Higher, and Higher, Education

[xoxoxoBruce]

In "The Corporatization of Higher Education", he talks about the direction of the institutions of higher education.

In 2003, only two colleges charged more than $40,000 a year for tuition, fees, room, and board. Six years later more than two hundred colleges charged that amount. What happened between 2003 and 2009 was the start of the recession. By driving down endowments and giving tax-starved states a reason to cut back their support for higher education, the recession put new pressure on colleges and universities to raise their price.

~snip~

The most visible sign of the corporatization of higher education lies in the commitment that colleges and universities have made to winning the ratings war perpetuated by the kinds of ranking U.S. News and World Report now offers in its annual “Best Colleges” guide. Since its relatively modest debut in 1983, the “Best Colleges” guide has grown in influence. For any number of small colleges, getting traction from the “Best Colleges” guide may be a dream, but for a wide range of middle-tier and upper-tier colleges and universities, winning a good “Best Colleges” ranking is considered so essential to success that it shapes internal policies.

~snip~

Food courts, spa-like athletic facilities, and elaborate performing-arts centers are increasingly common on college and university campuses. Whether this emphasis on the amenities is much more than a throwback to such a nineteenth-century Harvard extravagance as having a student room come with extra space for a valet to live is open to debate, but not open to debate is how so many colleges and universities with four-year residential campuses have increased spending for student services that on a percentage basis outpace their increases in academic instruction and financial aid.

~snip~

Small wonder, too, that when colleges and universities think of economizing, their target is all too often those who are already their most vulnerable employees—part-time faculty and service workers. The administrators who run our leading colleges and universities are unwilling, the record shows, to downsize themselves. In the 1970s, 67 percent of faculty were tenured or on a tenure track. Today that figure is down to 30 percent, and for those who run higher education such a low number is ideal. Whether they are adjuncts or teaching assistants (TAs), those without the claim to permanent jobs cost less and are easy to get rid of in a period of contraction. Unionization efforts by teaching assistants in graduate programs at public universities throughout the country have rectified some of the worst abuses in what is in essence an academic temp system. But the TA union successes have not changed the fact that, at our largest universities, an academic underclass is at work: the faculty having the greatest amount of contact with individual students are those on the lowest rung of the academic ladder.

I guess it's mirroring life, more money with less in return.