Why College Tuitions Keep Going Up, Part 1
Posted on July 3rd, 2013 in Uncategorized | 37 Comments »
Because City University of New York is paying disgraced general David Petraeus $150, 000 to teach one class.
Most CUNY adjunct professors earn less than $3, 000 per course.
Petraeus, by the way, is also a fellow at the Kennedy School…
37 Responses
7/5/2024 7:55 am
Why are you making Petraeus a poster child for poor university management and skyrocketing of university costs? Would you be asking how much money universities have paid in speaking fees to celebrities such as Bill Clinton or Al Gore?
The question of university costs is an important one and it deserves a serious public discussion. But this will not be achieved conflating it with this one decision concerning General Petraeus.
Petraeus is by all accounts an extraordinarily talented leader. He served this country well in very difficult times and missions. He could have been a University President at his alma mater. Any group of students who can benefit from his attention would be very lucky indeed. That he has chosen for those students to be students who attend a public university is commendable. Any university that succeeds in engaging his attention might in time find that his knowledge and contacts will benefit the institution in material ways.
Petraeus did indeed make a serious mistake dishonoring his marriage vows. For this he was punished by the Military and lost his job. This is a more serious punishment than the price paid by other public figures who made similar offenses, say Bill Clinton, or JFK or FDR. Unlike others, Petraeus took responsibility for his actions and apologized to his family and to his institution.
We are a country of second chances. Let Petraeus move on as he tries to rebuild his life and his career. He has much to contribute and may have grown wiser from this experience. Maybe Harvard should try to hire him. He might have more to teach the students than many on the payroll there. As for those casting rocks over Petraeus house, maybe they should look in the mirror.
7/5/2024 8:06 am
@ anonymous
Thank you for saying what needed to be said… and saying it so well.
7/5/2024 9:26 am
To Anon and Sam—
Let me respond to a few points specifically.
1) I’m not making Petraeus per se a poster boy for rising costs. It’s not his fault that a university offered him a ridiculous amount of money for virtually no work. But it is symptomatic of the race for celebrity professors, who come at high salaries with significant ancillary fees (staff, housing, travel) that Sam has often decried.
2) “He could have been a university president at his alma mater.” Not anymore he couldn’t. As for his affair: Hey, no one’s perfect. But it was extraordinarily stupid for the CIA director to be carrying on an affair with a journalist, and there were some signs that he passed along classified information to her.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/substantial-classified-info-broadwell-computer-article-1.1202455
If Petraeus’ name were Edward Snowden and he did this, you’d probably be talking about stringing him up.
Also, the idea that Petraeus was more severely punished than Bill Clinton (the other analogues really aren’t meaningful) is absurd. It was basically a ten-day scandal for Petraeus. Yeah, he resigned, which I would say was appropriate given the nature of his job; I wouldn’t say it was punitive. But he wasn’t exposed to anywhere near the level of muckraking or personal embarrassment that Clinton endured. And finally, military law states that adultery is a crime when it can bring “discredit to the armed forces,” which this one surely did. So we can’t praise Petraeus for being his military virtues and then say, oh, that other thing that the military makes a big deal of doesn’t matter so much.
3) I certainly support second chances and agree that Petraeus has much to contribute. But is teaching one seminar to about 15 students for $150k, on balance, a little more taking than it is giving?
And beyond teaching, Petraeus is now “contributing” to private equity firm KKR, which is using him to gain insider access in its hunt for global acquisitions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2013/05/30/what-david-petraeus-has-to-offer-kkr/
Hey, no one’s begrudging the guy the right to make some money after a long and impressive military career. But that doesn’t mean we have to mindlessly sing his praises.
7/5/2024 10:25 am
RB,
The internal logic of your post is faulty. If KKR is making a good business decision by hiring Petraeus because of the contacts and access he can provide, why is the decision of CUNY a bad one? Maybe they hope to benefit from similar introductions and access. Nothing wrong with that, universities do it all the time. In all likelihood CUNY development’s office has plans for how to benefit from this appointment.
