Having recently embarked on a new five-year DEI plan, UM is paying more than $30 million to 241 DEI staffers this academic year alone, Mark Perry found in a recent analysis for the College Fix.

That represents an astounding expansion of the school’s already-infamous DEI bureaucracy, which had a mere 142 employees last year.

And the price tag accounts for neither the money spent on programming and office expenses nor the hundreds of other employees who use some of their time to assist with DEI initiatives.

These expenditures are a reckless waste of taxpayer money considering the impact of UM’s last five-year plan.

It cost $85 million, and what did it accomplish? 

According to the university’s Black Student Union, “85 million dollars was spent on DEI efforts and yet, Black students’ experience on campus has hardly improved.”

Hispanic and Asian enrollments increased, but black enrollment dropped slightly from 4.3% in 2016 to 3.9% in 2021.

And the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, “The percentage of students who were satisfied with the overall campus climate decreased from 72 percent in 2016 to 61 percent in 2021.”

These results are consistent with findings at other institutions.

A Claremont Institute study of Texas A&M University found that despite an annual DEI budget of $11 million, the percentage of students who felt they belonged at the school dropped significantly from 2015 to 2020: Among whites, the number went from 92% to 82%; among Hispanics, from 88% to 76%.

Among blacks, there was an astonishing drop from 82% to 55%.

At the University of California, Berkeley, whose Division of Equity and Inclusion boasts 152 staffers and a $36 million budget, black undergraduate enrollment dropped from 3% in 2010 to 2% in 2021.

The truth is that DEI does not work and frequently makes matters worse.

DEI trainings not only fail to achieve their purposes but often exacerbate grievances and divisions by antagonizing people and teaching them to monitor one another for microaggressions and implicit biases.

DEI often leads to illegal activities, too.

The University of Washington recently revealed, for example, that its psychology department actively discriminated against faculty candidates based on race, elevating a lower-ranked candidate for a position over others because of a desire to hire a black scholar.

In another case, a former assistant director of multicultural student services at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire recently filed a lawsuit alleging that despite exemplary performance reviews, she was harassed and discriminated against simply for being white, until she resigned.

“We don’t want white people in the MSS office,” a student reportedly said during an open house.

Even with the failures and the excesses, Michigan is not the only school ramping up its DEI expenditures.

Another College Fix analysis found that Ohio taxpayers are spending $20.38 million annually on DEI salaries and benefits at UM’s famous rival, Ohio State University, where the number of DEI bureaucrats has grown from 88 in 2018 to 189 in 2023.

Oklahoma’s public universities spent $83.4 million on DEI over the last 10 years.

Florida’s public universities reported spending $34.5 million during the 2022-23 academic year.

The University of Wisconsin was poised to spend $32 million over the next two years.

Why not use all that money to give students a much-needed tuition break?

Or why not fund need-based scholarships for promising students instead of giving cash to bureaucrats who are actively damaging our higher education institutions?

Fortunately, some states are taking action.

Florida and Texas passed laws eliminating DEI bureaucracies, and Wisconsin lawmakers recently curbed DEI in the state university system by compelling the board of regents to agree to DEI staff cuts and a hiring freeze.

Many other state systems have ended the use of DEI statements in hiring, recognizing they are used to screen out heterodox thinkers when studies show ideological diversity is beneficial to the search for knowledge, which is a university’s core purpose.

And that points to the greatest cost of DEI: While the financial waste is appalling, the price of expecting everyone on campus to conform to an ideology that undermines free expression and excludes intellectual diversity, two foundational values of the academy, is one we should be unwilling to pay.

This post appeared on New York Post on January 11, 2024

The post How one college spends more than $30M on 241 DEI staffers … and the damage it does to kids appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

In this episode, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker speaks with ACTA’s President Michael Poliakoff. Governor Walker is now leading Young Americans for Freedom — an organization committed to ensuring that increasing numbers of young Americans understand and are inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values.

Download a transcript of the podcast HERE.
Note: Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

The post Scott Walker: A Governor’s Perspective on College Spending appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

While colleges may have hundreds or thousands of employees who interact with students daily, trustees operate largely behind the scenes to ensure the well-being of the institution and those it serves. They owe the institution fiduciary duties of loyalty, care and obedience, and are responsible for making decisions about major aspects of a school’s life, including areas such as the budget, tuition price, public image and student well-being. 

