-- READ -- The decline of the American advantage -- or The Perils of Cutbacks in Higher Education

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> The Perils of Cutbacks in Higher Education
>
> August 10, 2003
>  By LOUIS UCHITELLE
>
>
>
>
>
>
> THE e-mail message from the chancellor warned David Card
> that if the California Legislature failed to adopt a budget
> by Sept. 1, his salary, and those of all the other tenured
> professors at the University of California at Berkeley,
> would shrink to the minimum wage.
>
> The alarming wage cut did not happen. The legislature
> reached agreement on a budget in late July. Rather than
> shrink professorial salaries - from six figures, in many
> cases, to less than $6 an hour - the budget froze them,
> eliminating the annual raise, usually around 3 percent.
>
> "Surprisingly, people did not pay much attention to the
> e-mail," said Professor Card, who teaches economics. "I
> guess they thought that if things got that crazy, there
> would be some kind of relief."
>
> For tenured professors, maybe, but not for students at
> public colleges and universities. The chancellor's vivid
> e-mail warning fit right into the spirit of the times.
> Forced to cut spending to balance state budgets,
> legislatures are coming down hardest on higher education,
> an odd move for a nation that believes its special
> advantage in global competition is its "knowledge workers,"
> who are billed as so well educated that they are capable of
> turning out products and services other nations cannot
> match.
>
> More than seven million students are enrolled as
> undergraduates in four-year colleges and universities in
> the United States, and nearly 70 percent of them attend
> public institutions, which depend on taxpayer money doled
> out by legislatures for the majority of their funds. The
> percentages are similar for the 1.8 million graduate
> students; 60 percent attend public universities.
>
> The combination makes public higher education a pillar of
> the nation's competitive advantage. That is as it should
> be. How else can bright young people from lower-income
> families afford a first-rate education? Tuition is usually
> too high for them at private colleges, and now it is
> shooting up at the state schools as they struggle to get by
> with smaller subsidies in a weak economy.
>
> Higher education, it turns out, comes under the rubric of
> discretionary spending, easier to cut than outlays for
> kindergarten through 12th grade or programs like Medicaid.
> And states are taking this easier path, according to the
> National Conference of State Legislatures. During most of
> the 1990's, outlays for higher education in the 50 states
> rose substantially. They even inched up 0.7 percent, to
> $58.2 billion, in the 2003 fiscal year, which ended on June
> 30, although that was the first year of drastic cutbacks in
> many states.
>
> This year, the downward pressure is unmistakable. So far,
> 43 states have approved budgets for the 2004 fiscal year,
> the National Conference reports, and higher-education
> outlays have dropped by 2.8 percent, to a total of $37.7
> billion, from $38.8 billion last year. The final tally for
> all 50 states may be slightly higher than last year's, but
> by a minuscule amount. "In all the cutting, higher
> education is suffering a disproportionate amount," said
> Arturo Perez, a policy specialist at the National
> Conference.
>
> To make up some of the shortfall, tuition is rising at a
> number of schools. Students returning to University of
> California campuses this month will find that it is up by
> as much as 30 percent. This is happening as enrollments
> rise, pushed up in part by young people who can't find jobs
> and are going to college to acquire knowledge-worker
> status.
>
> THE University of Massachusetts at Amherst is among the
> most drastic cost-cutters. Over a three-year period ending
> next June, expenses have either been cut or will be cut by
> a total of 30 percent, much of it in this fiscal year. To
> shrink the staff of tenured professors, a special
> retirement package reduced by five years the age at which
> they could retire with full benefits. In response, a third
> of the English and music department professors retired.
> Physical education was canceled for the fall semester. And
> more than 100 full-time employees other than teachers have
> been laid off. To a lesser degree, these are familiar
> measures on many other state university campuses.
>
> When such cuts are made, quality inevitably suffers, along
> with affordability and access, not to mention global
> competitiveness. Many factors determine national winners in
> the complex global struggle, but education is undoubtedly
> one, and it is clearly being hurt in America as the gains
> of the 1990's are whittled away.
>
> We are not, for example, making high-speed Maglev trains,
> the magnetic-levitation system that the Chinese are buying
> to serve as a commuter system for towns around Shanghai.
> Knowledge workers at Siemens and ThyssenKrupp are bringing
> Germany $5 billion from that sale. The industry does not
> exist in the United States and the technology is not high
> on the agenda, if it is there at all, at the nation's
> shrinking public universities.
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/10/business/yourmoney/10VIEW.html?ex=1061483600&ei=1&en=6de38346967dd8c2
>
>
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