Signs of the apocalypse, part 2

In a long overdue post, I'll describe another sign of the pending apocalypse in higher education.  In my earlier post, I described how the State of California is letting its once-vaunted public higher education system die a slow death.  This time I turn to Florida, another state that has been battered by the recession and whose higher education system has also taken a beating.

Florida cut its funding for higher education by almost 10 percent this year compared to fiscal year 2009, about three times the size of the average reduction across the nation.  The public colleges and universities in the state responded in different ways to the cuts, including gaining the authority from the legislature to raise tuition at a higher rate than they had in the past.

Florida State University announced last month that it was laying off 36 tenure-line faculty, 21 of whom already hold tenure.  Traditionally, universities have not laid off tenured faculty without declaring a state of financial exigency, defined by the American Association of University Professors as, "an imminent financial crisis that threatens the survival of the institution as a whole and that cannot be alleviated by less drastic means."  While the cuts endured by Florida State are unarguably large, it is hard to make the argument that they threaten the "survival of the institution as a whole."

In discussing the procedures for laying off tenured faculty, the AAUP says, "As a first step, there should be a faculty body that participates in the decision that a condition of financial exigency exists or is imminent, and that all feasible alternatives to termination of appointments have been pursued."  The decisions at FSU evidently came from the top down, with very little (if any) faculty input.

Florida State is not the first major university to layoff tenured faculty.  Following Hurricane Katrina, Tulane laid off 230 faculty members, 65 of whom were tenured, when it eliminated four of its six engineering departments.  But in the wake of the hurricane, which shut the campus for an entire semester, Tulane did declare a financial exigency. The leadership of the university consulted an advisory panel of faculty members in making the decision to eliminate the positions.  Even under these circumstances, however, Tulane was criticized by the AAUP and others for going too far.

Florida State, like any other university, is not obligated to adhere to AAUP principles.  But AAUP documents such as the 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure have long been considered "common law" in American higher education.  It is likely that other universities will use the current financial situation as an excuse to abandon these principles.  Yet it is even more important in times like these that faculty involvement in critical decisions be reaffirmed and valued.

Signs of the apocalypse, part 1

This week I had the opportunity to testify at a heaing of the Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education of the California Legislature.  This hearing, on Affordability and Student Aid, was the third held by the committee, which is conducting its work as the Master Plan celebrates its 50th anniversary.

In a post on the blog 21st Century Scholar, written before this hearing, I questioned whether the Master Plan -- widely recognized as having created the best public higher education system in the country -- was in fact dead.  The State of California has managed to get itself in such a fiscal mess that it is unlikely that it can ever pull itself out.  It's not fair to just blame the current recession, which admittedly has battered California as much as any state. The fiscal problems, however, are symptomatic of a three-decade long antitax movement in California that has made it difficult for the legislature and governors to come up with enough funds to adequately fund the University of California, California State University, and the state's community colleges.

I'm sorry to report that, after sitting through part of the hearing this week, it is unlikely that this Joint Committee is going to be able to resolve the problems facing higher education in California.  It is clear that the fiscal constraints facing the state are unlikely to be removed without large-scale changes to the political structures there.  This would include changing laws and initiative petitions that have restricted the ability of the legislature and governors to raise the tax revenues necessary to support a world-class higher education system.  It would likely also require changing the earmarking of parts of the state budget to purposes such as K-12 education and corrections, both of which leave little flexibility for funding higher education when federal mandates such as Medicaid spending are taken into account.

I'm afraid that the reality is that the future will bring two things.  First, public higher education in California will be more expensive for this and future generations of Californians than those who had benefited from the first four decades or so of the Master Plan.  While UC and CSU have taken steps to make institutional grants available to financially-needy students (to supplement those funds available through Cal Grants and federal aid), it will likely be a challenge for them to maintain these commitments down the road.  Like many other public institutions, they will face immense pressure to address issues of middle-income (and even upper-income) affordability, at the expense of maintaining a commitment to access for poorer students. In a piece I wrote for The Century Foundation in 2003, I demonstrated how the most selective campuses of the UC system did a better job enrolling Pell Grant recipients than their peers around the country.  It is unlikely they will be able to continue this commitment in the future.