Trustees should stay informed about all aspects of their school, and their actions contribute to a school’s success or failure, experts say. Furthering a school’s mission sometimes means making or backing tough policy decisions that don’t please everyone, as governing in higher education may be more challenging now than ever. 

“Their unique role is to listen to every constituency, but be beholden to none,” says Michael B. Poliakoff, president and CEO of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, a nonprofit organization that provides extensive resources to help college and university governing boards function effectively. 

Although the trustee role is “not one that the public tends to understand,” Poliakoff says, “these are the people that are representing their interests. There’s often a misunderstanding that the trustees serve the institution. … They serve the public. They’re guardians of a public trust.” 

How Someone Becomes a College Trustee

Trustees of private colleges typically are elected by the existing trustee board members, and at public schools are most often appointed by state legislatures or governors. Some trustees are graduates of the school, and all serve without pay.

Terms usually are staggered for some continuity, rather than a complete board change at once. Boards most commonly range between 20 to 35 members, but sometimes have as few as 10 – or more than 50 for some elite private or very large schools.

Some colleges have student, faculty or ex-officio trustees with varying degrees of power and responsibility, as well as honorary and emeritus members. Depending on their classification, some trustees may not be voting members.

Typical Responsibilities of College Trustee Boards 

Here’s a partial list of some typical trustee roles and responsibilities:

• Making all legal and fiduciary decisions as the final authority for college business, although they may delegate some authority.
• Safeguarding the school’s mission, reputation and resources, including reshaping the mission when necessary and minimizing the risks of conflicts of interest and fraud.
• Formulating a strategic plan and holding the school’s president accountable for developing and implementing it.
• Selecting, setting pay for, advising, supporting and evaluating the president.
• Setting policies that govern the school while overseeing the school in general and upper management in particular.
• Approving the annual budget and setting major program fees.
• Raising money, leading in capital campaigns, overseeing the endowment, personally supporting the school financially and encouraging others to do so.
• Ensuring that use of the school’s assets aligns with legal requirements and the school’s mission.
• Recruiting, training, retaining and replacing their trustee ranks. 

The most basic responsibilities of trustees at nonprofit public and private colleges are “to make good-faith decisions in the best interest of the institution,” says Mary Papazian, executive vice president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, commonly called AGB.
“Unlike in other countries where higher education is managed by the government, American higher education was founded on the judgment of volunteer trustees,” she notes. “It relies on the belief that a group of thoughtful individuals, adhering to their fiduciary duties, will govern a college or university more successfully than will direct government control.”

Trustees are accountable to other ideals and groups, including the values of higher education, the public trust and the various stakeholder groups invested in the institution, such as faculty, staff and students, Papazian says.

“So that means boards, working in partnership with their presidents and senior administrators of those institutions, have to be concerned with student access and student outcomes. Are students doing well? Are they graduating successfully? Is there equity in serving all students? How do boards ensure their institutions are offering programs of value and making it clear to students and the public they serve? And does the business model of an institution work to achieve its success, its vitality?”

How a Good College Trustee Board Functions

Trustee boards typically do most of their work in committees outside board meetings, with each trustee serving on at least one committee, often more. Examples of common standing committees are governance, student affairs, academic affairs, facilities, compliance, budget, finance, audit, advancement/development and risk management.

“The real work and generative thinking occurs on those committees,” says Dennis Morrone, national managing partner of Not-for-Profit & Higher Education Practices at Grant Thornton LLP, a major audit, tax and advisory firm.

“Without the committees, the board can be only so successful,” he says. “The days of the sleepy boards are over. It’s not just showing up at graduation – it goes far beyond that and requires a lot of hard work and discipline.”

Outstanding character and reputation are essential qualities for trustees, many of whom come from fields outside higher education – “and that’s the real power,” Papazian says.

“They’re engaged and caring citizen volunteers who are acting in the best interest of their institution to try to ensure that the institution is successful. They bring a different perspective, and that allows them to ask different kinds of questions. I think it keeps everybody honest. It is a critical part of what makes higher education in the U.S. very strong.”

Trustee boards should be composed of accomplished people with diverse perspectives, talents and skill sets, experts say.

“Having an active and qualified and well-rounded board ensures that the institution will stay faithful to its mission,” Morrone says. “And second of all, that they will hold the management team accountable for the right actions and behaviors. So as an independent, unpaid body, their only real responsibility is to ensure their duties of obedience and loyalty.”

