decline in public discourse from our campuses.

Alan Wolfe, late of Boston College, writes, "The modern research university has unfortunately become increasingly susceptible to value monism, the belief that there is only one right way to advance, only one correct form of knowledge. The graduate school takeover, I hasten to add, is not the reason for my retirement: I simply felt that I had reached the age when it was proper to pass the responsibilities on to others. I just hope that whatever form the university of tomorrow takes, it leaves a place for those social scientists who resist the trend toward greater disciplinary professionalization. The liberal arts should be liberal enough to make a place for many kinds of teaching and learning."

Enroute to this conclusion he not only decries the triumph of professionalism over public intellectualism, but also the decline in teaching workloads.

Though it's not often said, the two go hand in hand.  A friend at Temple University has told me that, so long as he cranks out a new book every couple of years, the dean will keep his teaching load at a course or two a year.  

Thus,  neither in the classroom nor on the bully pulpit do such academics speak to the common woman and man.  Where are the leaders of the academy in this presidential election year, when a demigod (who most likely despises and disdains us) threatens to grab national power?

Is it possible that higher education is being so badly battered --- by an intrusive and over-reaching Department of Education; by conservative governors and legislators; by litigious alumni, students, parents and their legal advocates --- because in  the Market Place of Ideas, we academics have abandoned the field to our adversaries and critics?

What would Clinton's "free college" plan mean?

For starters, let's be crystal clear.  This plan is probably DOE in DC.

But, hypothetically, what would free public higher education mean?

Here's what one commentator thinks.

As for me, I see the following:

1.  States would have to spread the cost of public universities and community colleges across the entire tax base in one way or another.  This would have to be via increases in property taxes along the lines that school districts are now supported, or via some other tax increase: income, sales, or sin.  Name your poison.  (I assume of course that the Fed would mandate but not compensate.   Some federal subsidy might come with the mandate, as per Obamacare as a model maybe.  But we the taxpayers would have to pony up regardless.)  Whether higher education is such a public good as to merit spreading its cost across the entire citizenry is a matter of public policy to be debated.

2.  Private higher education, except for those schools wealthy enough to provide free tuition, would most likely be doomed.  The private, non-profit sector is already in financial crisis.  This would be the end of the sector as we now know it.  Would it be worth it?  Or could some schools become parts of the public system in their states, or part of some federal system?  And if this could happen, would either "demise or become public" cost the country in any ways other than in the pocketbook?  I am wondering whether the private sector is a voice in the public discourse that ought not to be lost or muted.

These are profound questions that go not only to the core of the best higher education system the world has ever seen.  They go to the heart of Democratic discourse and the vitality of the Marketplace of Ideas in our Republic.

Here, According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Are the "Great Colleges to Work For"

http://chronicle.com/interactives/greatcolleges16?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=4cdd4587a16b476ea0c40c0e6c64351b&elq=16531f39fa6742b9ae66d1107087ea81&elqaid=9906&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3641

Let's face it.  We all hate these ratings games, whether it's the infamous US News & World Report rankings, or the Princeton Review's Best Colleges  publication... or this one.

And, let's be honest, we all watch for the results with eagerness and anxiety, and blow our horns loudly if we come out near the top.

How does the Chronicle conduct it's survey?

"This year The Chronicle’s Great Colleges to Work For survey is based on responses from more than 46,000 people at 281 institutions: 189 four-year colleges and universities (109 private and 80 public), and 92 two-year colleges. All accredited institutions in the United States with an enrollment of at least 500 were invited to participate, at no cost to them."

A company called Modern Think LLC did the survey for the Chronicle.

Fact is, I've been in higher education almost my entire working life, since I got out of the service back in 1973.  With the exception of a decade in the private practice of the law with a major Philly law firm, I've been

1. Director of University Communications at Case Western Reserve
2. Assistant Professor of Business Law at UT-Austin  
3. Professor of Legal Methods at the Widener Law School
4. And for 20 years, the Associate Provost at my current institution
5. Plus stints as an adjunct faculty member in Penn's Wharton School and (currently) Drexel's law school

All told, I bring 30 years of higher ed experience to this blog.  What general observations do three decades lead me to make?

First, I still consider higher education the best industry in which to spend one's working life in terms of a quality experience.

Second, I can say in the same breath that it isn't nearly as enjoyable or easy to work at a university, as it was 40 years ago, when I first took an editor/writer job at CWRU, fresh from the Coast Guard.

My reasons for the first comment include:

• the pleasure of coming to a beautiful campus every day
• the bright and lovely colleagues with whom I get to interact
• the stimulation of a workplace where most people are of above-average intelligence, above-average civility, and actually interested in ideas
• the joy of preparing young people to succeed
• the challenges this entails

My reasons for the second comment include:

• the relentless financial difficulties we now encounter
• the helicopter (some say "Velcro") parents
• the DOE's conversion of our administrations to police, judges and juries in sexual assault cases and the litigation that seems inevitably to ensue

On balance, for me these challenges do not even come close to outweighing the "positives" that keep me coming to work every morning with a sense of anticipation.  To the contrary, meeting the financial challenges, while serving our students (and, yes, their parents), and eradicating the menace of sexual assault, all actually add to the satisfaction of the job more often than not.

