Let's Not Railroad American Higher Education!

Research & Occasional Paper Series: CSHE.6.13 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY http://cshe.berkeley.edu/ LET’S NOT RAILROAD AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION! * April 2013 Henry Brady Goldman School of Public Policy - UC Berkeley ABSTRACT Copyright 2013 Henry Brady, all rights reserved. Politics, economics, and technology have conspired to make this an exceptionally challenging time for American higher education. Some critics claim that costs are out of control in traditional public and private nonprofit higher education. They believe these institutions will soon go the way of the railroads as for-profit institutions displace them and the Internet replaces college campuses and classrooms. Other critics bemoan the privatization of higher education and the increasing role of market forces. Still others think higher education has lost its way and fails to focus on educating undergraduates. With their cries of alarm and simple nostrums for change, these critics often miss the mark because they do not recognize the strengths of the current system and the complexity of the problems it faces. Yet defenders of American higher education who paint a rosy picture are held too much in thrall by its venerable traditions, manifest accomplishments, and worldwide reputation for excellence. The modern university is worth protecting but it must also change in substantial ways. Politics, economics, and technology have conspired to make this an exceptionally challenging time for American higher education. Some critics claim that costs are out of control in traditional public and private nonproﬁt higher education. They believe these institutions will soon go the way of the railroads as for-proﬁt institutions displace them and the Internet replaces college campuses and classrooms. Other critics bemoan the privatization of higher education and the increasing role of market forces. Still others think higher education has lost its way and fails to focus on educating undergraduates. 1 With their cries of alarm and simple nostrums for change, these critics often miss the mark because they do not recognize the strengths of the current system and the complexity of the problems it faces. Yet defenders of American higher education who paint a rosy picture are held too much in thrall by its venerable traditions, manifest accomplishments, and world- wide reputation for excellence. 2 King and Sen pursue a middle course by recognizing that the modern university is worth protecting but that it must also change in substantial ways. To make the right changes, the peculiar features of higher education must be understood before any diagnosis can be made of what is to be done. The world of higher education is a bit topsy-turvy. Prices depart signiﬁcantly from costs, teaching students is not the only mission of most universities, performance is hard to measure, credentialing students is just as important as imparting knowledge, government programs pro- vide subsidies for tuition and research, and markets, prices, and competition operate in unusual ways. The challenges are very clear. The United States is counting on institutions of higher education to educate students and to provide the research to meet the needs of a twenty-ﬁrst century economy that increasingly depends on learning and innovation. Public institutions educate the vast majority (roughly three-quarters) of those in college, but as state governments have struggled with increasing health-care, correctional, and K–12 education costs in the last decade and with precipitously declining tax revenues in the last three years, they have opted to balance their budgets by making severe cuts in higher education—thus forcing public universities to increase tuition. 3 State governments have done so even though Americans since Thomas Jefferson have considered higher education to be essential for creating a truly free and educated citizenry and even though studies show that investment in higher education pays o ﬀ handsomely and is strongly sup- ported by the public—in fact, the increasing price of higher education is a growing concern of Americans. 4 The result of these actions is that the supply of higher education has * Henry Brady is the Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. This paper was originally published in Political Science & Politics, Volume 46, Issue 01,January 2013, pp. 94-101.