Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free: How to Decrease Cost and Increase Quality at American Universities

Preface

vii Universities are in crisis because they have lost their central identity. They were once defined by the twin goals of research and instruction, but now these two main activities are often lost in a sea of competing interests. It turns out that when a educational system or institution loses sight of its center, it spins out in many different directions, and these new interests can be very expensive and disorienting. In fact, I will argue that once a system is no longer focused on its central mission, it simultaneously increases its costs and decreases its quality. Thus, in the case of many American research universities, the more they spend, the more they often lower the quality of education and research. The explanation of this counterintuitive principle is that costs cannot be contained when there is no defining goal. As a working definition, we can understand research to be the scientific , critical, and creative investigation of truth, and we can define instruction as the effective communication of that truth. The argument of this book, then, is that universities have lost their focus on research and instruction, and this loss of vision is the real, underlying crisis facing higher education. In other words, the movements of corporatization and privatization are only side effects of the main crisis, which is a loss of educational priorities. Throughout this book, we will see that since there is no real institutional effort to judge and maintain quality research and instruction, false and misleading external forms of quality control are used instead, and these substitute forms end up increasing the crisis in universities. For instance, the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are used not only by students and parents to judge the quality of universities, but also by universities themselves to determine their own priorities. In this reverse PREFACE viii PREFACE feedback mechanism, the system that is supposed to be judging the institution becomes the guiding force behind the institution. Making matters worse is the fact that the chief criterion U.S. News & World Report uses in its analysis of universities is their reputation, but the people who assess an institution’s reputation—administrators at other universities—have reported that they base their judgments on past U.S. News & World Report rankings.1 Another rating system that is equally influential for universities is that of bond rating agencies, like Moody’s. These noneducational institutions often tell universities what they have to do in order to maintain a high bond rating and thus receive low interest rates when they borrow money. Like the way the International Monetary Fund tells developing nations to privatize their economies, bond raters push universities to privatize by increasing tuition and reducing their reliance on state funding. In addition , these raters motivate schools to cut labor costs and diversify their revenue streams, and the result of these recommendations is that universities spend more on expensive side projects and reduce their commitment to undergraduate instruction and pure research. Some academic readers may feel that this book unfairly criticizes professors and undermines the value of research, but the book’s ultimate aim is to correct the excesses of current university practices, which requires not idealizing universities.2 Although I show how national trends are shaping research universities, I do not want to remove individuals from responsibility . Thus, I both use many national statistics in this book to back up my claims and recount personal stories in order to show how larger institutional factors change reality on the ground. Furthermore, although I rely heavily on my knowledge of the University of California system, I match this local knowledge with facts about national trends and statistics. Ultimately, the goal of this book is not simply to list the problems facing higher education; I propose concrete suggestions to make universities more just and effective. By avoiding the use of academic jargon, I hope to reach parents and students so that I can explain how universities have entered into a state of crisis and what can be done to pull them out of their present predicament. As I argue throughout this work, the future of our economy and our democracy rests on our ability to train university PREFACE ix students to be thoughtful participants in the production and analysis of knowledge. If our leading universities serve only to grant credentials and prestige, our society will suffer irrevocable harm. By providing a clearer understanding of how universities spend and...