Washington
If public research universities are going to answer President Obama's call to increase the number of college graduates and also do research to help the country solve its thorniest problems, the federal government needs to play a bigger role in financing higher education, Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California system, said at a forum here on Sunday.
Mr. Yudof, who spoke on a panel of college leaders at the annual conference for the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, argued that the financing model for public universities no longer works because state support for higher education is declining, forcing universities to increase tuition and fees, cut programs, or cap enrollments and turn students away. Although the federal government helps pay for higher education through Pell Grants and other financial aid to needy students, and through research grants and the stimulus money that Congress approved this year, the cuts in state funds offset those financial gains, Mr. Yudof said.
"The stimulus has not worked to the extent many of us hoped," Mr. Yudof told the audience. With the states cutting back at the same time the president is pushing to educate more students, something has to change. "It cannot work as currently constructed."
The country needs a national strategy to increase capacity in higher education, he said, and college leaders must start talking about ways that the federal government could assist more in covering operating costs of public universities. Last month, Mr. Yudof released a paper, "Exploring a New Role for Federal Government in Higher Education," that outlines why he thinks the federal government needs to play a bigger part in higher education and how it might do that.
"The mission is simply too important to leave to state governments that seem disinclined or unable to pursue it," he writes in the paper.
Possible solutions he proposes include offering financial incentives to reward colleges with high numbers of Pell-eligible students, adding supplements to federal research grants to help pay for graduate programs that train researchers, and starting a program in which colleges would compete for federal funds based on strategic measurements such as graduation rates and provision of additional institutional support for students from low- and middle-income families.
Even if that were to happen, public universities would still need state support and support from private donors, Mr. Yudof said.
The federal government has an interest in the success of its public research universities, Mr. Yudof said. Not only do they educate a large number of students, they will play a role in solving the biggest issues facing the country, including health care, energy use, and remaining competitive internationally.
"In my judgment, you need a national solution," he said in an interview after the session. He is hoping to generate "intellectual energy" for the idea by inviting conversation and drawing on ideas of others about how the federal government could step in and create a unified national strategy for higher education while still protecting state sovereignty.
He is unsure what the short-term likelihood of his proposal is, though he has started to talk to members of Congress and policy makers. In the longer term, he thinks a national approach to public higher education is likely in the next five to ten years.
Though the Obama administration and federal government are grappling now with other expensive issues such as health care and defense, Mr. Yudof said a new approach to financing public research universities could not wait.
"I don't agree that it's not the time to act," he told the crowd.
Lee T. Todd Jr., president of the University of Kentucky, who spoke on the panel with Mr. Yudof, encouraged universities to join together and develop a plan that shows how they will respond to the national call to educate more Americans. That plan must spell out exactly what universities will need to do that, and then higher-education leaders will have to go out to the public and sell it.
"If we don't write it, somebody else might, and that's dangerous," Mr. Todd said.
Comments
1. jffoster - November 16, 2009 at 06:16 am
Mr Yudof "argued that the financing model for public universities no longer works because state support for higher education is declining."
These matters are related to, among other things, the question of whether too many people are going to college and whether there are too many colleges -- both raised in the pages of the Chronicle in recent times. The article above does not suggest that Mr. Yudof's proposal (I'm printing it out now.) is informed by consideration of either of these. The quoted phrase above suggests he thinks that public universities are entitled to support at the level they are or would like to become accustomed to whether the public wish to support them.
2. fizmath - November 16, 2009 at 09:18 am
Education is not a federal concern. You can't find it anywhere in the Constitution. If the states don't have the money to finance higher ed then how will the feds magically get the money when we are already in the hole? Why not figure out why tuition has been exceeding the inflation rate for 30 years?
We don't need more college grads. Our global competition is doing fine with much lower college attendance.
3. davi2665 - November 16, 2009 at 01:17 pm
The entitlement sentiment is alive and well in higher education. State support for higher education has decreased in part due to falling revenues. With high unemployment, home foreclosures, salary and benefit cuts, and diminished family expenditures, tax revenues have declined, leading to less support for most programs. Of course, if you live in New York, Michigan, California, etc., the answer to this dilemma is to raise taxes on virtually everything, thereby assuring that there are more lay offs, more declining state revenues, and even less resources. With the state support option declining, the next recourse is to ask the federal government to provide more support for higher education, which in practical terms means printing yet more money, running up the deficit even further, and increasing the likelihood of high inflation as the dollar declines. One thing that has not been clear in this scenario is where these newly minted graduates are supposed to find employment that pays salaries at the level they would deem appropriate after laying out huge amounts of money for their education.
In response to the initial discussion, I would love to see the evidence that additional support for higher education will "help the country solve its thorniest problems." The bottom line appears to be that higher education wants continuing or increasing support in an economic environment in which no other component has that luxury. Perhaps the higher education system needs some excising and downsizing of both its expenditures and its grandiose entitlement attitude.
4. wulkan - November 20, 2009 at 08:37 pm
As state support declines, students are charged more. As students are charged more, the class of people able to attend "public" colleges gets narrowed. As fewer low-income people escape poverty by attending college, states have greater costs in social services. If states can't break out of that vicious cycle, the federal government has an important role to play. And no, it doesn't mean printing more money -- it means reordering priorities, i.e. just a paltry few billion less for unnecessary wars.