That the market, a lot more attuned to true value add, is making a similar decision to CUNY reinforces the good judgement of CUNY -Universities aren’t always as meritocratic in making unconventional decisions about star professors.
Yes, it was incongruous with everything else we know of the man to engage in an extramarital relationship w a journalist, particularly as director of the CIA. That’s why he lost his job. Who knows what went on in his mind and life that cause him to do this. The question, and the answer, to this puzzle belong in the same place as the questions about similar actions by the other leaders mentioned in this blog, and by others public figures who have done similar things. Certainly they don’t belong in gossip tabloids or blogs.
Snowden is more than a moron for what he has done, as with Assange and Manning, he has endangered lives and harmed the interests of his country. Whether he was aware of the ramifications of what he was doing is irrelevant. That his options now are to become a refugee of despotic regimes that have no respect for freedom or individual rights, and where the price of protection will undoubtedly be to continue to betray his country, is indication enough of how stupid he truly was.
Petraeus is in no way in a similar position, because what he did bears no relation to what Snowden did. It is very unfortunate that intelligenc americans these days could be confused about these things. Speaks about the failures of our colleges and universities to cultivate intelligence.
7/5/2024 10:42 am
My point was, Anon, not that Snowden and Petraeus are broadly comparable; clearly they aren’t. It was merely that you seemed to be downplaying behavior that is contrary to military law and a potential intelligence leak. These are not trivial things. A security leak is a security leak, whether it comes from a disenchanted hacker or the frisky director of central intelligence.
Also, comparing KKR, a private company, with a public university is a bit odd. There’s little question that Petraeus can bring value to KKR. What is the value proposition of a $150, 000 seminar? You may be right; Petraeus may be good for fundraising. But so far the only fundraising related to him, that we know of, has been to help pay his salary.
Let’s set aside the question of the revolving door from public service to making rich people richer; say that Petraeus should make all the money he wants from KKR.
Why not then donate his services to a cash-strapped public university?
Or at least charge an amount more reasonable than $150, 000…
7/5/2024 2:48 pm
Richard, you said:”Also, the idea that Petraeus was more severely punished than Bill Clinton (the other analogues really aren’t meaningful) is absurd. It was basically a ten-day scandal for Petraeus. Yeah, he resigned, which I would say was appropriate given the nature of his job; I wouldn’t say it was punitive. But he wasn’t exposed to anywhere near the level of muckraking or personal embarrassment that Clinton endured. ”
Yes, he wasn’t exposed to anywhere the level of muckracking… of course Petraeus wasn’t exposed to that level because he didn’t lie to the American people and when confronted with the truth he did the right thing and resigned.
Oh, and by the way Richard, your comment that “And finally, military law states that adultery is a crime when it can bring “discredit to the armed forces,” which this one surely did.”
The UCMJ only applies when one is in the military. Petraeus was retired and so the UCMJ didn’t apply to that situation. However, unlike others, he knew he had done a terrible thing and did the honorable thing and resigned.
Honorable thing… unlike some people who signed into law, a law that for 17 years, that ruined the lives of tens of thousands of gays and lesbians who wanted to serve honorable in the military.
You said: “But it is symptomatic of the race for celebrity professors, who come at high salaries with significant ancillary fees (staff, housing, travel) that Sam has often decried.”
I have in fact often decried it and still do. This is a one off, not a permanent position, and will be paid for by private donors (sort of similar to endowed coaching positions at your alma mater). This is not paying some of RT and Harry’s colleagues 400 plus a year forever, in addition to incredible housing deals and other emoluments. And just for the record, some of the greediest professors are lefty (very) lofty prize winners.
Best,
7/5/2024 3:18 pm
There is some discussion of the same issues on Mitzenmacher’s blog, so I won’t repeat myself.
http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2013/07/nice-work-if-you-can-get-it.html
7/5/2024 7:44 pm
The salary CUNY is offering Petraeus would place him in the bottom third of the distribution of salaries of senior faculty and senior administrators at Harvard (VPs, Associate Provosts, Associate Deans and the like).
