In the previous post Steve Haner shows how Virginia’s public universities have relentlessly jacked up tuition and fees since 2010. What can be done? Students and parents can pick other colleges and universities — but most institutions have been raising tuition & fees just as aggressively. Alternatively, the General Assembly can try micro-managing the institutions by capping tuition or other means, but such arbitrary actions create their own set of problems. Ideally, change would come from within. Faculty and administrators are trapped in their own self-interested world view, so we can’t expect anything from them. Reform, adapted to the unique conditions at each institution, must from come from Boards of Visitors.
James P. Toscano, president of Partners for College Affordability & Public Trust (a former sponsor of Bacon’s Rebellion), delivered some ideas worth considering to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) this morning.
“When only one out of 200 Virginia trustees votes against a tuition hike, our trustees are really just administrative rubber stamps,” Toscano said.
We need to empower trustees with information that enables them to own up to their share of responsibility and work jointly with college presidents to create a true shared vision that isn’t just pro-institution but balances the interests of students, paying parents and the taxpaying public.
So … SCHEV should give trustees the tools they need to engage in substantive institution-level discussions of cost by developing a statewide report on program-level costs by institution. Until boards of visitors have access to this information and can grapple with it to address cost issues on their own, boards and presidents can’t even begin to engage on simply questions of Return on Investment and fulfill their governing obligations.
Finally … SCHEV should publicly support proposals that require boards of visitors to listen to the voices of students and paying parents and faculty and others before making tuition decisions.
In my observation, board members are easily railroaded by college administrators. Most know very little about higher-ed issues or financing when they join the boards, and by the time they figure out how things work, they rotate off. To a greater or lesser degree, administrators frame the issues in ways that are most advantageous to them and spoon-feed the data that they want board members to see. Board members don’t know enough to pose tough questions, even if they were disposed to do so. It would be extraordinarily beneficial if SCHEV could provide an alternate source of data and analysis pertaining to programmatic costs.
Rather than imposing draconian, one-size-fits-all solutions on Virginia’s colleges and universities, as legislators have tried unsuccessfully to do in the past, the General Assembly could accomplish far more good by empowering boards of trustees. Expand the scope of SCHEV’s data collection and analysis to encompass comprehensive cost data, fund two or three positions to beef up SCHEV’s data capabilities, and distribute an annual update on programmatic costs to every member of every board of visitors at a public Virginia institution.
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