This Washington
Guest Editorial: Challenging the Myths About Higher Ed Reform
State Rep. Marko Liias recently published an op-ed in PubliCola demanding that our state universities “rein in costs and improve accountability” before seeking tuition-setting authority. Representative Liias is a capable and thoughtful legislator who is on the right side of almost everything, and is certainly right when he says that we should not balance the state budget “on the backs of students.”
So when someone as smart as Marko Liias gets it so wrong about our universities, we can see how widespread and entrenched the myths have become. Everyone should always be looking for ways to do things better, but the answer cannot always be to simply squeeze more blood from the stone. Public four-year higher education is about to disappear in Washington and our elected representatives need to face that truth and stop pretending that policy tweaks or performance audits can replace state funding.
Probably the most pervasive myth about our state universities is that the cost of educating our students has spiraled out of control. It’s easy enough to see how our students or their parents might think that, given how much tuition has gone up, but the total cost of educating a student has remained remarkably constant for 20
years. The total funding per student in 1991 was about $14,000 and, after a brief peak of $16,000 in 2006, it’s now back to $14,000 (how many other things do you know that cost the same today as they did twenty years ago?). Tuition has gone up so dramatically because state funding has gone down just as dramatically. We don’t
need to rein in costs, the state needs to rein in the cost shift to our students.
Obviously this trend is not going to be reversed at a time when the state is facing a five billion dollar budget deficit. But that reality is not a reason to start desperately pretending that budget problems can be solved with policy changes. Whenever money is tight, politicians and policy makers always want to pretend that we can do
just as many things just as well for less money if we just renew, reinvent, and get a new footprint. All we really need is more “accountability” and “efficiency.”
Washington’s state universities are already the most efficient in the country. The next time somebody tells you that all the universities need to do is eliminate their greed, corruption, and waste, remember these facts:
Washington’s universities rank 47th in the nation in funding per degree. But, despite having such puny resources, Washington’s universities rank first, number one, numero uno in degrees granted per 100 students enrolled.
It doesn’t get much more efficient than that.
There are, of course, easy ways we could become more “efficient.” We could pack already overcrowded classes even tighter. We could eliminate prerequisites and requirements and just give everybody A’s. We could fire all of our highly qualified professors and hire people who don’t know anything but are willing to work cheap. Hell, we could just have our students give us money in exchange for our handing them a degree.
We are at the point where further cuts to our universities can only mean that the degrees our students are paying more for will be worth less (and ultimately worthless).
We are also at the point where we need to start telling the truth about the options we’re considering. The most immediate example is Governor Gregoire’s proposed 2011-13 budget, which calls for more massive cuts to state appropriations to our universities and 9-11% tuition increases. Using a series of accounting tricks, the governor’s office has been claiming that this adds up to a net 4% cut. That lie has gotten legs and 4% is the number that’s being bandied about in various legislative committee hearings.
The truth is that when you add in the retirement contribution that the proposal shifts to the universities and the 3 percent salary/FTE reduction in the proposal, the cut to the universities adds up to something more like 14 percent. Add that to the massive cuts from the 2009-11 biennium and we can see clearly that we’re putting the future of Washington’s children in great jeopardy.
These are serious times that require serious people to honestly confront the serious questions facing us. Our universities are hanging by a thread. Creating “efficiency” fantasy worlds or pretending that 14% is really 4% won’t help. We cannot possibly solve all of the problems that we face, but we won’t solve any of them if we don’t
face them.
Bill Lyne is Professor of English at Western Washington University and President of
the United Faculty of Washington State.
So when someone as smart as Marko Liias gets it so wrong about our universities, we can see how widespread and entrenched the myths have become. Everyone should always be looking for ways to do things better, but the answer cannot always be to simply squeeze more blood from the stone. Public four-year higher education is about to disappear in Washington and our elected representatives need to face that truth and stop pretending that policy tweaks or performance audits can replace state funding.
Probably the most pervasive myth about our state universities is that the cost of educating our students has spiraled out of control. It’s easy enough to see how our students or their parents might think that, given how much tuition has gone up, but the total cost of educating a student has remained remarkably constant for 20
years. The total funding per student in 1991 was about $14,000 and, after a brief peak of $16,000 in 2006, it’s now back to $14,000 (how many other things do you know that cost the same today as they did twenty years ago?). Tuition has gone up so dramatically because state funding has gone down just as dramatically. We don’t
need to rein in costs, the state needs to rein in the cost shift to our students.
Obviously this trend is not going to be reversed at a time when the state is facing a five billion dollar budget deficit. But that reality is not a reason to start desperately pretending that budget problems can be solved with policy changes. Whenever money is tight, politicians and policy makers always want to pretend that we can do
just as many things just as well for less money if we just renew, reinvent, and get a new footprint. All we really need is more “accountability” and “efficiency.”
Washington’s state universities are already the most efficient in the country. The next time somebody tells you that all the universities need to do is eliminate their greed, corruption, and waste, remember these facts:
Washington’s universities rank 47th in the nation in funding per degree. But, despite having such puny resources, Washington’s universities rank first, number one, numero uno in degrees granted per 100 students enrolled.
It doesn’t get much more efficient than that.
There are, of course, easy ways we could become more “efficient.” We could pack already overcrowded classes even tighter. We could eliminate prerequisites and requirements and just give everybody A’s. We could fire all of our highly qualified professors and hire people who don’t know anything but are willing to work cheap. Hell, we could just have our students give us money in exchange for our handing them a degree.
We are at the point where further cuts to our universities can only mean that the degrees our students are paying more for will be worth less (and ultimately worthless).
We are also at the point where we need to start telling the truth about the options we’re considering. The most immediate example is Governor Gregoire’s proposed 2011-13 budget, which calls for more massive cuts to state appropriations to our universities and 9-11% tuition increases. Using a series of accounting tricks, the governor’s office has been claiming that this adds up to a net 4% cut. That lie has gotten legs and 4% is the number that’s being bandied about in various legislative committee hearings.
The truth is that when you add in the retirement contribution that the proposal shifts to the universities and the 3 percent salary/FTE reduction in the proposal, the cut to the universities adds up to something more like 14 percent. Add that to the massive cuts from the 2009-11 biennium and we can see clearly that we’re putting the future of Washington’s children in great jeopardy.
These are serious times that require serious people to honestly confront the serious questions facing us. Our universities are hanging by a thread. Creating “efficiency” fantasy worlds or pretending that 14% is really 4% won’t help. We cannot possibly solve all of the problems that we face, but we won’t solve any of them if we don’t
face them.
Bill Lyne is Professor of English at Western Washington University and President of
the United Faculty of Washington State.
