16 February, 2010

The Unbearable Burden of Tuition and a Radical Proposal

As writers of comments on this blog have pointed out, and as one of the bloggers, Erik Ankerberg, has pointed out, the tuition drive in higher education has an ultimately corrosive impact on liberal education when it comes to what is offered, delivered, and gained. It's an understandable, and clever, business plan that students, parents, college administrations, and, therefore, also faculty, have: $$ in must = $$ out. Who can argue with it? The result is, as we've had occasion to point out, a constant wearing away at the core of liberal education, also in the Lutheran higher learning. What is to be done?
A radical proposal: create, or reform, a Lutheran college not just in its curriculum, but in its very governance, and back that reform up with a financial reform that would eliminate tuition. I love to return to Newman, and here a point he makes about tying liberal education to external goals bears repeating: the education that has specific vocational outcomes in mind (vocational as in "vocationalism") will never be liberal as in liberating, but always servile, as in enslaving. You can chew on that one for a while. But his logic is irrefutable, and evidenced in scads throughout Lutheran higher education today.
But in terms of tuition: the curriculum has been taken captive by pressures derived from the tuition drive. If that can be removed, the curriculum can be freed and can provide a truly liberal education, in the Newmanian sense.
This is, of course, predicated upon articulating a theologically faithful and intellectually responsible rationale for liberal education, instantiating it in curricular form, and then approaching influential laity, congregations, and pastors who can support the endeavor morally and financially--and financially to a point wherein tuition is taken out of the equation. Simply what this means is that the core endeavor of a college--its instruction--must be fully underwritten by drafts on endowed funds, or in other words, that every faculty position be an endowed chair.
Radical? Yes. Achievable? d.v. Utterly necessary? certissime!

14 comments:

Steve Gehrke said...

When I had the job of raising funds for endowed chairs, the rule of thumb was you could draw only about 5% of the principal. So for a department of a dozen faculty affiliated with a university would require you to raise over $10 million (if you did, I'm sure you'd find plenty of colleges willing to take you on board). It cost the Domino's pizza guy $200 million to start his Catholic law school. I think you'd be trading one master (tuition chase) for another (donor care & feeding). This might be a way to get a model program started, but I don't see how the rich patron model of higher ed can scale up to education of significant numbers of student as you seem to be suggesting this as a general approach to higher ed.

Here I am, the pragmatic engineer unable to see the vision...but I find it hard to wrap my mind around the idea that the recipients of a valuable service should not be expected to pay for the privilege.

Jon Bruss said...

Steve, yes. At first sight, this is a crazy proposal. What it requires is finding donors who buy into liberal education unattached to external ends, or to ends that aren't quantifiable in monetary terms. A bit on the history of tuition: tuition is a relatively late "invention." Even today in, say, Germany, there's really no such thing as tuition. There are a few fees amounting to (as one German student told me a few years ago) the "exorbitant" figure of Euro 150 (it had just gone up about 25% that year).
The ancient, medieval, and Reformational thinking about the education offered at the university was that it was intrinsically valuable to the church as a whole (today in Germany to society as a whole). It was to the impoverishment of the CHURCH, not the individual alone, that a dearth of such educational opportunities conduced.
Would this be expensive? Yes. As you point out, it would cost roughly $1.5M in endowed funds for each position, which is equal to roughly $60K in salary + $15K in benefits on an annual basis, using a 5% draw-down on principle. This certainly presents limits on the size of the faculty.
On the other hand, if I'm right about the lean-and-mean approach: a very tight curriculum with faculty qualified to teach across many areas and a smallish facility to accommodate that for the limited number of students who would be both qualified and interested in pursuing such an education, at least initially, these figures don't really represent an insurmountable barrier to launching a program. Daunting, yes. Insurmountable, no.
But the great benefit in removing tuition from the equation is that it leaves the curriculum in control of the education, as it were. Because there's no tuition drive, there's no need to adjust the curriculum to unqualified students; because there's no tuition drive, there's no need to adjust the curriculum to demands for direct application to employment (a short-sighted vision of education by any accounting, but one with a powerful pull on the imagination of the "consumers" of education); because there's no tuition drive, there's no need to molly-coddle the recalcitrant, who exert their own sort of negative drag on the classroom, the peer group, even sapping the energies of teachers. Etc., etc., etc.
Certainly, such a plan requires a great deal of educating of a constituency; and it may not be able to be achieved immediately. But the sooner, the better for laying hold of an education that truly embodies the Wittenberg spirit.

Dan said...

Jon, I don't think your idea is so radical. It is a return to the monastery.

The "marketing tool" is come here because you believe in what we teach--NOT come here because we have all these great things.

