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February 27, 2006
Costs Rising, Quality Falling
William Stuntz is pessimistic about the future of American universities:
Three key American enterprises have seen costs rise much faster than inflation over the past generation, and all three are enterprises in which America leads the world: housing, health care, and higher education. Houses have grown bigger and better, as anyone who has looked at contemporary bathrooms and kitchens knows. Doctors do things they could not imagine a generation ago. Costs may have risen faster than quality, but there is no doubt that quality has risen, and risen substantially.Today's college students do get a whole lot more for their money than their predecessors. The problem is that the new amenities include better dormitories, lavish college funded parties and expensive celebrity guest speakers... not a particularly better education. The hyper-specialization that has enabled advances in scholarship has simultaneously hurt undergraduates, who might know more about, for example, pottery in ancient Sumaria than the modern transition from representational to abstract art.Higher education is similar--on the cost side. Benefit is another story. There is little reason to believe that undergrads and graduate students are better educated today than a generation ago. More likely the opposite. Teaching loads of senior professors have declined; probably teaching quality has declined with it. The culture of research universities has grown ever more contemptuous of students, especially undergraduates, who are seen as an interruption of one's real work rather than the reason for the enterprise. Which means that, year by year, students and their parents pay more for less. That isn't a sustainable business plan.
Posted by Conor at February 27, 2006 01:06 PM
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Comments
(Please remove my name, if possible)
The Cal State University System, where I've worked for more than 20 years, would hardly qualify as "lavish" by any standards. Yet we produce graduates who can, and do, hold their own with any of this nation's best and brightest. The spending bloat can, to a great degree, be placed directly upon the shoulders of senior managers throughout the state system who are willing to pay more than $330,000 a year for the salary of the CSU Chancellor (Plus full housing and a huge entertainment budget) and dozens of "managers", "vice-presidents" and "presidents" located at each thoughout the 24 campus CSU system. How many students select a campus based upon the salary of their campus president? In fact, how many students can even name who their campus senior management are, yet these people usually all earn base salaries in excesss of $120,000 a year. Meanwhile, the faculty and staff, those who actually do the work on the campuses, enjoy the fruits of their labor - a half day off right before Christmas and the promise that "Perhaps next year we will find money in our budget to grant you a salary increase". We've been waiting for that promised increase for many years now. How much longer must we wait? My department has denied staff merit pay raises for the past six years, always citing a limited budget. Yet student course fees that were $19 per term in the early 1980's are now more than $800 per term, and rising. I wouldn't call this lavish spending at all.
Posted by: Rich McGee at March 21, 2006 05:52 AM