Predicting Mitt Romney’s Higher-Education Policy

February 1, 2012, 12:05 pm

I spent my last post trying to parse President Obama’s recent (January 27) speech about higher education. My main complaint was and is that the speech reflects a distorted view of the American higher-education universe, a view shaped by his own higher-education experience—a bachelor’s degree and a law degree at elite, prestigious schools. But if you really want a distorted view of higher education, look no farther than Mitt Romney.

First, education, and even more so higher education, are back-seat issues in presidential elections, and have been for decades. One could argue that, since 1980, elections have centered either on the national economy or on values. James Carville’s immortal declaration “It’s the economy, stupid,” set the tone for the 1992 election, and all signs point to the 2012 vote as an “economy” election too. While education should figure centrally in conversations about economic recovery, they never seem to at the national level. With the exception of extreme solutions offered by presidential candidates on the right (which I’ll address in future posts), candidates offer predictable platitudes about education being an important investment in oneself, etc.—the tamer stuff in Obama’s Ann Arbor speech last Friday. So finding what a candidate specifically thinks about higher education is difficult.

Fortunately (for my research purposes), Mitt Romney made a couple of bizarre references for which he was finally called out in a January 14 New York Times article by Eric Lichtblau. Lichtblau notes that on two occasions a week apart (a town hall meeting in New Hampshire and an event in Iowa) Romney held up for-profit universities as an attractive model for American higher education, but did so in a very curious way. On both occasions, he offered unsolicited endorsements for for-profit Full Sail University in Florida, explaining that “By increasing competition, for-profit institutions like Full Sail, which focuses on the entertainment field, [will] hold down the cost of education, and help students get jobs without saddling them with excessive debt.”

One egregious instance of mutual political back-scratching (the kind that so many Americans have come to hate), and one glaring error. Full Sail University is an obscure, privately owned for-profit. Why not cite the University of Phoenix, by far the largest and arguably the most representative for-profit university? The reason: the CEO of Full Sail is Bill Heavener, a major Romney donor and co-chair of Romney’s fund-raising team in Florida. The glaring error: for profit institutions typically cost around twice as much as community colleges, and in some cases more that four-year universities. Full Sail is an especially outrageous instance. According to the Times article, most of its programs cost even more than that. For example, it offers a 21-month program in “video game art” that costs $80,000. Moreover, its students do come out saddled with excessive debt—that is, if they graduate at all. The video-game-art program “graduated just 14 percent of its 272 students on time and only about 38 percent at all, while students carried a median debt load of nearly $59,000 in federal and private loans in 2008 (Times, quoting Education Department statistics).”

So, clearly to this point, Romney has laid an egg on the issue of higher education. But he does have a record, as governor of Massachusetts, which bears scrutiny and may have some predictive value. An extensively researched article by the Chronicle’s Karin Fischer looks at Romney’s record on higher education as Governor of Massachusetts as a way of anticipating how he might approach that issue were he to have been elected president the first time he ran, in 2007-8. Fischer reports the following:

In March 2003, just two months after taking office, Governor Romney introduced an audacious higher-education overhaul, proposing to privatize three public colleges, merge several others, and spin off the flagship Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts as an independent institution. He also called for eliminating the job of one of the state’s most powerful and well-connected figures, William M. Bulger, president of the university system. The plan, Mr. Romney said, would save taxpayers $150-million at a time the state faced a $3-billion budget shortfall.

Though there was enthusiasm for some of these measures—spinning off the Amherst campus would potentially have transformed it from an institution that has always stood in the shadows of Massachusetts’ august private colleges into a world-class research university—the real sticking point was the proposed elimination of Bulger, a very powerful political figure in his own right, speaker of the state senate for 17 years (not to mention the younger brother of the state’s most powerful mob boss, “Whitey” Bulger). “By summer the plan was dead,” states Fischer.

As she looks for deeper, methodological reasons why Romney’s bold plan failed, Fischer concludes that Romney relied too heavily on consultants from his old firm, Bain & Company. These consultants failed to understand “the peculiarities of higher education budgeting,” treating universities as if they were the private sector companies like the ones that Bain regularly bought and radically restructured.

