You dance all around the issue, but you never directly address it. UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT BUSINESSES!!! They should never be businesses. The goal of any business is to make money., as it should be. The goal of a university is to educate. That sometimes means making decisions that cost the university money. Back in the middle dark ages, when I matriculated through the university system, students were actually required to study. If was actually possible for students to get "C's," "'D's" or God forbid, F's. In fact, at the time around 50% of students did not complete their B.S or B.A. degrees nationwide. That was true at MIT and that was true at Podunk U.
However, that process is antithetical to a business model. A student who flunks out means the loss of a paying customer. A student who gets less than an A is an unhappy student and a happy student means a good review on TikTok and more paying students.
Tenured professors are a cost center, so it makes economic sense to replace them with underqualified adjuncts who are willing to work for starvation wages. In 1984 University of Texas - Dallas found themselves without a sedimentologist. So, the department chairman asked me if I would fill in. Since all of the courses were at night, I agreed. I was paid $3500 per course. We both agreed it was a great deal. I had a real job with a major oil company, so it was mad money for me, and he was getting a professor at a discount price. 41 YEARS LATER, that is a premium price for an adjunct. Today over 50% of university educators are adjuncts
As universities have devalued education, they have spent gobs and gobs of money on an ever-increasing administrative staff. The goal is not to improve education but to keep that money rolling in. Universities have become credentialing institutions as opposed to institutions of higher learning. and it is very very sad. I am extremely grateful that I attended college when a degree was hard to get and actually meant that you knew stuff. That may still be true in STEM, but even there, a C or lower grade is a rarity in many institutions. As universities turn into overpriced summer camps, they fail their students
For the past two years I have been studying grid engineering at You Tube University. the tuition is quite reasonable (I have the premium package) and the professors are the same as I would have to pay $200K for if I wanted the piece of paper.
Universities are and will face hard times. The baby bust is working its way through the system and a degree in a field like grievance studies is no longer a ticket to a great job. Universities will have to downsize, and some will even close their doors. This is not a bad thing. It may be a good if indeed, it allows at least some of them to refocus on their primary mission -education!!!
Demographic fundamentals appear, to me, to be behind this problem. If a nation has a fertility rate below replacement (<2.1 per female) then its population is bound to shrink over time. If an industry depends on population growth to sustain itself, and that population growth is not in the cards, then shrinkage is inevitable. The US fertility rate is 1.6 last time I checked, so universities cannot expect fresh floods of post WWII style baby-boomer crowds to float their boats. What to do? Shrink in a rational way? Or import students from overseas? The US universities have depended on the latter, students from China, for the last 20 years or so. That source of students may not be sustainable in the current geopolitical atmosphere. Where to turn? A wave of "creative destruction" looks, to me, to loom up in the near future. Small private colleges are already starting to fail. Political pressure is growing for the state-supported land grant universities to change their curricula to more practical subjects. Student loans have been exposed for the debt bondage trap they have always been. Trade schools for electricians, plumbers and welders are booming, and enriching their graduates in a way advanced victimology degrees are not. The knowledge pool available electronically, on the internet, will continue to overtake traditional classroom instruction. Universities without the self-awareness to remedy the many problems Roger has told us about during his time in academia will shrivel more quickly than institutions which devote themselves to rediscovering excellence. I expect troubled waters in academia for the foreseeable future.
This Hoover Institute video with Steven Kotkin, Victor Davis Hansen and Niall Ferguson is extraordinary, highly entertaining and amusing. The discussion about higher education starts at about 1:01:20. The entire discussion is well worth watching, but the part about higher education is on topic for this post.
I found that video maddening. Ferguson just dominated the conversation and didn't let Kotkin talk much. I already know what Ferguson thinks. Kotkin struck me as a fresh objective guy with some valuable insights, but he was just steamrolled. I almost left a comment saying they should invite him back some time when he'd be allowed to actually talk......
Wha? This certainly wasn't what I expected based on the Title. (Though it's points are generally well-taken).
