The following is a guest post by Bob Samuels, President of the University Council - AFT and a lecturer at UCLA. It is cross-posted from his blog, where you should go to find all of the original hyperlinks. I highly recommend also reading his November entry in the Huffington Post on why public higher education should be free.
The UC Regents meeting had a little of everything this week: UCR students came up with a new way to fund the university, a long list of new salary increases was released, UCSF asked to quit the system, a retired professor was fired, protesters disrupted the meeting, Regents met behind closed doors, and police attacked protesters who were using books as shields.
What does it all mean? Perhaps, it all adds up to the demise of the modern Western social contract. Without being too dramatic, we are seeing an attempt to resist the destruction of the central institutions of modernity: the university, the public commons, and the welfare state. Although it was once taken for granted that everyone should sacrifice for the common public good, this social contract has been broken, and now some are fighting to maintain it, while others are pushing us forward to a more premodern mode of social organization.
A case in point is the UCR “Student Investment Proposal,” which argues that students should pay no tuition while they are in school, but once they graduate, they should pay 5% of their income for 20 years. At first, this appears to be an elegant solution, but it really represents the final privatization of the public university. Instead of relying on state and federal funds and a common tax base, the new system would rely on private citizens to fund their own education through the use of a non-progressive flat tax. Just as UCSF wants to break its ties with the state and the rest of the UC system, this new funding model would allow students to “pay for their own education,” and would get rid of messy things like financial aid and family contributions.
Under this neoliberal payment program, the students working at Starbucks would be paying the same percent of their income to the UC as the students working for hedge funds. Of course, the university would have a strong incentive to only accept wealthy students, since these students have the highest chance of earning a big paycheck in the future. Likewise, there would be no reason to support programs in the humanities and social sciences if the big earners will all go to law school, medical school, and business school. In short, the student proposal is a private solution to a public problem, and yet we are told that the Office of the President will take it seriously.
It is indeed telling that a student group has come up with such a regressive funding model. We can read this as a sign of the way the backlash against the public good has been so successful that even good-intentioned people present anti-social ideas as if they were progressive. While the program does insist that the state should spend 2% of its budget on the UC each year, it does not say how the UC should use this money. Instead, we are told that students will pay for their own education out of their own future earnings. Of course, this model assumes that these students will have a future income in a world where we no longer have any sense of the common good
Showing posts with label tuition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tuition. Show all posts
Friday, January 20, 2012
Guest Post: UCR Students Promote a Bad Tuition Plan as Police Beat Protesters
The following is a guest post by Bob Samuels, President of the University Council - AFT and a lecturer at UCLA. It is cross-posted from his blog, where you should go to find all of the original hyperlinks. I highly recommend also reading his November entry in the Huffington Post on why public higher education should be free.
The UC Regents meeting had a little of everything this week: UCR students came up with a new way to fund the university, a long list of new salary increases was released, UCSF asked to quit the system, a retired professor was fired, protesters disrupted the meeting, Regents met behind closed doors, and police attacked protesters who were using books as shields.
What does it all mean? Perhaps, it all adds up to the demise of the modern Western social contract. Without being too dramatic, we are seeing an attempt to resist the destruction of the central institutions of modernity: the university, the public commons, and the welfare state. Although it was once taken for granted that everyone should sacrifice for the common public good, this social contract has been broken, and now some are fighting to maintain it, while others are pushing us forward to a more premodern mode of social organization.
A case in point is the UCR “Student Investment Proposal,” which argues that students should pay no tuition while they are in school, but once they graduate, they should pay 5% of their income for 20 years. At first, this appears to be an elegant solution, but it really represents the final privatization of the public university. Instead of relying on state and federal funds and a common tax base, the new system would rely on private citizens to fund their own education through the use of a non-progressive flat tax. Just as UCSF wants to break its ties with the state and the rest of the UC system, this new funding model would allow students to “pay for their own education,” and would get rid of messy things like financial aid and family contributions.
Under this neoliberal payment program, the students working at Starbucks would be paying the same percent of their income to the UC as the students working for hedge funds. Of course, the university would have a strong incentive to only accept wealthy students, since these students have the highest chance of earning a big paycheck in the future. Likewise, there would be no reason to support programs in the humanities and social sciences if the big earners will all go to law school, medical school, and business school. In short, the student proposal is a private solution to a public problem, and yet we are told that the Office of the President will take it seriously.
It is indeed telling that a student group has come up with such a regressive funding model. We can read this as a sign of the way the backlash against the public good has been so successful that even good-intentioned people present anti-social ideas as if they were progressive. While the program does insist that the state should spend 2% of its budget on the UC each year, it does not say how the UC should use this money. Instead, we are told that students will pay for their own education out of their own future earnings. Of course, this model assumes that these students will have a future income in a world where we no longer have any sense of the common good
The UC Regents meeting had a little of everything this week: UCR students came up with a new way to fund the university, a long list of new salary increases was released, UCSF asked to quit the system, a retired professor was fired, protesters disrupted the meeting, Regents met behind closed doors, and police attacked protesters who were using books as shields.
