Our Hopes for Higher Ed Reform in 2020

As priorities shift in the minds of higher education leaders and students, it’s important to take stock of recent changes on the local and national levels. At the Martin Center, we have our eyes on some reforms at the top of our list for 2020:

Jenna A. Robinson, President

More Colleges Experimenting with Income Share Agreements

Student debt poses a problem for many young people, especially those who are underemployed or unemployed after leaving college. A better alternative is Income Share Agreements (ISA). ISAs are contracts between students and their schools. The university pays for the student’s education and the student, after graduation, agrees to repay the university with a certain percentage of his or her income for a pre-determined number of years after graduation.

ISAs have several advantages over traditional debt. First, students know exactly how long it will take to “pay off” their debt since that’s part of the agreement from the beginning. Also, students who don’t earn very much money in their first jobs won’t be crushed by sky-high loan repayments. And there’s also no interest, which means that the balance won’t grow over time.

Most importantly, ISAs align the interests of students and schools because the school recoups more of its investment from students who graduate and find lucrative employment. Universities and students both have a financial stake in student success.

Purdue University was the first four-year school to offer ISAs. It began its “Back a Boiler” plan in 2016. Other schools that offer ISAs include Colorado Mountain College, Allan Hancock College in California, Lackawanna College in Pennsylvania, Clarkson University in New York, Norwich University in Vermont, and Messiah College in Pennsylvania.

In 2020, I’d like to see that list grow. ISAs are a powerful tool to prevent the worst consequences of excessive student borrowing.

More Due Process Protections for Students

Most students who face disciplinary actions on college campuses are treated as guilty until proven innocent. And the process for determining guilt is fraught with problems. Campus hearings often lack the kinds of procedural safeguards and basic fact-finding mechanisms that exist elsewhere in society.

In 2017, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) graded universities’ disciplinary proceedings. They found, “49 out of the 53 universities reviewed receive a grade of D or F from FIRE for at least one disciplinary policy, meaning that they fully provide no more than 4 of the 10 elements that FIRE considers critical to a fair procedure.”

Late last year, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights proposed new federal regulations that would require schools to provide many important procedural safeguards. But those regulations haven’t been finalized—and could be changed by future administrations. States should act to enshrine due process on public university campuses.

I hoped to see legislative action on this topic in 2019, but there has been little activity. Last year at this time, I wrote:

States should remedy this problem—at least at public colleges and universities—by adopting legislation that guarantees student defendants the right to counsel, requires parties to make good-faith efforts to exchange evidence, and allows students and their advocates to make opening and closing statements, and to present and question witnesses.

States should also ensure that accused students are given adequate notice of adjudication processes, including details of the allegations. Most importantly, states should demand that universities use “clear and convincing evidence” as the standard of proof of responsibility for proving sexual misconduct.

For the many students facing university disciplinary proceedings, the Education Department has been too slow to act. States should move forward on this issue.

Jay Schalin, Director of Policy Analysis

Leaders Should Start to Lead

One thing I’d like to see for the New Year is for the University of North Carolina Board of Governors to grow a spine and become a serious force for reform. I’m not holding my breath on this one; the cluelessness exhibited by that body over the last year or so has been breath-taking.

This lack of awareness was on full display in the Silent Sam debacle, in which they tried to avoid criticism and please all the various factions when no such compromise position existed.

There was clearly only one appropriate move: to keep the statue on the campus and to come down hard on anybody who committed an illegal act (meaning expulsion for students, firing for staff, and full prosecution for outsiders).

Instead of facing up to the actual problem of mob rule, the board sought some sort of sweet spot that would appease the radicals on both the left and right while ignoring the 65 percent of the population who wanted the statue restored. So how is that working out for them? Apparently not so well; their critics are more intense than ever and the credibility of the board is at a low.

The board may try to excuse their sorry solution by claiming it “allows the University to move forward and focus on its core mission of educating students.” But they cast aside the real opportunity for education. Long after the classroom quotations and equations are forgotten, the real lessons offered by the sad saga of Silent Sam will remain, including:

When you don’t get your way through ordinary processes, resort to mob violence.

Authorities are essentially cowards who will back down when threatened with adverse publicity.

Respectful negotiation, compromise, and trying to understand other perspectives are for losers. The loudest voices get their way.

So, it would be nice if the board were to regard Silent Sam as a teachable moment for themselves, realize that appeasement is no way to govern, and take a proactive approach to reform a system that is losing its way.