It seems the author misses the fact (IMHO) that there are two problems with "higher education". One is the utter uniform radicalization of faculty, administrators and students (and yes, I realize it's not all, but it enough and they are enraged enough to dominate). Schools hand out laughable degrees like "International Refugee Rights" (girl I know from Brown got this doozy.). Or "Sustainability" (girl at Denison proudly majoring in this). I can't even really tell you what that means.
Then there's the absolute explosion in Administrators over time. Usually highly ideological. Slash 80% of them. I don't see that here, or I missed it.
I do agree that the University Presidents all seem to have adopted the worst practices of the B-schools of the past several decades. "Rebranding". "Brand monetization." Game the system to get better "ratings". Blah blah blah. But, the University Boards rewarded them for this. As Munger said, "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome.". Or, as I once told the Editor at the Chicago Tribune (an NU grad), "University Presidents seem to get paid by the square foot", meaning big donors funding big buildings.
A friend of mine, a tenured Prof, sent me a recent WaPo piece by retired Prof Crispin Sartwell, bemoaning university censorship, but especially decrying "MAGA censorship". I totally agree with the university censorship being a problem, but would argue that Trump (of whom I'm no fan) in trying to de-radicalize universities is NOT “censoring". My response below:
Thanks. I’m in the much more common sense camp of closing entire departments, reforming the few non STEM or Classical Western Values ones that remain. Closing all “satellite” universities: they only exist to export dogma to the rubes. Anyone serious enough for a traditional college education is serious enough to move to the main campus.
De-credential many jobs. (a physical therapist needs a PhD nowadays, for example). Credentials nowadays only exist for the higher education system to exact ever increasing tolls from people. (Monetizing the brand!)
From my vantage point higher education is utterly corrupt, dangerous, and in dire need of retrenchment and reform. That probably sounds radical but to me it seems obvious and common sense.
The whole article seems to want to put two things in tension, but what those things are always seems a little fuzzy and indistinct. Sure, I get the general notion that for-profit schools need to make money, and the idea that maximizing income can come at the cost of the mission of educating students. That's the tension of every job though. Put another way, failure to educate your students is failing to provide value for money, which is the end of all businesses that put short-term gains ahead of long-term business health as customers eventually look elsewhere. I understand the general notion, but I didn't really come away with anything specific or concrete here that would help me understand where the author is coming from.
Is this just an emotional take on the fact that higher education is now facing this dilemma? Has something specific changed to put these schools in jeopardy? Are there any specifics to this dilemma that we can talk about in detail? I just don't really get what this was supposed to be about other than that somehow higher education is having problems balancing the checkbook. From the article I don't even really understand why that is. There were some allusions to dropping enrollment. Is that a broad issue (i.e. "schools across the country are seeing falling enrollment") or a local issue (i.e. "let's talk about how certain schools are struggling with falling enrollment")? There's also a mention of endowment revenues falling. Again, is that local or broad? Does the author know or have an opinion on why (even if it's just the proximate cause and not the root of the issue)? I could go on, and to me these questions are just what's necessary to frame the issue.
This feels like the kind of post that's intended for a very specific audience that already knows everything that's going on here. I think the article would have benefited greatly from a preamble for the uninitiated.
What I see here is a compilation of opinion. What I don't see is any financial data. It is fine to discuss challenges between mission and finance. But I don't see any data regarding revenues and expenses. Colleges and universities need to take a hard look at both. What if we took a significant hit on foreign students paying full tuition? Or out-of-state tuition? What if it was in research grants from the Federal government? What if in terms of student loans? What if in terms of football scholarships? What if all five? Where would we be then, and what size institution would we be capable of sustaining from a local, purely educational, parent supporting, non-governmental operation? What if all were to operate like Hillsdale college? Should our educational institutions be exempt from some creative destruction. What would be wrong with that? What is the point of getting a PhD in Ornithology then discovering the only way to make a living is by inventing a way to scare the Hell out of everyone that the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon, the sage grouse, the robin, the American Eagle, indeed all birds (something to do with chickens ought to do it) are about to be extinct. Is that what education in journalism, law, medicine, environmental science, social science is about today, scaring people? I for one am not afraid!