Second, the three sectors are likely to face a Hobson's choice of either allowing the quality of their institutions to degrade, or to restrict access.  I point out in my testimony that six of the UC campuses are ranked in the top 50 national universities, public and private, by U.S. News & World Report, and in the top 200 internationally by the Times Higher Education in London.  Starved of the necessary resources to maintain this level of quality, it will have to decrease.  Alternatively, the institutions could maintain quality, but at the expense of enrolling fewer students.  In the worst case scenario, quality would erode and access would be constricted.

I don't envy the task in front of the Joint Committee, or that of the administrators and faculty in the three sectors in California.  There are no easy solutions, other than going back to the public and voters in California and presenting them with the likely outcome if the existing antitax mentality continues.  And I am afraid of how the public will react to that proposition.

Another insult to the Canadians

This is not exactly about higher education, but file it under the "Itinerant" part of this blog.  Returning from testifying in front of the California legislature (which will be the subject of another post in the not-too-distant future), I picked up the Hemispheres magazine on the United flight.  There I found a nice article about what to do in Montreal.  At the end of the article, there was this map (click on the map to see a larger version):

 

Notice the small inset map, showing the position of Montreal in Canada and relative to the U.S. 

Unfortunately, the map is not even close to where Montreal truly is, as shown in Google maps:

Where the Hemispheres map shows Montreal is actually Kingston, ON.  Once again, we Americans demonstrate our ignorance of our neighbor to the north.  You can download a PDF version of the magazine article on the Hemispheres website.

Another shooting on campus

The Chronicle of Higher Education

There have been too many instances of gun violence on college campuses in recent years.  This is obviously a reflection of our larger society, as I have previously written about.  But this particular incident hits very close to home, as University of Alabama Huntsville biology professor Any Bishop has been charged with shooting five of her colleagues and a staff member in the biology department at UAH.  Three people were killed and three others were injured and hospitalized.  The shooting, which occurred Friday afternoon at a meeting of the biology faculty, allegedly involved a dispute over Professor Bishop's tenure.  According to news reports, she was denied tenure last year, and apparently an appeal to the department was about to be or had recently been denied.  Here are links to stories in The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed.

Anyone who has been in academe for any period of time can tell stories about disputes between colleagues.  I'm certainly aware of examples of these from my own career.  The tenure denial cases.  The academic couple in the same department who split when one of the pair had an affair with a graduate student.  The senior colleague who alleges discriminatory and inequitable treatment. 

No one ever expects disputes like these to escalate to the level of violence exhibited in Huntsville yesterday.  But as more and more of these instances occur, one can't help but think about the potential for it to happen at your own campus.  As conflicts between colleagues arise, it's all but impossible not to have in the back of your mind concern over the potential for violence to occur.

My thoughts are with the faculty, staff, and students at UAH in this difficult time.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation plays the heavy

This morning's Chronicle of Higher Education had an article about the National Merit Scholarship Corporation's attack on a blogger, Nancy Griesemer, for her publication of the state cutoff scores used by NMSC for its awarding of National Merit Scholarships.  Her point was that these cutoff scores vary widely from state to state, so that a student scoring at a certain level on the PSAT (used as the cutoff for the awarding of the scholarships) would qualify for a scholarship in one state, while a student scoring at exactly the same level in another state may not qualify.

As was criticized by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling in a report last year, the use of a single test for the awarding of the scholarships is an inappropriate use of a high-stakes test.  Nevertheless, the NMSC persists in this practice, and has refused to release data on the distribution of its scholarship recipients by race or socioeconomic status.

Seems that the NMSC accused Ms. Griesemer of publishing "proprietary information," yet these cutoff scores are fairly widely-distributed, such as to pretty much every high school guidance office in the nation.  Nevertheless, NMSC demanded that she take the information off of her blog, which she did.  As legal experts in the Chronicle article pointed out, you can't sue someone for publishing facts.  FairTest, an organization dedicated to the appropriate use of educational testing, and presumably more able to stand up to the NMSC, jumped to Ms. Griesemer's defense and assistance by publishing the list of state cutoff scores.  You can find FairTest's list here, where for example you can see that a PSAT score of 208 would be high enough to qualify you for a scholarship in Alabama, but a score of 221 would be required in Massachusetts or Maryland.