The Academy in Crisis

Political Economy of Higher Education

John Sommer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138534063
  9781138534063
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351486422
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Academy in Crisis is a provocative contribution to an important debate....The costs of goverment support for American universities are not negligible. They include stress on some of the core values of universities and of science-vaules like openness, collaboration, and collegiality-and pressure, too, on other central institutional responsibilities, such as the education of undergradutes. Robert M. Rosenzweig, former president, Association of American Universities.

I

The Politicization of Higher Learning

Introduction to Part I

John W. Sommer

The introductory chapter of this book expressed both angst and anger that the officers (faculty and administrators) of many higher-education institutions are failing their students and themselves by substituting safe bureaucratic responses for the courageous exercise of wisdom in the stewardship of higher learning. The direction of those responses, be they in the admission of students, the choices of curriculum, the conduct of courses, or the certification of student achievement, are made with reference to forces outside the academy—chiefly those emanating from public agency. Officers at private colleges and universities are less exposed than are those at state institutions, which must be more attuned to legislative directives, but those in both settings are responsible for the defense of the central mission of the institution. Those missions, usually stated in the beginning pages of the institution’s catalogue, are uniformly high-minded paeans to the education of students, a fact that makes the difference between goals and achievement that much more difficult to endure.

It is possible that the capacity for exercising wise choice has diminished significantly over the past four decades as the university officer has been confronted by the requirement to make many more decisions that have the potential to reduce flexibility of choice later, e.g. the acceptance, in the face of curricular initiatives that cut across disciplines, of the categories of the HEGIS code (Higher Education General Information Survey) upon which state formulas for funding, regional agencies for accreditation, and federal agencies requiring information for a variety of classification purposes base decisions. This example is cited because it appears to be innocuous, indeed even reasonable for accounting purposes, but this labeling becomes the plat that provides the boundaries for subsequent decision-making. To redraft such a plat, or to violate it by not using those categories, restrains the wise officer and places a premium on his or her knowledge of the exogenous agency rules rather than on understanding the desires of the students. State and federal concerns for assessment of the outcomes of education, i.e., value-added by the institution, are likely to lead to mandated measurement of student achievement, thereby creating a nightmare of bureaucratic formulas that entirely miss the point that educational institutions are only partially engaged in “training.” Officers of institutions of higher learning who are unable to distinguish between education and training are unlikely to make cogent arguments to legislators, trustees, or to the general public.

The four chapters that make up this section on the politicization of higher education take more precise aim at the course of higher learning and each, in turn, articulate different features of the system. Common to all four authors is a concern that higher learning has ceded much of its independence to external agency, although Meiners observes that this attentiveness to external, usually political, forces has been with us since colonial days when church and state were not separate. This observation is not meant as a justification for continuity in practice but as a caution that retreat from this arrangement would not be easy. Spring, in his chapter, also documents the historical context of the increasing federal role and the drive for instrumental outcomes chronicled in the legislation of the past one hundred years.

A second common theme is that the increasing politicization of higher learning subjects it to the inconstant whims of the political process: Kimberling, in particular, notes that changing federal student aid rules under different administrations has led to complexity and confusion.

Flew points out the other side of the adjustment process, citing that when the college age population shrunk in 1977 (and institutions were faced with the prospect of reduced flow of federal funds) there was great pressure to find “other bodies” to populate courses and this led to a dramatic increase in the number of students taking remedial mathematics, reading, and writing courses. Flew adds a comment that chills the heart of any who would argue for increased federal funding for education when he points out that the United States has made enormous investments in education in the past but seems to have reaped a crisis from those efforts. Why invest more?

Spring develops the theme of the disruptiveness of federal intervention in labor markets, as universities have become the instruments of dirigiste plans to supply firms with skilled labor: the problem comes when one administration’s favored sector is not that of the next and individuals who have been “trained” for one must adjust abruptly to another. I am sure that there are many who would not conclude as strongly as does Spring:

These conditions are a logical result of a university system that was originally organized to serve the state and a professorate that professionalized in a climate of service. Ones thinking should not be confused by the myth that during some previous period of time professors and universities pursued truth for its own sake. The university and the professorate were and are for sale to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, the state is the bidder with the most power and money.

But, the challenge Spring poses and his documentation of the growth of government’s role in higher learning must be recognized.

A third theme, developed principally by Meiners, Spring, and Kimberling, is that the politicization of higher learning has brought with it wealth transfers from lower-income individuals to higher-income individuals, be it through the simple fact that the better off are better informed about the availability of public funding for higher learning and have more resources at their disposal to deploy in sorting through the complexities of how those funds are secured, or whether it is written into the legislation, as Kimberling observes of the Federal Supplemental Loan Program. Meiners again gives us the historical perspective when he cites the governor of Kentucky railing against state support for Transylvania College in 1825 on the basis that “The State has lavished her money for the benefit of the rich, to the exclusion of the poor…the only result is to add to the aristocracy of the wealth[y], the advantage of superior knowledge.”

