I don’t think that’s cynical at all. Don’t forget politicians with no higher education experience.
3 Likes
I don’t disagree but when an institution is running operating deficits there are typically no ‘good’ choices.
8 Likes
This. Not just no “good choices”-- but a series of bad, less bad and catastrophic.
There was a time when every college in America prepared young men (affluent, white men) for the ministry, and teaching Latin and Greek was considered part of that training. Should every college in America retain its Classics and theology faculty in perpetuity? (As a former Classics major, of course I’d vote yes but I’d be wrong).
It is hard to grapple with change- especially when it’s an institution which has done so much good for so many people. But when costs explode and revenue contracts- or stays stable-- how do you rein in costs? Ask twenty people and you’ll get twenty different answers. But something’s got to give.
I have a long memory. I visited colleges with both older and younger siblings and remember what a dump/dive/falling apart mess many colleges were back in the 1970’s. Some of the colleges that folks here consider “country clubs” looked like poorly maintained state penitentiaries back then. Deferred maintenance was the polite term for “we can’t afford to fix broken windows or mow the lawn”. And chain link fences were a lot cheaper to install and maintain then repairing 100 year old bluestone walkways and stucco facades.
The last few decades have many people forgetting what lean years in higher ed look like.
9 Likes
A couple decades ago UMass named a president who had been a long time Speaker of the Massachusetts House: Billy Bulger. His brother was the infamous Whitey Bulger. Perhaps they thought they would get a bigger state appropriation. They didn’t.
2 Likes
I mean, we’ve been through this before, and you tend to have much more faith in the wisdom of the managerial wing than I do.
But framing this as a rhetorical (read: clearly an answer of no) “Should every college in America retain its Classics and theology faculty in perpetuity?” versus not changing and adapting is a classic case of a false binary.
I would suggest that change and adaptation is necessary, but that the methods being used at so many colleges these days are based in business practices from the 90s and the noughties that have been rightly discarded by the business sector generally.
(I mean, at the very least, maybe lean on the business faculty at colleges that have them? Rather than bringing someone in to simply take a chainsaw to the academic side of the house, maybe use the resources you already have? How’s that for a good start?)
6 Likes
Most folks I know who have held more senior positions at schools and colleges will tell you that the signs of trouble are typically visible long before any kind of crisis arrives. Often, there will be a gift or good enrollment that buys another year or so and can defer difficult decisions.
Without knowing the ins and outs of each of these schools, it’s hard to know if they are making the right decisions and whether they are being forward looking or are trying to catch a train that long ago left the station.
My own view is that there is a pressing need for schools to look less like each other and to instead develop their own unique “brands”. One of the big contributors to the have and have not college universe is the need colleges have felt to keep up with each other. And when the price tags are similar, why wouldn’t a student choose the school with the rock wall, 24 hour dining, and beautiful new dorms as well as 60 majors?
A less expensive school with fewer offerings, but excellent ones, could thrive. But students would also have to be willing to enroll with the understanding that their options might be more limited. Schools might also get creative through consortiums, online resources, etc.
I’m hoping for more creative thinking around what post-secondary education might look like because the current model doesn’t seem sustainable. Yet more than ever, we need graduates who are well-equipped to be good citizens, good parents, and good workers.
6 Likes
I think this model would work well, especially if multiple schools got together to form consortiums (like the Claremont or Quaker ones). At these schools, students takes classes across the campuses, with some even granting degrees on behalf of “others”. I know the Quaker one fairly well, and for a baseball player who wants to study geology, they can attend Haverford, get a Haverford degree, from a major offered solely at Bryn Mawr.
That type of specialization and sharing would be great for smaller schools in close proximity. There are a lot of issues…but it works. Less expensive schools than the ones I mentioned should be able to handle these issues leveraging technologies, sharing infrastructures, and focusing on the student experience instead of controlling every single aspect of their education.
8 Likes
Going to work and earning income is 8 hours a day. But, the rest of life is more than that. This is where having a more well-rounded education is healthy to a society. The notion of college=job is an oversimplification. Universities were also viewed as preparing students to address the needs of society.
12 Likes
And high schools were viewed as preparing students for college. It’s a “trickle up” effect that no longer works.
I 100% agree with your premise, but the variety, especially in the arts, needs to be delivered consistently, for free, at every level of the K-12 experience.
4 Likes
That is why governments (US states and Canada provinces) operate public universities.
1 Like
I love consortiums. But you gotta look at a map of the United States and realize how many colleges and universities are located in places with no public transportation with no easy/quick/feasible way for kids to take advantage of a consortium relationship.
Yes, online learning. But then just take your Psych 1 class at SNHU or University of Phoenix and don’t bother with your college’s consortium which involves a two hour drive.
