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There
is something fundamentally wrong with higher
education, and legislation recently enacted by the
Virginia General Assembly will not correct the
problem, even in the Commonwealth.
The
very title of the new law—“The Restructured
Higher Education Financial and Administrative
Operations Act —warns us not to expect too much.
The law purports to give Virginia’s public
institutions of higher education greater
independence, but at the same time creates a
troublesome overlay of new bureaucratic
requirements.
Each
public university or college must prepare a six-year
institutional plan. The governor must develop new
financial and administrative management benchmarks.
The State Council of Higher Education will adopt a
statewide strategic plan and education-related
performance standards. The Joint Legislative Audit
and Review Commission will conduct periodic
evaluations of each public college and university to
determine compliance with the new law. Each
institution will negotiate its own management
agreement with the state.
All
of these new requirements have the potential to bog
public colleges and universities down in no less
bureaucratic wrangling than before, at least for the
near term. Enormous amounts of time and energy will
be devoted to infighting and maneuvering until the
ambiguous language in the lengthy new statute is
interpreted and clarified.
Left
unresolved are the troubling policy issues that
bedevil every state as it attempts to deal with the
rising cost of higher education and the political
pressure from its taxpayers to assure that in-state
college students are not squeezed out in favor of
out-of-state students. The new law requires that
Virginia’s public colleges and universities make
certain “commitments” to the Governor and the
General Assembly about making higher education
affordable, offering a broad range of educational
programs that meet high standards and responding to
rising demand for higher education. But these
“commitments” are vague and unenforceable.
The
underlying problem in higher education is much
deeper than suggested by the debate over the new
law. While this legislation may not exacerbate the
problem, it does not confront it.
The
fundamental problem is that the cost of higher
education, whether paid for through tax-funded
appropriations or tuition, is rising far faster than
personal income. This dramatic rate of increase is
simply unsustainable.
Despite
the aspirational language in the statute and the
sincerity of its proponents, the statute does not
alter the conditions that drive the increase in
college costs. The pressure for higher tuitions and
state funding has not been reduced.
Sooner
or later, we must confront those conditions and
challenge the assumption that higher education
warrants such enormous investment. The pressure to
increase spending results from the wrong type of
competition. We need to substitute a different, more
responsible form of competition if we have any hope
of containing spending at our public colleges and
universities.
What
we’ve witnessed for decades is akin to an arms
race among colleges and universities to build more,
larger and ever more grandiose facilities, to lure
celebrated faculty with higher compensation, and to
add amenities and non-instructional activities that
will attract the best students. Only a fraction of
the increased funding—approximately 21
percent—goes toward instruction.
The
kind of competition that can hold down the cost of
higher education is undermined by the rising level
of direct taxpayer subsidies to public institutions.
We need greater competition from private
institutions, including for-profit universities and
on-line programs.
Only
by limiting public funding to direct grants to the
students themselves will we achieve this kind of
effective competition.
--
April 11, 2005
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