I see at least seven mutually reinforcing trends (not all mentioned in this post or in Joshua's linked posts) that have contributed to colleges' current dire straits:
1. Tremendous "pent-up demand" for higher education before World War II, where many students who were capable of doing "college level work" and would benefit from it were unable to attend college because they couldn't afford it.
2. Government commitment to more higher education led to easier funding for students, mostly in the form of loans. Early loans looked more like grants than loans - interest was forgiven while students were enrolled, and defaulters were generally not pursued aggressively. Even now, loans are easy to get, and colleges are more than willing to facilitate setting up the loans, but defaulters can have very difficult lives because the loans are generally not forgiven. Students who are effectively borrowing from their future selves may be unable to focus on economy.
3. Demographic expansion led to rapidly growing "college-age" population, with increased demand for colleges. Current demographic contraction means shrinking college-age population, implying decreased need for colleges.
4. Possibly because of employment law like the Griggs v. Duke Power case, employers began using college degrees as a necessary credential for "good" jobs that were previously considered as requiring good intelligence and on-the-job training. This led to increased demand for colleges.
5. Increased demand led to dramatic increase in supply. New colleges were founded. Two-year colleges expanded to four-year colleges. Four-year colleges became universities. Graduate programs multiplied. With declining demand, it would be difficult or impossible to reverse the expansion.
6. Administration grew much more rapidly than educational staff. Some of this is likely normal bureaucratic empire building. Some is faculty supporting full-time staff to do things like admissions decisions where faculty used to have a major role. Some is doubtless due to increasing need for bureaucrats to ensure compliance with multiplying government requirements.
7. Decreasing demand led to tougher competition to land the ever-smaller number of students. In order to impress students and their parents, colleges invested in more and more impressive facilities. Where these were funded by donations, the implications for receiving colleges were favorable. Where the donations weren't available, they could only be funded by debt (highly risky) or increased tuition, which seems to be unsustainable.
In addition, I think there may have been a trend to decrease the teaching load for faculty. Perhaps Joshua or Roger can comment; I have the impression that 75 years ago teaching loads of 4 or more courses per year were common, at least in "teaching" colleges. If teaching loads have decreased, then more faculty would be needed to teach the same number of students.
If we can define the problem and lay out the causes, solutions should be plain:
1. Decrease compliance costs. This would need to start primarily with state and federal government policy changes.
2. Decrease administrative staff. This would require a change in culture, particularly at the top of college and university organizations.
3. Cut back or terminate excessive graduate programs. Give the current employment market in higher education, too many PhDs are graduating to dismal job prospects.
4. Stop the facilities arms race. Emphasize affordability and long-term value to prospective students and their parents.
5. Recognize that some colleges will inevitably close. Struggling colleges should assess their long term prospects. If they can only survive based on more students with more debt, they probably aren't viable.
Like a couple of other commenters below, I was surprised that the topic of administrative bloat did not get mentioned in Joshua Brown's guest post. This is a common topic of ridicule in "The Babbling Beaver", MIT's version of the Babylon Bee. Somehow the DEI hires have ensconced themselves so firmly that they are almost impossible to root out. One side-effect is that tuition has grown to astronomic levels. MIT's new president is supposed to be some kind of reformer, yet she has not been willing or able to attack this source of the problem. It's easier for her to attack Trump.
I went through college in the mid-70’s. Those were simpler times. Or maybe we were simpler people. My education was focused on - education. Or maybe I was focused on education. There didn’t seem to be time for peripheral things in the classroom. Sure, we got into political discussions. And learned about our fellow students of multiple persuasions. But we weren’t forced into these latter two items. We had the freedom to explore as we desired.
It seems, from the outside looking in, that schools today are more focused on these peripheral items and less focused on student education. Maybe the difficulty in supporting the mission is that the mission expanded beyond providing a critical education. And this is sad.
