In 1985, I graduated in the bottom third of my high school class with a 2.22 GPA. My life’s trajectory was not one that would have me sitting next to Middle East royalty.

What happened?

It’s a story about the power of higher education.

Colleges and universities are in the life transformation business.

I want to make that transformational education available to as many people with the talent and desire to go.

Long story short, for 12 years I served as an elected member of the University of Colorado Board of Regents, and I have spent the better part of the past two decades looking under the hood of American higher education.

What I see is not pretty.

So, I wrote a book.

The Book

Lies We Like: The Self-Delusion of American Higher Education. What trustees, lawmakers, and taxpayers need to know is designed to kick-start a conversation so that real change can occur on campus, in policy, and in society. Those changes will enable more students with the talent and desire to access the life-changing education I received.

Lies We Like names the five lies higher education tells itself to avoid real change:

• Schools do everything they can to keep tuition low,

• Research is good for undergraduates,

• Tradition is the mission,

• Emulating elite colleges is good, and

• Colleges and universities put students first.

Under the most basic examination, none of these claims holds up.

I propose a new model, FS², a focus on students and service, to help American higher education get back on track. Two simple questions anyone can ask about any college or university decision: does this serve a working-class, first-generation student? Because if a decision serves them, it will serve all students. And does this decision serve the community, or does it serve the institution?

What I’m raising funds to Do

Finish the book, get it into the right hands, and take a baseball bat to the hornet’s nest and get people talking about what they would rather avoid.

The manuscript is written and is in late-stage developmental editing.

What’s left is the part that turns a Word document into a real book: professional editing, cover design, interior layout, printing, and distribution.

I’m looking to raise $5,500 by August 20, 2026. It’s an all or nothing deal. If I hit the target, it’s funded; if not, no money goes towards the book.

If I raise more than $5,500, that money will support a book tour and getting the book into the hands of trustees and lawmakers.

If you would like to contribute to the project, I would be greatly appreciative. Every little bit helps.

Thanks for considering.

I love the smell of tuition dollars in the morning. It’s the smell of status.

Texas has bought its way onto higher education rankings, but it is almost guaranteeing a worse experience for undergraduates.

Because that’s how it works.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott wanted the state’s universities to produce more research, which produces better rankings, which produces more economic development. To do that, he has thrown tens of millions of dollars at it. It worked.

Since he became governor in 2015, the number of major public and private research universities (referred to as R1, Research 1, the top tier) in the state went from four to 11 by 2023. With recent changes in the classification system, that number now stands at 16[1].

Faculty love to work at R1 institutions because they are more prestigious than schools that do less research, donors love to give to R1 institutions because they get to shine in their glow, state lawmakers love it because a large number of them are usually alumni from the schools in question, business leaders love the increased research spending as they help the economy, alumni love it because it makes their degree more valuable, and college presidents love it because it helps them get their next job.

Everyone loves more research.

I mean, everyone. Loves. More. Research.

Unless we are forgetting someone.

They must not be very important because all the important, powerful, and connected people are listed above.

Oh, right, it’s students. Do they even count?

Why shouldn’t students love more research? Unbeknownst to them, their families, and the lawmakers playing this game of ego, pride, fame, and glory, more research can be very bad for undergraduates.

Students Pick Up the Bill

University presidents tout the amount of research money their institution brings in, using it as a proxy for quality and productivity. Sounds good to us; what do the great unwashed masses know about the work of brilliant Ph.D.s?

Ask university leaders privately, and they will admit that research does not pay its own way. Research grants increase demands on the overall university budget, which has to be covered from somewhere.

Compounding the issue are changes from the Trump administration that seek to cap the amounts schools can charge for indirect research costs. That means schools that built research facilities on the assumption that research dollars would pay the mortgage are left scrambling.

That cost must be passed on to someone. Want to take a guess at who?

Tuition increases, with the accompanying student debt, is fair game to fund status chasing and ego-boosting that comes along with university research grants.

Good luck hearing that when university leaders testify to the need for more research funding at the state capital.

There are two main areas of cost when it comes to university research: hard costs and opportunity costs.

Hard Costs

Basically, the more of a research enterprise you have, the more fixed costs an institution has. These include:

Research faculty: These individuals can require expensive packages to recruit and retain them.

Adjunct faculty: The teaching not being done by research professors is passed onto others— adjunct faculty and instructors need to be hired.

Research Assistants: Not all staff are covered by the research grants. These people need to get paid from somewhere.

Research infrastructure: Some lab and building costs are covered by research grants, but not all. That adds up quickly.

Managing complexity: The more complex an institution, the more support staff, and management are needed. This includes maintenance, janitorial services, security, IT infrastructure, parking infrastructure, and others.

Opportunity Costs

Opportunity costs are those things NOT done because of the time, attention, and money spent chasing research. Some of the opportunity costs are:

Access to faculty: Arguably, the best faculty on campus, those with the most in-depth knowledge of a subject area, are the tenure and tenure-track faculty. However, at research-heavy institutions, these faculty do not teach many classes.

Teaching Quality: Faculty at most research-heavy institutions are not rewarded for good teaching nor punished for bad teaching. It is not a priority.

To teach classes, graduate students, full-time instructors, and part-time adjunct faculty are brought in. These individuals have varying levels of expertise and training, if any, before they get in front of students.

I’m curious, how many students get a sub-par experience because of this approach?

The thing that seems most important to the public, lawmakers, and students, the quality of classroom instruction, is simply not a priority. This lack of attention to high-quality instruction is well known, but little has been done to remedy it.

Class Size: No one thinks large undergraduate lecture classes are an effective way to teach. But they are adequate and very profitable. Let’s assume you have a class with 350 students, who paid an average $1,000 for that three-hour course. That’s $350,000 in tuition for one class, regardless of the salary for the person teaching the course, that’s a money maker.

Community Service: Community problems that could use faculty expertise are often ignored. There is no reward or recognition for faculty providing service to critical local projects.

Adult Learners: You know, those people who pay taxes that help fund state budgets and national research. These are often treated as less desirable and second-class citizens.

Transfer Students: Schools often make it unnecessarily complicated to transfer in. They are just not as important as “native” students.

