Which Way Forward?

The liberal arts have fallen on hard times. We all know by now what the battlefield looks like. Consumerism in the "education marketplace" leads the charge, and then all the soldiers fall in line: the liberal arts are outmoded; the delivery system is antiquated; most students choose a college for its prestige, not the education it affords. On the left flank, we've got price tags that are far too high; on the right, the ages-old canard of the uselessness of liberal education.

Alexander Mosaic; Darius III, right, faces Alexander

Meanwhile, liberal arts colleges face the onslaught with all the hand-wringing of Darius III on the eve of Gaugamela. Darius' solution in the face of the tactically superior Macedonian forces was to overwhelm with numbers. He threw more of what didn't work at Issus at a problem that was the same as what he faced at Issus. It didn't work.

In his Chronicle of Higher Education piece, "When Trying Harder Doesn't Work," Dan Lundquist argues that the twenty-first century liberal arts colleges of the States are doing much the same thing as Darius: trying harder. But not necessarily smarter. And not with any apparent gains in withstanding the onslaught.

That's because, so Lundquist, there's been no real, wholesale re-thinking of the critical issues of access, affordability, curriculum, and pedagogy.

He's right. And part of that has to do with the fact historical perspective is lacking. As a result, the liberal arts colleges have had a difficult time articulating, extramurally, just what it is that they do and don't do; and internally, how the liberal arts at the center should drive decision making. 

So which way forward? Return the liberal arts to the center. Center curriculum on the liberal arts. Externally, make promises that can be kept and disabuse of misunderstood promises. Internally, make the education offered more affordable by reducing administrative costs, exiting the higher ed arms race, and making the teacherly task of the liberal arts college central once again. 

A Modest Proposal: Lutheran Higher Ed of the Faculty, by the Faculty...and for the Students

A series of recent articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed has pointed out that the burgeoning costs of higher education are frequently related to the explosion in the size of administrations. If you’re in higher ed, I’d love to hear from you. Look back a decade, look back two: what’s the size of your administration today compared to what it was then—and how does that compare to the size of the student body? I estimate, based upon anecdotal evidence, that there’s been a nearly three-fold increase in the size of administrations in the last 20 years. I think that’s a conservative number. And it’s no secret that the Lutheran schools are not immune to it.

What’s behind all this? A number of things. First, the push for “productivity” as measured by research and publication. Let’s face it: most undergrads—even Ivy League undergrads—benefit very little or not at all from their professors’ publication and research. In fact, one could say there’s an inverse relationship between faculty productivity (so conceived) and student benefit. Nevertheless, this kind of productivity is a driving force in the rising cost of higher ed in the States and among the Lutherans.

Why? you might ask. Because faculty loads are computed by courses, and to get more research time means reducing course loads. Suppose that in 1992 your history department ran 12 sections a year of American History. Staffing needs would have run 1.5 FTE (4 courses per term per prof). Today, with course load reductions, the same 12 sections now require 2 FTE (3 courses per term per prof). That’s an increase of 25%. But that’s not the only place the increase in research time has been felt.

Research has also placed demands on what is called “service.” Service is made up of those student-facing, committee, and administrative tasks that all faculty do, today less than before. If teaching faculty no longer have time to advise students, advisers must be hired and advising offices created and administered. If teaching faculty can no longer serve as registrar or assistant dean, then a full-time registrar and full-time assistant dean must be found. You get the picture. The basic needs of a college are, well, very basic. But when those who are there don’t attend to those needs, others have to step in to do it. So that’s the impact of the research thrust.

Another, equally devastating force that has been brought to bear on higher ed, from which Lutheran colleges are by no means immune, is that of legislation and accreditation. This has led to a dramatic increase in administrative overhead, simply because of the complexity of the entire thing. There’s FAFSA and FERPA; and there’s SACS and NCA and state boards and the Department of Education, and the list goes on. To address problems created by bureaucracy, they bureaucratize. And bureaucratization means nothing if it doesn’t also mean more bureaucrats, meaning: administrators.

