Thanks to coronavirus and Zoom, we’re looking at the end stages of college as a commodity

A pandemic is an essentializing force; it strips away the frosting of rhetoric and habit and forces us to confront bare realities. Nowhere is this more apparent than in higher education, which over the past few decades has been one of two sectors that have just kept increasing their prices, the share of national income and, of course, the share of our attention they claim.

The other one is health care, and in both cases, Americans justified the increased spending in contradictory ways — invoking both pragmatic benefits and airy ideals such as “scholarship” or “caring,” which denied the necessity of even appealing to necessity. To skeptics viewing luxury dormitories and multimillionaire cardiologists, this always sounded a bit like middle-age men selling doubtful wives on a BMW’s engineering — “You can’t put a price on safety, honey.” But we all bought it, and in the case of health care, America has now had an accident that retroactively justified the expenditure — or at least left us in no mood to argue about it.

But colleges are in the opposite position. As students balked at full tuition for online education, Elizabeth Cohen, a political science professor at Syracuse University, set off a minor Twitter storm: “Working at a college or university right now is hearing a lot of people say that they should pay less for something you’re working twice as hard to make available for them.”

A follower responded, “Your customers are telling you that the value of your now remotely-delivered product is less than you want them to pay.” Another academic account fired back: “STUDENTS ARE NOT CUSTOMERS.”

And now we get to the essentializing, because the pandemic has made something undeniable: To a large extent, students have become customers. And professors should acknowledge their own role in getting us to that point, because the commodification of higher education is a direct byproduct of the transformation of college into the entrance examination for America’s middle class, something the professoriate has cheered on.

Sure, students are buying a complex bundle that’s rarely described as a “product.” But if you doubt colleges are selling, you need look only at the glossy marketing campaigns. And if you think they’re mostly selling learning, consider this thought experiment from economist Bryan Caplan: If you had to choose, would you rather have four years of Princeton University classes but no diploma, or the diploma, but no classes?

Maybe you’d choose the classes; if so, you’re in the minority. Most students are primarily buying something else — a credential, a social network — not a “community of learning.” Which is not to say that this is what they should be buying, or that we should even think of it as a “purchase.”

Markets are terrific, and we need them, but we also need institutions that are buffered from them. When those buffers break down, as they have in America’s colleges, dysfunction ensues. University business-think has meant bureaucratic overgrowth and an obsession with useless “metrics” — assessing faculty using student evaluations rather than student learning, goosing “selectivity” by soliciting applications in order to reject them.

Professors rightly resist these developments. But what else could you expect once colleges became the gatekeeper to all the good jobs? Now most everyone needs to go, regardless of their interest in learning. And an essentially scholarly enterprise doesn’t serve most of those people well.

So instead, U.S. higher education bundled “teaching and research” with a bunch of other things — residential amenities, sports teams, networking opportunities, career coaching, dating service and so forth. Among other effects, all this initially created a booming demand for professors; their numbers quintupled from 1940 to 1970 and then almost doubled again by 1988. Without that shift, most of the professors complaining about the commercialization of education would have had to take jobs in actual businesses.

The bundle was still tightly woven enough, however, that we could tell ourselves the learning was still the heart of the package. Then covid-19 came, and suddenly, the lectures and the homework were the only part schools could still deliver. Yet somehow, few students seem reassured that they’re getting most of what they were paying tuition for.

Deep down, even university presidents knew this would be the case, which is why so many spent the summer pretending they were going to find some way to reopen, in many cases announcing the truth only when the tuition checks were well in hand. One can imagine a university in which this sort of at-best-wishful thinking wasn’t necessary, one that defined its community narrowly around education. Such schools probably couldn’t enroll nearly half of all high school graduates, but on the other hand, in our current situation, they might have kept the ones they did sign up.

Instead, some decades ago, U.S. higher education reimagined itself as the ticket to secure white-collar employment. And like most of the other organizations that supported themselves by selling a lot of tickets, they’re going to have to rethink that business model.

SOURCE 






4 States Supporting Private Schools With COVID-19 Relief Lead Way on Education Choice

When COVID-19 brought the school year to an abrupt halt early this year, few anticipated that the global pandemic would be the impetus for private school choice reforms across the nation.

As is the case with so many other sectors, many private schools struggled after losing tuition and other funding resources due to the strains of COVID-19.

In fact, the libertarian Cato Institute reported that as of this month, 115 private schools had announced permanent closures.

That means that more than 15,400 children lost their schools. The estimated transfer cost of these students to public schools is more than $278.3 million.

Recognizing what the loss of education options would mean for families, policymakers in six states proposed emergency private school scholarships in response to the crisis.

Four of those states—Florida, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and South Carolina—used emergency federal funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to expand private school choice options.

The CARES Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in June, authorized $3 billion for the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, or GEER, a flexible grant that governors can use for education-related programs.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, used a portion of his state’s GEER funds to craft “Stay in School” scholarships, providing $10 million to cover tuition at Oklahoma’s 150 private schools for children from low-income families whose incomes have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 1,500 Oklahoma children could receive a scholarship worth $6,500 each. That covers all or most of the average annual cost of private school tuition in Oklahoma, which is about $5,000 for elementary students and about $7,000 for secondary students.