First Generation Students and Students of Color: I’m fascinated by the fact that our best minds can figure out the relative mass of subatomic particles, the age of the universe, and understand the complexities of ancient civilizations, but we still can’t figure out how to improve the college pipeline for underserved students.

Plenty of Research is Junk and/or Self-Indulgent

In 2018, there were more than three million articles published in more than 33,000 peer-reviewed English language journals. In the 10 years between 2006 and 2016, the number of academic journals increased by 56%.[2] [3]

The higher education community has rightly called into question the quality of all these academic journals that have proliferated over the past few decades. To prove this point, papers written by bots that have no coherence but simulate academic gibberish have been published[4], and papers submitted as deliberate hoaxes[5] have been accepted and printed by “peer-reviewed” academic journals.

Adding to this is the replicability crisis, where results from published research cannot be reproduced, calling into question their validity.[6]

Perhaps worse, legitimate papers written and accepted are often never cited by others, which is considered a sign that the research is not of value to anyone inside or outside of the academe.

What are we doing? Why are we putting up with this?

Nuance

Should the major universities in the United States stop doing research? Of course not. They remain a national treasure and have and continue to make massive contributions to the wold.

However, have they gotten carried away? Have their portfolios become bloated? Likely. There is too much research of little to no value to justify all of it.

Should smaller colleges seek to become universities and universities seek to become R-1? No. They should focus on better serving students and their communities.

The simple fact is, when a university is focused on research and supporting that mission, other areas are not given the same emphasis. It’s just how it works. You can’t focus on everything.

And all that research comes at a very high price, with undergraduates, first-generation students, students of color, and working adults seeking a college education holding the bag.

But, hey, they are not the important people, are they?

[1] https://www.highered.texas.gov/texas-leads-the-nation-in-top-tier-research-universities/

[2] Nils, Schimanski, et al. Why We Publish Where We Do: Faculty Publishing Values and their Relationship to Review, Promotion, and Tenure. Access at: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/706622v1.full.pdf

[3] American Journal Experts (2016) AJE Scholarly Publishing Report: 2016. Available at: https://www.aje.com/dist/docs/International-scholarly-publishing-report-2016.pdf

[4] Van Noorden, Richard. (2014). Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers. Nature. 10.1038/nature.2014.14763.

[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/

[6] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

I don’t think students, parents, lawmakers, or trustees are aware of how much they pay for college sports.

In 2022, only 28 Division 1 schools (those with the largest and most competitive athletic programs) made a profit. Or, in academic parlance, were revenue-positive, meaning they generated more revenue than they spent.

That means the remaining 320 Division 1 athletics programs (approximately 92%) lost money.

On top of that, every Division 2 and Division 3 school with athletics programs loses money.

Lord only knows how much more money schools will need to spend to stay competitive.

Starting this academic year, 2025-2026, student-athletes can be paid directly by schools through revenue sharing.

Institutions are also under increasing pressure to help secure Name, Image, and Likeness deals for students. The NCAA explains NIL: “Student-athletes may receive compensation from third parties for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL), such as social media posts, brand appearances or promoting products and services.”

Dozens of Division I public institutions lose between $20 and $40 million annually on sports. Public university athletic departments that lose roughly $40 million per year or more include the Universities of Connecticut, Houston and Massachusetts and James Madison University. And these numbers are based on National Collegiate Athletic Association statistics, provided by the universities, that top economists say can significantly understate the true deficits.1

If all these schools lose money on sports, where do they make up the difference, especially if more advertising revenue doesn’t pay the bill? Student fees, of course. They also need institutional support from the general budget, donors, etc. Money that could be invested elsewhere or used to bring down the cost of a degree.

When it comes to student athletic fees, an extreme example is Longwood University, a public institution in Virginia with 3,500 undergraduates. It does not have a football program.

“The annual mandatory student fee for intercollegiate athletics is $3,197. The average amount of loans taken out by first-year students at Longwood University is $7,262, 44% of which is directly attributable to intercollegiate athletics fees. And that’s for Longwood University sports.”2

It takes about 10 years to pay off the average federal undergraduate student loan, but for 40% of borrowers, it takes longer. This timeline does not include repaying private loans used for their education.

That is a huge cost to pass on to students.

Many college and universities see their athletics programs as the ultimate marketing tool and as a way to keep alumni and potential donors engaged.

Perhaps.

The fact is, there is no way to know if the money they spent on athletics was spent elsewhere it could produce similar or better results.

This isn’t to say that student athletics is bad, but to question the disproportionate amount of time and money it receives relative to the actual mission of a college or university.

Every minute spent worrying about the athletics program is time and attention taken away from the mission of serving students and the community.

Every additional dollar spent chasing glory is money that can’t be spent supporting students and academics.

Everyone knows this is unsustainable.

So, I have questions for college presidents, trustees, and alumni:

• How much money is too much money to lose per year on your sports program?

• How will you know when to cry uncle?

• What is your plan?

● The two major camps in debate around the purpose of higher education (idealists and transactionalists), and

● That we need FS² (focus on students and service) to be the new North Star of American higher education.

In this post, I will discuss the rewards needed to achieve FS².

TL;DR: If we want to see colleges and universities focus on students and service to the community (FS²), we need a new robust FS² Rewards System to reward the behaviors and outcomes we want. Stakeholders will need to understand what drives the behavior of higher education institutions and strategically focus their rewards to get the biggest bang for the buck.

Summary: Current Higher Education Reward System vs. FS² Reward System

The table below contrasts the current reward ecosystem with the proposed FS² (Focus on Students and Service) reward framework, which focuses on student outcomes, public value, and mission alignment.

Elite Hypocrisy

The East Coast print media still drives national conversations about higher education. You will often see essays, stories, or opinion pieces critical of American colleges and universities in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Free Press, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The National Review, and The New Republic.

Writers advocate skipping college entirely or increasing the number of trade schools; they point out the need to lower prices, the insanity of college football coaches’ salaries, the stupidity of college rankings systems, and how the higher education system is stacked against poor and first-generation students.

Look up these writers on LinkedIn, and you notice a theme: a vast majority of them attended an elite college, many in the Ivy League.