My son recently graduated from UC San Diego. I paid attention to what the school claimed to offer, what my son expected, and what the university delivered. I was unable to discern any specific mission or goal of either the university or the particular department of interest. The curriculum lacked any coherent or reasonable contribution to any discernible educational or professional goal, and some of the curriculum appeared to be in support of a leftist political mission.
I'm no expert on the topic, but I have the impression that there are educators who are working at cross purposes to what their students expect from their education. Their individual missions don't match what their paying students want. If that mismatch is widespread, the institution is destined to struggle financially.
If a college or university's mission coincides with that of a significant segment of the prospective student body, then the institution has a reasonable chance of attracting students willing to pay a reasonable tuition for their education. So, resolving the tension between mission and finance begins with matching the mission to the students to attract to the institution. That's what any business must do, including the business of attracting and educating students.
Next, the institution must execute. It must deliver on the specific promise made to the enrolled students by ensuring that the faculty shares and supports that purpose.
Finally, the cost of educating must be controlled to be less than the revenues that the school's mission and reputation can attract. Just like any other business. Faculty and administrators must accept that their school cannot spend more money than it attracts by virtue of having a mission and execution that attracts students and revenue. So they need to understand what the paying students generally expect for their time and money, and stay focused on satisfying the students' expectations.
In sum, faculty and administrators must accept that they are part of a business. If they want to pursue lofty educational goals (e.g., other than career development), then they need to find a way to attract students whose goals and payments match the educators' mission.
The author does not seem to be an economist, and so does not set the problem in the obvious framework of supply and demand. In the US (also the UK, Canada, Australia/New Zealand - I do not know about the non-English-speaking world) there are simply too many universities.
Demand was temporarily increased by supplying Chinese students, but that is largely ending as supply within China has ramped up (and Western governments get picky about spying and subversion).
The only industry-wide solution is to reduce the number of universities (close half of them?two-thirds? nine-tenths?). The strategies of individual universities matter because they will determine which ones survive and which close, but they are not of wider interest as they cannot affect the future of the industry as a whole.
Had the author talked to the executives of railway companies in the early years of the last century, he would have found many of the same issues. The (only possible) solution was that most railway companies went bankrupt and the demand was supplied by a small number of survivors. Higher education is on the same path.
This point was one that occurred to me. Sounds like there are too many Universities chasing too few students. I also believe that student loan programs have artificially goosed demand and perhaps that bubble is bursting as students realize that bit student debt is going to be a millstone around their neck.
Universities have a great opportunity if they focus on the skills people need for good jobs in the knowledge and economy and work with employers who know what the skills they need are
Roger, I’ve been out of American academia since 1997, but a very quick search allowed me to find out that “between 2000 and 2019, student enrollment rose by 5% while the number of administrators increased by 95%”. Some of that can be explained by factors like increased reporting requirements and a growth in professional staff, but the absurdly high change can’t be overall justified. Tellingly, I also found that “in 1987, the faculty-to-administrator ratio was nearly one-to-one, but by 2008, it had fallen to approximately 0.56”.
I don’t even want to get started on DEI job additions, which exist only to signal ideological compliance, not to fulfill any practical role.
I see no hint of these glaring issues in this analysis. Since you have just recently retired from academia, it’s highly unlikely you’re not aware of this significant factor. It’s difficult to understand then why you deemed this deficient work being worth publishing in THB.
I understand that higher education navigates an “increasingly competitive landscape”, especially as many would be customers (students) realize that they will get worthless diplomas; journalism, anthropology, literature, social studies - do you want French fries with it?
What this article fails to address, while whining about the competition, is the malignant growth of the administration positions. If the finances of higher education institutions are as precarious as described, how can this very well documented trend be happening? How was it possible to see in the last decade the mushrooming of DEI positions, who serve absolutely no other purpose than an ideological one? I see a big chasm between reality as we all know it and what is described in this article. Sounds a lot like an attempt to hide the ideological capitulation to the most debased ideas of the extreme left by sweeping it under the rug of financial duress.
