Harvard recently announced that it was going to use a little more of the income on its $35-billion endowment to provide some additional financial aid to more of its student body. The details can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and every other media outlet in America, perhaps the world. It is rightly considered big news. Other institutions, Swarthmore, Duke, University of Pennsylvania and Pomona, are already following Harvard’s lead each in their own way. May we ask, “What does this mean for me?”
The institutions that have the ability to do what Harvard has done can be counted on the fingers of one’s hands. Okay, make it twenty. As a percentage of the undergraduate enrollment in the United States, the number of students affected is almost trivial. The combined undergraduate population of all the Ivy League universities equals the enrollment at only two of the Big Ten schools. America is a big country — metaphorically as well as geographically, and “where the elite meet to eat” is not the diner where most Americans have lunch.
Other colleges and universities, however big-hearted they may be, however concerned for the welfare of their students, however much they might wish to emulate their colleagues in Cambridge, will simply not be able to do so given the more modest size of their endowments, their capacity to raise money, and their current mode of operations. “The rich are very different from you and me,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, and this is surely a wonderful example of that truth. In the end, as much as it is déclassé to say it, much of higher education is fueled by money.
When one looks at the rankings of the institutions published annually by US News and World Report, in spite the long list of ostensible criteria used by the magazine in determining those college standings, somehow the institutions with the robust endowments are always at the top of rankings, the middle class institutions are in Tiers Two & Three, and so on. The reason for this is obvious: The criteria are merely a disaggregated representation of the money being expended by the institutions on the things that universities spend their money on. What is their student-faculty ratio? How well do they pay their faculty? What is the size of their library? All of these and similar questions are small colored stones that compose the mosaic called the university budget.
Budgets are, of course, not financial documents; they are philosophical statements. They tell us how much money the university has and what it spends that money to do. And money is fungible. Like water, it seeks its own level. In most instances, if an institution invests more on financial aid, it will have less for the goods and services that define the academic experience. Only Harvard, and perhaps a few fortunate others, may not have to make choices; the rest do. Most come to know that if you want this you can’t have that. It will be curiously ironic if institutions other than those with big-buck resources provide greater access to students through more generous financial aid only to have those very students less satisfied because the quality of their campus experience has been diminished.
If universities are serious about holding tuition down, providing greater financial support for students, and concurrently paying faculty and staff appropriately (and doing all the other things that enrich and inform undergraduate years), they must get past operational status quo and get about reinventing the entire enterprise. Using campuses only 28 weeks a year out of a 52-week calendar is wasteful. Uniformly requiring four years for a bachelor’s degree when many students have access to AP courses in secondary school and when a high percentage of students go on to professional and postgraduate degrees may no longer be appropriate. In order to restrain the prices universities charge, the institutions are going to have to question their costs. Only innovation and change will make a lasting difference in the long run.
America has about 3,500 colleges and universities. As a community they have many more similarities than differences, as unique as each likes to think it is. Tear off the cover of the catalogues and students will be hard-pressed to tell you which matches the school at which they are enrolled. With the Common Application comes a common mindset. Insufficient originality going into the selection process, little originality of “service” found after one arrives on campus. Everyone wants to be Wal-Mart — a broad-based operation offering almost everything students and faculty dream of and most of it at discounted prices. A Wal-Mart in the Northeast is the same as a Wal-Mart in the Southwest.
I don’t want to overstate this thesis. Cal Tech is not St. Johns. Juilliard doesn’t boast about its chemistry department and MIT is not a natural first choice for drama majors. Would more product differentiation and specialized study allow schools to concentrate their resources in more cost-effective ways, keeping down expenses and moderating tuition? If the world’s leading experts didn’t teach every aspect of every subject on every campus, would students be the poorer? I’ve always been an advocate of the value of a liberal-arts education. But that doesn’t mean that each school need offer in-depth majors in every discipline: An appetizer-size portion of many, entrees of only a few may prove to be a more sustainable menu.
America’s education system is presently like a Horn & Hardart cafeteria of old. Pay your nickel, make a choice, any choice; they have unlimited selections. Looking ahead, not all campuses can afford to continue to be all things to all students.
Innovation in design will streamline expenses. “If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes.”