In 2022, I attended a conference on the importance of supporting colleges with a dual enrollment mission. Generally, these institutions grant both associate’s and bachelor’s degrees and focus on working adults and meeting workforce needs. Institutions that would not be on a “dream” list, but are critical workhorses for meeting the needs of students and the community.

On one panel discussing the importance of these colleges, almost every speaker came from an Ivy League or an elite school. The organizations that these speakers worked for, ran, or represented hired the same type of people as themselves: the elite of the elite.

It is highly unlikely that any of the speakers would dream of sending their children to one of these “lesser” colleges. Nor, after looking at employees’ bios, would their organizations hire graduates of these colleges.

In other words, do what we say, not as we do. The hypocrisy seemed lost on them. But, hey, at least they said the right things.

Playing the Game

American higher education is the first HR screen for every major organization. The higher up you go in government, nonprofits, NGOs, business, Wall Street, and the media, the more unspoken but widely understood the rule becomes, “If you want to work with us, you’d better have gone to schools like ours.”

Educated parents know this: the key to the top starts at a young age, with doing everything they can to secure a coveted seat in a highly selective college or university. They will spend the money, play the games, and sometimes, famously in the Varsity Blues scandal of 2019, cheat to get their kid a shot at one of these schools.

Media outlets have these parents dialed in, so they keep pumping out dubious college rankings, and colleges and universities keep chasing them.

This is part of the ecosystem that rewards institutions for their current behavior with prestige, money, and social status.

The actions of these schools speak loudly: “If we can win at this game, damn the cost for others.” So, they and we pretend that it’s all merit, it’s all fair, and it’s all about the value of education. Don’t blame the player, blame the game.

For those that win, we’ve got ours, too bad for you.

Less prestigious colleges and universities see the rules of the game and the rewards that follow. If a middling school wants to move up the academic pyramid, it will play by the current rules, which leads to more of what we already have: massive student debt, underserved first-generation students and working adults, a lot of dubious research, and individuals with bachelor’s degrees struggling to find meaningful employment.

I don’t see how high rankings, bragging about who doesn’t get in, and a lack of support for social mobility align with the lofty mission statements and goals of our august institutions of higher education.

Colleges and Universities say they find the game beneath them, but they play it anyway, as they feel they must and have zero incentive to change.

So, if we want the FS² approach to succeed, we need to provide rewards—a lot of them— that would make implementing the FS² model attractive.

For rewards to be effective, they should align with what institutions value. Not what they say they value, but what their actions show they value. Those values drive behavior. I have found these drivers tend to be similar regardless of the type or size of institution.

The Six Major Values of Higher Education

The six major values that drive the behavior of higher education institutions in the United States are listed below. They are heavily intertwined.

1. Institutional perpetuation: The ultimate value of almost any organization, including higher education, is to keep the doors open. At the same time, it is to prevent reputational damage and/or financial damage.

You see this value in action when schools make crazy decisions in the wake of a scandal. They hide behind lawyers and PR firms to explain away some horrible decisions that make zero sense to the public. The institution comes first. Protect it at nearly any cost.

2. Institutional autonomy: Colleges and universities can’t stand to be told what to do and want as little oversight as possible. As the importance of higher education has grown, the laws and regulations institutions must follow have increased. Schools want to keep this to a minimum.

The feeling is that people outside of higher education don’t really get it.

There is some wisdom in this; even well-intentioned laws and reporting regulations can be burdensome and do little to achieve what lawmakers and policymakers hope.

The challenge, of course, is how to hold institutions that take public money accountable for outcomes that serve the public good.

3. Prestige/reputation: This is the lifeblood of higher education. It has been said that prestige to colleges and universities is as profits are to corporations. Even if a college is only seen as better than another institution down the road, it’s something. Everyone needs a yardstick to compare to.

If your primary objective is self-perpetuation, this is rational. An English degree is an English degree. It’s the reputation of the school where you go for your degree that people take into account.

Under the current system, reputation-chasing most often leads to decisions that are not in the best interests of undergraduates and underserved populations.

4. Faculty/department independence: Highly educated people want to have agency to make their own choices. Faculty and departments want to follow/lead where their academic field is going. Bureaucratic demands from an out-of-touch administration, policymakers, or, worse, lawmakers are often seen as a waste of time.

If one’s commitment is to the academic discipline, this is a rational approach. If your commitment is to being strategic in meeting student and community needs, excessive independence is often counterproductive. There can be a better balance if there is a commitment to a common North Star.

5. Budget: This is not to be confused with profit. People in higher education are not in it for the money (some might argue that college presidents and Division 1 sports are the exception). They are in it to do cool, interesting, and breakthrough things. That takes money. No budget, ideas don’t see the light of day.

Faculty and administrators are experts at applying for grant money to bring their ideas or research to life. This is critical to remember.

6. Mission: Everyone loves the mission of higher education, even if there is no exact agreement about what it is. Most people like being a part of something bigger and more important than themselves.

While the current reward ecosystem touches on the above values, it tends to focus on two areas: prestige and budget.

For FS² to succeed, trustees, lawmakers, foundations, donors, alumni, professional organizations, media outlets, and others need to develop a parallel system that rewards new behaviors while aligning with the same values.

While we might like the values to differ, institutional perpetuation and autonomy seem to be common themes across most organizations, not just in higher education. It will be less of a lift to meet the goals of FS² if we work with what is so.

The Reward System for FS²

While carrots (recognition, grant money) and sticks (policy, law, shame) both have their place, we will focus on carrots.

With those conditions in mind, here are some suggestions for rewarding FS² institutions.

Build prestige around FS²: If prestige is one of the major drivers of behavior, we need to make different things prestigious. That means developing local, regional, and national awards in collaboration with philanthropies, donors, governments, businesses, and nonprofits. Make these things institutions and faculty want to aspire to.

This could be recognition for:

• the most innovative online programs,

• creative interdepartmental approaches,

• experimental programs,

• the most robust community service,

• lowering the cost of education,

• focusing on and promoting outstanding instruction,

• having the best outcomes for underserved students,

• creating clear pathways to graduate in three years,

• clarity in transfer credits and guaranteed admission,

• best service to working adults,

• best faculty service to the community,

• best research focused on community needs,

• best scholarship aimed at a general audience,

• most active public intellectuals,

• developing specialized programs that meet workplace needs, etc.