The Full Sail flubs aside—and for his own sake, one hopes that Romney won’t keep making them—the real question for this candidate is will he understand the nuances and complexity of American higher education and the difficulties it faces?

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rogue_academic

And those colleagues are not entirely clueless. As a grant applicant, grantee, reviewer and panelist I can only confirm that for women faculty it is easier to get funding.
12094444

As a reviewer and panelist, I only evaluate on merit of proposal and quality of research based on previous publications on the research topic. The colleagues may have a perception problem.
rogue_academic

But then you know that your reports are only advisory to the program officers.
hank_devereaux_jr

How is this data?

I’m sorry to be a stickler for empirical research but… you cannot confirm that it’s easier for “women faculty” to get funding with anecdotes — even if you have a lot of them.

In order to confirm that it is easier for ” women faculty” to get funding than men, we would have to do a statistical study where we started with a random sample, and controlled for other relevant variables (discipline, years of experience, ranking of graduate program, publications, etc.) by including this data in our regression. We’d insert a binary variable (representing gender of the applicant) and do a test to determine whether or not the estimated coefficient on the binary variable is statistically different from 0.
richardtaborgreene

Perhaps it is easier to get funding if you THINK you are a woman. Perhaps women propose better ideas to better sources with better expression. Perhaps the genders are basically competing sports teams and the men are irritated when the other team–women–wins. There is lots of research that people who do a good job get promoted slower and less than people who do a for-show job and work really hard to get promoted. Perhaps women do a good job too much and now are learning to be superficial about good job doing and hard-nosed about promotion-seeking, so women and men are now equally for-show? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps—neither women nor men are capable of deep broad intelligence but only a trio of two women and one man (to equality the for-show stuff) can make intelligent decisions and designs. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
_perplexed_

What the Full Sail “flub” shows is that despite his wealth, Romney is bought and paid for…
Guest

I have no reason to defend Gov. Romney. But, um, President Obama is clearly in the pocket of Harvard and the University of California, which are corporations and also his biggest donors in the 2008 cycle. So there’s bad-faith education policy in enough supply to go around. I’d like to see us take on the elite non-profit universities with as much disdain and righteous indignation as we show toward for-profits. They are all overpriced private enterprises that abuse federal taxpayer money to crown their handpicked elites with special privileges. The main difference is that Ivy League elitists actually run the world (and badly).
http://twitter.com/jazprimo Jaz Primo

Higher education is something most republicans relied upon to succeed in their respective careers, but view as largely esoteric as a need for the general public. Instead, they would rather allocate funding to invade yet another third-world country in the name of freedom and democracy, which will stimulate the economy for the military industrial complex.
kilbourj_1

I witnessed first-hand Mitt Romney’s assult on public higher education in Massachusetts. I was a respected and valued professor at Bridgewater State College (Now Bridgewater State University) during his tenure as governor. With the high cost of living in the Boston area and my low salary, our family actually qualified for food stamps. Because salaries were not competitive many state institutions were not able to attract or retain quality faculty. I myself left for a university in Michigan where the cost of living was significantly less and where I received a substantial increase in salary. Governor Romney worked hard to dismantle our faculty union, and to divide the state college and university system. A simple Google search will reveal many articles, etc. that detail his assult. This must become a campaign issue as we move forward.
betterschool

It is difficult to predict the behavior of presidents when it comes to infrastructure that is characterized by a substantial lag between policy and impact. Such policy areas provide temptingly fertile ground for politicians to promise impact that cannot be accurately determined until they have left office. In such areas, even pragmatic politicians find themselves relying on fundamental ideological principles to guide whatever policy issues land on their desk.

While I find this writer’s analysis thin, unsophisticated, and seemingly guided largely by his own ideological biases, the question he raises is important, even if not answerable. I had high hopes for President Obama, for example, only to learn that his grasp of higher education is narrow to the extent that it is guided by a vision of higher education borne of his association with elite and semi-elite institutions.