While many common issues confront trustees across the higher ed landscape – demographic changes, access, affordability, value and public perception, to name a few – each school must also solve its own unique problems.

“The old adage is, ‘If you see one board, you’ve seen one board,'” Papazian says. “It’s very context-specific. We tell them that the key for really effective board leadership is for boards to stay engaged, ask thoughtful questions, be courageous and imaginative. It takes courage sometimes to not give in to pressure, but to keep the mission and the purpose and the vitality of your institution and the success of your students at the forefront.”

An Example of a Successful College Trustee Board

Although it’s common for trustee boards to occasionally struggle to fulfill their responsibilities, there are many that consistently show strong performance, experts say. The AGB provides numerous programs and services for trustee boards and annually recognizes stellar boards with the John W. Nason Award for Board Leadership.

One of the 2023 awardees, Xavier University of Louisiana, was honored for a range of initiatives to improve students’ lives and elevate the school’s legacy, including laying the groundwork to establish a graduate school of health sciences and a medical school. Xavier is the only historically Black and Catholic college in the U.S. and graduates more Black students who go on to become medical doctors than any other U.S. college.

Facility updates, data-driven approaches to student persistence and other efforts to improve the student experience have been underway at Xavier. Trustees also worked in advance to secure $65 million by November 2022 toward the $500 million fundraising campaign goal for Xavier’s 100th anniversary in 2025.

Trustee board chairman Justin T. Augustine III says the AGB recognition “shows that the body of work we’re putting in is getting noticed.”

Augustine, an Xavier alumnus, is entering his seventh year on the 27-seat board and his third year as chairman. After reviewing best governance practices, the board amended its bylaws to allow Augustine to serve longer as chair to promote continuity while rolling out important new initiatives, such as the university’s “pillars of success” missional objectives.

Augustine, a regional vice president for Transdev Services Inc., calls his board involvement a “labor of love” and says his board’s effectiveness is due largely to its strong committee structure and the diversity and creativity of experts from fields that align with the school’s mission.

For a trustee board and its school to succeed, “you have to listen to your student body,” Augustine says. “Schools need to adapt and constantly enhance the experience for the current student body.”

At the same time, it’s critical that students hear from trustees, he says. “We communicate with them. We may not be able to resolve everything right away, but we keep a running list and try to address things, including with the budget, to make sure they can see the results. And when they see the results, they know we’re listening to them and paying attention to them. And that’s important.”

This type of engaged work distinguishes the best-functioning governance boards, Morrone says. The paradigm has shifted from decades ago, when governing boards were seen as “alumni clubs” that got together for dinners and golf outings, he says.

“Now, they are far more structured in terms of their thinking and their focus on being more of a strategic partner and generative thinker to complement the management team. And more introspective about how things can be better. A trustee, one that really takes their role seriously, realizes that it’s tough work and really a responsibility.”

Resources to Help College Trustee Boards

In addition to training programs, seminars and conferences, here are some resources that Grant Thornton, AGB and ACTA provide to trustee boards that can also educate students and the public:

• Grant Thornton publishes and updates a guidebook for trustee boards.
• ACTA helped develop the “Governance for a New Era” report for trustees, a blueprint for forward-thinking higher ed governance.
• AGB’s self-assessment tool was designed to help strengthen relationships and trust among trustees for greater board effectiveness.
• The Governance IQ resource by Grant Thornton offers a webcast, guidebooks and articles that subscribing trustees can receive to stay abreast of relevant trends and best practices.
• ACTA’s “How Colleges Spend Money” online financial analysis tool lets trustees check their school’s spending and benchmark against peer schools.
• The “Gold Standard for Freedom of Expression” by ACTA helps boards lead in promoting a culture of free thought on campus. 

Poliakoff offers some boilerplate advice to all college trustees: “Don’t be shy. Don’t feel you shouldn’t ask questions, that you shouldn’t do appropriate investigation. The worst possible thing is embarrassment for the school because of failures that oversight could prevent. Too often trustees become passive, and that’s a deadly place for them to be nowadays.”

This piece appeared in U.S. News & World Report on November, 16, 2023.