Additionally, there should be an effort to develop specific, high-profile prizes that would gain widespread notoriety.

Grant Money: As no ideas can be implemented without a budget, develop robust granting structures for programs like those listed above.

Mission: States should offer greater financial rewards to those who follow the FS² model and/or adopt it as their core mission.

Other actions:

Business, Government, Nonprofits, Think Tanks: Develop robust internship programs with schools that follow the FS² model. Look at current hiring practices and identify where bias towards specific colleges and universities is at play.

Philanthropies and Donors: Instead of giving to your alma mater or institutions and programs that already have much, focus on those where the money will go further.

Academic Societies: Develop societies that support and recognize faculty work at FS² institutions.

Colleges/Universities and Academic Departments: Develop internal rewards for faculty, including promotion and tenure, in ways that support FS² goals and objectives.

College/University Trustees: Develop your own special rewards for those faculty and staff who excel at FS².

What difference will new rewards make? Here is look at the before and after of implementing FS².

Before vs. After: A Hypothetical University

Before FS²

Before adopting the FS² model, University X behaves much like most American universities. Its leaders speak fluently about access, opportunity, and student success, yet the institution’s actual priorities are revealed through budgets, promotions, and strategic decisions. Rankings matter. Reputation matters. Research expenditures matter. Selectivity matters. Or, just looking better than the college down the road matters.

What matters less, despite constant rhetorical praise, is whether students complete efficiently, graduate with manageable debt, or leave with skills that employers can clearly use.

As a result, University X steadily increases spending on visible signals of quality. New facilities are built. Amenities are expanded. Administrative capacity grows to support ranking submissions, compliance reporting, and grant chasing.

Faculty are encouraged to publish early and often, to seek external funding, and to orient their scholarly lives toward peer recognition rather than public use.

Teaching is valued in principle but marginalized in practice.

A strong teacher may be admired, even celebrated, but that admiration rarely translates into meaningful career advancement.

Over time, academic programs grow more complex rather than more coherent. Silos thrive.

Degree pathways accumulate requirements as departments protect turf and faculty add courses aligned with their research interests.

Transfer students lose credits. The time to degree exceeds four years. Advising systems strain under the complexity they did not create. Students borrow more and stay longer.

When outcomes disappoint, responsibility subtly shifts to students.

They were underprepared. They made poor choices. They lacked motivation. Structural inefficiency remains largely unexamined because doing so would challenge the very incentives that shape institutional behavior.

From the outside, costs rise faster than inflation while results appear opaque.

Public trust erodes not because the university lacks talent or effort, but because its value proposition is increasingly hard to explain.

After FS²

After adopting the FS² framework, University X does not suddenly become a different institution.

Its faculty remains largely the same.

Its students are no more or less capable.

Its mission statement does not radically change.

What changes, decisively, is the reward system.

Leadership formally redefines success in terms of outcomes rather than inputs. Completion, learning, economic mobility, and regional impact become central performance measures, not peripheral dashboards.

Budgeting processes are restructured so that resources follow results. Programs are evaluated not by reputation alone but by whether students complete them efficiently, affordably, and with demonstrable benefit.

Faculty promotion and tenure criteria are rewritten to reflect a balanced conception of academic work.

Teaching effectiveness is no longer symbolic; it is evidenced through learning gains, curriculum improvement, and student progression.

Faculty service to the institution and the community is redefined and rewarded more broadly.

Research remains valued, but its worth is assessed by use and impact rather than by citation counts alone. Public scholarship, applied work, and knowledge translation gain legitimacy as first-class academic contributions. Advising and mentorship, long treated as invisible labor, are acknowledged as central to institutional success.

Predictably, faculty behavior changes. Rational actors respond to incentives. More time is invested in course design, pedagogical improvement, and collaboration across departments.

Programs are streamlined. Silos are reduced. Departments and colleges are merged to reflect new realities. Redundant requirements are eliminated. Transfer pathways are clarified. Low-performing programs are redesigned or, when necessary, sunset. High-performing programs receive additional investment and visibility.

Within several years, outcomes improve. Completion rates rise. Excess credits decline. Median student debt falls. Placement and underemployment metrics improve, particularly for first-generation and place-bound students.

Employers report stronger alignment between curricula and workforce needs, and many begin to co-invest in program design. Public confidence begins to recover not because the university markets itself more effectively, but because its results become easier to see and defend.

Nothing magical occurred.

University X did not abandon research, dilute academic standards, or become narrowly vocational.

It does not diminish or jettison the liberal arts.

The institution simply stopped rewarding the wrong things.

The lesson is neither ideological nor partisan. It is structural.

When incentives change, behavior follows. When behavior follows, outcomes change. FS² works not because it demands cultural conversion, but because it aligns governance with purpose.

Severing students is not the North Star for most colleges and universities.

Setting a direction to a North Star, creates a clear, stable point of orientation that aligns decisions and trade-offs across an organization. It is the purpose that everything else points toward.

If students were the clear focus of American higher education, the behavior and decisions made by institutions would be radically different, including:

• transparency in the admissions process,

• transparency in the transfer process, and ease of moving credits from one institution to another,

• easy to understand pricing,

• using online education and online books to drive down costs,

• guaranteed admission for high school graduates and community college transfer students meeting certain criteria,

• offering classes and services at times that are best for students, including working adults,

• robust career counseling, robust academic advising,

• offering a true third semester over the summer to help students graduate more quickly,

• teaching quality would be a major factor in the hiring and promotion of faculty,

• stop prestige chasing, and others.

Critiques of the American higher education system are not new or unknown. Tuition increases continue to outpace inflation, outstanding student loan debt is north of $1.8 trillion, and more graduates are having difficulty finding meaningful employment. Colleges and universities continue to underserve first-generation students, military veterans, students of color, and working adults.

In the 2015-2016 academic year, 65% of undergraduates had at least one parent with some postsecondary education; in 2020, 82% of students with two parents who had earned a bachelor’s or higher degree graduated with a bachelor’s degree. That compares to just 26% of first-generation students.