Is is unquestionably in the public interest to ask taxpayers, business, and industry to fund a portion of higher education. However, we need to change the current systems of funding, end the bifurcation of funding and accountability, raise the embarrassingly low levels of accountability, and replace archaic siloed structures with modern cooperative and constructively competitive counterparts.

Above all, we must effect change with a firm hand on costs. The current systems have priced themselves out of the market and out of the reach of the middle class. This is especially true of the non-profit systems that double-dip to receive more than they would need in taxpayer support, if they were even modestly efficient, and that much again in student support. The runaway price increases of the non-profits have created a robust market for the for-profits, some of which have figured out how to do a better job of meeting students’ and employers’ needs.

This is not a type-of-control argument. The real issue is efficient, accountable higher education and which presidential candidate is going to get us closer to that goal. Frankly, I don’t see much vision or leadership on this issue on either side. Most of our presidents and presidential candidates these days attended elite institutions and are still guided by that hazy vision of “college days,” unaware that half of today’s students are adults who work and have adult responsibilities. Mr. Donoghue, as is often the case, has weighed in with a sophomoric C-, yet raised an important topic.
westernfields

Come on Jaz, is that that best you can do? I love your conflated, red-herring argument. “We” Republicans (not that your verbiage is marginalizing “us” as a peculiar and detestable segment of the general population or anything. No, no, liberals don’t do that. Only Republicans engage in such rhetoric) do not find higher education “largely esoteric” but as a valuable and oft necessary vehicle/springboard to “succeed in [our] respective careers.”

Attempts to reform higher education is not questioning the natural value of advanced education (though that too needs to be addressed. See “Declining By Degrees” and “Academically Adrift”), but more about how to provide it in a costly way (education cannot be free. Study the early years of the California system. What caused the change in the philosophy and practice on the cost of education? Can you really place a dollar value on knowledge?). What system of financial support has ever worked (asked sardonically)? As a back-bench, armchair quarterback, what substantive solution(s) do you offer (expressed mockingly and tauntingly)?

Personally, I think the number of required credits need to be radically reduced, thus limiting the amount of actual time spent in college accruing debt. I mean, honestly, that dance class I took to satisfy my fine-arts requirement was a waste of my time and money. And don’t get me started on my French courses… Oh right, we need to make sure that we’re a culturally aware society (as if I care anything about the Mona Lisa) blah, blah, blah. Having a masters degree in social work and a PhD in educational administration and policy studies, I’ve been inundated by the “liberal” liberal-arts argument. I just don’t see any demonstrative evidence supporting this claim (obviously it didn’t work with the Occupy folks who have been so warmly embraced by the academic community.) I also think a matrix system of charging students on the actual value of their degree. For example, since a business degree has a greater earning potential than, oh, a degree in Russian Literature, the biz student should pay more. Yes, this would cause a trickle-up effect on professors’ salaries etc. etc….

I have a few more reformation ideas but I will hold onto them until you provide some intellectual evidence you are willing to have a substantive discussion. But let us return to your shallow, empty, and thoughtless bumper-sticker comment. You make tinny-minted assertions that are fallacious at best and proceed to further evidence your poor insight by offering no kind of solution (typical of a liberal drone). You excoriate Romney and “Republicans” for “our” higher educational reformation ideas/attempts, but fail to share how you (or anyone) would address the bleeding system. What liberal policy/legislation EFFECTIVELY meets the rising needs of higher education? Borrowing Frank Donoghue’s glass ball I can already see you typing “more money…” which of course comes from the newly created iCloud-bank.
manoflamancha

Will he understand the nuances and complexity of American higher eduaction, like you do, I suppose? Your arguments are narrow and specious, and typical of the pc crowd, so stay out of public displays of political preferences. It reflects badly on OSU.
pianiste

This is a wonderful piece of rhetoric (“replace archaic siloed structures”)–a combination of stump speech (“we must effect change with a firm hand on costs”) and thinly guised advertisement for money-making* schools (“a robust market for the for-profits, some of which have figured out how to do a better job of meeting students’ and employers’ needs”). But a few points need clarification:

Why the sympathy for “even pragmatic politicians” (who often sound off on education policy as much as Professor Donoghue does) who “find themselves relying on fundamental ideological principles,” and none for Professor Donoghue’s “being guided by his own ideological biases”?

