Academic Freedom Does Not Depend on Federal Grants

The Department of Education has faced criticism for its recent investigation into Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill’s joint Consortium for Middle East Studies.

School faculty, academic associations, and the American Civil Liberties Union have called the investigation a threat to academic freedom. But their odd interpretation of academic freedom could signal danger for true academic autonomy.

In September, the Department of Education published a letter to Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill suggesting that the schools’ joint Consortium for Middle East Studies does not qualify for a federal grant. The Department indicated that federal grants go to programs that provide, among other things, a “national resource” for teaching a modern language and the instruction needed to provide a full understanding of areas, regions, or countries in which that modern language is used.

The Middle East Consortium does not meet these criteria, the Department wrote, because, among other shortcomings, it does not teach foreign language competency—only 14 percent of students (960 of 6,791) in grant-sponsored programs participate in foreign language classes, let alone achieve mastery. In addition, the consortium does not offer instruction to provide students with a full understanding of the regions studied—it offers few if any programs focused on the historic discrimination faced by religious minorities in the Middle East or the positive aspects of religions other than Islam.

In response, 62 Duke University faculty wrote:

The Department of Education investigation targeted a Middle East center, but should concern all of us. . . At stake, in the current moment, is the ability of Universities to operate freely and openly without the fear of censure, and the ability of faculty to determine what they ‘teach, how they teach it, what they choose to research or write about, or who can speak on our campus.’

But it is the Duke faculty view that is concerning

The faculty suggest that cutting government grants from an academic program because the grant-making body disapproves of it, is censorship. If they are right, then academic freedom means never withdrawing federal grants. Such a view asserts that doing so would jeopardize the freedom of that program to continue to offer its unique teaching methods and content.

In the long run though, this view fosters a troubling preference for existing programs over new ones. Since funds are limited, the Department of Education cannot fund every possible grant applicant. Yet, if they stop providing grants to any program, Duke’s faculty suggest they are violating academic freedom. To protect academic freedom therefore, the Department must continue funding today’s programs regardless of the quality and potential of future programs.

Worse still, the Duke Faculty view invites further government control of academia. By their reasoning, choosing one grant applicant over another could mean preferring one view over another—a violation of academic freedom. Assuming the Department of Education had enough resources therefore, they should provide grants to all applicants. This position would likely inspire more academic institutions to apply for and receive federal grants, but with those grants more academic institutions would be forced to abide by federal compliance requirements that are part and parcel of the grants. For example, those who receive federal funds cannot discriminate based on sex. By some interpretations, that means schools receiving federal funds must accommodate transgender locker room and restroom preferences.

These regulations can leave little autonomy for educational organizations that wish to maintain religious standards or provide as they see fit for the comfort and safety of their students.

Schools should certainly be free to engage in discussion that generates, explores, and challenges new and even controversial ideas. The Supreme Court affirmed this freedom in Healy v. James (1972) where a unanimous majority wrote:

"The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools. . . The college classroom with its surrounding environs is peculiarly the ‘market place of ideas,’ and we break no new constitutional ground in reaffirming this Nation’s dedication to safeguarding academic freedom."

But the freedom to discuss, teach, or explore controversial subjects has never depended on government financial support. Nor should it.

If Duke’s faculty truly support academic freedom, they might consider welcoming the withdrawal of federal grants. Without them, University professors would be free to teach what they see as important and how they think best, without fear of losing federal funding or needing to comply with federal policies.

Better yet, those truly interested in safeguarding academic freedom should consider turning their attention to the colleges and universities that truly threaten it by forbidding students from speaking, protesting, or gathering signatures for causes they support unless they are in “free speech zones” or by punishing students for speech crimes they may not even know they’ve committed.

There are certainly threats to academic freedom that deserve attention, but at least today, they do not come from the Department of Education’s grant-making decisions.

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The New Campus Housing Bubble

Richard Vedder

My good friend, banker-scholar Alex Pollack of the R Street Institute, has shared with me some startling new data. High priced, comparatively luxury college student housing has been popular, and in this century lots of apartment complexes have been built with many amenities—granite or marble counter-tops, fancy swimming pools or saunas, etc. With unemployment rates below four percent and low overall real estate delinquency since recovering from the traumas of a decade or more ago, this sector should be booming. But according to a story published by Wolf Street (Wolf Richter), delinquencies are rising dramatically.

Mortgages for commercial apartment buildings are packaged together into commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS). While government sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae do much of this, there has been growing private sector involvement, trying to capture what has been regarded as a hot and growing market—nice housing for affluent students. Now, however, some 10.1 % of CMBS for student housing is either delinquent or in “special serving” (approaching delinquency). That compares with a low, normal 1.8% for other types of CMBS (e.g, non-student apartment housing). Moreover, deeper analysis shows the delinquency rate is even higher on student housing built recently.