And I don't even work at one of the alleged "Great Colleges to Work For."

The Second Amendment is looming large in this national-election year, as divisions have never been wider... what should educators be doing about it?

In Texas three professors have brought a lawsuit, challenging the imposition of the Lone Star State's concealed carry law upon public higher education.

In Cleveland, the Ohio open carry law allows citizens to roam the streets with rifles on their backs during the GOP convention.  To me it looks a little bit like Mogadishu ten years ago.

And, of course, there are all the killings: police killing young black men, black men retaliating.

And the terrorists... in Orlando in particular.

Cross the pond and we encounter a Europe every bit as chaotic as the United States.  The Nice attack, like the Orlando massacre, suggests that the body counts from these terrorists atrocities are trending upward.

And we Westerners have never been more divided about what we ought to do.

Should we deport all the immigrants from both Continents and build barriers to keep them out?

Should we launch a new Crusade in the Middle East to try to eradicate radical Islam once and for all?

The ethical issues aside, these undertakings seem Quixotic... highly unrealistic fantasies.

And what of all the guns?

Some say we should arm the good guys.  This is the Israeli approach and it seems to have some efficacy.

Or should we try to ban firearms in the US?  This too seems a Quixotic undertaking, considering the proliferation of guns in America.

No easy answers emerge for any of these questions.  And, sadly, we have never been more divided in the West than we are today.  In America it's right v. left.  And let it be noted that the right is much better armed... not unlike the Nazis v. the Communists in Weimar Germany, one might venture.

In Europe, Brexit underlines the depth of division.  And to a large degree it's over the same issues: immigration and security.

At UT-Austin, "Specifically, the professors seek the right to ban guns from their classrooms -- something the university has maintained would put it out of compliance with the new law. The professors, who argue that both state law and university policies are vague on that point, on Friday were granted a hearing for a preliminary injunction on having to allow weapons in class. It’s scheduled for early next month. Fall classes resume at the end of August."

But what are we in higher education doing collectively?  Our campuses are often the targets of lone wolf terrorists and other nuts.  We take our licks and light our vigil candles.

Bottom line: higher education is as divided as the US and Europe... perhaps more so.  Elite v. run-of-the-mill... public v. private... for-profit v. non-profit... four-year v. community colleges.  Competition is keen and many small schools are in financial crisis.

That's only one of many reasons why we seem to lack influence in the great national debate facing us over the Second Amendment and immigration and terrorism and civil rights.

You don't agree that we lack influence?  Name one college president who is a national figure?  Margaret Spellings probably comes the closest, coming out of the Department of Education and taking over the California system.  But she's hardly high profile outside of higher ed itself.

There are a few influential faculty members... but no Henry Kissinger of which I am aware.

As prior posts on this blog have chronicled, higher education is under attack by the Department of Education.  Policy is being pushed downward from D.C., whether we are talking about sexual assault or gainful employment.  We are accused of defrauding students, while we struggle to make ends meet.

At the state level, from  concealed carry in Texas to anemic budgets in the Mid-West , we are buffeted by state lawmakers as well.

Is it technology that has robbed us of our former influence upon the national debate, as Prof. Clay Christensen would have it?  Are we just not as significant in the Internet age?

Or is it a more deep-seated problem... a failure of our moral fiber?

For example, bringing this little essay full circle:  Should the UT-Austin professor have to go to court?  UT's president has said he "sympathizes" with students and faculty who oppose guns on campus.  So I might ask him what Thoreau once asked Emerson, after the former was jailed for refusing to pay the poll tax:

According to some accounts, Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?” 

Sympathy is not what is needed. Leadership is.  And leadership entails risk... risk of losing a well-compensated position, for example.

Who in higher education is worth a million bucks?

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2015, five chancellors and presidents in the public sector made that milestone.  Some three dozen CEOs in the private sector of our industry apparently merited that kind of money in 2014.  Most of this "top 40" still is far behind the nearly 30 college coaches who topped $3 million in '14. 

Are CEOs worth the big bucks they get paid?  Well, there are a number of ways to come at this.

Once upon a time, probably because I was just jealous, I was highly critical of such obscene compensation packages.  However, in my dotage I have come to believe that really effective top dogs are worth their weight in gold.  And this is as true for a business or educational organization as it is for a nation or a cause.

Two other considerations should be taken into account.

First, Europe and Japan seem to be able to get top performances out of their CEOs without the outrageous comp packages typical to American free enterprise.

Second, nobody ever does it alone.  And when your employees are grossly underpaid and short on benefits... when your graduates are overburdened with mortgages on their diplomas... when your universities are in danger of financial failure... then you ought not to get that kind of "reward."