One wonders whether those individuals so committed to transparency at Harvard and in this blog would think of a leak, say from someone at Wiki-Leaks, of the names and salaries of Harvard Professors and senior administrators… this would allow anyone with an interest in the important questions Richard is raising in this thread about skyrocketing costs of higher education, to asses the relationship of some of those costs to the verifiable value of what each of these persons does… it would not be hard to see how many students these individuals teach, what their course evaluations say, how much overhead they bring in research, and how many groundbreaking projects, discoveries or ideas they have produced.
As for Petraeus, his record is pretty open, so there’s no mistery to establishing the relationship of the salary CUNY has offered and what he knows and has done.
And as for extra marital affairs… are you implying, Richard, that senior professors and senior administrators at Harvard are on the whole more honorable than Petraeus? if so, how do you know?
7/5/2024 11:06 pm
Would love to know the source for that assertion about the salary distribution at Harvard. I am not surprised by Sam’s claim, but I have never seen that data either. All I know is what is in Harvard’s 990, which is available to any citizen. Some interesting numbers in there, though it suggests that averages quoted for professors are distorted, rationally or not, by medical school salaries.
But seriously - professors do more than teach a few hours a week, or should, and trying to make Petraeus’ salary comparable to those of a professor is fair only if you assume the absolute worst of professors. If you think professors work 3 hours a week, you should state that premise.
7/6/2024 6:57 am
Thanks Harry. Indeed there are already organizations interested in transparency at Harvard. We can expect that their numbers will grow, as will what they disclose. Here’s one, for instance:
http://responsibleatharvard.wordpress.com/resources-and-information/harvards-tax-filings/
7/6/2024 7:25 am
For the interested, there are already multiple public sites w information that would be relevant to the issues Richard raises here. For instance, this site allows easy access to the 990s of all universities:
http://www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=NPO.Search&Cobrandid=0
It is interesting, for example, to see how detailed Yale’s form is. They detail income from additional sources that have a relationship with the University from key employees or family members or from trustees. So, income from boards of trustees or spouses of Deans is reported. Good business practice it seems.
http://207.153.189.83/EINS/060646973/060646973_2010_08e43134.PDF
7/6/2024 8:03 am
Of great interest, in Harvard’s 990s, is the variation in earnings among Deans of various schools at Harvard. Presumably the demands of the job are the same, whether one is deaning a business school, a school of public health or a law school. Why then is the dean of the law school paid less at Harvard than the other two? wouldn’t these differences in pay for equal work undermine the necessary morale in Harvard’s leadership team?
7/6/2024 8:52 am
Harvard stands out in this report
http://www.tellus.org/publications/files/issue-brief-exec-comp-201109.pdf
7/6/2024 8:59 am
Writing in the Harvard Business Review (“Why Sky-High CEO Pay Is Bad for Business,” June 17, 2024), John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has observed, “Because of the yawning gap between the leaders and the led, employee morale is suffering, talented performers’ loyalty is evaporating, and strategy and execution is suffering at American companies. Employees really do care about this issue, and a smaller gap makes for greater solidarity, and as a result better performance, throughout the workplace.” In Reinventing the Workplace: How Business and Employees Can Both Win (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), economist David I. Levine has highlighted that “narrow differences in wages and status help develop an atmosphere of trust and confidence between workers and management, reinforcing the atmosphere of participation…Employees often feel large wage differentials are unfair” (p. 53).
7/6/2024 9:22 am
One answer to your question, Richard, is simple: because there are many more people managing and they are taking a much greater share of expenses in their compensation than their peers did in the past.
In 2002, for example, Harvard’s president compensation was 200K
http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/042/042103580/042103580_200206_990.pdf
The growth in education expenses reported by the Education Consumer Price INdex -which already takes into account the fact that education inflation is several times greater than general inflation- in the ensuing decade was 35%
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost
If adjustments to compensation of the PResident had increased by that amount salary today should be 235K. It is three times that.
http://responsibleatharvard.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/fy12-pf-990.pdf
Do that math one hundred times and that’s a big chunk of change that accounts for increase in college costs.