What does it all mean? Perhaps, it all adds up to the demise of the modern Western social contract. Without being too dramatic, we are seeing an attempt to resist the destruction of the central institutions of modernity: the university, the public commons, and the welfare state. Although it was once taken for granted that everyone should sacrifice for the common public good, this social contract has been broken, and now some are fighting to maintain it, while others are pushing us forward to a more premodern mode of social organization.
A case in point is the UCR “Student Investment Proposal,” which argues that students should pay no tuition while they are in school, but once they graduate, they should pay 5% of their income for 20 years. At first, this appears to be an elegant solution, but it really represents the final privatization of the public university. Instead of relying on state and federal funds and a common tax base, the new system would rely on private citizens to fund their own education through the use of a non-progressive flat tax. Just as UCSF wants to break its ties with the state and the rest of the UC system, this new funding model would allow students to “pay for their own education,” and would get rid of messy things like financial aid and family contributions.
Under this neoliberal payment program, the students working at Starbucks would be paying the same percent of their income to the UC as the students working for hedge funds. Of course, the university would have a strong incentive to only accept wealthy students, since these students have the highest chance of earning a big paycheck in the future. Likewise, there would be no reason to support programs in the humanities and social sciences if the big earners will all go to law school, medical school, and business school. In short, the student proposal is a private solution to a public problem, and yet we are told that the Office of the President will take it seriously.
It is indeed telling that a student group has come up with such a regressive funding model. We can read this as a sign of the way the backlash against the public good has been so successful that even good-intentioned people present anti-social ideas as if they were progressive. While the program does insist that the state should spend 2% of its budget on the UC each year, it does not say how the UC should use this money. Instead, we are told that students will pay for their own education out of their own future earnings. Of course, this model assumes that these students will have a future income in a world where we no longer have any sense of the common good
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Things That Make Me Go Hmm....(Part 2)
Hot off the presses, recent news that has me scratching my head, or otherwise up in arms...
(1) Raising tuition in expensive cities in the midst of an economic crisis. Yep, that's what CUNY thinks is the right thing to do. Hat tip to Tom Hilliard, who pointed me to this incredible inane comment from a CUNY administrator: "What's really driving some of the issues here is the concern about debt and debt upon graduation, and our students as a whole take out little debt, for obvious reasons. The tuition's affordable for those who can pay." Um, yeah.
(2) The White House wades into the quagmire of university admissions, promoting creative thinking on how to achieve diversity. In one sense, just in time, since it sure looks like the Supreme Court is going to end the use of race in admissions by June. On the other hand, I wish the Administration would issue some cautions about how criteria like first-generation status and high school attended are hardly clean proxies for race. Plenty of folks want to do something less controversial, which socioeconomic diversity proxies will accomplish, but they can't and shouldn't pretend the outcomes achieved will be the same.
(3) Jerry Sandusky is innocent? So he says. "I didn't do those things. I'm not the monster I've been made out to be. I didn't engage in sexual activities with those kids." Others told me similar things during a recent trip to Penn State. I don't know, call me naive but I'm inclined to believe the testimony of the 8 or more adults who say they were raped, over the guy who likes to call anal sex "horseplay." I don't care what his "motives" were-- I care what his ACTIONS were. And by the way, does he sound drugged or drunk to anyone else?
Things That Make Me Go Hmm....(Part 2)
Hot off the presses, recent news that has me scratching my head, or otherwise up in arms...
(1) Raising tuition in expensive cities in the midst of an economic crisis. Yep, that's what CUNY thinks is the right thing to do. Hat tip to Tom Hilliard, who pointed me to this incredible inane comment from a CUNY administrator: "What's really driving some of the issues here is the concern about debt and debt upon graduation, and our students as a whole take out little debt, for obvious reasons. The tuition's affordable for those who can pay." Um, yeah.
(2) The White House wades into the quagmire of university admissions, promoting creative thinking on how to achieve diversity. In one sense, just in time, since it sure looks like the Supreme Court is going to end the use of race in admissions by June. On the other hand, I wish the Administration would issue some cautions about how criteria like first-generation status and high school attended are hardly clean proxies for race. Plenty of folks want to do something less controversial, which socioeconomic diversity proxies will accomplish, but they can't and shouldn't pretend the outcomes achieved will be the same.
(3) Jerry Sandusky is innocent? So he says. "I didn't do those things. I'm not the monster I've been made out to be. I didn't engage in sexual activities with those kids." Others told me similar things during a recent trip to Penn State. I don't know, call me naive but I'm inclined to believe the testimony of the 8 or more adults who say they were raped, over the guy who likes to call anal sex "horseplay." I don't care what his "motives" were-- I care what his ACTIONS were. And by the way, does he sound drugged or drunk to anyone else?