Institution-Building May Be the Last Resort

My other wish is predicated upon the unlikelihood that we will see any serious reform in higher education. Given that unfortunate state of affairs, I would like to see a flowering of alternative institutions that will uphold standards and teach the best-known truths rather than what is fashionable or politically expedient. They can be entirely new colleges, or they can be centers, institutes, and programs that maintain some degree of independence as part of existing campuses.

Over the last 20 years, there has been an explosion of such centers. Many of them continue to thrive and influence their campuses. However, others are starting to suffer from attempts to subvert them, limit their ability to disrupt the academic zeitgeist, and drive them off-campus. One pernicious development is the “UnKoch my Campus” campaign, which attempts to destroy any centers that take money from the Koch Foundation.

(Although, maybe that’s not the worst idea ever. Maybe there should be a new organization called “UnSoros My Campus.”)

On the other hand, new college start-ups with traditional, Christian, conservative or unique emphases have been few and far between. A couple of them were founded in North Carolina recently, but they are the exceptions. One reason is the lack of awareness of the need to for alternate institutions. Prosperous people continue to give big donations to their alma maters that are then used to undo everything these same donors hold dear. Talented students still want to attend the most prestigious schools rather than seek alternatives that may provide a better education.

And, even when donors do look for alternative ways to give, their money goes to well-funded schools such as Hillsdale College or Liberty University.

I’m hoping these established patterns will change and we will start to see more start-ups of both colleges and centers. It may be that the only way to have intellectual diversity is to have institutional diversity.

George Leef, Director of Research

How About a National Conversation on Diversity?

As president, Bill Clinton declared that America needed a “national conversation” on race. We never had much of a real conversation, however, but rather we suffered a one-sided, divisive harangue from progressives.

Although that “conversation” didn’t work out, we could use a true conversation in the coming year on the related subject of diversity.

Ever since the mania for diversity, especially in academia, arose in the 1970s, we have had a torrent of pro-diversity claims from advocates of group balancing to achieve greater “fairness.” We have heard over and over that diversity creates vital educational benefits, heals racial misunderstandings, prepares Americans for a diverse world, and so forth. Occasionally, those assertions are questioned, but those who dare to do so are shouted down (figurative, and sometimes literally) by diversity advocates who never doubt their own beliefs.

A true national conversation on diversity would mean that Americans get the chance to hear the arguments that diversity doesn’t bring educational benefits (consider, e.g., Professor Charles Geshekter’s rebuttal to a so-typical book entitled An Inclusive Academy) and that the obsession with hiring people from “underrepresented” groups is a serious impediment to academic excellence (as Heather Mac Donald demonstrates in her recent book The Diversity Delusion.).

In short, America needs a conversation in which the purported benefits of choosing people based on their ancestry are weighed against the costs of doing so. No claim should be accepted or rejected out of hand but evaluated based on evidence.

There is a huge obstacle to such a conversation, however. The pro-diversity people have gotten their way and don’t care for challenges. Almost no higher education leader has come forth to say, “While I have supported diversity efforts, there are sound reasons to doubt that they’ve had the rosy effects I envisioned. People who criticize diversity admissions and programs are not evil, and they make some strong arguments.”

Evidence against the diversity obsession is mounting. What we need now is for a prominent academic leader to say that it’s time to consider stopping it.

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How Medical Schools Are Polarizing Tomorrow’s Doctors

To be a successful doctor, it is no longer enough to make an accurate diagnosis and recommend an effective treatment. Today’s medical schools want their students to be well-versed in politics—and not just any politics, but issues embraced by the left. Left-leaning issues are weaving their way into the curriculum and woe to those who speak out, including faculty members.

Climate change is the newest charge. A coalition of nearly 200 health professional schools supports an initiative, backed by the American Medical Association (AMA), to instruct students on how the changing planet is impacting health and altering the course of illness and disease.

One could argue all the hysteria surrounding climate change is creating a medical issue, anxiety, especially among children. That is not, however, what the proponents of “climate medicine” have in mind. The movement is aimed at influencing world view—to train tomorrow’s doctors to look at disease and illness through a political lens of doom and gloom.

A sampling of some of the courses being offered in medical school paints a fuller picture of the inroads that climate alarmism has made.

The University of Colorado School of Medicine offers a course, Climate Medicine, that not only includes field trips to Rocky Mountain National Park but also teaches students how to write op-eds on the subject of climate change. The school also offers a fellowship focused on “climate change and health policy” for physicians.

A “Brain and Behavior” lecture at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel explores how fossil-fuels are related to neurodegenerative conditions.

Stanford University School of Medicine student Anna Goshua told the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) that she and other students are actively working on making climate change a regular part of her school’s curriculum. An elective will be offered starting in winter 2020.