The post What College Trustees Are and Why They Matter appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Boston University Professor Phillipe Copeland would like to know. When news broke that Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University was laying off half or more of its staff, Professor Copeland called the move an “act of employment violence and trauma” and said the “university needs to explain … how mass layoffs are ‘antiracist.’”

Kendi needs to explain it too — and remember: neutrality is not an option.

Professor Copeland is not the only former colleague turning against Kendi. The outgoing faculty lead of the center’s policy office critiqued the original decision to give him “millions of dollars and so much authority.” The former assistant director of narrative (and, yes, the center also had an associate director of narrative) said she found the center “exploitative and other faculty experienced the same and worse.”

In another comment, Copeland accused others of sitting “at the feet of a ‘Master’ who provides answers in exchange for deference. They mistake celebrity for solutions. This is a ‘Chosen One’ theory of change.”

While these criticisms are partially directed at the university, they also clearly target Kendi and suggest he is what his critics have long said he is: a self-promoter elevated to a role he is unsuited to play.

In conversation with Columbia University linguist John McWhorter last year, Glenn Loury, a professor at Brown University, was blunter in his assessment of Kendi: “I take umbrage at the lionization of lightweight, empty-suited, empty-headed mother***ers like Ibram X. Kendi, who couldn’t carry my book bag, who hasn’t read … a f***ing thing. If you ask him what Nietzsche said, he would have no idea. … He’s an unserious, superficial, empty-suited lightweight. He’s not our equal, not even close.”

The popularity of this mediocre thinker was always stunning. He has commanded up to $40,000 per speaking engagement and attracted millions of dollars in donations, including a $10 million gift from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. What has happened to all that money?

Those of us who lived through the moral panic that catapulted him (and Robin DiAngelo) to fame in 2020 could be forgiven for enjoying a moment of schadenfreude as his ideological brothers-in-arms turn his own arguments against him. It is an understandable enjoyment after those of us who always opposed racism were nonetheless subjected to all those workshops, trainings, and committee meetings. We watched as our institutions issued diversity statements and inclusive language guides, insisted on curricular changes, and announced new antiracist initiatives, suggesting racism lurked in every corner.

In fairness, Kendi cannot be personally blamed for all of this, even if he took full advantage of his moment. While the complaints about him and the layoffs are personal for his former colleagues, the rest of us should be more concerned with what he represents. His rise and fall are irrevocably tied to a fervor, fueled by the anxieties of a pandemic, that spread through the American academy, attempting to remake it according to the ideas of one or two thinkers — a damnable abdication of responsibility for the intellectual capaciousness and commitment to free and open inquiry aiming toward truth that should characterize academia.

Dare we hope that the decline of Kendi’s center is another sign that we have reached “peak woke” and the tide is turning, as some have suggested?

Texas and Florida are dismantling the diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies that colonized their universities, and public institutions in Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia, and elsewhere have renounced the use of DEI statements in hiring.

Meantime, legislatures in Tennessee, Ohio, and elsewhere have created academic centers devoted to civic education and free expression. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against race-based college admissions. There is even some evidence that the number of cancellations on American campuses is declining.

These are small flickers of freedom against the backdrop of intolerance and ideology that still dominate our colleges and universities. These institutions are still overpopulated by those who would call themselves liberals or progressives or leftists. They have allowed too much of the ideology Kendi represents to become embedded within them. And looking to the future, survey data suggests that the next generation of college professors is already set in its even more intolerant ways.

But the reduction of Kendi’s center shows that things can change. As he and his former allies descend into infighting, we should slip past them and continue to build on the reforms that have begun.

Kendi famously and perversely claimed, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.” The remedy to Kendi’s supposedly antiracist ideology is to ignore this pernicious binary and cultivate institutions dedicated to truth and freedom that are based on merit, fairness, and equality.

This article appeared on Blaze Media on September 21, 2023.

The post As Ibram X. Kendi’s ex-colleagues turn against him, higher ed should turn against his ideas appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

The Supreme Court’s decisions addressed issues that originate from a much larger malady affecting colleges across the United States. That is, the erosion of the true function of higher education – the cultivation of polished, well-learned individuals capable of taking on the real world.  

Instead, our universities have become estranged from their intended purpose, sinking more than half of their students into debt in excess of $30,000, and have evolved into liberal hive minds. 