2 Likes
Online learning didn’t exist in the 90’s (in any meaningful way) so that’s one “new thing” that’s being used. The notion that you could get a Master’s degree without ever stepping foot on a campus- and these are respectable universities- that’s a “new thing”. The international/faraway campus idea-- that’s new. Not just a junior year abroad option- but actual campuses with resident faculty outside the main university/home city. That’s new. Certification programs (I mostly hate these, but I can’t deny that they are profitable and that students seem to love them) for a wide variety of functions and industries- these are new. Or for the colleges that did have them in the 1990s- they have now proliferated. Full blown College of Professional Studies or whatever. Cash cows.
So I don’t necessarily agree with you that the only trend is “let’s do what the business world stopped doing in 1997”. There is some innovation going on. Remains to be seen what’s going to stick for the long haul.
I met someone on a plane recently who designs Avatars for the online learning industry. She’s created a wide range of patients for nursing, PT and pharmacy students. Your professor can order up “Asian female, 120 lbs with early stage liver disease” or “African American male, asthma and allergic to sulfa-based meds” so that all the learning isn’t done on the 175 lb. male prototype which earlier health care students all learned on. How cool is that? And given the shortage of seats in nursing schools right now, what a great way to expand the pipeline without going to the expense of opening new nursing programs??? No, it doesn’t replace rotations. But it is an inexpensive, techno-enabled way to improve instruction…
So I guess that’s why I have faith in managerial based solutions. At some point, innovative thinking WILL crack the walls of the academy.
2 Likes
But what happens when you have entire states that have a limited number of major offerings (often because they’re low population states, like Alaska or Wyoming)? Or when public universities decide to drastically reduce offerings (as we saw recently with West Virginia)? That’s only why governments operate public universities when that’s why governments operate public universities.
1 Like
Please don’t put extreme positions in my mouth! I have never claimed that the only trend is for higher-ed administrators to use only outdated methods. I do, however, claim that doing so is all too widespread, especially when the methods being used in many cases are not just outdated, but also thoroughly discredited and counterproductive.
(Also, I’m not incredibly bullish on online education. It has, I would suggest, nearly reached reached saturation, if it hasn’t arrived there already.)
2 Likes
How do you feel about Evanston, IL? Actually named after John Evans who was responsible for bad things, like the Sand Creek massacre? I don’t see Northwestern moving.
I wasn’t aware of the history of Evans and Evanston; thank you for letting me know. And by the way, I said the town’s name (and thus the school’s name which named itself after the town) was unfortunate; not that they should move.
No matter how logical or illogical (i.e. an abolitionist’s name being a homophone for a terrible racist act of violence), it’s still a reaction. People choose partners, schools, houses, towns, and all sort of other things that may have some seemingly irrational reasoning behind it, but few people will argue with someone who doesn’t want to buy a certain house because it has an unlucky number or doesn’t want to name their child something because of a negative association (i.e. maybe they don’t want to name their kid Jack because they always think of Jack the Ripper, even though 99% of people probably don’t think that way).
We’ve mentioned going on a cruise before with our extended family, but my BIL has not been a fan. For him, the idea of going on a big boat makes him think of a time when his ancestors were forced onto a big boat, so for him it’s not the type of vacation he wants when he’s looking for fun and relaxation. Not everyone with slaves as ancestors feels that way, and the experience on a cruise would be a far cry from that of a slaveship, but once we found out his feelings, we no longer suggested cruises as possible vacations. There are plenty of other options to consider.
5 Likes
I attended a school like this. I loved it, but I’m not so sure it make it today (the school still exists but in a very different - more offerings & more expensive - form). Why?
This. It’s unfortunately a hard sell in the current higher education market. The desires of students and their parents seem to be constantly increasing. At some point, though, maybe the pendulum will swing back & a less expensive school with fewer offerings could thrive.
4 Likes
Colorado changed the name of Mt. Evans last year, and other things related (the road to get there, for example) but hasn’t removed the stained glass window with his picture from the state capitol dome.
It’s pretty expensive to change the names of things (like towns). Just changing the street names is expensive for the people who live on the street.
3 Likes
There is a whole thread on silly reasons for kids to refuse a school (edited that I don’t consider having a visceral reaction to the word lynch a silly reason, but if the school were otherwise a great fit, it may be considered an irrational one), and we also had threads on unfortunately named colleges before. When a school doesn’t have much reputation in the first place and is already struggling with enrolment, I guess it may be the tip to tip them over the tipping point….
7 Likes
Yes, colleges with high enough reputations can survive the marketing negatives associated with their names (e.g. Yale, WLU, Rice). But a lesser reputation college may find such a marketing negative to be a bigger problem.
2 Likes