You dance all around the issue, but you never directly address it. UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT BUSINESSES!!! They should never be businesses. The goal of any business is to make money., as it should be. The goal of a university is to educate. That sometimes means making decisions that cost the university money. Back in the middle dark ages, when I matriculated through the university system, students were actually required to study. If was actually possible for students to get "C's," "'D's" or God forbid, F's. In fact, at the time around 50% of students did not complete their B.S or B.A. degrees nationwide. That was true at MIT and that was true at Podunk U.
However, that process is antithetical to a business model. A student who flunks out means the loss of a paying customer. A student who gets less than an A is an unhappy student and a happy student means a good review on TikTok and more paying students.
Tenured professors are a cost center, so it makes economic sense to replace them with underqualified adjuncts who are willing to work for starvation wages. In 1984 University of Texas - Dallas found themselves without a sedimentologist. So, the department chairman asked me if I would fill in. Since all of the courses were at night, I agreed. I was paid $3500 per course. We both agreed it was a great deal. I had a real job with a major oil company, so it was mad money for me, and he was getting a professor at a discount price. 41 YEARS LATER, that is a premium price for an adjunct. Today over 50% of university educators are adjuncts
As universities have devalued education, they have spent gobs and gobs of money on an ever-increasing administrative staff. The goal is not to improve education but to keep that money rolling in. Universities have become credentialing institutions as opposed to institutions of higher learning. and it is very very sad. I am extremely grateful that I attended college when a degree was hard to get and actually meant that you knew stuff. That may still be true in STEM, but even there, a C or lower grade is a rarity in many institutions. As universities turn into overpriced summer camps, they fail their students
For the past two years I have been studying grid engineering at You Tube University. the tuition is quite reasonable (I have the premium package) and the professors are the same as I would have to pay $200K for if I wanted the piece of paper.
Universities are and will face hard times. The baby bust is working its way through the system and a degree in a field like grievance studies is no longer a ticket to a great job. Universities will have to downsize, and some will even close their doors. This is not a bad thing. It may be a good if indeed, it allows at least some of them to refocus on their primary mission -education!!!
Demographic fundamentals appear, to me, to be behind this problem. If a nation has a fertility rate below replacement (<2.1 per female) then its population is bound to shrink over time. If an industry depends on population growth to sustain itself, and that population growth is not in the cards, then shrinkage is inevitable. The US fertility rate is 1.6 last time I checked, so universities cannot expect fresh floods of post WWII style baby-boomer crowds to float their boats. What to do? Shrink in a rational way? Or import students from overseas? The US universities have depended on the latter, students from China, for the last 20 years or so. That source of students may not be sustainable in the current geopolitical atmosphere. Where to turn? A wave of "creative destruction" looks, to me, to loom up in the near future. Small private colleges are already starting to fail. Political pressure is growing for the state-supported land grant universities to change their curricula to more practical subjects. Student loans have been exposed for the debt bondage trap they have always been. Trade schools for electricians, plumbers and welders are booming, and enriching their graduates in a way advanced victimology degrees are not. The knowledge pool available electronically, on the internet, will continue to overtake traditional classroom instruction. Universities without the self-awareness to remedy the many problems Roger has told us about during his time in academia will shrivel more quickly than institutions which devote themselves to rediscovering excellence. I expect troubled waters in academia for the foreseeable future.
This Hoover Institute video with Steven Kotkin, Victor Davis Hansen and Niall Ferguson is extraordinary, highly entertaining and amusing. The discussion about higher education starts at about 1:01:20. The entire discussion is well worth watching, but the part about higher education is on topic for this post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Gm1OR2SPg
I found that video maddening. Ferguson just dominated the conversation and didn't let Kotkin talk much. I already know what Ferguson thinks. Kotkin struck me as a fresh objective guy with some valuable insights, but he was just steamrolled. I almost left a comment saying they should invite him back some time when he'd be allowed to actually talk......
I actually thought that Kotkin was the one dominating and interrupting, at least in the beginning. As usual VDH was the most coherent IMHO.
Wha? This certainly wasn't what I expected based on the Title. (Though it's points are generally well-taken).