When I graduated in 1985, the annual cost of tuition at a public four-year institution was roughly $1,200. Today, that number is over $9,500. The eye-popping hike in the cost of higher education over the last several decades is due to two primary inputs, with inflation being a tertiary factor.

First, society has hoisted upon younger generations an obligation to attend college to succeed in life. The third-party payment model we employ allows young adults to plunge themselves into debt with little understanding of the tangible value of the degree and the stratified return-on-investment different fields of study confer to graduates. Over 2 million individuals now graduate with a bachelor’s degree each year, and because institutions know that there will always be a buyer, they have no incentive to reduce costs.  

Second, university expenditures have exploded due to the theme park-ification of campuses and administrative bloat. In 2021, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni released a meticulously detailed 52-page report on the runaway spending of colleges and universities. Using data from the Department of Education, the report revealed the drastic growth in spending on student services, which includes amenities, and the number of administrators has significantly outpaced instruction. 

Critics often contest my assertions in two ways that are important to address. First, that the federal government should increase subsidies to colleges and universities to reduce the costs of enrollment. That is a recipe for accelerating the woes we are currently witnessing and is a practical example of Einstein’s definition of insanity.  

And second, that student services are critical to the success of students and their wellbeing. While select services may offer value, such as career counseling, data suggests that there is almost no correlation between spending on student services and graduation rates. 

As a former member of a college board of trustees, I observed not only the steady growth in the cost of post-secondary education, but also the stunning forced progressive ideological shift of the school and others across the nation.  

The college president abused the authority of her office to push her own political views upon faculty and students with adverse repercussions should they not confirm. Since then, it has only gotten worse.  

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies are creeping into every administrative office, free speech on campuses is imperiled, and universities are becoming incubators of un-American, cult-like behavior. 

The disturbing ideological drift of American universities is a threat to this nation’s future, both philosophically and tangibly. The principles and rights enshrined in our Constitution are rapidly becoming incompatible with the progressive dogma proliferating on campuses today. 

And the quality of education students receive suffers when greater attention is given social justice theory than practical instruction. As a physician, I am particularly concerned by medical schools engaging in the woke social experiment by loosening application requirements and requiring diversity statements in the name of equity. 

We can continue to document, report and condemn illiberal radicalization of higher education, but without action, intellectual degeneracy and the ostracization of conservative principles will accelerate. 

I am outspoken about the woke progression of universities, lead on several pieces of legislation to combat the progressive blitz on campuses, and host an annual Congressional Campus Free Speech Roundtable to bring together key lawmakers, supportive outside groups and students to collaborate.

Everyone agrees reform is desperately needed, albeit in different ways, and the appetite for change is high. Conservatives must take our seat at the table and engage on this issue if we want to restore excellence in our universities and avoid losing support from young voters motivated by the enormous cost to attain a college degree. 

If we fail to meet the moment, we will allow the left to take ownership of this issue and define the policy narrative moving forward at great consequence.

This opinion piece appeared on Foxnews.com on August 7, 2023.

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Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Question 5

sdgjodfjgdfjgodfjgd

So… how do you think you did?

The correct answers, in order of the questions, are:

Question 1: What is Purdue?

Question 2: What is Rice

Question 3: What is Duke?

Question 4:  What is Notre Dame?

Question 5: What is the University of California–Berkeley?

Thank you, Jeopardy, for using the episode to highlight an issue that is no minor matter to the many Americans who increasingly find themselves priced out of a college education and paying more and more for a degree that often means less and less in the job market.

You should not have to be a Jeopardy champion to afford the cost of higher education, nor should seeking a degree put anyone in financial jeopardy. While one game show episode is not enough to motivate overpriced schools to tackle the tuition crisis, we hope it serves as another check on the conscience of school administrators who refuse to slash overhead, cut costs, and deliver more bang for the tuition buck.

Check out ACTA’s website, HowCollegesSpendMoney.com, for a deeper dive into the college spending crisis.  

The post College Affordability is in Jeopardy appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

College is really expensive. And it just keeps getting more expensive.

The average tuition at US private colleges grew by about 4% last year to just under $40,000 per year, according to data collected by US News & World Report. For a public in-state school, that cost was $10,500, that’s an annual increase of 0.8% for in-state students and about 1% for out-of-state.

But at highly rated or selective schools, the price tag increases substantially. Harvard University charges $57,246 in tuition and fees, per year, for undergraduate students. When you add in housing, food, books and other cost of living expenses, Harvard says you should expect to pay about $95,438 each year.