Saturday, February 26, 2011
More Flexibility to Raise Tuition?
Central to debates over the New Badger Partnership is the question of whether additional flexibilities that make it possible to raise tuition are desirable.
Evidence can and must be used to make these decisions. A robust, evidence-based debate on our campus is obviously needed but to date has not occurred. Instead, to many of us outside Bascom it seems as though administrators have mostly relied on the input of a few economists and some other folks who work in higher education but are not scholars of higher education. It also seems like seeking advice from those mostly likely to agree with you. (Please--correct me if I'm wrong--very happy to be corrected with evidence on this point.)
It would be wonderful to see a more thorough review of existing evidence and the development of an evaluation plan that will assess positive and negative impacts of any new policy in ways that allow for the identification of policy effects-- not correlations. (Let's be clear: comparing enrollment of Pell recipients before and after the implementation of a policy like the MIU does not count.)
A few years ago I blogged about studies on the effects of tuition and financial aid on individual decision-making. To summarize-- effects of each are relatively small (especially when compared to effects of academic under-preparation, for example) but usually statistically significant. Also, what we call "small" reflects our value judgments, and we must recognize that.
Effects of "sticker shock" are thought to accrue early, such that the "shocked" students end up academically unprepared for college (for example don't even graduate high school) and thus are omitted from the eligible population of students on whom effects of aid and tuition are usually estimated. So hypotheses about sticker shock are very hard to test, partly because a good test requires measuring both the initial "shock" and the resulting behavior many years later (when college enrollment decisions are made).
There are other ways to think about these questions, beyond individual-level analyses. For example, we could contemplate possible effects of tuition hikes and aid increases on overall enrollment (which results from the aggregation of behaviors of many individuals). We could also look at evidence on how common it is for institutions like ours that hike tuition and raise aid to sustain the commitment to that aid over time.
Let's start down that path by examining one study that sheds light on the first of those questions. I will review more such studies in the coming days. My goal is to help facts and figures replace fear as the driving force behind our campus decisions.
*************
In "Rising Tuition and Enrollment in Public Higher Education" Hemelt and Marcotte examine the relationships between tuition and aid on the one hand, and enrollment on the other. Essential to this discussion, for most of their analyses they disaggregate by type of institution, making it possible to isolate effects on universities comparable to UW-Madison.
Using national IPEDS data on public 4-year colleges and universities from 1991 to 2007, the authors find that on average a $100 increase in tuition and fees (in 2006 dollars) would lead to a decline in enrollment of a little more than 0.25 percent. Since we rarely raise tuition by $100, let's instead consider that a $1,000 increase in tuition would result in an enrollment decline of 2.5 percent.
But most relevant to this discussion, these economists find that the tuition elasticity of enrollment is largest at Research I universities-- and they specifically give the example of UW-Madison. According to these scholars, freshmen at universities like Madison's are "much more" affected by tuition increases than students at other kinds of institutions (for example, freshmen at UW-Stout). (The tuition elasticity is -0.24 at Research I's compared to -.107 on average). And, the average amount of aid received has the smallest effects for students at Research I universities, compared to other colleges (.06 on average, compared to .01 at Research 1's).
In plain English, what does this mean? The consequences of raising tuition are greatest for students at places like Madison, and the benefits of increasing aid are smallest.
Why is this? The authors consider the possibility that students at Madison are not weighing the price of Madison relative to the price of Stout or Eau Claire, nor the price of other Big 10 schools writ large, but rather the price of comparably elite Research I institutions. Restricting their analysis to the top 120 public universities in the country, then, they again find that these students are particularly price sensitive, and particularly aid insensitive.
A few words from the authors: "These patterns in price and aid sensitivity are consistent with students opting out of “top 120” schools for competitors as price rises, while finding a way to pay tuition bills at other state schools where students may have fewer options....The evidence...of higher price sensitivity but lower aid sensitivity at “top 120” and Research I institutions raises general questions about enrollment patterns at public four-year colleges and universities, beyond the implications of tuition on enrollment at single institutions. One implication may be a shift of students from higher income families to private institutions or public universities in other states, along with a shift of students from lower income families to less expensive public universities within the state. This would suggest a redistribution of students across public colleges and universities within a state, with those most financially able leaving the system, and others scaling back to enroll at more affordable
institutions. Obviously, student-level data are needed to test this."
Distributional consequences of tuition policies are too rarely considered, and are not addressed in the NBP.