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Yes, schools provide scholarships for lower-income students, in addition to government funding through Pell Grants; however, the amount of money being given to children from wealthy families is increasing.

A 2020 report shows that:

[T]he 339 public universities [examined] spent nearly $32 billion of their own financial aid dollars on students who lacked financial need from 2001 through 2017. During this period, $2 out of every $5 these schools provided in institutional aid went to non-needy students—those whom the federal government deems able to afford college without financial aid.

They are giving more to those who have much.

At the same time, the most selective institutions do more to replicate socioeconomic status than help people move up the social ladder. Forty percent of students at the most elite universities come from the top 0.1% of income earners in the United States. And at 38 elite colleges in the country, more students came from “the top 1% of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60% of earners.”

Why are these institutions behaving this way? They forgot who they are meant to serve.

Lost Their Way

Colleges and universities were created to serve students and the community in which they were founded. The organizing principle was to produce the professionals needed for a community to thrive, as it could not do so without teachers, ministers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc.

As the needs of the community and the country grew, the mission of higher education adapted and expanded to include research intended to meet those needs.

The federal government has also turned to higher education institutions to help meet national needs. This included the Land Grant Acts creating many new colleges and universities, the GI Bill allowing veterans access to higher education, federally backed student loans, Pell Grants for low-income students, and scientific research funding, especially after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit Earth.

However, over the years, colleges and universities have drifted away from educating students and serving the community as their main orientation to focus on self-perpetuation, status-seeking, and becoming the academe, a place for and run by scholars.

To address the shift away from service to others to a service to self, we need a new mental framework, a new North Star. It should be FS², a focus on students and service to the community from which they arose and supported them.

FS² would include a new social contract between higher education and the people of a given state, as well as the taxpayers of the United States.

The Social Contract

When higher education institutions were founded, and for decades, the informal social contract between the public and the schools was something like this:

“We, the taxpayers, will give you tax-free status and money (for public institutions) and we leave you mostly to your own devices as long as you provide opportunities for our young people for careers that our community needs.”

Today, through words, actions, and inaction, colleges and universities (public and private) see the current social contract as:

“You give us taxpayer money in the form of direct dollars, research grants, subsidized student loans, and tax-free status; we will do what we determine is best for our institution, reputation, fields of study, and faculty; and you need to leave us alone because you don’t understand our work or how important it is.”

And, of course, they will reserve the right to howl that oversight on how they use tax dollars is excessive and burdensome. At the same time, they will spend millions on state and federal lobbyists to ensure they are mostly left to their own devices.

Forgive me if I think that colleges and universities are supposed to work for us, not the other way around.

FS² and a New Social Contract

The new FS² social contract would be as follows:

In exchange for public money in the form of direct investment via the local, state, and federal governments in the form of grants, federally subsidized student loans, and tax-free status, and in exchange for direct support and awards from individuals, philanthropies, professional organizations, and others, you will focus on:

1. Providing education opportunities for students that reflect state demographics;

2. meet the higher education needs of working adults, underserved populations, and first-generation college students, while keeping tuition reasonable;

3. serve the needs of the community through partnerships with K-12, other colleges and universities, business, and government agencies and;

4. public research universities should focus a significant portion of their research portfolio on addressing local and regional community challenges.

Now, you can drive a truck through some of the langauge, including reasonable, partnerships, significant to a majority, and community challenges. How do you decide those things? How have they changed or been adapted over the years? Or, worse, how do you measure it and hold people accountable to those standards?

Fair enough.

Anything more specific is not adaptable to changing needs; anything vaguer is worthless.

What that looks like will differ from institution to institution and community to community. But I do not doubt that, through a rigorous discussion among community leaders, lawmakers, parents, students, faculty, staff, trustees, and others, an agreement can be reached that will better serve students and the community.

Agree or disagree with my proposal, or have one of your own; the fight over a new social contract will be messy and long.

Sadly, incumbents and beneficiaries of the status quo (many in higher education, business, media, nonprofits, and government) have the advantage. There is a robust, mature, and well-funded ecosystem that supports the current structure. It will not change willingly and without a fight.

If we believe individuals and institutions respond to incentives, then a new ecosystem will need to be developed that rewards those institutions that use FS² as their North Star.

What incentives are needed? I’ll discuss those in my next post.

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The Ideal vs. The Transaction

There are two major camps of thought in higher education: Idealists and Transactionalists. While people are not as binary as this description, arguments about higher education typically fall into these two camps.

The Idealists argue that the purpose of higher education is human development; an educated person can more fully understand, enjoy, and engage with life, and better participate as a citizen. For research institutions, they would add that their primary mission is to create new knowledge, expanding human understanding in science, medicine, and the humanities, while being a repository and transmitter of the collective wisdom of the ages. Idealists also argue that colleges and universities should be sanctuaries of free thought that push the boundaries of pedestrian tastes and social mores of any given time, so humanity can continue to evolve.

For Idealists, colleges and universities are like national parks, a value unto themselves, and best if they are left undisturbed. Students getting a job is simply a by-product of these endeavors. To give too much focus to employment concerns is to cheapen the true calling of higher education, the equivalent of putting a Walmart in Yosemite.

For Transactionalists, the thinking is reversed. Higher education’s role is to ensure that a graduate is well-positioned in the marketplace for long-term employment prospects. For community leaders, higher education institutions are meant to produce people with the skills a community needs to thrive (teachers, engineers, nurses, etc.) and to ensure that enough people have the right business-friendly skill sets for a city or state to remain economically competitive. For this camp, an excellent by-product of higher education is human development. Generating new knowledge is nice, but it is nowhere near their primary concern, and constantly pushing “radical” ideas is obnoxious and counterproductive.

For Transactionalists, colleges and universities are like Bureau of Land Management holdings; they need to balance the various needs of ecology, beauty, commerce, and recreation. To do otherwise is illogical.

This argument about the “true” role of a college or university is at least 150 years old, but it has become more heated as the cost and importance of higher education have increased.

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Tell Them What They Need to Hear

To appease Transactionalists, who include most students, families, and lawmakers, higher education leaders have resorted to explicitly or implicitly telling the public what they want to hear: we put students first, do everything we can to control costs, and research is good for undergraduates. They also imply that tradition is the mission, and we should emulate elite schools.