Why, if the question Professor Donoghue raises is “unanswerable,” does betterschool begin the next paragraph with “It is unquestionably in the public interest to…”?

What, exactly are these wonderful-sounding “modern cooperative and constructively competitive counterparts,” and what is “constructively competitive” as opposed to cut-throat competitive?

What’s with this campaign against “elite,” e.g. betterschool’s objection to Obama’s experience with “elite” institutions, and Newt Gingrich’s by-now-routine barbs cast at the “elite” media? Don’t all the teams in the NBA want to get to be considered one of the “elite” teams? Don’t we want physics professors to be among the “elite” in their field? Don’t business travelers want to rack up enough miles to get into the “elite” categories on their favorite airlines. Doesn’t betterschool run one of the “elite” educational think-tanks in the country?

And what are “semi-elite” institutions (which I take to mean colleges and universities) and how many are we talking about? Is San Diego State University one of them? Carelton College? St. John’s University? The University of Montana? Are they every post-secondary school except community colleges?

I’ll be argumentative here: The “better job” that the money-making schools have figured out how to do is mostly to gorge on borrowed tuition money from their students, pay everybody in the company (except faculty, usually) a nice profit from it, and then let the borrowing students–and the gullible Government which grants the loans–stew in their own juices of debt. Yes, a few do a good job, but it’s scarily the biggies, such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan, that are continually the objects of a plethora of student complaints.

What does a suitable rate of “efficiency” for non-profit colleges and universities consist, in the eyes of betterschool? An even thinner skeleton crew of tenure-track faculty and an even bigger sea of underpaid adjuncts? All distance learning and no undergraduate residency? All vocational ed and STEM fields and no philosophy, history, literature, the arts? No quads and all strip malls?

Finally, an obversation: Professor Donoghue’s post contains some meat–actual names, some figures, an account with some detail concerning Mr. Romney’s history of implementing policy in higher education, and the connecting of specific dots. Betterschool provides almost none of these things. Betterschool may throw adjectives such as “thin,” “unsophisticated,” and “sophomoric,” but they seem to come from a quiver of his own ideological bias (in favor of money-making schools, with a veneer of non-partisan language) as much as Professor Donoghue’s allegedly come from his. Myself, I’d give betterschool an A for rhetoric (30 percent of the grade) and a D for substantial content. I wonder what Professor Donoghue, a real professor of English at a school that betterschool would probably disdain as “elite,” would give it?

* Yes, I know that “for-profit” is the preferred, antiseptic term.
betterschool

It is difficult for me to see how you divined support for for-profits and sympathy for politicians out of my comments. The only material points the writer raises are fundamentally economic. From that perspective, they are sophomoric and narrow in scope. His notion of “cost” is but one example. You raise some other points with which I disagree but which deserve consideration. There are certainly good arguments to be made from various perspectives. I believe I made my perspective clear to an objective reader. In the future, perhaps you could refrain from imputing — to me and to others who post — motives, judgments, and ideological positions clearly not in evidence. It is annoying and it distracts from whatever important points you have to make.
wilkenslibrary

If the author had done a bit more research, he’d have learned that, as governor, Romney declined on multiple occasions to fund the contracts that the fifteen Massachusetts Community Colleges had negotiated with management and that the Legislature had sent him to sign. Supporting public higher ed is clearly not one of Romney’s priorities.

Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College
pianiste

Anybody else have trouble “divining” support for for-profits from betterschool’s comment? Hands?

Granted, betterschool is an absolute master at cosmetic pseudo-evenhandedness, but most if not all of his phrases of criticism (“archaic siloed structures,” “elite and semi-elite institutions,” “change the current systems of funding,” “the bifurcation of funding and accountability,” “embarrassingly low levels of accountability,” “non-profit systems that double-dip to receive more than they would need in taxpayer support,” “that hazy vision of ‘college days,’” etc.) are directed at non-profits. There are no criticisms of for-profit schools in his comment.

