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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Mixed Signals

If you follow the media coverage of campuses from day to day, you find two alternative realities in conflict. We want it cheap. We want it gold-plated.

On one side, the students and their families appear to be overwhelmed with tuitions and the student-loan crisis. Who can blame them for expressing their concern? Lenders are tightening up the cash, tuition and fees for next fall are due to the bursars in only a couple of months, and the students have no place to turn. The Chronicle tells us that we are experiencing the highest level of anxiety over college prices in the past 35 years. Even with the relief offered by a handful of the wealthiest colleges to families earning six figures a year, the middle class is clearly caught in a vise. Congress is in the midst of trying to pass loan-guarantee legislation to protect lenders who in turn will assist students. But it is not over until it is over.

By contrast, students and their families are increasing their demands that colleges deliver more and better, near-luxury services and accommodation over and above anything required for a “quality college experience.” Universities are being driven to provide an extraordinary level of material support — campus food approaching Michelin standards. It won’t surprise me if we soon see a star and knife and fork rating system listed on the front page of college catalogs — following the lead of the Princeton Review. According to The New York Times, incoming students are requesting such things as organic vegetarian alternatives, farmer’s market produce, and spa waters with flavorings from mint to watermelon when they tour prospective colleges. The daily choices available in many college cafeterias show a diversity of cuisines that rival many restaurants. Apparently at one night’s dinner, Bowdoin College offered Dijon-crusted chicken, Vietnamese noodle soup, and spicy orange beef as three of the five entrée choices. How many students eat like that at home? I remember a one-dollar Sunday night dinner at a little restaurant down the street from Columbia: a bowl of rice covered with brown sauce and a little mystery meat, a slice of toast, a cup of coffee.

Today gymnasiums are approaching beauty-spa status, with masseuse and personal trainers offered, as well as state-of-the-art equipment to tone every part of the body. Classroom activities hone the mind, and during after-school hours, the body is pampered. We see a world that compares favorably to gated communities in Palm Beach.

If you are a student paying a high tuition — figures that reaches into the stratosphere — then it follows that, like Johnny Rocco in Key Largo, you ask for “more”: more choices in the dining room, better work-out equipment, and larger and better dorm rooms. And if you’re the college, and prospective students tell you they will only enroll in your classes if you give them more and more — then you feel compelled to accommodate while raising tuition in order to have funds to pay for all the customer demands.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Posted at 07:47:52 AM on April 21, 2008 | All postings by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Comments

  1. I see this tension – between cost and demand for services – all of the time. At my institution, we just built a new living-shopping area that looks like a hotel, complete with a Starbucks in the lobby.

    — Shelly Wyatt · Apr 21, 11:26 AM · #

  2. I graduated from college in 1995. My parents were, thankfully, able to foot the entire bill. This was really before “luxury campuses” began emerging. My first three years of college, I used a hall pay phone to call home once a week. My friends and I ate in the dining hall, which had questionable entrees, but always had cereal if you were a picky eater such as myself. The gym was okay – it at least had stairmasters, the “hot new” exercise machine in the early 90s. I have no idea how my husband and I will be able to do the same for our kids if the demand for “extras” continues to help drive the high cost of higher education

    — MB · Apr 21, 11:26 AM · #

  3. The root of the problem can be found in the penultimate sentence of your essay: You refer to college students as “customers”. When colleges and universities ceased thinking of students as “students”, and began thinking of them as “customers”, a series of changes began to take place. Luxurious campuses are, in my mind, among the least worrisome changes wrought by the commodification of higher education. At the top of my list is the proletarianization of the professoriate, whose “quality” is now to be judged purely on the basis of quantity of “productivity”, not on the quality of the work, or its import, or its value to the world. Another problem is that many students, I mean “customers”, feel that if their tuition is paid, then their end of the transaction is complete, and now the “product” they’ve “purchased” must be delivered. The customer pays, the customer gets their grade. This focus on the “bottom line” means that cheating and other short cuts to the grade make perfect sense—why actually learn the material if the product you’ve paid for is the grade/degree? Administrators should not complain about having to provide “new and improved” products, since it is they, collectively, who have presided over the corporatization of colleges and universities and thus the commodification of learning.

    — Marc Flacks · Apr 21, 01:37 PM · #

  4. On comment 3:

    “The customer pays, the customer gets their grade. This focus on the “bottom line” means that cheating and other short cuts to the grade make perfect sense—why actually learn the material if the product you’ve paid for is the grade/degree?”

    Absolutely—- and increasingly, students who don’t get the grade they desire, go to a chair, a dean, a state legislator, to get it changed.

    And, remember, in some Federal circuits, all the faculty member gets is the right to put a grade on a faculty grading “sheet” — and NOT on the transcript itself .