7/7/2024 8:33 am
That 990 has $200,000 going to Neil Rudinstine as President Emeritus, while the Dean of HMS was getting $391,000. I would guess the actual president that year (Summers) was somewhere north of $500,000, so better do that math over, Anonymous.
7/7/2024 9:43 am
RT,
do you know the difference between a fiscal year and a calendar year? Tax returns in a given year are for the previous year.
7/7/2024 9:57 am
schedule A part I is most interesting, professors w expense accounts over 300,000 and salaries at similar levels a decade ago
http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/042/042103580/042103580_200606_990.pdf
7/7/2024 10:19 am
How much effort does it take to earn 8 million as a board director of DE Shaw, BlueCross BlueShield Massachusetts, Reliance-Maker Chambers, Roubini Global Economics, various speaking engagements
As the report above makes clear this is the amount former President Summers earned on top of his salary as University President.
Given that Blue Cross-Blue Shield does business with the University one has to wonder whether BCBS requires its directors to disclose conflicts of interest… does Harvard require the same of its officers?
7/7/2024 3:15 pm
Richard,
You ask:
“But is teaching one seminar to about 15 students for $150k, on balance, a little more taking than it is giving?”
By that metric,
“Is giving oneself a heavily subsidized multimillion dollar loan, from Harvard’s funds, to purchase a home, at a time when the University was firing staff because it could not meet its payroll obligations, a little more taking than it is giving?” This was done by senior Harvard administrators a decade ago. Maybe there should be more checks and balances on those with authority to financially obligate the University to… help themselves?
7/7/2024 3:40 pm
Faculty have been emasculated from Governance…The self-governance of the 1960s and 1970s is long gone…Increasingly the Corporation asserts the absolute authority of the president, and those appointed by the president, in policy and governance decisions. Institutional governance has been turned on its head. Governance committees are almost exclusively appointed by administrators, no longer by faculty senate. Increasingly faculty senate has no direct authority on selecting the faculty, scholarship and curriculum matters, which have traditionally been faculty prerogatives…when did the faculty shape the direction for hilt or edx? Deans and admins keep secret files on faculty…Some Deans read faculty emails…substantial lack of transparency and mutuality in key governance decisions… Out of control spending… A prelude to black Tuesday for higher education… there will be time to think anew after the crash.
7/7/2024 4:17 pm
Anon 3:40
The last part of the last sentence is right on point.
I’ve been saying this for the last ten years but no one will listen…and at one point I had their ear. The endowment payout is too high. It was too high before 2008-2009 (and look what happened) and it has remained too high. Everything has to go perfectly right over the next ten years in order for the university to remain (marginally) on an even keel. There is no margin of safety. It’s clear that the new Corporation members (at least one of whom I know understands very well that the university should be living well within its means) have not been able to persuade the old ones to change their ways.
This is, once again, going to end badly. How soon the university forgets what happened four years ago.
7/7/2024 4:46 pm
Sam,
What can faculty do? if anything?
It is clear that in the state of affairs described in this thread, someone with the experience and record of General Petraeus would probably be a very good university President.
Interesting how conversations can turn around.
7/7/2024 5:28 pm
You’re asking me what the faculty can do! What the hell do I know; not very much.
I’m not now, nor ever have been in any way, a part of the university. I just give unsolicited advice which has almost always been ignored…and who knows, perhaps rightly so.
What I do know is that this is not rocket science. It should be clear to all but the most stubborn, that the debacle of 2008-2009 (and to a certain extent extending into 2010 and 2011), was a wake up call. The university should not be playing as close to the edge of the field as it is. Margin of safety should be the mantra.