Harvard University stands in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 6, 2023.Brian Snyder/Reuters

It wasn’t always this way. After adjusting for currency inflation, college tuition has increased 747.8% since 1963, the Education Data Initiative found.

And between 1980 and 2020, the average price of tuition, fees, room and board for an undergraduate degree increased by 169%, according to a report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

That far outpaces wage increases.

Over the same 40-year period, earnings for workers ages 22 to 27 only increased by 19%, the report found.

That might explain why Americans’ confidence in higher education has dropped to a record low, according to a Gallup poll released this week. The June poll found that just 36% of Americans have confidence in higher education, down more than 20 percentage points from eight years ago.

“While Gallup did not probe for reasons behind the recent drop in confidence, the rising costs of postsecondary education likely play a significant role,” said Megan Brenan, a research consultant at Gallup.

So why is the price of college rising so rapidly?

The high cost of human teachers

It costs a lot to employ professors, said Catharine Hill, an economist with the education nonprofit organization Ithaka S&R and the former president of Vassar College.

“Higher education is primarily produced by skilled workers — faculty and administrators,” she said. “Their price in the economy has gone up.”

Real wages for US skilled workers have outpaced inflation by a couple of percentage points for long periods of time, but other industries have been able to offset those labor costs through productivity advances that reduce their reliance on skilled labor — things like AI and robotics.

But there aren’t many robots teaching college classes. You still need professors with expensive degrees to do that.

“We pretty much produce higher education the way we used to, which is a faculty member in front of a class of anywhere from 20 to 40 students,” said Hill. “That means that there haven’t been efficiency gains to reduce that cost.”

Some universities have been leaning more heavily on contingent, non-tenure track faculty with low pay and no access to employer-ee benefits in an attempt to save money. The higher education system has become increasingly dependent on this temporary labor, according to the National Education Association. Nearly 70% of US faculty members held a contingent position in fall 2021, up from 47% in 1987.

Competition for the richest families is driving up costs

Income inequality in the United States has grown significantly since the 1970s, and there’s a much wider gap between the rich and the average income earner today than there was back then.

In 2021, the top 10% of Americans held nearly 70% of US wealth, up from about 61% at the end of 1989, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The top 1% of earners in the United States now takes home 21% of all the income in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

That means a top-ranked university can charge whatever it wants and will still find wealthy families willing and able to pay each year.

“Flagship schools are competing for talented students and families that can pay the sticker price,” said Hill. These families “don’t have any trouble writing that check,” and are willing to spend more in exchange for luxe services and well-maintained campuses. “They want small classes, they want nice dormitories, they want good food,” said Hill.

If a school tried to scale back on spending and cut back on those amenities, she said, “they wouldn’t end up attracting those students.”

Colleges currently spend more on administrative services and luxuries than they ever have in the past, according to a recent study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. That type of spending grew by 29% between 2010 and 2018, compared to a 17% increase in spending on instructional staff.

State subsidies fall

State legislatures are also contributing less in their budgets to public education than they used to.

Between 2020 and 2021, state funding for higher education declined in 37 states by an average of 6%, according to a recent NEA analysis. “This means colleges and universities must rely on students to pay the cost of college — and those students are borrowing to do it,” wrote the NEA in a report.

Many students at the nation’s top universities who qualify are receiving a healthy amount of financial aid and other subsidies, greatly reducing the price they ultimately pay for their degrees. But not everyone benefits from financial aid and other subsidies.

The net price of college

Yes, sticker prices are increasing. But the net price of college — that’s the amount that students and their families are actually shelling out — has been decreasing.

The average student at a private four-year college paid $32,800 for tuition and room and board last year. When adjusted for inflation, the actual price paid for private college has dropped by 11% over the past five years, according to College Board data.

For public colleges, the net price averages out at just over $19,000 and has dropped 13% over the past five years.

What comes next

“These kinds of discussions about whether this ‘college cost disease’ could possibly continue, they existed 50 years ago too, with people saying, ‘oh, it couldn’t possibly go above $30,000. It couldn’t possibly go above $40,000,’” said Hill.

“On some level, if incomes continue to rise the way that they’ve been rising, I think it will go on for a while.”

