Alright, then, defend yourself. We have put a lot of facts in this thread. What facts are you putting forth to defend your words? Are you prepared to support a 229% increase in average revenue per student? Are you prepared to show us how we're wrong about misaligned incentives? These are facts - Where's the money going? Why is quality suffering with such great revenues? It seems to me if that 229% increase in revenue and all those great things being done by admins you cite are in fact supporting quality, then our graduates should be the best in the world instead of second-rate. Why has American higher ed declined for 40 years while costs increase out of control?
I haven't been ducking the question; I've just been away.
You have not established a clear link between the figures you've cited and any measure of "quality." I don't agree with your assertion that American higher education is second-rate, though I'd welcome any facts you'd care to provide in support of that. But more to the point, I don't understand why you think that increases in revenue, or increases in cost for that matter, are related to quality. I can't deny that revenues have increased, but how is that a bad thing?
If you could name five things that would immediately improve the educational experience at any college or university, they would all be a function of
increased costs, not lower ones -- smaller class sizes, improved labs and other facilities, more library resources, more funds for student research and student travel, more financial aid period. Controlling costs is an essential goal in for-profit businesses, but not in not-for-profits. (Controlling costs isn't a bad thing at non-profits, but the incentives and structures to control costs aren't there.)
Game Theorists can demonstrate that such a dispute with rules of "compromise" strongly favors the wrong party, since wrong parties have nothing to lose by defending themselves, and stand only to gain when compromises are made. "Right" parties are forced to win every single skirmish in order to preserve what is right, since any losses result in an incremental weakening of their position over time.
Game theory also differentiates between zero-sum (or constant-sum, or strictly competitive) games and non-zero-sum games. You seem to think that solving the cost puzzle is a zero-sum game: either administrators are at fault, or faculty are at fault; as a consequence, you think that if I defend administrators I must be attacking faculty. I think that solving the cost puzzle is a non-zero-sum game. There are too many participants in the game -- students, parents, employers, publishers of college guides, faculty, administrators, state government, federal government -- to treat it as zero-sum. Solutions have to be found by faculty and administrators working together; that's the only way to ensure that they are successful, sustainable, and meaningful.
I have no doubt that you have encountered incompetent and/or malevolent administrators in your life. I have too. But their existence does not justify painting every administrator as a greedy tin-eared thug. (You seem to have had no problem with the converse lesson; you say that you have known good administrators, but you haven't fallen into the trap of saying that all administrators are good.) Nor does it lead to a solution.
It's certainly simple to think that administrators are the problem and that if we could just get rid of them life would be much easier. The problem is that the last time we had no administrators it was the 19th century. No libraries (except a collection of books donated by students), no cafeterias or dorms (students lived in local homes), no student activities staff, no development staff to solicit donations, no payroll staff to make sure that taxes are collected and checks issued promptly, no one monitoring safety in radiation labs, no health benefits, much lower salaries, and the occasional inability of the college to collect enough money to make payroll.
You cite data about the changes in revenue from 1980 to 2001. (By the way, would you please provide a more specific citation? There are so many data flying out of the DOE that it's hard to tell them apart.) I think this timeframe is flawed because it misses the more important changes from 1945 to 1980, when revenues soared because of huge increases in public funding. In real terms the price to students declined substantially, at least into the 1960s and possibly beyond, because of public funding. In general terms, a year at college has historically been closely tied to the annual median family income. Between 1945 and 1980 that price was significantly depressed because of public subsidies. (I don't have specific stats handy but I will try to update in the next day or so.)
For my part, I'm not ready to accept the notion that faculty either share an equal portion of the fault or play a major role in this problem.
I never said, or meant to imply, that faculty share an "equal portion", but they are indeed involved in cost drivers. Let me demonstrate by way of the first number I can actually lay hands on. According to the 2008-09 AAUP Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, average compensation for faculty increased 256% in nominal dollars between 1980 and 2001. Personally, I think that's a good thing, and I'll defend that rate of increase to anyone; if anything, I wish it were higher. But I haven't noticed much movement among the faculty to say, "Please lower our salaries so that we can keep costs down for students." And of course I don't expect or even want them to do so. None of us is going to solve the puzzle if we say "this is not my problem, it's your problem, so fix it." The problem belongs to all of us.
BTW, you talk about accountability and quality for faculty - are you suggesting that faculty aren't holding each other accountable in the tenure and promotion process, and somebody else would do it better?
Nothing of the kind. I was referring to one of the actual articles in the roundup, the one by Charles Miller, who encourages academia to work harder at evaluating
programs (not individuals), their costs, and their connection to mission. Miller criticizes what he calls the "revenue model," which is, I think, a similar complaint to yours: institutions try to get all the money they can, and spend all they get. If they were to evaluate programs more closely, and eliminate those that aren't central to the institution, they could control costs better. This idea was echoed in another article, by J. Douglas Toma, who points out that institutions tend to compete by trying to emulate high-quality programs rather than on other factors (he doesn't use these examples, but these factors might include efficiency and cost).
I am sorry the mods have not made it a free link. Maybe if they had, we could talk about these issues rather than thrashing around old bugaboos.