It seems the author misses the fact (IMHO) that there are two problems with "higher education". One is the utter uniform radicalization of faculty, administrators and students (and yes, I realize it's not all, but it enough and they are enraged enough to dominate). Schools hand out laughable degrees like "International Refugee Rights" (girl I know from Brown got this doozy.). Or "Sustainability" (girl at Denison proudly majoring in this). I can't even really tell you what that means.
Then there's the absolute explosion in Administrators over time. Usually highly ideological. Slash 80% of them. I don't see that here, or I missed it.
I do agree that the University Presidents all seem to have adopted the worst practices of the B-schools of the past several decades. "Rebranding". "Brand monetization." Game the system to get better "ratings". Blah blah blah. But, the University Boards rewarded them for this. As Munger said, "Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome.". Or, as I once told the Editor at the Chicago Tribune (an NU grad), "University Presidents seem to get paid by the square foot", meaning big donors funding big buildings.
A friend of mine, a tenured Prof, sent me a recent WaPo piece by retired Prof Crispin Sartwell, bemoaning university censorship, but especially decrying "MAGA censorship". I totally agree with the university censorship being a problem, but would argue that Trump (of whom I'm no fan) in trying to de-radicalize universities is NOT “censoring". My response below:
Thanks. I’m in the much more common sense camp of closing entire departments, reforming the few non STEM or Classical Western Values ones that remain. Closing all “satellite” universities: they only exist to export dogma to the rubes. Anyone serious enough for a traditional college education is serious enough to move to the main campus.
De-credential many jobs. (a physical therapist needs a PhD nowadays, for example). Credentials nowadays only exist for the higher education system to exact ever increasing tolls from people. (Monetizing the brand!)
From my vantage point higher education is utterly corrupt, dangerous, and in dire need of retrenchment and reform. That probably sounds radical but to me it seems obvious and common sense.
The whole article seems to want to put two things in tension, but what those things are always seems a little fuzzy and indistinct. Sure, I get the general notion that for-profit schools need to make money, and the idea that maximizing income can come at the cost of the mission of educating students. That's the tension of every job though. Put another way, failure to educate your students is failing to provide value for money, which is the end of all businesses that put short-term gains ahead of long-term business health as customers eventually look elsewhere. I understand the general notion, but I didn't really come away with anything specific or concrete here that would help me understand where the author is coming from.
Is this just an emotional take on the fact that higher education is now facing this dilemma? Has something specific changed to put these schools in jeopardy? Are there any specifics to this dilemma that we can talk about in detail? I just don't really get what this was supposed to be about other than that somehow higher education is having problems balancing the checkbook. From the article I don't even really understand why that is. There were some allusions to dropping enrollment. Is that a broad issue (i.e. "schools across the country are seeing falling enrollment") or a local issue (i.e. "let's talk about how certain schools are struggling with falling enrollment")? There's also a mention of endowment revenues falling. Again, is that local or broad? Does the author know or have an opinion on why (even if it's just the proximate cause and not the root of the issue)? I could go on, and to me these questions are just what's necessary to frame the issue.
This feels like the kind of post that's intended for a very specific audience that already knows everything that's going on here. I think the article would have benefited greatly from a preamble for the uninitiated.
What I see here is a compilation of opinion. What I don't see is any financial data. It is fine to discuss challenges between mission and finance. But I don't see any data regarding revenues and expenses. Colleges and universities need to take a hard look at both. What if we took a significant hit on foreign students paying full tuition? Or out-of-state tuition? What if it was in research grants from the Federal government? What if in terms of student loans? What if in terms of football scholarships? What if all five? Where would we be then, and what size institution would we be capable of sustaining from a local, purely educational, parent supporting, non-governmental operation? What if all were to operate like Hillsdale college? Should our educational institutions be exempt from some creative destruction. What would be wrong with that? What is the point of getting a PhD in Ornithology then discovering the only way to make a living is by inventing a way to scare the Hell out of everyone that the dodo bird, the passenger pigeon, the sage grouse, the robin, the American Eagle, indeed all birds (something to do with chickens ought to do it) are about to be extinct. Is that what education in journalism, law, medicine, environmental science, social science is about today, scaring people? I for one am not afraid!