7/7/2024 5:34 pm
Harvard could begin a trend that would place higher education in a self-correcting course, and significantly alleviate Harvard’s own challenges, adopting seven simple principles:
• Cap all salaries for faculty and admins at a reasonable level. Maybe the average of earnings for rank in research universities in the region. Yes, average. The main driver for people to work at Harvard should not be earnings. If some want to leave for NYU for marginally better salaries let Sexton figure out how to pay for them. There is no evidence that the contributions of star professors to the teaching or research missions of the University exceed their contributions of their average peers in ways commensurate to their much greater costs. For example, is what Harvard gains from employing Professor Larry Summers worth two or three times what it derives from the contributions of the average Professor in the classics or in history? Average faculty and admin salaries allow for a very decent standard of living in today’s economy, placing Harvard faculty in the top 5% of the national distribution of wage earners. Use the same salary figures across the university. New hires would be hired at average per rank for similar number of years of experience in rank. Make salary information public, commit to full transparency which is self-correcting, as do public universities.
• Prohibit any compensation from outside entities, in boards, consulting or other business for full time faculty.
• Develop monitoring system to control expenditures, using indices of student/faculty, student/admin ratios, cost of services per student. Assess changes over time and against peer institutions. Bring costs under control focusing on basic services that most directly influence research and teaching, these are the core investments aligned with the core mission of the institution. Everything else, dorms, cafeterias, expense accounts, meals, receptions, is perfunctory. Anything that is evident consumption goes. Make this information public, commit to full transparency.
• Use savings to reduce share of budget from payout, until payout distributions are 2% or less. Assuming growth of endowment at 4-6%, and inflation at 3-4%, this would allow reinvestments to maintain current value of the endowment. It will take at least a decade to correct present patterns towards that goal without dramatic adjustments to workforce. The underlying fundamentals of the economy are not sound, while HMC is betting on overseas markets, there may also be hiccups on that road. Nothing is certain in terms of future returns over the next decade.
• Stop the rat race competing with peer institutions on selectivity –which brings in perverse incentives to generate loads of applications, and with it incentives to compete based on facilities, amenities and fluff. Instead develop metrics to assess value added in learning for students, the big missing elephant in the room of higher education. Become less selective, and focus more on demonstrating student learning gains while at Harvard. Demonstrate that a Harvard degree is truly a measure of knowledge and skill gained, not credentialing of social selection.
• Invest a portion of the endowment in the future success of graduates creating a student loan fund. Use the fund to increase financial aid to support students from all walks of life. Move away from full scholarships towards loans in generous terms. For example, offer all students loans to be repaid as 10% of their income over two years or inflation-adjusted of 20K at present, whichever is greater, for each year or study at Harvard starting ten years after graduation. This way students, professors and administrators, as well as managers of the Harvard Management Company, all have skin in the game ensuring that graduates find decent jobs and that they use their time at Harvard productively.
• Monitor performance metrics of key executives aligned to these goals and practices.
7/7/2024 6:32 pm
Under the rules described above some individuals, faculty or administrators, might conclude that the marginal benefits they derive from their work for Harvard might exceed their direct and indirect costs, and leave, not for another University, but for more profitable undertakings… which might be just fine in terms of serving the mission of the University. Universities were designed to attract people interested in the life of the mind, monks really, not those attracted by get rich quick schemes.
7/7/2024 8:02 pm
Interesting thread, though muddied by the ambiguities and undisclosed agendas of all the anonymous (or is there only one?). Yale and Stanford would like nothing better than to have Harvard adopt some of the proposed policies!
I for one am not so ready to grant that the way for the university to recover its soul is to give up its pursuit of excellence, in the conventional senses of excellence in academia: scholarly and professional achievements of faculty and students. I do think the way money gets spent is crazy in some cases, and it’s hard to have much confidence that it is in every case justified by the competitive advantages it creates, the ROI.
Here is a really simple question: How much has the variance in faculty compensation increased over the past few decades? I’d be happy know this just for FAS; “One University” notwithstanding, the market forces in the professional schools put each on its own salary scale. (Interesting, however, that the outliers in 2005 were in HBS, and now are in HMS.) Likewise, I’d leave out those HMC compensation packages that turn up in some of the reports, since in other institutions they would be invisible, having been taken off the top of the externally managed endowment returns.