Before adjusting for inflation, the average student loan debt at graduation has increased 2807% since 1970, according to the EDI. Even after adjusting for inflation, the average debt increased by 317%.

Student debt explosion

Late last month, the Supreme Court put the kibosh on President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, blocking millions of borrowers from receiving up to $20,000 in federal student debt relief, just months before student loan payments are set to restart after a yearslong pause. On Friday, the Biden administration said 804,000 borrowers will have a total of $39 billion worth of debt wiped away in the coming weeks.

There is about $1.6 trillion in outstanding loan debt in the United States.

This appeared on CNN Business on July 16, 2023.

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This webinar is part of The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s Institute For Effective Governance.

The post Student Debt and the Spending Crisis: What Trustees Need to Know to Spend Wisely appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

At first glance, the results are fairly shocking, as are the accompanying interviews with Americans who express regret at earning a college degree alongside a belief in the utilitarian nature of education. Fifty-six percent of respondents said going to college is “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.” Meanwhile, those in favor of the four-year degree are only in favor so far as it provides one with “a better chance to get a good job and earn more income.” The study illustrates the all-too common confusion about how best to determine college value and displays the trend of viewing the four-year degree as a tool for economic advancement rather than preparation for a meaningful life.

The WSJ-NORC study suggests that people are losing faith in the value of college because of rising tuition paired with low return on investment after college. This indicates that many Americans understand college “value” in monetary terms. Take, for example, the experiences of Danielle Tobias and Paulo Eskitch, quoted at length by the Journal. Ms. Tobias graduated from a liberal arts school with a degree in equine studies and an immense $85,000 in debt, while Mr. Eskitch received a master’s degree in music. Though they pursued their passions in college, both Ms. Tobias and Mr. Eskitch express regret that they did not choose to study other fields (welding, for example) that may have been more financially viable.

Their stories reflect the concerns of many struggling postgraduates of all ages: that the skills they learned in college have not transferred well to the working world. These findings indicate that there is often a dangerous mismatch between the fields that young people think will fulfill them personally and the disciplines that are truly viable in today’s economic landscape. Further, they reveal the dark reality that many universities are all too happy to saddle their students with debt that the credentials they earned at these very institutions may never be able to help them pay back.

One look at average annual tuition brings these concerns into sharp focus. For the year of 2021–22, the average Ivy cost $60,122, and the most popular liberal arts schools cost $58,870 on average. And though students bear responsibility for selecting their schools and majors, the higher education industry has lost its way, in many instances operating too much like a business, eating up staggering tuition and exorbitant fees while offering unfocused curricula and failing to equip students with the basic skills and knowledge they will need to succeed.

Against this reality, how do students determine which institutions are committed to providing a high-quality education that is worth the price, one that nurtures students’ intellectual growth while also equipping them with practical skills? Unbeknownst to many, there are in fact a number of excellent schools that do all these things and more. Through its What Will They Learn?® (WWTL) project, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni helps students and families focus on what matters most when determining college value: what students will actually learn in the classroom.

What Will They Learn?® assesses over 1,100 colleges and universities nationwide on the strength of their core curricula. Schools are rated on an “A” through “F” scale based on how many of the following seven essential subject areas they require students to study: Composition, Literature, (intermediate-level) Foreign Language, U.S. Government or History, Economics, Natural Science, and Mathematics. “A” schools are those that require six to seven of these subjects, while “B” schools require four to five subjects. Institutions that make careful effort to craft a rigorous general education program recognize the serious financial investments students are making. They are dedicated to shaping students into lifelong learners while also preparing them for successful careers.

Surprisingly, many schools that offer excellent core curricula often cost much less than typical four-year institutions. For the 2021–22 year, the public “A” and “B” schools, in-state students paid an average of $9,253, and out-of-state students paid an average of $21,051. Meanwhile, tuition at private “A” schools cost students an average of $33,034. Not only do many of these schools prioritize students’ future economic well-being by keeping costs low, but they also prioritize intellectual growth through their comprehensive core curricula, exposing students to diverse fields of study and fostering inquisitiveness and a love of learning.

Students who have studied a well-rounded core curriculum are prepared with critical, transferable skills that make them excellent job candidates in any field. A 2021 survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that employers seek job candidates whose undergraduate education provided them with a broad base of skills. Further, one study found that over the course of 40 years, graduates from liberal arts schools accumulated over 25% more earnings in their profession than other types of degree holders, providing evidence that the fruits of a strong core curriculum are perennial. It is no surprise then that many of the best schools assessed by What Will They Learn?® view college as the beginning—not the end—of students’ intellectual formation and as the gateway to future success wherever life might take them.

