College enrollments have been in decline for more than a decade and that trend is almost certain to accelerate. A big reason why is that more and more Americans now doubt that college is worth the expense. Gone are the days when most of us were convinced that college credentials were necessary and sufficient for a good life, a notion propagated by irresponsible politicians and higher-ed spokesmen. The fat years are behind them. What can college leaders do to survive the lean ones ahead?
In today’s Martin Center article, Professor Richard K. Vedder offers some advice: Go back to basics. As he sees it, colleges have grown far past their essential functions and now squander resources on a host of activities that are peripheral. He writes:
They feed and house people, own hospitals and clinics, and run sometimes financially substantial entertainment venues (often featuring ball-throwing and kicking contests of various kinds). All the while, they claim they are also contributing to saving the planet from climate-driven catastrophe; alleviating racial, ethnic, or gender injustice by using their allegedly superior intellectual and moral values to improve the quality if not the quantity of human and other forms of life; and encouraging non-academics (especially what Leona Helmsley once called “the little people”) to do the same.
Schools could outsource many of their functions, improving services while saving money.
Also, most colleges today have large numbers of administrators who have make-work “diversity” jobs. They don’t educate, and they arguably miseducate by helping to propound destructive ideologies that undermine America’s foundation. When budgets must be cut, there’s good starting place.
Vedder also calls out the exorbitant expenditure on athletics. Colleges don’t have to be in the sports-entertainment business.
Finally, colleges could get more teaching out of faculty members if it weren’t for the mania over research. He writes,
Colleges give many professors very light teaching loads so that they will have time to do research in their fields. The problem is that many of them have nothing valuable to say. Therefore, the commitment to research adds to costs with negligible resulting value. A more sensible system would be to expect all faculty members to carry a full teaching load but to reduce it if outside parties want their research badly enough to buy their time. That would eliminate the “research for the sake of doing research” cost and probably improve teaching at the same time.
Some existing colleges might take Vedder’s advice, and undoubtedly, some new ones will arise that just focus on affordable, worthwhile education.