Now, this isn’t to say that all administrators are bad. They aren’t. Most of them are good people, but most of their jobs are just, well, unnecessary. Which isn’t to say that all administrative positions are unnecessary. We still need presidents and deans and registrars—just not so many of them, and just not so many who don’t also teach.

In short, higher ed, whose only goal it has to be to educate students, as well and as cost-effectively as possible, has relinquished its control to others who have other concerns. Let’s face it: if the English prof who’s working on the next article she hopes to get into PMLA doesn’t—can’t—care about the rigor of her writing class, the dean of admissions sure doesn’t, either, because rigor frequently doesn’t mean happy students (that’s just an example; multiply your own). When the faculty have relinquished control and relinquished their responsibility, the responsibility for the enterprise falls into the hands of bureaucracies. But as high-minded as bureaucracies can sometimes sound, bureaucratic high-mindedness must (it’s a law of bureaucracies) give way to what is “sensible,” and “sensible” doesn’t always, and frequently fails to, equate with what is best—even, and especially, for the student. If you don’t believe me, consider how we got to a place where students today do 50% less homework than they did 20 years ago, are faced with a tuition that, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is 100% greater than 20 years ago, and leave college saddled, on average, with nearly 200% more debt than 20 years ago.

This is why we need a Lutheran higher education of the faculty (that’s a subjective genitive) and by the faculty—so that, at the end of the day, it might also be for the student. What that means is that faculty will control the curriculum—not just the part of the curriculum in which they teach, but the entire curriculum.

Of course, this requires a faculty dedicated to higher education the Wittenberg way, not a faculty patched together to meet the fleeting needs of social and economic ephemera.

And in the end, what would it look like? It’s hard to say. I imagine a simplified, concentrated curriculum. I imagine an almost embarrassingly low tuition. I imagine students who seek an education for the education, and not the chimaera on the other side of the valedictory speech. I imagine a dedication to the Lutheran way that is unabashed and unapologetic. I imagine an education that is challenging and rigorous and instructive in timeless things and not ephemera.

And I imagine the time is coming. The mavens of higher education understand that the status quo of the last 40-50 years (see above) just cannot continue without falling in on itself. If I may be permitted, I’d like to put in writing what I’ve said many a time: the next “bubble” that will burst is higher ed. The question is whether the Lutherans are going to follow the Pied Piper or have the foresight to do something dramatically different (see above).

I hope we’ll choose the latter, because what I really hope for is a Lutheran higher education of and by the faculty and for the students, with all that really entails.

Foxes in the Chicken Coop

Critical observers of U.S. higher education—of which there are far too few—have certainly seen it coming for years, perhaps decades. I think it might have finally sunk in for me when, within the space of but a few years, the ubiquitous “caf” was renamed the “dining facility,” dorm rooms that looked like what you’d get for third-class passage on a ship were replaced by suites, and the cavernous rubber-and-sweat-smelling gym was turned into a “fitness center,” often as well appointed as the local for-profit fitness club. Ironically, none of this coincided with an equally obvious renewed emphasis on teaching and learning. Those on the busy side of the podium at the front of the room might even have been able to discern, over this roughly 10-year revolution that swept American higher ed, an inverse relationship between enhanced non-academic facilities and students’ engagement.

The problem was, those who should have been keeping tabs on it all were the ones who stood to gain the most from it: the fitness club for students is open, usually free, to faculty; the house-beautiful dorm rooms are as much a badge of pride for bricks-and-mortar administrators as they are for the students who take up residence there; and, well, everyone has to eat, and adults no less than students prefer padded chairs to benches, small tables to row seating, and a nice cut of beef in the stroganoff to yesterday’s shepherd’s pie. Meanwhile, students and their parents paid more and more; the federal government released more and more funds in support of “higher education” in the form of grants and loans; and the institutions kept doing what institutions do best: engage in a Veblen-esque conspicuous grasp for the biggest piece of the pie they could get.