College enrollments rose nicely from 1636 to 2010, with occasional short interruptions for wars, depressions, etc. Income levels were also rising, increasing the demand for higher education. The proportion of the college age population that was comparatively affluent, wanting to live in expensive private housing instead of commuting to school from home grew as well. All of that suggested “luxury campus housing is a growth industry.“

The biggest competition to private housing was the colleges themselves. Greedy universities were raising their own room charges very aggressively (far more than for ordinary rental housing), increasing student demand for non-college provided living spaces.

But then came the Big Change, recognized only very recently. Total college enrollments began falling starting early in this decade, and the earlier growth in the residential four year university population diminished. Comparatively low interest rates resulting from loose Federal Reserve monetary policy lowered financing costs, encouraging new speculative housing ventures. Large increases in student indebtedness and the problems arising from it became increasingly publicized, perhaps giving more students and their parents reason to pause about spending large sums on living accommodations.

Heightened talk about recent college graduates living in their parent’s basement while working as a Starbucks barista perhaps cooled the ardor for luxury housing. The growing largely correct perception that investing in college is somewhat risky may be leading people to either consider alternatives to college or to at least constrain college costs with cheaper housing. Excessive exuberance on the part of real estate investors is reaping its toll.

Looking beyond the collegiate scene, one could argue that there are some indications that the bad habits that led to the 2008 financial crisis are reasserting themselves. Is the luxury private college housing market a leading indicator of a new general housing bubble? Hopefully and probably not, but it is a chilling thought.

That raises a public policy issue. Why should the federal government be lending $1.5 trillion that it has to borrow itself, often to young persons from moderately affluent families, in some cases continuing the lending for six, eight or ten years (through graduate and professional school)? More broadly and provocatively, why should taxpayers be funding state universities, a significant proportion of whose students are from affluent families often living in luxury housing? Why subsidize affluent kids to live in luxury with their swimming pools and marble counter tops? The data from Raj Chetty and associates show that the top American universities are filled with students disproportionately from the top quarter of the income distribution, so funding these schools is therefore likely highly regressive—middle or lower income taxpayers are helping fund the education of relatively affluent kids.

The over-investment in college funded by a dysfunctional federal student financial assistance program clearly hurts many beside students attending school. There are investors losing money on seemingly safe CMBS securities. There are merchants and their employees in college towns suffering as enrollments at the non-elite schools fall. There are, of course, staff at the schools themselves. Educational over-exuberance has many casualties.

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Australia: Mandatory maths won’t STEM decline

Even with 400 hours of secondary school mathematics under their belts, it seems that Year 10 students in New South Wales remain underprepared for the 21st century. One proposed remedy is to make mathematics compulsory from Kindergarten through to Year 12.

Prioritising mathematics was announced as part of the NSW Government’s promise to ‘take the curriculum back to the basics’ — apparently in response to the interim findings of the recent NSW Curriculum Review.

Unfortunately, with the Review’s author conceding that the main question is whether the proposed reforms are even heading in the right direction, the report epitomises the lack of clarity, vision and strategy in Australian education.

Weirdly, while chewing up a lot of taxpayer dollars, the NSW Review is being undertaken well before a planned review of the Australian Curriculum in 2020. So policy decisions will be made for students and teachers in one state that may turn out to be even less aligned to practices applying to students across the country than they are now.

Rather than starting with a post-mortem of how we got into the current mess, the NSW effort echoes other misguided reviews, showing a fixation on globalisation and technological threats and promoting yet more educational experiments.

Technology specialist and CEO of global marketing company Freelancer, Matt Barrie, recently referred to Australian education as a “basket case” that produces “avocado toast” graduates whose poor skills – especially in computer science and engineering – explain the national slump in productivity.

Any curriculum can set forward priorities. The NSW Government seems intent on bringing mathematics to the fore, but does this make STEM the holy grail?

Education systems that regularly outperform Australia do not expect their school leavers only to master STEM subjects. In Finland and Singapore, for example, there is also an intensive, sustained focus on languages and humanities subjects. Producing well-educated citizens who can contribute to the national good is a sophisticated undertaking.

Improvements do not come from the ad hoc compilation of ideas or from intermittently bolting subjects on to the curriculum.

A more constructive approach would be to identify policy mistakes that have let down many young Australians, but which have been cleverly avoided by high-performing school systems elsewhere.

This should include an honest analysis of what has worked, what has gone wrong and why, and what can be done – without fear or favour – to change things for the better for future generations.

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