Jon Bruss said...

Dan, thanks for your comment. Perhaps what I'm saying here is that, prima facie, this element of what's being proposed is the most radical. But the proposal is, in fact, upon second consideration, radical in the sense of "going to the root [radix]" of the whole manner of running an institution that embodies the Wittenberg spirit. You're right about the monastic mode, too. Might I point out that in the Lutheran Reformation a number--a great number--of the monasteries that "came over" to the Wittenberg way of thinking continued on as lower-level academies (academies that did not offer higher education, but elementary and gymnasial education). A classic example of this is Bergen Abbey (Kloster Berge) near Magdeburg that played such a pivotal role in achieving the great consensus laid down in the Formula of Concord. You can read about Kloster Berge here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kloster_Berge
At Kloster Berge the Benedictines after the Reformation provided promising young pupils from Magdeburg with a virtually free education, as far as I can tell from the sources.
One of the points we moderns fail to recognize in our glances toward the past is that in the course of the Reformation, at nearly every step, choices were exercised. To or not to reform the Mass, and if so, just how? To or not to ditch clerical garments? To or not to re-think this or that social institution, including, to the point here, the social and economic exchange that took place in education?
The Reformational answer was to continue to provide the kind of education necessary for church and society for the good of church and society in much the same way it had been delivered to this point, the cost onus for students falling in the area of their living expenses, not tuition, with the cost of running and maintaining, e.g., the University of Wittenberg, falling to the Elector.

Dan Johnson said...

Jon, wasn't it Russell Kirk in, Decadence and Renewal in the Higher Learning, who said that higher education should be a "quiet place of reflection"?

You are looking at tuition and how it gets paid. I am looking at why should college cost so much. The two ideas come together somehow in a "monastery" type college . It shouldn't take an unreal amount of money to run a "quiet place of reflection" should it?

Jon Bruss said...

Dan, that sounds like it could be Kirk. It also sounds a bit like Josef Pieper. And it could be Pieper through Kirk, since the latter went over the papacy in 1963. In any event, I hear exactly what you're saying. At the same time, I would argue that the "quiet place of reflection" also needs to be "formed"--that the interaction of teachers with students is an important part of gaining the most from it. You could be like Thomas Merton if you wanted to be, I suppose, and you and I both know some brilliant self-taught people. However, part of human education from its inception has been the interaction of the learned with those seeking to learn.
Now, your argument and mine come together at just this point: that a good higher education doesn't require a great outlay of tuition. Luther, for example, graduated 2nd in a class of 17 at Erfurt. Let's suppose, for argument's sake, that there were 17 x 4 students there = 68 total students. And let's suppose that to have adequate coverage in a humanistic curriculum, you'd need 5 to 6 faculty (again, that's minimal, but adequate coverage, and heavy teaching duties). So you're talking a student:faculty ratio of roughly 13 or 12:1. Now, supposing that no other needs are met by the institution for faculty welfare (no housing is provided; no food, etc.), and that you want to cultivate a good faculty. On avg. you're talking about a package of roughly $75K total, with everything tossed in. Divide that figure by 13 and you come up with something between $5K and $6K, which, provided the space is provided for and students buy their own books, is the actual cost of instruction (the reason they go to college). As they say down here in KS, that's a darn sight less than the minimally $20K you pay for a college education these days. But the proposal for endowed chairs takes it one step further and says: this kind of education is too important to the life of the church and the welfare of society to either bar a deserving student from it who can't afford it, or for it to be lassoed to external concerns via market-drive. So the desideratum is tuition-free liberal education that leaves the students, the faculty, and the curriculum totally free to comprise that "quiet place of reflection."
Great to hear from you, Dan, as always!

Jon Bruss said...

Dan, that sounds like it could be Kirk. It also sounds a bit like Josef Pieper. And it could be Pieper through Kirk, since the latter went over the papacy in 1963. In any event, I hear exactly what you're saying. At the same time, I would argue that the "quiet place of reflection" also needs to be "formed"--that the interaction of teachers with students is an important part of gaining the most from it. You could be like Thomas Merton if you wanted to be, I suppose, and you and I both know some brilliant self-taught people. However, part of human education from its inception has been the interaction of the learned with those seeking to learn.
Now, your argument and mine come together at just this point: that a good higher education doesn't require a great outlay of tuition. Luther, for example, graduated 2nd in a class of 17 at Erfurt. Let's suppose, for argument's sake, that there were 17 x 4 students there = 68 total students. And let's suppose that to have adequate coverage in a humanistic curriculum, you'd need 5 to 6 faculty (again, that's minimal, but adequate coverage, and heavy teaching duties). So you're talking a student:faculty ratio of roughly 13 or 12:1. Now, supposing that no other needs are met by the institution for faculty welfare (no housing is provided; no food, etc.), and that you want to cultivate a good faculty. On avg. you're talking about a package of roughly $75K total, with everything tossed in. Divide that figure by 13 and you come up with something between $5K and $6K, which, provided the space is provided for and students buy their own books, is the actual cost of instruction (the reason they go to college). As they say down here in KS, that's a darn sight less than the minimally $20K you pay for a college education these days. But the proposal for endowed chairs takes it one step further and says: this kind of education is too important to the life of the church and the welfare of society to either bar a deserving student from it who can't afford it, or for it to be lassoed to external concerns via market-drive. So the desideratum is tuition-free liberal education that leaves the students, the faculty, and the curriculum totally free to comprise that "quiet place of reflection."
Great to hear from you, Dan, as always!