In my view, too often today, the CEO's package is more a reflection of having made the leap into an elite club, where the Board members are also comfortably ensconced... rather than a reflection of actual performance and contributions.  One solution?  Tying at least half of all CEO comp packages to clear, quantifiable performance measures.  That solution lies in the hands of the Board members.

The second solution, the one aimed at dealing with the great and still growing wealth gap, lies in the hands of working people themselves (ourselves?).  There are two non-exclusive ways to close the gap:

1.  Recapture a larger share of the profits, e.g., via effective union organizing and collective action, and/or

2.  Vote politicians into office who will work a redistribution, e.g., replacing employer-sponsored healthcare with Obamacare.

At the level of higher education, free community colleges are a great step in the right direction.  Significantly lowering the costs of instruction,  and passing these efficiencies on to students in the form of lower tuition and fees, is another.

Show me the president who can do the latter, while keeping her/his institution financially sound, and I can support a seven figure comp package.

A Gaping Communication Gap in a Crisis?

Inside Higher Ed reports on a new survey that reveals that 60 percent of business officers at private non-profit colleges agree that their industry is in crisis.  No less than 70% of CFOs of public universities agree with this.  Somewhat more than 50% of the thousands of respondents from hundreds of institutions believe their schools will come through and be OK a decade from now.  Apparently the other half are not so sure.

"But several experts said the survey indicates business officers are not broadly engaged in the deep, strategic work necessary to deal with the broad financial crisis they report. They see business officers as trying to buy their way out of the situation instead of taking a deep look at costs."

Among the many strategies identified for dealing with the perceived crisis, less than one-third of respondents manifested an interest in increased teaching loads for faculty. 

Furthermore, "Chief business officers varied more widely in their opinions when it came to the question of involving faculty members in budgeting. Just 33 percent of business officers agreed that faculty members have been supportive of efforts to address budget problems at their institutions. The portion who said faculty members had not been supportive was only slightly different, 27 percent. That left 40 percent neutral on the question.

"Meanwhile, 43 percent of chief business officers said faculty members played a meaningful role in collegewide budget decisions at their institutions. The remaining majority, 57 percent, said the faculty did not play a meaningful role in such decisions."

What does this say about the communication gap between the faculty and "the other side of the house"?

To me this data reflects a much larger and longstanding issue:  the failure of higher education leadership to understand how to maximize that long-term capital investment we refer to as the tenured faculty.

More than a half century ago, Dr. Clark Kerr, forger of the California state university system,  remarked, “I have sometimes thought of the modern [U.S.] university as a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.”

During my decades in higher ed, I have heard several apologias for tenure:

• Outstanding professionals won't stay in higher ed, when they can make more in the for-profit arena, unless they have tenure.
• Academic freedom requires tenure.
• Contra the first bullet point, and probably more candidly, aging faculty would wind up unemployed and unemployable, absent the job security of tenure.

Regardless, the faculty, including the tenured faculty, must be managed more efficiently in the current crisis.  It's just that simple.  And in order to enlist the full engagement of these players, administrators must begin by communicating the crisis in a transparent way.

Then they must get more work out them.  Primarily this means delivering more instruction... being on campus and available to students and administrators and colleagues more of the time... focusing on research that has cash-flow potential, whether via grants or tech transfer... taking ownership with administrators of recruitment and retention activities... buying into and owning assessment of learning outcomes and career success for students and alumni.

I never thought I'd see the like of it!

Here in New Jersey, I'm still paying $2.02 for gas.  And under New Jersey state law, it gets pumped for me.  I never thought I'd see a gallon of gas at anything like this price--- reminiscent of my college years --- again in my lifetime.

When I taught at UT-Austin in the early 1980s, the Texas legislature threatened to raise tuition and the students--- just blocks away from the state capital building --- took to the streets in protest.  The proposed tuition?  $600 per semester, as I recall.

Now Margaret Spellings, late of the Department of Education and now president of the North Carolina university system, has proposed a $500 per semester tuition for three of the systems 17 institutions.  According to reports, every North Carolinian resides within 150 miles of one of the three chosen campuses.

One question that immediately arises is, who among North Carolina's college-qualified citizens will get to attend these three schools?  "The $500 tuition plan could create another problem: too much demand. If it’s perceived as a quality education at a price far below market, it’s possible many highly qualified students could start applying. That could, in theory, create an applicant pool that’s too large for the three institutions to handle, potentially crowding out all but the top students,"  opines Inside Higher Ed.

So, will the spots go to a meritocracy?  Will other schools in the state have to lower tuition rates in order to compete for students?  Will this move, if signed into law by the governor, cause a ripple effect across the region... across the nation?

Spellings terms her plan a "game changer."  Well, as this Blog attempts to demonstrate on a consistent basis, the game is changing in a dizzying number of ways.  The Fifth Wave is a whole new paradigm of higher education in America.  How big a splash Spellings will make will be an interesting aspect of the tsunami for us to follow as it plays out.