    (cf. Comment 1 at: http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/fendrich/the-secretary-to-the-rescue)

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 21, 02:01 PM · #

  5. If my university is representative of others, we’ve helped create the problem and have no clear idea how to break the cycle.

    Unlike the elites, our endowment is not sufficient to fund our many needs, including, in particular, financial aid. We increase tuition, and more and more of our students then require ever larger financial aid packages. Ironically, the well-intentioned desire to provide the needed financial assistance makes us ever more dependent upon the steadily shrinking base of full-pays.

    And those little buggers have the audacity to think the increasing amounts we charge should entitle them to some not inexpensive extras. In addition to the destructive effects that others have mentioned about grades and work ethic, these higher and higher expectations translate into calls for more luxurious dorms, better meals in the cafeteria – on an on.

    As an institution, we seem clueless about how we might reverse the trend. However, I can hardly blame the students and their parents who believe the higher and higher tuition and fees should entitle them to expect more for their money.

    — dm · Apr 21, 04:57 PM · #

  6. When are we educators going to get a grip and cease enabling “entitlements” for the sake of enrollment? When you realize that the students that surround you are setting the academic agenda and defining who you are as an institution it is to late. At what point does learning become a secondary outcome of higher education? Hey! I got a great idea. How about developing a curriculum based on “remedial” living? I could easily bring in 2 to 3 hundred “students” with that one.

    — Dr. Bill · Apr 21, 10:18 PM · #

  7. At the Ivy I taught at, students “demand” entertainment in the classroom; we were encouraged, more or less, to put on a stage show per lecture hour… I teach now at a Community College (where I was given tenure), and the only request from students is learn and improve. My career is immensely more satisfying.

    In the last ten years I have seen a radical change in the expectations of undergraduates. The lack of respect is palpable. Our authority to issue grades is challenged if “the customer” is unhappy. When I noted to one young man that he had been absent from many classes, he exploded (in front of peers who were filling the classroom for the lecture). “I want PROOF”!” he yelled. He subsquently submitted a story about a student who shoots his professor.

    What has happened? What is happening in the homes of these students that this type of behavior toward faculty is permissable? We are educators, not “the help,” though there are many, many students who confuse the two.

    Thank God someone has finally written something about this issue.

    — Anna · Apr 22, 07:27 AM · #

  8. As someone in the business of marketing colleges and universities, I bet many parents and students would be very interested in a pared down “experience” (minus all the luxury) for a pared down price. Everyone loves to be in on a wonderful “deal” — so one strategy would be for colleges who are trying to keep up with the Ivy Joneses to forget that and use their resources only for the core “product” — great teaching, great programs, eliminate the extras and the extra cost. Change expectations by marketing great value at a lower price. It’s why even elite “customers” shop at Target. It’s why some students very capable of going straight to a top-tier institution choose to go to a good community college (minus the luxury) and transfer to a more elite institution two years out — it’s a good education and a good deal.

    — AJ · Apr 22, 09:25 AM · #

  9. The bare walls room “classroom” bespeaks a neurotic anal Plato-hates-sex-and-the-body culture of “study” that has nothing to do with real study. Good coffee, carpets, decent chairs worth lounging around in, and decent nearby conversation have a lot more to do with study than bare walls boring old person droning on and on in front, and obedient fools taking notes no one reads. Your average Starbucks is closer to “classroom” in function than your average “classroom” at any college. It is about time that the monk got kicked out of educational surroundings and the social person with networks of interests and contacts took his neurotic murderously Christian place.

    — Richard Tabor Greene · Apr 22, 10:18 AM · #

  10. All of the forgoing responses and comments are true. So what do I add to the mix other than to agree with everyone? How about someone having the guts to tell parents and prospective students that their demands are driving up the cost of their educations? As any faculty member can tell you, the “quality” i.e. preparedness of the average student today seems to diminish with each passing year. Putting money into these perks do nothing for their education. And I deal with students cheating at all levels in all disciplines. True, they see it as no big deal.

    And as a student affairs dean I can speak from years of experience dealing with food services. Students are demanding gourmet meals, but most of that ends up being thrown away. Year after year the foods that are in biggest demand are the burgers, chicken fingers, fries, onion rings and pizza. What they ask for and what they actually eat are two entirely different things. Yet, they continue to pay higher meal plan prices for food they never consume. But woe is the college that offer only these foods that young people actually eat.