Jon Bruss said...

P.S. I guess my point about Erfurt, above, needs to be expanded: there was no "sweet number," like the mavens of higher ed tell us today there has to be (typically, they say at least 1200 students) in order to have all the "stuff" that goes along with today's college experience, which, as I've mentioned in other posts, often proves to be a distraction from rather than an enhancement of the education. And the faculty at Erfurt was, indeed, small. Again, ML was able to gain a perfectly good and acceptable education. However, whether students are willing to pay for "small" (as in micro) is a whole nother thing. Two options arise: teensy-tiny tuition or none at all.

Peter H said...

Perhaps this is only a tangentially related question, but what is the impact of an institution accepting governmental funding? On a larger scale, what is the impact of academia accepting governmental funding?

Jon Bruss said...

Peter, there's not a little irony in biting the hand-out that feeds me when I write that I think higher ed is longer overdue in getting off the federal gravy train, and the federal gov't is long overdue in taking higher ed off the gravy train. Here I suppose I sound like a Ron Paul supporter, which I'm not. But federal dollars in mean federal restrictions on how those dollars are used. In an earlier post I bemoaned the grabs made by the federal government in calling the shots for liberal education. After some response to that, I think I might wish to reframe my argument to say: OF COURSE the federal government should ask for, and get, the kind of thing it thinks it's paying for. Fine. We don't expect the federal government to buy new military aircraft from Boeing only to see that money spent by Boeing on making a park for Boeing employees. I'm all for that. So here's where liberal education has to stand up for itself and make the tough decisions: federal gravy train or preservation of the core mission of liberal education, for us Lutherans, as I've proposed elsewhere, educating for eloquent and learned piety. Now, I don't expect Uncle Sam to find that a compelling project. In fact, I hope he doesn't, because it helps avoid the siren song of federal monies and the entanglements that ensue therefrom. But again, if liberal education is that kind of lean and mean education with a clean curriculum, I don't imagine that federal monies will be necessary in any case.

Rev. Sean L. Rippy said...

I agree Jon, too often the carrot of Government funds is quickly followed by the stick of Government mandates. For a school to maintain its principals (especially if they're contrary to the goals of the Government) it seems logical to avoid unnecessary entanglements, no matter how enticing.

Rev. Sean L. Rippy

Dan Johnson said...

Peter H, you ask a good question.

In America the Federal Government's involvement in Higher education has destroyed much in Higher Education. Read Decadence and Renewal, by Russell Kirk for documentation! Jon Bruss had me read it many years ago and I thank him for that!

Jon, I like your tuition ideas! Unfortunately, I think I see a trend away from less tuition and towards more tuition whether it's Pre School or College.

Peter H said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Peter H said...

Dan, thank you for the recommendation. I will certainly get my hands on that work.

The reason I pose the question in the context of Jon's "radical proposal" is due simply to the fact that there are so few institutions that successfully avoid the siren song of federal monies (even if only in the form of student loans). This seems to indicate that this carrot is quite tempting indeed. The concern I have with this carrot doesn't even have to get to the point where the stick is brought out. After all, the carrot and the stick serve the same purpose, right? That is, they both attempt to "lead" the mule. So the operative question is where does the federal funding carrot lead? The generous answer is to a more educated populace, but tend to be a bit less trusting of the government than that.

If the desire is for an institution led solely by its own intentions, funding must be a central concern. (That is, if we believe that money is truly power.) In this sense, Jon's radical proposal starts to seem far less radical and far more necessary. It seems to me that freeing the curriculum from the "pressures derived from the tuition drive" leads directly to the further necessity of freeing the curriculum from the pressures derived from federal funding.

In short, all money is not procured equally. In the pursuit to preserve autonomy funding becomes a central concern.