Higher Education
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-08-17/higher-education
Two professors examine the American higher education system and explain how students and parents can get the most for their money.
Guests
Andrew Hacker
professor of Political Science at Queens College, New York, and co-author of "Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids - And What We Can Do About It"
Mark Taylor
chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University, professor of philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary, and professor emeritus of humanities at Williams College. His latest book is titled, "Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming our Colleges and Universities."
Comments
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I am a former faculty member and currently an administrator at a large state research university where I am responsible for improving the quality of teaching and the student learning experience. Research university status is largely linked to the carnegie classification system. Unniversities strive to become "Research 1" institutions to improve their national status. Imagine a university that is ranked as a research 1 but teaching 3. That institution would certainly put a greater emphasis on improving its teaching classification. We are what we measure - a national system for ranking teaching effectivness of universities would go a long way to shifting the emphasis of our educational institutions. Another part of the solution is to develop two faculty tracks - one on teaching and the other on research. Research faculty could be expected to get most of their support from grants and pay to be released from teaching. This would fund hiring faculty on the teaching line. Both lines could receive tenure (or multiyear floating contracts) but would be assessed in different ways. This would keep the cost of providing an education seperate from the cost of conducting research and the indirect public subsidy of research through tuition.
My son attends a large land grant university in the midwest where the cost is approximate $10,000 per year. His expected income at graduation is approximately $25,000 more than what a starting secretary in my earns. That means in 4 years he will have paid for his education. That's a pretty good investment by anyone's standards. Public based higher education is a bargain. The "experts" on the show come from an out of touch educational environment where students overpay. As a society we need to wake up and recognize the power of public education.
I couldn't agree more! Most professors could make more money working somewhere else but choose their occupation because they are devoted to students.
In the fall of 2009 my former employer, The University of Akron, became the only college or university in the United States to pass a rule enabling it to collect DNA samples from applicants for employment for any job on campus. I took a stand on the issue, and I was later terminated for doing so. As an adjunct, I had no job security whatsoever.
Here are some statistics from my former institution which may serve as an eye opener for the uninitiated:
1. Only 2.4% of The University of Akron's annual $400 million annual budget is spent compensating the more than 1,000 part-time faculty who constitute 60% of the teaching faculty.
2. UA President Proenza and his 35 vice presidents earn in excess of 50% (sans benefits) of what the more than 1,000 part-time faculty earn.
3. A part-time faculty member earning the mean rate of $800 per credit hour and teaching the maximum permissible load of 21 credit hours per academic year (one course below full-time teaching status) would earn only $16,800 per year.
4. A part-time faculty member desiring to purchase health insurance (entirely out of their own pocket and from post tax dollars) who earns at the low end of the pay range and works the maximum load of 21 credit hours would expend fully 91% of their gross pay for the university's least expensive plan for a family of three. Since there is a mandatory 10% contribution to the State Teachers Retirement System, they would, in effect, pay 101% of their modified gross pay simply to buy health coverage.
Matt Williams, MPA
Vice President
New Faculty Majority
College costs......Everyone knows that the nation's handful of brightest students are fully funded through endowment money at the very top institutions. Lesser institutions, pretenders to the throne of academic excellence, afford access in a different way. Wishing to run with the big, top-tier, dogs but lacking the endowment to do so these pretender institutions -primarily private, liberal arts colleges - artificially raised tuition to create the impression of quality (phenomenon known as the chivas regal effect) and then almost every student is rebated through "scholarships" enough, to reduce actual costs to be competitive with the public university just down the road a piece. And the beauty of it is that it works on so many levels" 1) alumni feel good about their expensive alma mater 2)johnny's high school buds see he's attending a "rich kid school" and 3) johnny's parents get to brag about his large scholarship- proof positive that he is academically all that and a bag of chips. If the college has run of the mill faculty, if the graduates get into mostly mediocre grad programs and if few companies of consequence are actively recruting its graduates then you've got a plain vanilla college dressed up with a fancy sticker price.
As a 16 year staffer at a liberal arts institution most of the professors I know would not make more money working elsewhere...given their egotism, their work ethic, their inability to function in a subordinate role, and their general level of condescension I doubt they would be able to find a job in the real world much less hold onto it long enough to make more money than they make "devoted to their students".
I am impressed to see how many intelligent people felt that the show was so unbalanced. I guess I at least expected Diane to play the balancing role and really challenge those "experts" on their views, but she played more of a supportive role it seems. All of us who think that Prof. Hacker is selling us smelly baloney should write our own Amazon.com reviews of his book.
I'm extremely disappointed by this show Mrs. Rehm. While the idea that higher education is too expensive for students has merit, I'm afraid virtually nothing else in this show does.
Here is where you went wrong:
1. You didn't make the slightest effort to inform yourself about: a. science education, b. engineering education, or c. math education. The United State's technological lead is primarily due to the fact that our university research and higher education is by far the best in the world.
2. You invited two humanities professors to discuss higher education!? Just as I've come to expect from humanities departments, these two ignoramus's HAD NO CLUE what the primary utility of a research university is: to train the next generation of scientists, engineers, etc. and conduct the basic research that is the basis of all high tech. economies. Quite frankly, humanities departments contribute very little to society and this terrible show is just another example.
Please have Ellen Schrecker on your program. She is the author of the just published The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University. Provides a very different view from that of this show's guests.