Which makes it, frankly, refreshing that someone, finally, has someone’s ear: the president’s. In an interview with college and university newspaper staffs from around the country yesterday, Mr. Obama shows that he: (a) is onto the federal gravy train that has allowed higher education costs to soar out of proportion; (b) understands the higher-ed “arms race” (if I may be permitted: in 1985, 25 years ago, the comprehensive annual cost of one, very nicely appointed private institution [VNAPI] which I was fortunate enough to attend was just less than a brand-new VW Golf—$8,750; today, while the equivalent 2010 Golf runs roughly $16K, the comprehensive cost of the same VNAPI is $47K); (c) rightly views spa-like accommodations on campus as having little to no bearing on the quality of education; and (d) wonders out loud whether “research” may have gotten in the way of teaching and learning. You can read more about Mr. Obama’s interview in the Around Washington column in today’s Inside Higher Ed.

What does this all mean? First, this may be the first time I’ve seen these issues addressed publicly by anyone in Washington, although, as I've mentioned, critical observers have long noted these matters privately and in smaller venues. Mr. Obama’s comments may bring some long-overdue and well-deserved attention to some of the real problems in higher education. Second, this portends a new era of what we’ve been arguing for here on RenMus, a leaner, meaner curriculum, the creation of a shared culture not based upon whether students have private bathrooms with Kohler fixtures but on what they read. Third and finally, perhaps the reign of the foxes is over in the chicken coop.

That said, the foxes will be foxes as long as they can—even if it means destroying the chicken coop. The higher education juggernaut will continue. But there is room—and it is widening—for a new way, for a return to a tightly managed curriculum taught by teachers to students who want to be...educated. And Lutheran higher education, with its unique Wittenberg intellectual apparatus, is poised like few others to deliver.

Bankrolling Academia--Or Bankrupting It?

A truth-telling op-ed piece on higher education financing appeared in The New York Times this week. In "Academic Bankruptcy," Mark C. Taylor, chair of the Religion Department at Columbia, tells a story of two academic institutions, his own and NYU, whose spending is prodigal even as sources for such spending seem to be drying up.

But the Columbia/NYU arms race is probably more a symptom of a systemic malaise in North American higher education than anything else.

In the face of this malaise, higher education the Wittenberg way is in a unique position to be able to do something radically counter-intuitive and, in fact, countercultural. A higher education the Wittenberg way doesn't require vast resources and can actually thrive with a leaner, meaner curriculum.

I was just doing a little number-crunching. A well-staffed, adequately-resourced Great-Books and radically-liberal-arts oriented curriculum can be put on the ground comfortably and cover annual costs necessary to run it (by which I mean underwriting instructional costs) at $10,000/year per student. If such an institution had a 15:1 student:faculty ratio, each faculty member would "bring in" $150,000 per year. Subtract $100,000 for a complete faculty package (salary + health insurance + retirement), and you're left with $50,000 for support functions per faculty member. In short, an institution with the physical plant paid off and a modest endowment adequate to maintain, manage, and run the physical plant, can deliver a bracing, intellectually-challenging, traditional, and rigorous education on the back of a bare-bones curriculum that focuses on what's necessary, not "what would be nice," at a quite modest cost.

This is the case that needs to be made to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America. While programs that have the appearance of enhancing our appeal proliferate, the core has evaporated. And yet the core is precisely whence Lutheran higher education takes its energy and that for which it exists. Are there Lutherans of goodwill out there willing to support such an endeavor? Can a wealthy Lutheran businessperson, for example, look beyond narrow business interests and projecting himself or herself upon Lutheran higher education and come to the conviction that Lutheran higher education doesn't need the bandaids of new programming, but surgery to restore core health? I think so. I think this makes, well, business sense--and sense for the Church.

More on "Is It Time?"

Naomi Schaefer Riley has a nice analysis piece in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education on "The Lure, the Risks, of Starting a University." There is much to be learned here. Let me outline a few of the items:

• free tuition works--and works very well

• newly founded institutions must find a way to

(1) locate properly

(2) conceive of an institution that can achieve what it wants with the size of student body that it can expect

(3) conceive of an institution attendance at which is made for intrinsic reasons justifiable and desirable to students.

Question: does a radically liberal-arts oriented institution envisioned on the Wittenberg model make sense in light of these criteria that Ms. Schaefer Riley has identified? I think so, but I'd love to hear from others.

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!