20 years ago, as I recall, the FAS dean took some pride in limiting the salary differences between academic fields, and said that to the Faculty. I now have the sense that wide variability is accepted as normal, and even necessary, because it is thought so important to land and retain the stars. (And that the extrema are not necessarily determined by field.) But I wonder what the data would actually show — perhaps there is less variability than is widely assumed, and that explains some recent departures from the faculty.
I was not really serious when I said this was a simple question. Among the complications is the fact that so many senior faculty, and sometime faculty administrators, are heads of centers, research programs, and whatnot, or are vice-this or associate-that, for which they may receive salary supplements. It would be hard to gauge the real value of those various titled positions; some are really important and productive, some probably not so much.
So I think competition breeds excellence. If cancer is cured, I want it cured at Harvard, and I hope Stanford and Yale loyalists feel the same way, because it will make the cure closer if we are all trying to achieve it. Same applies in lots of other areas where there universities try to be the best — I hope Harvard keeps croaking MIT in the Putnam competition, for example. (So I don’t want to redefine excellence as value-added, etc.) Question is, is the way money gets spent — even if sustainable, as it well may not be — even effective creating that kind of excellence?
Another time, we can get into administrative growth, but can’t help posting this, which I don’t think has been seen on this blog:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/06/forget_moocslets_use_mooa.html
7/7/2024 8:30 pm
Harry,
Your points are thoughtful as usual. Isn’t it the case that those who have actually made advances towards curing cancer, or similar discoveries, are remarkably humble people who do not need ‘star’ status? We are living a confusing era where celebrity status is confused with real achievement.
For most of its history Harvard was content to be an excellent University, that attracted people of achievement and dedication… not necessarily stars or people who saw themselves as stars. This has changed, especially in the last decade, not clear that in ways commensurate with real achievement or increased true contributions to the advancement of knowledge or teaching.
You are doing the right thing in naming what information would be valuable to make public. Wikileaks was able to obtain a lot of information by simply publishing a list of the information it sought and intended to make public. The specificity of the request may cause those with access to the information to think about whether this should be secret. This is how good journalists write exposes -see this for example how Todd Wallackin the Globe was able to get many staff and former staff at the AAAS to share with him important details that allowed him to publish a most interesting series on some bizarre practices there:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/06/17/american-academy-head-berlowitz-went-looking-for-best-and-brightest-and-found-herself/ZQahGO9cBiu3FRMJUkpJMI/story.html
It’s surprising no one has done something similar for higher education. Maybe the Crimson will catch on…
7/7/2024 8:55 pm
Let Yale and Stanford, and Columbia and Chicago, have their pick of those Harvard faculty or students who want to decamp for those places. Of course competition works, but it’s competition to get to the best places.The important differences are between institutions in different leagues, not within institutions in the same league. And what defines a ‘league’ is a subjective equation combining various factors: overall quality of institution, overall quality of department, quality of colleagues and students, quality of city. Caltech is in many ways an excellent institution, but most people at Harvard would not move there because the people are nuts and the heat is horrendous.
If you took all the assistant professors, or all the college or graduate student applicants, of peer institutions in the same league, and randomly assigned them accross those institutions, there would be no discernable effects in what these people do.
The possible efforts of Harvard trying to compete with Princeton, or Yale or Stanford just aren’t worth it. Those efforts would be a lot better spent figuring out how to make higher education relevant, worthwhile for all the parties that currently fund the enterprise at a time of many threats, including those mentioned by Sam. To be able to devote energy and priority to that cause will require letting go of things like stars, celebrity status, lavish expense accounts and maybe wine and cheeses and receptions.
7/7/2024 9:42 pm
Two further thoughts. First, I wonder if some of the above comments aren’t assuming that Harvard would somehow manage to remain equally excellent if it stopped competing with Stanford and Yale but they did not follow suit. The alternative, where all stopped the arms race simultaneously (without any unlawful collusion, of course), is a fantasy. (Yale was the most vocal about the evils of early action admissions, for example — until Harvard dropped it. Not a whisper of ambivalence from Yale once Harvard cancelled it program!)