And then there’s this comment from betterschool, on another thread concerning education policy:

“This is an important topic that tends to be dominated by unreasoning, for-profit hating ideologues. If you knew [Richard] Shireman [a former Deputy Under-Secretary of Education, and author of the article commented upon*] personally, you would place him in this camp. He uses his intellect to distort and manipulate reality.” (I haven’t seen anybody do that since Lex Luthor.)

“Divining” is hardly what one has to do to come to the conclusion that betterschool is a supporter of for-profits. If betterschool is annoyed at my connecting dots as big as manhole covers, he’d better do a better job of covering his favoring for-profit tracks. And while I appreciate that he regards (albeit patronizingly) some other points I raised as deserving of consideration, I do notice that he addressed none of them. I guess his schedule today is even more crowded than it was yesterday over on that other thread.

* Mr. Shireman directs something called California Competes, and educational policy think-tank that seems to focus on the role of non-profits, particularly state schools. One suspects there might be a little Macy’s vs. Gimble’s going on with betterschool. But hey, I wouldn’t want to impute anything to him.
comanchepilot

Just a thought, but why didn’t you take as much time looking at Mr.Obama’s educational standings when he was running for president? Or did you?
Unemployed_Northeastern

Guy, Romney is a grad of both HBS and HLS and spent his entire career at two consultancies notorious for basically only hiring from the top HALF of the Ivies. I’m sure he’ll have plenty of money from the “Ivy League elitists.”
Unemployed_Northeastern

“I’m not very concerned for the very poor – they have a safety net.”

- a certain politician who has never known any form of deprivation or hardship in his life
emwhitephd

What seems to me missing from the article and its discussion, is awareness and appreciation for the admirable variety of American higher education, with its almost endless opportunities for students (hey, remember students?). My fifty plus years teaching and administering at several kinds of institutions has given me real respect for how fully our system meets its responsibilities, despite its glaring problems, easy enough to enumerate. The starting place for discussion needs to be its overall success, for the society, for students, for research. Political meddling with such a complicated structure, with economic concerns up front, almost always makes things worse.
theart

I don’t know if I would call it synergy, but I can see a basis for the correlation. It’s hard to become an athletic powerhouse without strong and consistent alumni involvement, and it’s hard to build a large base of alums with money to throw around without strong academics. Synergy would suggest that academics to benefit from athletics to a similar degree.
yellow1

I think it is important to note that many of the schools named specifically above have athletic departments that do not operate in the red. I think many people in Academics find this frustrating for two reasons: First, these schools have managed to maintain alumni donorship to the point that football or men’s basketball can keep an entire athletic department afloat financially. Second, the very fact that the athletics have bloated coffers in this era of increasing tuition and decreasing funding for the academic side of the house drives some nuts.

The problem is that there are only a few dozen institutions like this. The rest drain precious funds because sports has come to dominate the marketing of college in general.
jthelin

Well, it may be true that SEC universities do not hire PhDs from the Ivy League (a “lesser” conference). But is that because the Ivy League is a lesser conference, or perhaps, because the Ivy PhDs go elsewhere? Perhaps in some case of conference correlations of faculty hiring, lesser is more?

John Thelin
University of Kentucky (an SEC member university)
mrudd

Here’s a reasonable discussion of the issue and some limited data:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/53879464-82/academic-pac-athletic-university.html.csp
lslerner

Most top football schools “hire” players with considerable “scholarships,” who have very different profiles from those of the genuine scholars who attend. Their graduation rate is abysmal, partly because their preparation is in football and not academics, partly because of the time and energy they expend in football, and partly because their ambition is to become professional football players, not lawyers or doctors or scientists or English teachers.
Robert Hutchins had it right. Some years after he had closed down the University of Chicago’s Big Ten football program, some reporters asked him if he planned ever to reinstate football. He replied, “If I ever do, I’ll buy the Chicago Bears.”
Socratease2

Well, you can put hire in quotes or not, doesn’t change fact that students are not being paid to play. If you look at the amount of room and board money left after the tuition is paid for through scholarship, then thse athletes are some of the poorest paid employees in America.