The authors of the first four chapters set out the historical and developmental characteristics of the increasing influence of politics on higher learning, and in doing so begin to unfold some of the difficult conditions under which decisions in and about the institutions that purport to offer higher learning will be made. The literature about higher education of the 1980s is replete with the description of one pathology after another, some focusing on students, others on the professoriate, and still others on the their administration. Is something wrong? The answer is a thunderous “Yes” from all quarters, but the solutions vary dramatically. A compendium of statements from a variety of authors, such as is the composition of this work, does not lend itself to the easy advancement of a unique solution [as if there could be a unique solution], but beginning with the chapters by Meiners, Spring, Kimberling, and Flew and continuing throughout the work there is a clear suggestion that the nexus of interaction between the state and the institutions of higher learning is an important first place to search for answers.

1

The Evolution of American Higher Education

Roger E. Meiners

The discipline of colleges and universities is, in general, contrived not for the benefit of the students but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave toward him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability.¹

Introduction

The history of higher education reminds us that, although institutions change, the state of the world today is in many ways not unlike the world of the past. Adam Smith’s discussion of higher education in The Wealth of Nations provides as insightful a view of the behavior of college teachers and students as any that has ever been written. The American system of higher education is the same in some fundamental ways as that observed by Smith over two centuries ago. For anyone who thinks that higher education has reached some new low with respect to the diligence of faculty and students, remember what Smith told us:

If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense. It must too be unpleasant to him to observe that the greater part of his students desert his lectures; or perhaps attend upon them with plain enough marks of neglect, contempt, and derision…. The teacher, instead of explaining to his pupils himself, the science in which he proposes to instruct them, may read some book upon it; and if this book is written in a foreign and dead language, by interpreting it to them into their own; or, what would give him still less trouble, by making them interpret it to him, and by now and then making an occasional remark upon it, he may flatter himself that he is giving a lecture.²

This chapter is intended to increase the reader’s understanding of why higher education operates as it does today. Although the size and scope of the institutions are different in twentieth century America from those found in eighteenth century Great Britain, the incentives of the participants in the market for higher education have not changed in many important ways. The nonprofit structure of our colleges and universities denies us many of the benefits visited upon private organizations by competitive forces.

The chapter begins with an overview of the structure and development of American higher education from colonial times to the present. Special attention is given to the primary sources of subsidies for colleges: churches, foundations, and governments. Some remarks are then made concerning the role of the modern university and the issue of academic freedom.

Support for Higher Education in Colonial Times

Beginning with Harvard College, nominally founded in 1636, and for decades afterwards all new colleges were sectarian and quasipublic. Each college was a corporation chartered by the respective colonial assembly, and was clearly a state-church college. Since nine of the thirteen colonies had established religions, the assemblies were not interested in allowing dissenting sects to found colleges.³ Most colleges founded during the colonial period received government support. For example, the General Court of Massachusetts appropriated £400 in 1636 toward the founding of Harvard College, which was under the control of the Congregational Church.⁴

As the list in table 1.1 illustrates, many colleges were quasimonopolies because many assemblies would not grant more than one college charter. When the states chartered a second college, usually to be controlled by another church, it indicated a shift in the power of religious groups within the colony. Although the nature of colleges has changed drastically over time, many of the premier institutions undoubtedly benefited by their long stature as the only college in a state. Harvard had no competition in Massachusetts until Williams College was chartered in 1793, and Yale had no competition in Connecticut until 1823 when Trinity College was chartered. Yale and Harvard did offer one another competition, but high transportation costs limited such efforts. Restriction on entry into higher education in many of the older colonies resulted in fewer colleges being established and in a relatively high survival rate. On the other hand, a few of the original colonies and some of the newer states, such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia, allowed numerous colleges to be formed. There was active competition in many states to establish colleges as a way of demonstrating the growth and vitality of new towns.⁶ For instance, in Missouri eighty-five colleges were established before the Civil War, but only eight still existed in 1861. College mortality in states that were not restrictive about college formation was usually around 90 percent before the Civil War.

TABLE 1.1
Chronology of College Formation in Colonial Times⁵

College	Colony	Religion	Charter Year
Harvard University	Massachusetts	Congregational	1636
College of William and Mary	Virginia	Episcopal	1693
Yale University	Connecticut	Congregational	1701
Princeton University	New Jersey	Presbyterian	1746
Columbia University	New York	Episcopal	1754
University of Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania	Episcopal	1755
Brown University	Rhode Island	Baptist	1765
Rutgers University	New Jersey	Dutch Reformed	1766
Dartmouth College	New Hampshire	Congregational	1769
Washington College	Maryland	Episcopal	1782
Washington and Lee University	Virginia	Presbyterian	1782
Hampden-Sidney College	Virginia	Presbyterian	1783
Transylvania College	Kentucky	Presbyterian	1783
Dickinson College	Pennsylvania	Presbyterian	1783

Although colleges in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were primarily schools for training ministers, they received state support. In 1652 and 1653 the General Court of Massachusetts donated 2,000 acres of land to support Harvard and ordered a tax levy of £100 for its support. Harvard was also assigned the Charlestown Ferry revenues, a support that lasted for 200 years. The charter of William and Mary College provided for a tax on tobacco to support the school and placed the state functions of land control in the Virginia colony into the hands of a collegiate land office. George Washington received his commission as a surveyor fr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction American Higher Education: State of the Art or Art of the State?
• I. The Politicization of Higher Learning Introduction to Part I
• II. The Political Economy of Higher Learning Introduction to Part II
• III. The Political Economy of Scientific Research Introduction to Part III
• About the Contributors
• Index