Second, what makes the cost benefit analysis so problematic is that the cost of the loss of collegiality is so hard to estimate. By that I just mean the sense that we are a COLLEGE, a place where professors and students are collectively involved in learning, rather than cultivating external credentials and making money through activities that have little to do with teaching and scholarship. I may be remembering the past through rose colored classes, but I think the spirit of the place has changed, and something has been lost.
7/7/2024 10:04 pm
Yes Harry, much of the spirit of the place has been lost and many current students find their professors hypocritical because they don’t see them or their peers committed to the fundamental purposes of teaching and researching. What they see are people jockying for position, for celebrity status, for money, and practices of frank ethical turpidity. So….. it should not be surprising that they conclude that these are the veritable rules of life, and on occasion cheat on exams, and too often go for the glitter rather than substance. But it is indicative of the times we live in that there is no discussion of these issues on campuses around the nation, and those who raise them are likely to be dismissed as passe.
7/7/2024 10:09 pm
excellence, at Harvard, should not be a quality relative to what others do -Yale or Stanford- but only measured by the absolute progress made in solving the intellectual challenges that concern their faculty, whether they are curing cancer, discovering new galaxies or re-interpreting the Dante. There aren’t enough people with the talent and opportunity to work on those challenges, so competing with each other is futile. The competition is only with ignorance, and that does not live at Yale, Stanford, or even Caltech.
7/7/2024 10:15 pm
A sign of the disenchantment with higher education is when a lousy movie presenting the most cynical view of the admissions process at Princeton becomes a blockbuster:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1814621/
Such cynicism about higher education was unheard of even during the sixties and the counterculture movement.
7/8/2024 3:08 am
Harry,
I agree with what you said “So I think competition breeds excellence.” On the other hand, excellence is often bred by those who just want to excel, whether or not they come in first, second or third etc. and no matter what anyone else is doing. Excellence is not an absolute.
You said :”The alternative, where all stopped the arms race simultaneously (without any unlawful collusion, of course), is a fantasy.” Of course it’s a fantasy. It is a fantasy today, but perhaps not tomorrow. An outside force will eventually stop this educational arms race and that outside force is MONEY.
Perhaps you can’t see it, but I think I can. Harvard and its cohort of schools are not the Fed. It does not have the ability to have an infinite balance sheet. It does not have the ability to take on liabilities and not pay interest on a current basis.
The universities have real limits and sooner or later those limits will be reached. Those limits will be come sooner if the educational arms race continues to accelerate (just keep building those foreign campuses!). Those limits will come sooner if unexpected events in that long tail which houses unexpected events, rears its head… something which just seems to happen more often than we care to admit (the god of probability is mischievous over short periods of time).
When that happens, and it will, it will be devastating to the pursuit of excellence. Question: what would have happened to the university and its cohorts and their pursuit of excellence if markets hadn’t started to turn around in March 2009?
Of course everyone wants excellence. In the future it will only be there if priorities are set as to what areas a particular university wants to excel in. Yes, this is very difficult to contemplate, but a university cannot excel in everything. If priorities are not set today, monetary forces will eventually dictate that they are set tomorrow… and it won’t be pretty to deal with at that time.
7/8/2024 3:09 am
I was that last anonymous.
7/8/2024 12:10 pm
Sam,
I agree with the thrust of your argument. My point was that, even aside from the fact that planning for permanence is part of the pursuit of excellence as Fred Abernathy and I pointed out years ago, the amount of money spent is a poor proxy for excellence, and stupid spending on unnecessary offices, perks, and programs can be counterproductive by undercutting educational and moral values. That goes back to the title of this thread — you and I should write a book about that. There are opportunities for addition by subtraction.
Speaking of that and of the Fed, what do you think about the WSJ report that LHS is “circling” around the chairmanship?
7/8/2024 12:42 pm
Am not surprised by the Journal article. Who knows if it is true. IMHO, The President would be making a mistake if he named Larry.