The scholarship amount, however, is still less than the average per-pupil amount, $8,778, spent annually by Oklahoma public schools.

Oklahoma students also will have access to the $8 million Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet education savings account-style funding, which is funded by GEER and will provide more than 5,000 children living in poverty with $1,500 grants to “purchase curriculum content, tutoring services and/or technology.”

In the era of pandemic pods, this is critical policy.

Likewise, South Carolina used its GEER funds to create a private school scholarship program for children from low- and middle-income families. For instance, children living at or below 300% of the federal poverty line could be awarded a scholarship of about $6,500.

Other states used these funds to bolster existing private school choice programs such as tax credit scholarships.

For example, New Hampshire under Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, boosted funding for the state’s tax credit scholarship by $1.5 million. The state’s tax credit scholarship allows individuals and businesses to receive tax credits for donating to nonprofits that fund private school scholarships.

Since 2015, New Hampshire’s tax credit scholarship has allocated $3.8 million to help 1,377 children attend private schools of their choice. The additional emergency funds will help 800 children receive scholarships valued at $1,875 each. That amount covers more than 22% of the average cost of tuition at a private elementary school in the state.

Like New Hampshire, Florida used $30 million of its GEER funds to stabilize its tax credit scholarship.

At the same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, also put $15 million toward the Private School Stabilization Grant Fund. Private schools are eligible for this grant if they were hard hit by the pandemic and if more than 50% of the student body uses school choice scholarships.

Never missing a beat, special interest groups have alleged that efforts in those states to use GEER funds to support families accessing education options of choice will hurt public schools.

Yet, public schools in Florida, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and South Carolina received a combined $1.1 billion from the CARES Act. Of that, the total governors’ discretionary funds accessible to children enrolled in private schools in the respective states totaled $96.5 million.

Taxpayers and state policymakers, however, are right to balk at the new federal education funding.

The $13.5 billion CARES Act, along with the $3 billion in GEER funding, is significant new federal spending, representing more than 25% of what the federal government spends yearly on K-12 education through the Department of Education’s discretionary budget.

However, as The Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Butcher wrote: “If the funds already are appropriated for education, as it is with CARES spending, then there is no more effective purpose than to give every child a chance at the American dream with more learning options.”

Moving forward, state policymakers should make sure that the emergency private school scholarships become permanent, funding them through changes to state policy.

Rethinking how education funding is delivered, through more nimble models, such as education savings accounts, should remain a permanent feature of the education policy landscape. Moves in these states are steps in the right direction.

SOURCE 






It's Time to Rethink Campus Policies

College students are not adults.

There. I said it.

To be clear, I am not referring to "re-entry" students, those who enroll after working for some years, or after serving in the military. I am referring to the "traditional" college student -- i.e., the 18- or 19-year-old who attends college right out of high school.

They are adults in a legal sense. As such, they have certain legal rights (for example, the right to vote) and responsibilities (such as serving in the military if the draft is ever reinstated). And, certainly, many will appear to be physically mature. But in what should be the most meaningful senses -- emotional and psychological maturity -- they are not.

This is not mere opinion. Research has proven that the human brain is not fully developed until the mid-20s. Adolescents and older teens make decisions using the amygdala -- the part of the brain associated with emotion. By contrast, adults with fully developed brains analyze information using the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with impulse control and long-term thinking.

A 2010 article from the Journal of Adolescent Health says: "(T)here is little empirical evidence to support age 18, the current legal age of majority, as an accurate marker of adult capacities. ... Where specifically, along the maturational path of cognitive and emotional development, individuals should be given certain societal rights and responsibilities continues to be a topic of intense interest. Increasingly, neuroscience has been called on to inform this question."

One of the questions higher education should be asking, in light of scientific evidence, is whether it's time to reconsider campus policies that permit the freewheeling liberties college students have taken -- often to their detriment -- for the past 40 to 50 years.

The cultural consensus used to be that it takes time, structure and meaningful limits -- gradually removed -- for young people to successfully transition to responsible adulthood. On college campuses, that consensus took the form of policies like housemothers or other adults in residence at fraternities and sororities; curfews or parietals for on-campus housing; single-sex dormitories; restrictions on alcohol use (reinforced in some cases by the state drinking age); and even dress codes for class attendance.

But by the late 1960s and early 1970s, most schools had eliminated these policies. Some of the changes were part and parcel of the so-called sexual revolution, and others were driven by reactions to the Vietnam War and the draft. But the rationale behind the arguments for abolition of limits was essentially the same: that college students were adults and should be treated as adults, including allowing them to make their own decisions.

Some four or five decades later, it's clear how wrong that was.

A student editorial in The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides an excellent example. UNC-Chapel Hill, like many universities across the country, tried to bring students back to campus this fall and restore some sort of normalcy after COVID-19 sent everyone home mid-spring semester. But despite very few COVID cases on campus when students returned, clusters of infections were springing up across campus within days, creating consternation and concerns.