I see at least seven mutually reinforcing trends (not all mentioned in this post or in Joshua's linked posts) that have contributed to colleges' current dire straits:
1. Tremendous "pent-up demand" for higher education before World War II, where many students who were capable of doing "college level work" and would benefit from it were unable to attend college because they couldn't afford it.
2. Government commitment to more higher education led to easier funding for students, mostly in the form of loans. Early loans looked more like grants than loans - interest was forgiven while students were enrolled, and defaulters were generally not pursued aggressively. Even now, loans are easy to get, and colleges are more than willing to facilitate setting up the loans, but defaulters can have very difficult lives because the loans are generally not forgiven. Students who are effectively borrowing from their future selves may be unable to focus on economy.
3. Demographic expansion led to rapidly growing "college-age" population, with increased demand for colleges. Current demographic contraction means shrinking college-age population, implying decreased need for colleges.
4. Possibly because of employment law like the Griggs v. Duke Power case, employers began using college degrees as a necessary credential for "good" jobs that were previously considered as requiring good intelligence and on-the-job training. This led to increased demand for colleges.
5. Increased demand led to dramatic increase in supply. New colleges were founded. Two-year colleges expanded to four-year colleges. Four-year colleges became universities. Graduate programs multiplied. With declining demand, it would be difficult or impossible to reverse the expansion.
6. Administration grew much more rapidly than educational staff. Some of this is likely normal bureaucratic empire building. Some is faculty supporting full-time staff to do things like admissions decisions where faculty used to have a major role. Some is doubtless due to increasing need for bureaucrats to ensure compliance with multiplying government requirements.
7. Decreasing demand led to tougher competition to land the ever-smaller number of students. In order to impress students and their parents, colleges invested in more and more impressive facilities. Where these were funded by donations, the implications for receiving colleges were favorable. Where the donations weren't available, they could only be funded by debt (highly risky) or increased tuition, which seems to be unsustainable.
In addition, I think there may have been a trend to decrease the teaching load for faculty. Perhaps Joshua or Roger can comment; I have the impression that 75 years ago teaching loads of 4 or more courses per year were common, at least in "teaching" colleges. If teaching loads have decreased, then more faculty would be needed to teach the same number of students.
If we can define the problem and lay out the causes, solutions should be plain:
1. Decrease compliance costs. This would need to start primarily with state and federal government policy changes.
2. Decrease administrative staff. This would require a change in culture, particularly at the top of college and university organizations.
3. Cut back or terminate excessive graduate programs. Give the current employment market in higher education, too many PhDs are graduating to dismal job prospects.
4. Stop the facilities arms race. Emphasize affordability and long-term value to prospective students and their parents.
5. Recognize that some colleges will inevitably close. Struggling colleges should assess their long term prospects. If they can only survive based on more students with more debt, they probably aren't viable.
Like a couple of other commenters below, I was surprised that the topic of administrative bloat did not get mentioned in Joshua Brown's guest post. This is a common topic of ridicule in "The Babbling Beaver", MIT's version of the Babylon Bee. Somehow the DEI hires have ensconced themselves so firmly that they are almost impossible to root out. One side-effect is that tuition has grown to astronomic levels. MIT's new president is supposed to be some kind of reformer, yet she has not been willing or able to attack this source of the problem. It's easier for her to attack Trump.
I went through college in the mid-70’s. Those were simpler times. Or maybe we were simpler people. My education was focused on - education. Or maybe I was focused on education. There didn’t seem to be time for peripheral things in the classroom. Sure, we got into political discussions. And learned about our fellow students of multiple persuasions. But we weren’t forced into these latter two items. We had the freedom to explore as we desired.
It seems, from the outside looking in, that schools today are more focused on these peripheral items and less focused on student education. Maybe the difficulty in supporting the mission is that the mission expanded beyond providing a critical education. And this is sad.