Sure, consequences and benefits should be put into context-- for example considered against the consequences of not raising tuition. But this paper by respected economists clearly indicates that it is not appropriate to assert that increasing financial aid at institutions like UW-Madison will effectively hold students harmless from the negative effects of tuition increases. Enrollment will be affected, and distribution of enrollment across institutions may be particularly affected. Who will measure those effects? And who will care?
Evidence can and must be used to make these decisions. A robust, evidence-based debate on our campus is obviously needed but to date has not occurred. Instead, to many of us outside Bascom it seems as though administrators have mostly relied on the input of a few economists and some other folks who work in higher education but are not scholars of higher education. It also seems like seeking advice from those mostly likely to agree with you. (Please--correct me if I'm wrong--very happy to be corrected with evidence on this point.)
It would be wonderful to see a more thorough review of existing evidence and the development of an evaluation plan that will assess positive and negative impacts of any new policy in ways that allow for the identification of policy effects-- not correlations. (Let's be clear: comparing enrollment of Pell recipients before and after the implementation of a policy like the MIU does not count.)
A few years ago I blogged about studies on the effects of tuition and financial aid on individual decision-making. To summarize-- effects of each are relatively small (especially when compared to effects of academic under-preparation, for example) but usually statistically significant. Also, what we call "small" reflects our value judgments, and we must recognize that.
Effects of "sticker shock" are thought to accrue early, such that the "shocked" students end up academically unprepared for college (for example don't even graduate high school) and thus are omitted from the eligible population of students on whom effects of aid and tuition are usually estimated. So hypotheses about sticker shock are very hard to test, partly because a good test requires measuring both the initial "shock" and the resulting behavior many years later (when college enrollment decisions are made).
There are other ways to think about these questions, beyond individual-level analyses. For example, we could contemplate possible effects of tuition hikes and aid increases on overall enrollment (which results from the aggregation of behaviors of many individuals). We could also look at evidence on how common it is for institutions like ours that hike tuition and raise aid to sustain the commitment to that aid over time.
Let's start down that path by examining one study that sheds light on the first of those questions. I will review more such studies in the coming days. My goal is to help facts and figures replace fear as the driving force behind our campus decisions.
*************
In "Rising Tuition and Enrollment in Public Higher Education" Hemelt and Marcotte examine the relationships between tuition and aid on the one hand, and enrollment on the other. Essential to this discussion, for most of their analyses they disaggregate by type of institution, making it possible to isolate effects on universities comparable to UW-Madison.
Using national IPEDS data on public 4-year colleges and universities from 1991 to 2007, the authors find that on average a $100 increase in tuition and fees (in 2006 dollars) would lead to a decline in enrollment of a little more than 0.25 percent. Since we rarely raise tuition by $100, let's instead consider that a $1,000 increase in tuition would result in an enrollment decline of 2.5 percent.
But most relevant to this discussion, these economists find that the tuition elasticity of enrollment is largest at Research I universities-- and they specifically give the example of UW-Madison. According to these scholars, freshmen at universities like Madison's are "much more" affected by tuition increases than students at other kinds of institutions (for example, freshmen at UW-Stout). (The tuition elasticity is -0.24 at Research I's compared to -.107 on average). And, the average amount of aid received has the smallest effects for students at Research I universities, compared to other colleges (.06 on average, compared to .01 at Research 1's).
In plain English, what does this mean? The consequences of raising tuition are greatest for students at places like Madison, and the benefits of increasing aid are smallest.
Why is this? The authors consider the possibility that students at Madison are not weighing the price of Madison relative to the price of Stout or Eau Claire, nor the price of other Big 10 schools writ large, but rather the price of comparably elite Research I institutions. Restricting their analysis to the top 120 public universities in the country, then, they again find that these students are particularly price sensitive, and particularly aid insensitive.
A few words from the authors: "These patterns in price and aid sensitivity are consistent with students opting out of “top 120” schools for competitors as price rises, while finding a way to pay tuition bills at other state schools where students may have fewer options....The evidence...of higher price sensitivity but lower aid sensitivity at “top 120” and Research I institutions raises general questions about enrollment patterns at public four-year colleges and universities, beyond the implications of tuition on enrollment at single institutions. One implication may be a shift of students from higher income families to private institutions or public universities in other states, along with a shift of students from lower income families to less expensive public universities within the state. This would suggest a redistribution of students across public colleges and universities within a state, with those most financially able leaving the system, and others scaling back to enroll at more affordable
institutions. Obviously, student-level data are needed to test this."
Distributional consequences of tuition policies are too rarely considered, and are not addressed in the NBP.
Sure, consequences and benefits should be put into context-- for example considered against the consequences of not raising tuition. But this paper by respected economists clearly indicates that it is not appropriate to assert that increasing financial aid at institutions like UW-Madison will effectively hold students harmless from the negative effects of tuition increases. Enrollment will be affected, and distribution of enrollment across institutions may be particularly affected. Who will measure those effects? And who will care?
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