The apparent source of the transmissions? Parties. UNC reversed course and announced the move to completely online learning.

The editorial expressed outrage that the editors claim reflects the sentiments of the student body: "(U)niversity leadership should have expected students, many of whom are now living on their own for the first time, to be reckless. Reports of parties throughout the weekend come as no surprise. Though these students are not faultless, it was the University's responsibility to disincentivize such gatherings by reconsidering its plans to operate in-person earlier on."

UNC is not alone. Other universities such as the University of Alabama, the University of North Georgia, Oklahoma State University and now my own university, Notre Dame, have seen a dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases on campus, largely attributable to student parties, and despite repeated warnings by university leadership.

If this behavior were confined to the past year, one could argue that it was a function of the global pandemic, a unique circumstance without precedent in the past 100 years. Further, many people know no one who has had the virus, or who has had a serious case. College students could be forgiven for underestimating its gravity.

But COVID-19 isn't the only example. We have plenty of proof that college students make poor decisions in an environment of unfettered freedom: rampant alcohol and other substance abuse; rising numbers of students with serious mental health issues; and irresponsible or even dangerous sexual behavior including the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and sexual assault.

College students cannot have it both ways. If they wish to be treated as adults, they must be able to demonstrate that they can behave as adults. If their position is that they will be "reckless" and irresponsible unless prevented by actual adults from behaving that way, then we should take them at their word -- especially in light of what we know about their cognitive development.

It's time to admit the mistakes of the past and craft campus policies that better protect our young people while they learn to take on adult responsibilities.  College students won't like it. But then, we shouldn't expect them to.

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Australian universities plead for fee rises to be scaled back and places increased

A group of Australian universities has called on the Morrison government to scale back the size of proposed fee increases while also warning that the number of student places needs to grow even faster than planned.

As the government considers the final shape of its higher education package, which it wants to legislate before the end of this year, the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) network is pushing for changes that would protect students and universities from dramatic changes in fees and funding.

IRU – which represents seven comprehensive universities including Western Sydney University, La Trobe University and Griffith University – argues in a submission that the government should “rework the student charges so that no unit is subject to a charge higher than the current highest rate”.

In order to ensure its proposal remained budget neutral, the IRU says the government could simultaneously “raise the lower rates proposed to offset this”.

The IRU is also seeking a second change to the package to ensure that universities do not receive less funding for each student on average than they currently do.

“As we explore the detail and universities model the period to 2024, there is less and less comfort that the funds saved are all being returned in other ways,” the submission states.

“Revenue for STEM and agriculture ought not to reduce if more graduates with these skills are required.”

In a third major change, the IRU calls on the federal government to support faster growth in the number of university places.

“Additional growth places are needed since the number planned will only just cover the population growth in the younger age groups in the short term and will fall well short towards the end of the decade,” it states.

The education minister, Dan Tehan, unveiled the “job-ready graduates” package in June, proposing to reduce the overall government contribution to degrees from 58% to 52% on average and increase fees for some courses to help pay for 39,000 extra university places by 2023 and almost 100,000 extra places by 2030.

But the package has attracted controversy over some heavy increases in student fees – for example 113% for the humanities – and because the government has no modelling about whether the changes will incentivise students to study science instead of humanities, the rationale provided by Tehan.

The Nationals have also expressed fears that the inclusion of social work, behavioural science and mental health in that highest paying cluster will hurt regional areas, which have already suffered from a lack of access to mental health support.

The regional education minister, Andrew Gee, who is from the Nationals, issued a statement under his ministerial banner last week describing this aspect as “a glaring and potentially detrimental design flaw” that could harm women, mature students and regional Australia more generally.

Tehan responded to that broadside by saying he would listen to all feedback as part of the consultation process. Monday was the deadline for submissions on the draft bill, which was released six days earlier.

The IRU submission says it supports the need for the package overall, noting it “seeks to reverse the steady decline in the value of university funding through effective indexation and provide a mechanism for growth in the future that will meet likely demand”.

But it is pushing for several changes, including removing many elements of the “student protection” schedule of the bill. This is the portion that includes cutting off commonwealth support for students who fail more than half of eight units in their first year of study.

IRU says the government “should leave universities to administer their policies and continue with performance measures that include the successful passing of units as one marker”.

It argues those elements are part of “a major extension of regulation over universities, with a limited evidence base for the need”.

“It is an extension of micro regulation to universities contrary to the government’s commitment to reduce red tape and inefficient barriers to effective practice,” the submission states.

Universities Australia, an umbrella body, has also raised concern about the issue of student success and commonwealth support.

The chief executive, Catriona Jackson, said universities already had “a range of measures in place to ensure satisfactory academic progress within their chosen course”.

“As we understand it the new legislation means students must pass more than half of the units in a course to retain commonwealth support, but that students can change direction, or have special circumstances recognised and retain support,” she said.

“We continue to discuss the detail with the government, with fairness the primary consideration.”

SOURCE