This article provides lots of of food for thought about the structure of America’s Universities these days.
from the article:
" I’m talking about the way universities operate, every day, more and more like corporations. As Benjamin Ginsberg details in his 2011 book, ‘‘The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters,’’ a constantly expanding layer of university administrative jobs now exists at an increasing remove from the actual academic enterprise. It’s not unheard-of for colleges now to employ more senior administrators than professors. There are, of course, essential functions that many university administrators perform, but such an imbalance is absurd — try imagining a high school with more vice principals than teachers. "
I remember being amazed at the increase in administrative staff numbers compared to faculty that was shown in the documentary “Ivory Tower”. Between that and the race to build the best facilities, it’s no wonder the cost of a college education has been climbing at an astounding rate.
Colleges seem to exist more to perpetuate their own continued existence than to serve their stated missions of education and research. Marketing teams, financial wizards to grow endowments into oblivion, administrators upon administrators to feed the monstrous governmental appetite for never-ending bureaucratic nonsense…the students are just the little cogs that give all this bloat a reason to exist.
Colleges have no way to track earnings, and states have only a limited capacity. It really has to be done at the federal level.
Well, colleges can’t serve their mission, unless they can stay in business and it’s only a limited number of colleges (out of the 4,100+ 2 and 4 year public/private institutions in the US), that have “giant” endowments.
Lots of reasons for Administrative bloat, how to get it under control is the challenge. What incentives can be put in place that would make administrators (and faculty, we have to keep in mind the “shared governance model”) make different choices?
The state of Florida, for example, is using a combination of hard and soft incentives. An example of a “hard” incentive would be limiting the rate state public colleges can raise tuition (and fees). If your revenue is capped, you have to look for additional revenue (such as research funding) and reduce cost (like reducing administrative bloat). Of course, the downside is the raise of adjunct faculty.
A “soft” initiative is the role out of a performance-based funding model. Based on how each University does, it could receive additional funding. If it does very poorly, it could lose a % of it’s based funding. It uses 10 metrics:
Metric 1 -Percent of Bachelor’s Graduates Employed and/or Continuing their Education Further 1 Yr after Graduation
Metric 2 -Median Average Wages of Undergraduates Employed in Florida 1 Yr after Graduation
Metric 3 -Average Cost per Undergraduate Degree to the Institution
Metric 4 -Six Year Graduation Rates (Full-time and Part-time FTIC)
Metric 5 -Academic Progress Rate (2nd Year Retention with GPA above 2.0)
Metric 6 -Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded in Areas of Strategic Emphasis (includes STEM)
Metric 7 -University Access Rate (Percent of Undergraduates with a Pell Grant)
Metric 8a -Graduate Degrees Awarded in Areas of Strategic Emphasis (includes STEM)
Metric 8b -Freshman in Top 10% of Graduating High School Class
Metric 9 -Board of Governors’ Choice
Metric 10 -Board of Trustees’ Choice
Metric’s 8, 9 and 10 allows Florida more flexibility when comparing schools like UF (large research university) with NCF (honor’s college focused on undergraduates)
As can be seen in this article, the performance-based funding model isn’t perfect and is still being tweaked.
Anyway! my point is a state based solution will always be far more effective (and fair) than using a federal based scorecard method, which is what the Obama administration had first proposed (a scorecard that would directly impact federal funding). As can be seen in that insidehighered article I linked above, it’s a challenge coming up with a “fair” scorecard for 12 public university, think of the challenge of doing it for 4,100+ public/private institutions.
These will tend to reward schools for higher admission selectivity, unless they are considered relative to the expected rates based on the academic qualifications of entering students.
A way to favor those schools which are already more selective, or which can effectively market themselves to those students?
Nope. Feds can’t do it either, as evidence by the recent website that they just released. Do you really expect the masses of colleges grads will voluntarily sign up with the feds so they can track their post-grad employers?
How exactly are colleges gonna track this?
While I’m a big fan of research, it takes the faculty out of the classroom. Moreover, chasing research dollars takes staffing.