Under the most basic of scrutiny, these claims are revealed to be what they are. Lies. I think people making these claims are well-intentioned and might even believe what they say, which is why they are delusions.

These delusions have also been laid bare by the hundreds of books by college presidents and academics, as well as thousands of articles, policy papers, and conference presentations that are critical of the modern higher education enterprise in the United States. It is all incredibly well documented.

Advocating for those delusions makes sense, especially if you are more inclined to the Idealist camp. You would do whatever you needed to ensure that a college or university is left undisturbed by outside forces.

After survival, the primary value for colleges and universities is institutional independence. A college president’s job is to keep the barbarians at the gates. For Idealists, only those on the inside, especially those with Ph.D.s, better if they are tenured professors, are truly capable of deciding which direction the “academe” should take.

If you are a Transactionalist, this is rather insulting and infuriating. They would call for whatever wholesale changes are needed to meet the customer’s needs: ensure graduates can get high-paying jobs, bring down the cost of higher education and, for some, expand access. Transactionalists would argue that those on the inside, especially tenured professors, rarely have the incentive or desire to make the necessary changes to meet the community’s needs. They think reality needs to be rattled into those Ivory Towers. If radical change is needed, so be it.

Transactionalists claim they are paying the bills through taxes and tuition, so colleges and universities should meet more of their needs.

Idealists claim that an education is not an economic transaction. If students are treated as customers, they would not be challenged to think and grow, just appeased (which is already happening in the form of grade inflation). That would ruin the point of an education, because without struggling with material and new ideas, they wouldn’t get much of one. Idealists also believe that if the public “just knew our story,” they would fall in love with the great work done at colleges and universities and give them more money.

And so it goes. Granted, this is an oversimplification of the arguments. But when you read the debates, the arguments generally fall into these camps.

Right now, you are likely thinking that there is a third way, that both the Idealists and the Transactionalists have legitimate points and concerns.

There is, but we need new mental frameworks, a North Star to guide our discussions.

I’ll discuss my ideas on this in my next post.

Welcome to the future.

The university has a budget deficit of $45 million, and no last-minute miracle will shore up its finances.

All indications point to WVU getting into this problem through wishful thinking and profligate spending. They built their infrastructure to appeal to wealthy out-of-state students and a fundamentalist belief that research would pay its way— both proved false. COVID certainly didn’t help matters.

WVU leaders felt that demographic trends that were well-known and understood would not impact them. There is just a lower number of students in high school in their state and nationwide. Additionally, more students are opting out of college altogether*, there are other educational/career options, and traditional colleges and universities can’t imagine serving non-traditional undergraduates, translating into institutions fighting over fewer students.

If we are generous, WVU leaders followed the accepted playbook of many public research-intensive universities. Original thinking is not the hallmark of any large institution.

For them, the music stopped; not everyone had a chair.

WVU is not the first that will go through cuts and certainly won’t be the last.

The Numbers

Various thinkers responded that WVU is being “gutted,” and the sky is falling for higher education. A more sober view is required.

The cuts at WVU represent 9% of its majors, all foreign language programs, and eliminates 16% (169 positions) of its full-time faculty.

While radical, dramatic, and upsetting, the big percentages don’t tell the whole story.

Of the majors cut, 20 are at the graduate level, and 12 are undergraduate. Enrollment at West Virginia University is about 19,000 undergraduate and 5,700 graduate students. These cuts only impact 147 undergraduates and 287 graduate students, less than 2% of the student body.

While horrible for the faculty members losing their jobs, students losing their majors, and alumni the connection to their alma mater, the institution is not imploding.

My assumption—not based on anything I could find to confirm or refute this— is that WVU is giving up on the scholarship, not teaching the languages (which likely will be done by adjunct, non-tenured faculty.)

Image created by DALL·E.

What is a University Anyway?

Some have claimed that you can’t be a “serious” or “world-class” university, or a university at all if you don’t have a foreign language program.

This raises a great question for people concerned about cost and access to higher education.

What “must” a university have to be considered a “university,” and what is “nice” to have?

Who gets to answer that question? Academics, state politicians, national politicians, accreditation agencies (mostly academics), the public, who?

What is that answer based upon? History? At which point in history? What standard do we use, how was that standard developed, when, by whom, and for what purpose? Is the past standard the one we need moving forward? Whom does that standard serve?

Who pays for that standard?

This also raises the question, “What does it mean to be educated?” Can you be considered educated without having studied, at least rudimentarily, a foreign language, even if you remember nothing of it five years after graduation?

Many colleges and universities have dropped a foreign language requirement for graduation. Some are appalled at this idea and think it makes the United States worse off.

Again, who sets that standard of what it means to be educated and all the related questions? How much of what we think it means to be educated is tied to class, cultural bias, and our unchallenged assumptions?  

From a more practical level, does every public university in each state have to have the same set of programs and offerings in their physical location to be considered a university? When smaller universities grow up, do they need to look just like all the other universities?

Now that we are no longer tied to geography, how should we rethink what a university looks like?

How much duplication should the public support when new technology allows tenured faculty members to teach students in multiple locations simultaneously?

On the flip side, how can we explore ways to save low-enrollment programs that benefit both the students and the university?

Can University A have French, University B have Latin, University C have Mandarin, and University D have Greek, and each offers those classes to the other institutions?

Yes, it is possible. Some small liberal arts colleges are adding courses from other institutions to round out their offerings, which is proof of concept. However, higher education culture is not known for institutional cooperation. And, so far, it hasn’t been necessary.

Like any large organization with entrenched interests, significant change does not come without external impetus.

WVU leadership blunders have forced their hand.

Everyone in higher education is facing pressure.

Solutions/Advice

Nothing is going to stop larger trends from taking place. That doesn’t mean we are powerless. Here are some thoughts:

The Public: Demand more state tax dollars go to higher education. This is complicated and will be very hard to achieve. At the same time, demand more accountability of how that tax money is spent among institutions and ask about program duplication. All tax money should come with more accountability—which is always more complicated than it sounds.  

State Lawmakers: It is critical to set aside the typical left/right divide on higher education: college is always great/college is always terrible. If we are honest, neither is accurate.

