Uncouth Reflections

Fenster writes:

The American Way of Higher Education is a lot more about letting a hundred flowers bloom than the heavy hand of central government.  Certainly we are a lot more freewheeling than China, where the government and the party play a leading role.  But our system is more open than many others in the Western world, too.

The federal government is good at giving money.  It has funded sponsored research, essentially creating the modern research university since World War II.  And it provides financial aid to students.  Yes, it uses its role as subsidy provider to gain leverage over certain desired policy outcomes, and it can do so in ham-handed ways.  But the government itself does not itself determine institutional strategic directions, curricular decisions or whether a new entity may commence operations.  There are no real federal universities.

The direct regulation that takes place, such as it is, happens via semi-autonomous accreditation agencies, a positive review from which is necessary for any entity to get federal financial aid and which most reputable institutions desire just for the brand value.  These agencies are much more captive of the industry than they are the government.

But while the American Way is generally comfortable with a hundred flowers, there is always a cry for someone to do something when things are not going well, and that usually implies a buck stopping somewhere.  Under our system, that duty often falls to the President, as Symbolist-in-Chief.  That symbolic role has been much on display in the Obama administration.

As the bearer of a hope and change message, Obama has had bad timing from the outset, and higher education is no exception.  The go-go years of growth in higher education are behind us.  Where does that leave hope and change?

Costs and prices are going up, unsustainably.  The institutions themselves have proven incapable of doing much about it, partly because of the Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy and partly for good, capitalist market-related reasons: parents don’t want to pay more but they know junior loves the rock-climbing wall, the rock-climbing program and the pretty rock-climbing residence life staffers.

Obama’s first round of action was somewhat chiding in tone.  Look, he lectured, you guys need to constrain costs and prove you are good at what you do.  So we propose metrics that will tell us who is doing what we want to have done at the federal level, and we will direct the money accordingly.

That went over like a lead balloon, for both good and bad reasons.  Bad reason: the institutions resist change.  Good reason: any metric likely to be used would likely result in a misallocation of resources (for instance, away from institutions working with problem students) and would bring the federal government more into a direct regulatory role.  I am with the institutions in being suspicious of that.

Now, as Obama struggles to keep his footing in an increasingly tough second turn, I think he’s figured out that he should stick to symbolism.  Real change is hard, as he is finding out on Obamacare.  The higher education system, like the health care system, is complex, and trying to push either sector with a one dimensional prod is hubris–it’s like trying to herd elephants with a boiled noodle.

So what do do?  You do what Obama did yesterday. You call leaders to the White House and ask them to increase “access”.  That’s a magic word that all can like.

Gone are the ambitions for a federal government stepping in to control a sector out of control.  That is replaced with pledges from college leaders that they will do a better job with “access”.

What does this mean?  Take Tufts.  According the Boston Globe:

In one of the more unusual initiatives, Tufts University said it would launch a program to help high school seniors take a year off to do community service before enrolling.

Crucially, Tufts said it would provide enough financial aid to make the “gap year,” already popular among affluent young people, affordable for all students, regardless of their ability to pay.

A gap year?  That’s a classic in the Stuff White People Like genre.  Google “gap year” and you will find only a little bit on things like working on a fishing boat, and even that is pretty white and privileged when you get right down to who would actually work on a fishing boat during a gap year.  Mostly you find an elite-focused industry devoted to taking junior away for a “broadening experience”, allowing him to beef up his holistic bona fides on the way to Tufts admission.  These often serve as a means by which white suburban kids flesh out the required diversity side of an otherwise diversity-starved academic resume.  The image below from Adventures Cross Country, a gap year program.

Perhaps Tufts will find that subsidizing this side of things will make it more diverse and increase access.  Perhaps not.  We report you decide.

Elsewhere, with the other colleges in attendance, it was a pledge of doing more for 10 students here and 15 there.  Nothing wrong with this, mind you.  But it is pretty thin gruel for a big press hoo-hah.  And of course it has nothing to do with how the conversation started: how the heck to do something about changing the nature of the beast in more fundamental ways.

My own view: the feds should own up to the fact that as regards direct action they are holding that boiled noodle.  Rather than engage in an Obamacare equivalent for the higher education sector, the feds ought to find a better way.  That starts with acknowledging that they don’t hold the center of power, and that the fight that is taking place is occurring in the real world beyond them.  They might need to take sides in that fight.

That could start with pressure on the accreditation agencies to move away from their role as protectors of institutions and to think harder about what students and employers need.

There is no reason for colleges to have a monopoly on credentialing.  Let them teach, let others teach, and let students learn where they will.  But let’s have someone find a way to formally recognize skills-based approaches, wherever gotten, that are not required to have the form of a Bachelor’s Degree from College X.