Leaving that aside, you can say that FB student-athlete graduation rates are abysmal and that’s fine but these “abysmal” athlete rates are usually much higher than for the general student population. And if you compare rates for black athletes and black non-athletes on campus, athletes graduate with even a larger positive gap. So overall, grad rates must be “super-abysmal” for non-athletes. You do understand that at many universities, overall student graduation rates usually fall between 40-60%, most FB grad rates are much higher. Don’t have to believe me, just go check out the comparative statistics before labeling/stereotyping.
mich8718

The longer I think about the place of athletics in academia and the more I research the
topic the more complex the issues seem to be. One way I have come to simplify
the situation is to admit to the fact that, as Mr. Bissinger notes, college
athletics is a tiered system. For state universities the place on the athletic tier and the place on the academic tier are often very compatible and often comes down to money.

So, as an initial way to consider the place of college athletics and football in particular is to follow the money and see where it comes from and where it goes. Consider the admittedly few financially successful schools. Let’s take just two from the Big Ten for example – Michigan and Ohio State. Both have self-sustaining athletic programs driven primarily by revenues associated with football and men’s basketball. Michigan sponsors 13 men’s sports and 14 women’s sports. Ohio State sponsors 17 men’s sports and 18 women’s sports. Clearly proceeds from two sports are enabling a large number of students to attend each university who might otherwise not have the opportunity or interest and perhaps the case can be made that this contributes to the academic reputation of the institution. By this criterion there is little defense for the decision that has been made by the University of Maryland.

This observation does lead to the proposition that the work of a few men is generating
big bucks for the schools and supporting other athletes and that those men are being exploited. For the sake of argument I reject that position. Not only are hose men getting access to a valuable education but, and I’ve not seen this discussed, they are getting specialized training and a chance to develop physical skills that will enable them, if they are talented enough to make a living playing the sport. This is not nearly as true for basketball as it is for football, but does anyone really believe that Tim Tebow was physically ready to play pro ball when he came out of Nease High School? I saw him play his senior year – even superman needed some development and U of Florida provided that chance in a high caliber physical facility under the tutelage of skilled trainers and coaches.

However, I question the model for universities at the next level both in terms of the reputations for athletics and academics . Let’s consider the University of Central Florida. In terms of student enrollment it is one of the 3 largest universities in the country and it seems to want its athletic program to fit in with schools like Texas and Ohio State. In 2010 44% of its operating income for athletics came from student fees with an additional 6% coming from the university and from FY 2005-2006 through FY 2009-2010 the UCF athletic program received yearly direct support from the state of between $345,000 and $600,000. Despite these subsidies the athletic program had a cumulative deficit of $2.9 million dollars when operating revenues are compared to operating expenses. UCF supports 6 men’s sports and 8 women’s sports. As we move to a lower tier then it seems that the opportunities for student athletes also diminish although students are being called on to bear more of the cost of the program and in the case of UCF state funds that could otherwise go to the academic budget are being spent on athletics. If anything I think that this hurts the academic reputation of this type of school.
4206dinty

However, studnet – athletes etc have tutors,tutors and others to help them & the regalr student doe not get that help!
Socratease2

That is not entirely true. It is true that student-athletes have access to academic staff, advisors and tutors that help them manage their time and help them with readings, paper drafts, etc. However, non-athletes have access to a different pool of departmental and general tutoring services that student-athletes don’t because of their travel and practice schedules. When you take into account the academic negatives associated with sport (missed class for travel, no time in afternoon to meet faculty or TAs, lack of energy after practice) and add in the fact that a certain percentage of these student-athletes have far lower academic indexes than general student body, I don’t think the academic support provided does much more than level the academic playing field. Even 3.7 gpa pre-med student-athletes struggle because of the burdens of their sport. Student-athlete grad rates (with excpetion of men’s basketball) are impressive despite this academic support.