    — L. Thomas · Apr 22, 10:24 AM · #

  11. Boy, Trachtenberg’s comments really brought out all the cynics today!
    (1) Doesn’t anyone out there understand enough about college finance to know that virtually all those new dorms have little or no impact on tuition/fees?
    (2) I remember the mystery meat of forty years ago, and I complained loudly. Finally, someone heard my pleas!
    (3) When I visit Tanzania my expectations for the mattress are low. I change my mind when I get home. Surprise?
    (4) A college president at Cal Lutheran about forty years ago argued that smaller families allowed young people more privacy and they were going to demand this in future campus facilities. Right on; we get what we reap.
    (5) Let’s be honest, most of our students live in residence halls (even the new ones) that most of us would avoid staying in for a summer conference. God forbid we had to stay in what are mostly old buildings with gang showers.
    (6) I love today’s college students. Yes, there are some smucks, just like in my day (fewer, I think), but for the most part they are great.

    — bill · Apr 22, 01:07 PM · #

  12. Early in the 20th century, Harvard and Yale both built on campus residence halls (“colleges” or “quads”), partly for the laudable purpose of eliminating the obvious social inequality among the student body, evidenced by the rich students who lived in expensive, private residences in Cambridge and New Haven (“gold coasts”) as opposed to the many other students who had to “grind” their own way through. Another reason, of course, was to try to create educational communities (the “houses”) that would enhance learning and social interaction. In 2008, even at state universities, the social and (especially) financial exclusivity among students is again obvious, and painful to those who cannot afford luxury. It is common now for wealthy parents to buy their freshmen students houses in residential neighborhoods and or well appointed condominiums close to the campus. If colleges build new dorms now, they know that they are competing with luxury places off campus which many students can afford; gone are the days when on campus student housing was built as another way to make college affordable! At many colleges now, it’s mainly the poorest students who live on campus. I hope the “old” idealistic notion of students from many economic, social, political, international, religious, and academic backgrounds living together on campus can be recaptured. Luckily, some campuses still have this, and I hope they will retain it. I fear that for the great majority of colleges now, the huge social and economic gaps we have in our society will be reinforced by student life on our campuses.

    — Carl · Apr 22, 01:45 PM · #

  13. The first thing wrong with this picture is that the author is responsible for the most expensive university in the nation. When Trachtenberg arrived, a year at GW cost about $14,520, not including fees or premiums for living in better dorms. (http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=2406) and now, the cost is about 50G per year. (http://gwired.gwu.edu/finaid-n/CostofAttendance/)

    — Seth · Apr 22, 04:18 PM · #

  14. What? Students are asking for nutritious cuisine that doesn’t use pesticides or unnecessary transportation? And they want to use exercise equipment other than medicine balls and barbells? Where could they be learning these values? Keep them anemic and locked in their jail cells – um, dorms – I say! That’s how it was done in MY day. Hippies!

    In all seriousness, it’s not the cafeteria or the gym that’s driving up college costs. If you’re looking for some possible culprits, less taxpayer support and more “boutique” professors who bring in grant money in exchange for high salaries might be a good start.

    There are also more students going to college, which necessitates additional living and classroom space, which means lots of construction projects that must be funded. Plus, some of these new students have the nerve not to be middle class or traditional-aged, which usually means an increased need for financial aid. And if students and families are borrowing money for education, they are rightly more concerned about what they’re getting for their money.

    Then, there’s also the fallacy that all learning happens only in the classroom. One commenter asked, “At what point does learning become a secondary outcome of higher education?” My response: what part of higher education is NOT part of the learning process, especially when we’re talking about a young adult?

    It’s true, I may have learned much in the classroom in college, and I believe that should still be the main focus of higher education. But I also learned a great deal when my residence hall served me tofu for the first time, or when I tried Tai Chi at the rec center, or when I learned how to connect my computer to the (fledgling) internet from my dorm room.

    There already IS an entire “remedial living” curriculum that occurs outside the classroom during college, whether we like it or not. I think it’s great that our institutions can be a part of that, because we can do better than just hoping students go to the opera on weekends for a little culture. Students SHOULD broaden their horizons during college.

    As instructors, we often unwittingly teach “remedial living” through our classroom and after-class interactions, especially when we have to discipline students or give them bad grades. Teaching college academic ethics comes with the job of – well, teaching college! If our institutions, parents, the media, and the courts aren’t backing us up, that doesn’t mean it’s not a legitimate part of the university “curriculum.”

    (PS What’s with the negative focus on Asian food? Also, do most people really think Grey Poupon is gourmet cuisine anymore? And what exactly is “spa water”?)

    — Anna B. · Apr 23, 03:49 PM · #

  15. When inveighing against students who (gasp!) want good, nutritious food and snack foods, please check how many times in the past five years the nearest campus has “redone” the president’s office suites. Curtains, carpet, art work, desks, lamps, room size (walls taken out/put in), whatever, etc.

    That is the absolute favorite topic of conversation among my colleagues across campuses whenever the topic of the overly-stretched college/university budget is raised.

    Seems what’s good for the goose isn’t food for the gander, is it? So to speak….

    — Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 23, 08:47 PM · #

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