There is no doubt higher education is changing. At first, I thought my experience in North Dakota was due to the downturn in the energy sector which in combination with the reluctance of Republican state legislatures to adjust taxes to compensate resulted in serious multi-year cuts to support for state institutions. I am retired, but the adjustments and my old institution seem to be contributing to a downward spiral. While what I have experienced and observed is partly attributable to local decisions, the general scenario seems more general.
This recent Atlantic article describes what is happening as the bursting of the higher education bubble. The article notes:
In the spring of 2013, there were 19,105,651 students enrolled in higher ed; this spring, there were 17,839,330 …
and enrollment declines seem to be producing
the decline of research faculty, increased workloads, and more rapid adjunctification. And given how colleges have treated adjunct faculty, Alexander says, “it would be a humanitarian disaster”—one of higher education’s own doing. “We’ve done it to ourselves with open eyes since the 1990s. And we know about it, it’s kind of an open secret,” he says. “The Research I universities keep pumping out Ph.D.s, and they haven’t slowed down at all. And they know exactly what that means, you know, that the majority of these Ph.D.s are either going to leave academia or end up.
There are so many interrelated factors here. Universities have complex missions that include research. Doing research successfully results in the opportunity to compete for external funding (grants) which are part of the funding model for these institutions. To do research requires more human work than can be provided by faculty members and this is one of the reasons for training PhDs. When you get down to it, grad students are cheap labor for research and teaching. They work for such low wages because they eventually hope to secure a faculty position themselves. The development period is lengthy. Most grad students understand the risk of the investment they are making. Most folks who view higher education without understanding the realities have little idea of the risks and competitive environment that are the reality. It is more of an “if you think you are good enough, put in your time and find out” thing than most appreciate.
What I have just described is only part of the complex model. Of course, research addresses other goals besides raising money. It is part of the educational process – you learn about several disciplines by participating in the work of that discipline. The image of all learning taking place in large lecture halls is terribly uninformed. The primary reason for the research and creative scholarship is to move knowledge forward. Research done at universities address many areas that would be ignored if society had to depend on the R&D of business and industry.
If higher education is too expensive, all parties involved are responsible. Taxpayers are paying less and less of higher ed costs. Students want things in their “experience” that are unnecessary to learning, but institutions feel they must these opportunities to compete for these students. Living facilities and dining halls are impressive. Fitness centers are better than most of us have access to in our communities. Athletic facilities and teams are somehow tied in as part of the “quality” of the institutions students want to attend. Administrations become bloated relative to the size of the teaching/research faculty to provide the services, infrastructure, marketing, and student services that are expected.
As I look at the experience, I am not convinced that higher education is too pricey. It is not as efficient as it might be, but this is part of what is required to compete for the multiple sources of financing that are required. You want a world-class hockey program capable of winning multiple national championships and producing numbers of NHL players and Olympic champions in a state with the population of Omaha, you need a 120 million + stadium, high salary coaches, and a very, very large travel budget. Is this necessary? In North Dakota, this is part of the “experience” and a reason many alumni continue to support the institution.
Universities are far more than advanced versions of high schools (I guess even high schools have athletic teams). The missions are far more complex, but also interrelated. Focusing on any single strand of this complexity – the cost of textbooks, the large lecture experience, the time faculty spend doing research, the athletic programs, the full-service buffet meal services, etc. – misses the point. The combination is a pretty good deal.