@ucbalumnus Keep in mind these metrics are only for the 12 public universities in Florida, and each school has a separate target for each goal. The target set for each metric is different for each of the 12 schools.
For example, FAU 6-year graduation rate was 45%, which reflects a 5% improvement, so they earned 5 points for that metric (each metric is worth a max of 3 to 5 points). UF rate was 87%, which reflected a 1% improvement, so they also earned all 5 points for that metric.
The “Metric 8b -Freshman in Top 10% of Graduating High School Class” is an alternative metric for NCF only, other schools use Metric 8a (Graduate Degrees).
Lets use California as an example, They could setup two separate 'Pools", one for the UC’s, another for the CSU’s. Then each UC or CSU would have different metrics, based on current performances and what the state wishes to emphasize. Florida is focus on graduation rates, cost of degree, low SES student access, and stem majors, while the state of California could pick different metrics…
The system isn’t perfect, and a lot of lobbying takes place when it comes to setting these metrics, but it’s an interesting program.
As crazy as it sounds, Florida does seem to do some things “right” when it comes to higher education.
A couple of years ago I attended a homeschool STEM-based conference and learned about what Florida is trying to do with its community college system, too, and it was heartening. That conference spurred me to get my son going in dual enrollment.
Our own experience with dual enrollment at community college has been pleasantly surprising as well.
In theory the feds can do this (and should be doing something similar with Obama care, using IRS info to validate income), in reality they’ve failed. They can’t seem to link info provided by colleges (SSN #, degree info, etc…) with IRS income data (keying off SSN#).
Good question. It’s either via graduation surveys, or it’s limited to students that continue their education in the state of Florida.
It’s also why the average wage info is limited to students that stayed in the state of Florida. Florida doesn’t have access to wage info for students that move out of the state.
Yes and no (IMHO), research funding can also fund additional faculty and grad students. It’s why you can’t grow your grad school, without also growing research funding. Of course, you first have to hire the faculty to then acquire the research funding.
This is also one reason I think it’s problematic to compare an institution that’s focus on undergrad education vs. a large research university.
yes, and that was my earlier (and I thought obvious) point: tracking grads requires more staff, i.e., more admin.
Nope, they cannot. Full pay students do not apply for federal aid. Full pay students do not have to supply an SSN to colleges. The only way for the feds to know the SSN’s of all college students is to pass a law to make it mandatory – highly unlikely – or to ask students to voluntarily sign up for post-grad tracking.
btw: don’t forget that those who are here illegally and internationals may not have SSN’s, but do attend US colleges.
^^not under “fierce” opposition by the private colleges. Note, that there is bipartisan support to collect the data – the Bush administration also asked for it – but there is also bipartisan support to not collect the data. Privacy concerns on both sides. Probably more concern now that we have experienced several major hacks in the last year of two. (Home Depot, Sony, Target, Blue Cross/Shield, federal employees…)
Meanwhile, the right watched while a different beast (for-profit colleges enrolling marginal students) grew (more than tripled from 2001 to 2009), took in lots of government financial aid, and produced a disproportionate amount of student loan defaults.
How did for-profits become a right wing thing? Something to do with not jumping to support the President’s recent education initiatives? The ground work for the expansion was laid out in 1972. The 90-10 rule (which defined “institution of higher education” for the purposes of federal-aid eligibility as including for-profit institutions).was put in place by a democratic congress in 1992. I guess for-profit=capitalism=right wing. Plenty of democrats and republicans benefited from the expansion, as did the large financial firms (like Goodman Sachs) that support both (and got heavily into the game in the late 1990, early 2000’s).
The “lobbying power” behind for-profit’s isn’t the schools themselves, but the investment firms and hedge funds that support them.
But to be fair some for-profits do an excellent job of training and job placement.
I happened to attend an “investment” seminar for the education space and several of the speakers represented for-profit training companies (think electrician, diesel mechanic, heavy equipment operator, underwater welding), and those guys had an ~80% placement rate upon graduation. (Much better than many T3 colleges!)