Brush up on university budgets, get testimony from non-partisan think tanks and thought leaders, quiet your institutional and/or alumni bias, and ask what new areas of additional legislation/regulation (or reducing legislation/regulation) can help public universities achieve greater access and affordability. 

Carrots are far more effective than sticks. Put together grant programs that will fund the development of cross-institution collaboration at the front end. Wanting to reward results, not activity makes intellectual sense. However, change can’t/won’t happen without upfront investment.

Campus Leaders: Expand your offerings to non-traditional students. There is a huge need for what colleges and universities have to offer beyond the 18–22-year-old demographic. Fulfill your public mission, meet the needs or working adults, and help your bottom line all at the same time.

Presidents/Chancellors: People were upset during the pandemic with the phrase, “Don’t let a crisis go to waste.” Whatever changes you were able to make, that opportunity has passed. It is now time to start undertaking the very difficult task of restructuring for the future with less state support and fewer students. It will be a painful process, but necessary to avoid draconian measures later.   

Trustees/Regents: Do your own research. Start looking outside your home institution for information about what is happening in the higher education sector. Bring that information back to your meetings with administrators and ask better questions. Be polite, but remain skeptical of easy, overly simple, or especially optimistic answers. Getting information in the best-case, worst-case, and probable-case scenarios should be part of any budget, program, or building approval.

Don’t be the board member who only likes to hear positive news.

Also, ask your leaders, “What is keeping you up at night?” and “What, if anything, can we do to help?”

Tenured Faculty: Changes are coming. Start looking at reorganizing the campus departments now with the deans and the provost, and help guide/direct strategic decisions. Otherwise, decisions will happen to you.

Faculty and Staff: Join unions. The only real way to have power at the table is if you can threaten and implement a strike. It won’t stop all changes but will give you more leverage than “shared governance” does.   

Alumni: Give where you can, what you can. It won’t fix large budget gaps, but it is all helpful.

Major Donors: Like lawmakers, invest in programs that will allow cross-campus, cross-institution collaboration. Giving for the same things will get you the same results.

Change is Coming

I find the advice to “be fearless” in the face of change idiotic, although it sells a lot of books and seminars. It’s not how we are wired.

We fight change because we often assume it is for the worse.

Those who decided on the change think it is, of course, for the better. (“We are smart, thoughtful, caring, and considered all the options.”) Those of us who the change is happening to think it is, of course, for the worse. (They are uncaring, overpaid idiots that didn’t think it through.”) Again, the binary is not correct.

These conversations will require a lot of empathy from all parties. I have found it easier for me to be empathetic with others when I know what I’m afraid of and what my personal “triggers” are. When I’m clear on my concerns, it is easier for me to hear theirs.

We’ve all seen what happens when we get into polarized camps. Decisions are forced, have mixed results, and leaves a lot of hurt feelings and mistrust.

Change is here; it’s how we manage it that will make the difference.

What thoughts do you have? Leave a comment or shoot me a note.

*Immediate college enrollment rate of high school completers: In 2016, overall, it was 70%; in 2021, it fell to 62%. This number is a combined percentage for both 2-year and 4-year institutions.

The high-water mark for immediate enrollment post-high school students at 2-year institutions was 26% in 2018; for 4-year, it was 46% in 2016.

In 2021, they were at 19% and 43%, respectively.

That stung.

It was feedback on my last newsletter from a dear friend I met 30 years ago when we worked at a university together. He asked, “What’s your solution?”

Other friends that work in higher education see some of what I write, and it likely sounds like just another gaping mouth from the complaint chorus.

When I was a Regent for 12 years at the University of Colorado, I tuned out most critics —sometimes well-meaning, occasionally accurate, usually lacking nuance—because most times I couldn’t do anything about their issue even though people thought I had all this power.

After a while, constant complaints are not interesting. Saying some version of “you suck” was not helping me do my job better.

Another reaction was to defend higher education externally—as a Regent, I think that’s a legitimate part of the job—because I love colleges and universities. The teaching, research, and medical care they provide are critical to our society, and they need and deserve our support.

I would save my thoughts about what we could do better—like any large organization, it was a list—for an internal audience.  

For practitioners, pointing out what is true at the macro, policy, or cultural level doesn’t help them solve campus, college, or department issues. If you are dealing with today’s problem, you don’t care about trying to boil the ocean. You want to fix what is in front of you.

In my Regent’s Roundtable podcast, I talk to higher education experts about issues university trustees face so they can have more context to do their job. It is designed to be informative, not a critique. But that’s not this.

So, why am I doing this this newsletter if it annoys people I love and often says what can be found in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, editorial pages, volumes of papers from think tanks and policy organizations, or in mountains of books by current or former professors, deans, and presidents?

University of San Diego Library, Image by Stephen Ludwig

My Story, My Driver

The fact is my heart is broken.

My college experience was profound and transformational. It was so meaningful to me that I want as many people as possible—with the talent and desire—to have access to that life-changing education.

I am a higher education evangelist.

But I see higher education in general, even my alma matter, drifting further away from a focus on service to others to a focus on self.

The unspoken message from the higher education sector—regardless of what Web sites or brochures say— to that kid that barely graduated high school but got a second chance through two community colleges and a great regional university is something other than “welcome” and “we have a place for you.”

That kills me. 

It is my hope, perhaps naïve, that by clearly articulating our shared problems and highlighting where we deviate from our stated values, we can start a conversation to begin to address them as a community inside and outside of higher education.

Then again, I could be screaming at the wind.

Helpful Questions

In my later years as a Regent, after a lot of therapy and good medication, I found a question that would help determine if and how to move forward with something. “What’s running the show today, my ego or my commitments?”

Let’s be honest. We are complex people. It is never all one or the other—it’s a mix. But, in asking, I was usually pretty sure which was which. If my ego was sailing the ship, I could pause and reflect on what was happening.

Providing counsel about institution-level challenges needs to be contextual. So, there is no “solution” I can offer when it comes to what people deal with day to day.

However, I can share what I find useful. The following three questions can provide guidance when looking at an issue:

1.     “Is this decision allowing us to lower/control costs, improve student outcomes or experience, or serve the public better?” The answer can’t always be yes, but it’s a good check-in.