My son recently graduated from UC San Diego. I paid attention to what the school claimed to offer, what my son expected, and what the university delivered. I was unable to discern any specific mission or goal of either the university or the particular department of interest. The curriculum lacked any coherent or reasonable contribution to any discernible educational or professional goal, and some of the curriculum appeared to be in support of a leftist political mission.
I'm no expert on the topic, but I have the impression that there are educators who are working at cross purposes to what their students expect from their education. Their individual missions don't match what their paying students want. If that mismatch is widespread, the institution is destined to struggle financially.
If a college or university's mission coincides with that of a significant segment of the prospective student body, then the institution has a reasonable chance of attracting students willing to pay a reasonable tuition for their education. So, resolving the tension between mission and finance begins with matching the mission to the students to attract to the institution. That's what any business must do, including the business of attracting and educating students.
Next, the institution must execute. It must deliver on the specific promise made to the enrolled students by ensuring that the faculty shares and supports that purpose.
Finally, the cost of educating must be controlled to be less than the revenues that the school's mission and reputation can attract. Just like any other business. Faculty and administrators must accept that their school cannot spend more money than it attracts by virtue of having a mission and execution that attracts students and revenue. So they need to understand what the paying students generally expect for their time and money, and stay focused on satisfying the students' expectations.
In sum, faculty and administrators must accept that they are part of a business. If they want to pursue lofty educational goals (e.g., other than career development), then they need to find a way to attract students whose goals and payments match the educators' mission.
The author does not seem to be an economist, and so does not set the problem in the obvious framework of supply and demand. In the US (also the UK, Canada, Australia/New Zealand - I do not know about the non-English-speaking world) there are simply too many universities.
Demand was temporarily increased by supplying Chinese students, but that is largely ending as supply within China has ramped up (and Western governments get picky about spying and subversion).
The only industry-wide solution is to reduce the number of universities (close half of them?two-thirds? nine-tenths?). The strategies of individual universities matter because they will determine which ones survive and which close, but they are not of wider interest as they cannot affect the future of the industry as a whole.
Had the author talked to the executives of railway companies in the early years of the last century, he would have found many of the same issues. The (only possible) solution was that most railway companies went bankrupt and the demand was supplied by a small number of survivors. Higher education is on the same path.
This point was one that occurred to me. Sounds like there are too many Universities chasing too few students. I also believe that student loan programs have artificially goosed demand and perhaps that bubble is bursting as students realize that bit student debt is going to be a millstone around their neck.
Another book i need to read...! I'll be curious if your book addresses the question below on growth of the administration layers at schools.
Hillsdale College, which takes no government funds, seems to be thriving. They remain mission and student focused.
Universities have a great opportunity if they focus on the skills people need for good jobs in the knowledge and economy and work with employers who know what the skills they need are
Roger, I’ve been out of American academia since 1997, but a very quick search allowed me to find out that “between 2000 and 2019, student enrollment rose by 5% while the number of administrators increased by 95%”. Some of that can be explained by factors like increased reporting requirements and a growth in professional staff, but the absurdly high change can’t be overall justified. Tellingly, I also found that “in 1987, the faculty-to-administrator ratio was nearly one-to-one, but by 2008, it had fallen to approximately 0.56”.
I don’t even want to get started on DEI job additions, which exist only to signal ideological compliance, not to fulfill any practical role.
I see no hint of these glaring issues in this analysis. Since you have just recently retired from academia, it’s highly unlikely you’re not aware of this significant factor. It’s difficult to understand then why you deemed this deficient work being worth publishing in THB.
I understand that higher education navigates an “increasingly competitive landscape”, especially as many would be customers (students) realize that they will get worthless diplomas; journalism, anthropology, literature, social studies - do you want French fries with it?
What this article fails to address, while whining about the competition, is the malignant growth of the administration positions. If the finances of higher education institutions are as precarious as described, how can this very well documented trend be happening? How was it possible to see in the last decade the mushrooming of DEI positions, who serve absolutely no other purpose than an ideological one? I see a big chasm between reality as we all know it and what is described in this article. Sounds a lot like an attempt to hide the ideological capitulation to the most debased ideas of the extreme left by sweeping it under the rug of financial duress.