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The NCAA has a vested interest in this fiction, because the bulk of its annual $1.14 billion in revenue comes from its March Madness tournament. Critics fall into two broad camps. The first complains that those generating the cash—the players—are the only ones who aren’t paid. The other argues that college sports has become a big business, corrupting our universities.

Indeed, the NCAA even came up with its own metric—graduation success rate, or GSR—because it said that the federal graduation rate (used for students who don’t play sports) fails to capture the full reality of college athletes’ experiences. The great advantage of the GSR is that it allows college athletic departments to claim academic progress based on inflated numbers.

The proposed “solutions” depend on which complaint camp you fall into. Those who worry that universities are unfairly profiting off the labor of student-athletes favor ending the pretense of amateurism by paying them. One recent move in this direction was to allow college players to benefit from name, image and likeness deals. If a jock signs an NIL deal with a local car dealer, it allows the school to say it isn’t paying him. In fairness, this was largely forced on the NCAA by state legislatures.

By contrast, those concerned with colleges serving as de facto minor leagues for professional football and basketball have different priorities. They would like to see the NCAA—which just abolished its requirement for standardized tests—tighten academic standards. Though the economists’ answer—pay the players—is more honest, it’s a nonstarter because the whole attraction of college sports is the idea that the guy wearing the jersey is a student like everyone else.

What all these solutions have in common is university presidents, trustees and staffs outsourcing their primary responsibility to outsiders. But if a university won’t hold its students to academic standards, can we really expect the NCAA to do so?

Now imagine this: On the eve of March Madness, a university that has earned a slot gets in a dispute with the NCAA about the governing body’s new requirement that athletes maintain a minimum grade point average. Imagine too the university refuses to certify this for the NCAA, on the grounds that academic standards are none of the NCAA’s business. Actually, you don’t have to imagine it because it really happened—in March 1966, with the University of Pennsylvania.

That year the Penn men’s basketball team won its first-ever official Ivy League championship, going 19-6 overall. But the Quakers were ruled ineligible for the NCAA competition after the university refused to file a confirmation that Penn was in compliance with the minimum 1.6 GPA. Yale took the same position.

A New York Times article on March 5, 1966, laid out the university’s view:

“The chief contentions of the Ivy schools are (1) that the N.C.A.A. has no jurisdiction over academic standards and (2) that the Ivy standards are above 1.6, anyway.”

Try to imagine a college president today doing anything remotely similar. It’s impossible. For one thing, such a stand would be highly unpopular with students, alumni and fans. For another, today it would mean giving up significantly more revenue.

But the biggest difference between now and then is that the liberal academy has lost its nerve. In 1966, university presidents were confident enough to insist that when it came to a university’s mission, they knew their own business and would thus set and enforce their own rules. Excellent schools would take pride in having academic standards that were much higher than the NCAA minimums.

Today men’s college basketball is a $15.8 billion business, according to the NCAA. When the Final Four—the Miami Hurricanes, San Diego State Aztecs, Florida Atlantic Owls and University of Connecticut Huskies—meet on the court this weekend in Houston, their four head coaches will earn a combined $7.2 million in salary. One player, Hurricanes guard Nijel Pack, is being paid $800,000 in a two-year NIL deal. The rosters, moreover, are filled with transfers who assuredly did not enter the portal as students seeking a better engineering or philosophy program.

Still, the real disappointment isn’t the athletes, kids who can’t be blamed for getting what they can while they can. Or even the NCAA. It’s the universities, which have watered down their academics—and not just for athletes.

“Too many degrees are tickets to nowhere, and there ought to be more outrage and a reckoning,” says Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. “Over a third of our college seniors couldn’t show any significant cognitive gain for their college years.”

In 1966 when Penn—out of principle—told the NCAA to buzz off, many people, probably including the players on the Quaker team, thought it arrogant for the university to deny them an opportunity by refusing to accommodate. Today we see the alternative.

This post was originally posted in the Wall Street Journal on March 28, 2023.

The post Another Kind of March Madness: Tell the NCAA to Buzz Off appeared first on American Council of Trustees and Alumni.