The Commons

There is a big hubbub right now on an Inside Higher Ed piece by Dennis Jones and Jane Wellman called “Bucking Conventional Wisdom on College Costs.” Judging by the commentary, they have clearly gored a small herd of sacred cows by attempting to debunk the conventional wisdom that budgets will (should) only rise, that spending does not equal quality, that state governments are now “minority shareholders” in the educational enterprise, and the like.

Having worked for many years in higher ed – both in faculty positions and as a consultant – I don’t argue with their basic premise:  The model has real problems. Duplication of effort, fierce fiefdoms, historic insulation from the marketplace, lack of a structure that could link real planning (which requires tough choices) with the authority to execute the plan, political intervention: All are endemic.  But in a larger sense, the model has these problems because the enterprise is – and by its very nature must be – messy.  On the undergraduate side, incoming freshmen don’t know what they want so they need the latitude to fumble their way forward to some more lasting definition of self ( aka…“Seven years of college down the drain” – Bluto). In graduate and professional education – particularly at the doctoral level – the “tradesman” model that attracts a grad student is often in conflict with faculty assumptions that what they are actually doing is replicating themselves (even when there aren’t any faculty jobs on the horizon).  In research, we learn as much from what doesn’t work as we do from what does (“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison).

The biggest problem I have with the piece is that the authors leave perhaps the most important point to the conclusion – the myth that “American colleges and universities are grossly overfunded, and that better management of resources by itself will generate enough ‘new money’ to pay for the nearly doubling of capacity needed to return our country to internationally competitive attainment levels.”  All their other points – which mitigate against this conclusion – are thoroughly developed, and this key factor is tossed in nearly as an afterthought.  What do you want to bet that in Congress and statehouses across the country, the first eight myths – which seem to argue that efficiencies alone can save the institution – are widely touted, and the final, meek conclusion gets short shrift?

Our higher ed institutions were dealing with a plethora of problems before the current economic malaise – problems that have only been exacerbated by shrinking state budgets, endowments, and family resources.  The biggest loss, though, would be one of faith: If the public no longer believes that education is the path to personal fulfillment and prosperity, or that they can’t afford to take that path, then we’ve quite simply lost the game.

- Rob Moore, Managing Partner

Tags: economic downturn, education spending, higher education, nonprofit marketing, trends