The Battle for Public Higher Education

Recent debate about how these dangerous education policies are at work in higher education as well....the battle has many fronts indeed.  Note that the Goldwater Institute's main priority is the privatization of public services; care about public colleges and universities?  Better start paying attention!

Cut public "subsidies" of higher education Indy Star:
http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/
That is the recommendation of an Op-Ed piece in this morning's (8/14/2010) Indianapolis Star. Its author, Jay P. Greene of the University of Arkansas and a fellow of the Goldwater Institute, bases this recommendation on his analysis of recent trends in higher education cost nationwide as well as in Indiana. Greene argues that
university in the past twenty years have shifted an increasing proportion of their funds away from paying salaries of instructors, researchers, and "service-providers" to pay for a growing number of
highly-paid administrators. The only solution to this "administrative bloat," according to Greene is to shift more of the bill for higher education onto students and their parents and away from public funds.
In his scenario, "cost-conscious" parents will then force the universities to trim their administrative expenses and shift more funds back to classroom education and research.

Greene might be correct about recent trends in the ways funds are spent
in our universities for administrative versus the more primary missions
of instruction and research. University faculty have witnessed teaching
"lines" disappear from academic departments and salaries being frozen
as the numbers of vice-chancellors, assistant deans, and their support
staffs have swelled in recent years. While the latter individuals do
perform invaluable functions in supporting the university's teaching
and research missions, perhaps the charge of "bloat" has an element of
merit that needs to be corrected. In a time of economic downturn, all
parts of the university should be prepare to retrench including the
administration.

Nevertheless, the solution that Greene proposes to reduce public subsidies to higher education is based upon an inaccurate analysis of the financing of Indiana's higher education system and its solution
seems more punitive than helpful towards faculty, researchers, students, and parents. The financial "subsidies" that Indiana taxpayers make of the state higher education system already have been in relative
decline in recent years and more of the cost of running the universities has been transferred to tuitions, private donations, and revenues from research. In fact state funding policies seem intended to
make all Indiana Universities and college "self-supporting" on their own revenue sources rather than public funds. Rather than acknowledging the benefit of "public education" for the Indiana public, state
mandates already have forced universities to raise tuitions to record levels. Expecting industries or philanthropic organizations to step in to help higher education at a time of serious economic recession is
unrealistic.

Following Professor Greene's recommendation of raising tuitions even higher would threaten to bar lower and even middle class students from enrolling. Higher tuitions are likely to drive away Indiana students from pursing college educations at a time when the state needs to increase its base of well-educated workers to compete in the intensely competitive world economy. Faith that the "market" of cost-conscious parents will reform problems in higher education spending is based on untested ideological assumptions that risk causing fatal damage to the state's public colleges and universities. There seems to be a major campaign in the works against public education at all levels and the future of our state is being placed in jeopardy.


Absolutely!