“We’re the ones who are going to find ourselves on the frontlines of climate change. It’s important to be able to deal with these evolving threats and meet the needs of the people we’re going to be serving,” Goshua said.

Other “environmentally friendly” issues working their way into medical schools include gun control, gender identity, immigration, racism, social justice, and income inequality. No longer are these topics relegated to the off-campus settings of political activism. Now, they’re finding “safe spaces” in lecture halls, student conferences, and seminars.

Learning how to treat the effects of gun violence concerns those who will work in an emergency room, but instruction on gun violence is increasingly morphing into promotion of gun control. With the support of activist organizations, such as Scrubs Addressing the Firearms Epidemic (SAFE), students and faculty are lobbying deans to bring firearm injury prevention into medical school classrooms.

Curriculum advisors, like Stanford University School of Medicine’s Dr. Neil Gesundheit, are already on board. Gesundheit told WAMU radio he believed gun violence deserved the same attention as colon cancer and the way to get it into more medical school curriculums is to work more closely with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The idea is to get future doctors comfortable asking patients about gun ownership. The AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Academy of Family Practitioners have publicly weighed in on gun control policies.

SAFE holds rallies on medical school campuses, distributing free scrubs with SAFE’s bright red logo. “As future health professionals, especially physicians, we have huge amounts of power in our society,” Columbia University medical school student Mattie Renn told CNN. A political agenda is thus seeping into what should be purely medical instruction.

Medical schools are also trying to “move the needle” on social justice. The Yale School of Medicine (YSM), for example, makes no secret of its objective as it describes on its website the “concerted effort” by faculty, students, and staff to address “the marginalization of members of our society due to race, socioeconomic status, gender and sexual identity, education, or other factors.”

YSM offers a “U.S. Health Justice” elective. First-year medical students are required to take a course entitled “Making the Invisible Visible: Art, Identity & Hierarchies of Power.” But that is just the beginning of this initiative, as “there remains a need” to incorporate social justice even more broadly into the curriculum, according to the website.

Faculty have spoken out about this politicization of the medical school curriculum but have done so at their own peril. In an op-ed, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb described how he was “chastised” for not including climate change in the curriculum when he was an associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.

Dr. Goldfarb explains how all of these political perspectives are finding their way into our medical schools: “As concerns about social justice have taken over undergraduate education, graduate schools have raced to develop curricula that will steep future educators in the same ideology. Today, a master’s degree in education is often what it takes to qualify for key administrative roles on medical school faculties.”

He fears that medical education will become more and more politicized, writing, “Curricula will increasingly focus on climate change, social inequities, gun violence, bias and other progressive causes only tangentially related to treating illness.”

Furthermore, medical students looking for at least open debate on highly charged topics such as climate change, gun control, and social justice are finding their graduate programs no different from the left-leaning echo chambers of undergraduate institutions.

“In many cases, there is a strong bias in the selection of speakers and guests the school chooses to invite,” Anthony Fappiano, a third-year medical student at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, told the author. “In a class of 180 students and your professors, it can be challenging to speak up and discuss a more conservative or libertarian point of view.”

Frappiano says some of his fellow students stopped speaking to him after learning his viewpoint. “There were many times students would tell me I wanted poor people to die,” he said.

“There is an implicit understanding in medical schools that it is, for some reason, taboo that physicians should discuss or have any expectation of compensation,” said Chad Savage, M.D and owner of YourChoice Direct Care, a direct primary care practice in medicine. “It is somehow unseemly to expect compensation, and this engenders the belief that the only way to partake of medical care is via governmental transaction.”

Finally, who gets admitted to medical school is becoming more a matter of attitude and less a matter of academic ability. That is facilitated by the inclusion of more subjective questions on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).

The new MCAT, introduced in 2015, now takes nearly eight hours to complete and has a new section called “Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior.” It also renamed the “Verbal Reasoning” section to “Critical Analysis and Reasoning.” These sections ask test takers to consider an author’s point of view.

Behind this “holistic” approach is a man who has made no secret of his politics: AAMC’s president emeritus, Darrell Kirch, M.D., president and CEO of AAMC from 2006 to 2019. In a 2011 speech, Kirch referred to himself as a man on a mission to transform health care.

In 2015, Kirch praised the White Coats for Black Lives Movement, stating, “as community healers and leaders, we must do our part to address the systemic issues relating to inequality, social exclusion, racism, and bias that all too often are linked to the problem of violence in our society.”

Choosing a class that reflects the nation’s demographics is a respectable goal, but not if it comes at the expense of rejecting more qualified candidates.

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