2.     “If we were doing this from a blank slate today, what would it look like?” Institutions can’t start from scratch, but the question can provide new insight into what might be possible or what direction you might want to take.

3.     I invite you to use my question, “What’s running the show today? Is it your values and your commitments, or is something else creeping in?” It’s not a fun question, but it is helpful when things get muddled with personality conflicts. And, let’s be honest here, a lot of work is dealing with personality conflicts.

For those in higher education, I truly hope those questions are helpful for you. For those of you in other sectors, you can change some of the context, and they work just as well.

Every university or president, or chancellor will insist that their institution is unique and that there are solid reasons for the spending increases.

“Public university leaders often blame stingier state funding for the need to raise tuition revenue. And three-fourths of states did cut their support, undermining a longstanding principle that schools educated the populace with government backing. But universities generally didn’t tighten their belts as a result. Rather, they raised prices far beyond what was needed to fill the hole.”

The schools paid for it in part by pulling in tuition dollars. The median flagship received more than double the revenue from undergraduate and graduate tuition and fees it did 20 years prior. Even accounting for enrollment gains, that amounted to a 64% price increase for the average student, far outpacing the growth in most big household expenses.”

There are two major problems behind these increases: mission and complicity.

We, the unwashed masses, think the mission of a public college or university is to serve students by providing an education. The fact is, there are many masters that university leaders are trying to keep happy, and students and their families are not at the top of the list. For “flagships” (a self-aggrandizing term if ever there was one), their first and last master is reputation.

Yet we, the unwashed masses with a degree, two, or three in our households, don’t like acknowledging our complicity in this system. Employers use higher education as their first HR screen. Parents know this, so they go nuts to get their offspring into the schools with the best—say it with me—reputation.  

When the focus is institutional reputation building over a passion for meeting the needs of students and the community, spending that kind of money makes all the sense in the world. We pretend we hate it while lavishly rewarding the system that keeps it in place.

Let’s face it, people will pay what it costs as long as it is seen as the ticket to punch to get into a good life.

State “Flagship” Universities Source: Oglethorpe University

Drivers of Spending/Lack of Cost Cutting

Mission and complicity are the high-level reasons for the spending increases. Here are some more nuanced thoughts and observations:  

·      Only 15% of college or university board members have any background in higher education. That means, when it comes to budget, trustees trust what is told to them by administrators about what is necessary to "maintain quality" and remain "competitive." Board members—and most of the university community—are clueless to how the budget works.

·      Board members often want their school—their alma matter—to be the "best" without ever defining what that means or how much it will cost.

·      Board members that do want to hold costs to zero or reduce spending are treated as pariah and are quickly frozen out of major discussions. The administration thinks they are being completely unreasonable and they make that clear.

As much as we like to honor people that stand on principle, if that’s a hill someone is willing to die on, they won’t be able to get anything done because everyone will think they are a jerk. So, they often capitulate or become quiet about the cost issue.

·      There isn’t a lot of original thinking when it comes to university operations. There is one Platonic ideal; they all want to be that, which is why they all tend to do the same thing the same way in different places.

As there is a herd mentality—because no college president, provost, or dean gets rewarded for being truly cutting edge—they tend to have the same ideas on how to deal with budget shortfalls.

That means every state “flagship” thinks they can balance their budget by enrolling more out-of-state rich kids or international students that pay huge out-of-state tuition to boost their bottom line. Some schools do this spectacularly well.

To attract those students, institutions need to build shiny objects to impress 17-year-olds. That gets expensive. This strategy blew up in the face of West Virginia University, which is now dealing with a major budget shortfall. They built it, and students didn’t come.

·      Higher education is a commodity. To best way to distinguish one “flagship” from the others is by reputation. Reputation usually means exclusivity and research. Everyone loses money on research, but no one talks about it, resulting in higher tuition bills and less access to tenured professors.

·      State funding has decreased, but as the story points out, the tuition increases have outpaced what the state would have given—generally. While state funding is not what it used to be, universities think they are entitled to operate as they always have.

·      Schools use fees as a back-door tuition increase that usually gets overlooked in the numbers reported by the press.

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·      The external reward systems (rankings, donors, employers, government, accreditation agencies, academic societies, professional organizations, alumni, media, etc.) support the status quo. While complaining about costs, none of the enablers are doing anything about it. There is no external incentive for “flagships” to change. Shaming them isn’t working.  

·      Almost all of the people that write about this at the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic, and The Washington Post all went to an Ivy League school or small private liberal arts college. Only hiring from a few select colleges helps drive the reputation game that “flagships” play. That makes these publications part of the overall problem, and they are hypocritical for not calling themselves out on the issue. 

·      When a recession comes, businesses tend to correct and cut the bloat they have taken on. (This is a horrible system that is a failure of leadership and management to make hard decisions in good times, but that’s how it works.) There are rarely cuts in higher education (which, overall, is great). However, institutions grow, grow, grow, and never address their bloat. When cuts do come, they are usually at the margins and not strategic. 

·      Tenured faculty tend to fight every measure of reform or change at every step. If I were in their shoes, I would too. The changes rarely make their lives better or easier. But that often slows or kills possible reforms or cost-cutting.  

The Near Term

So, what’s next?

·      Students and families will continue to pay and borrow if they think the best opportunities only come from earning a credential from a "flagship" school.

·      With no policy measures to stop it and with a massive external reward system in place, the academic arms race won't stop, and costs will continue to outpace inflation.

·      With a national decline in the number of high school graduates, most universities will experience cuts and have some re-focusing of efforts.

·      Outside of culture war issues, the general public will continue to resent higher education because more of them feel excluded. University leaders will respond by saying that “if the public only knew our story, they would love us” and spend money on PR and marketing accordingly. It will have a negligible impact, as it has for decades.

·      Non-flagship state colleges and universities—generally the ones that do the most to provide access, affordability, and social mobility—will begin to experiment because they have to. They don't have the financial resources the bigger campuses do, their students are more price sensitive, so they will need to adapt. Some will innovate to keep costs in check and to find new ways to generate revenue. Best practices will eventually make their way to “flagship” institutions.

·      As costs continue to rise, more students will choose alternative options to a traditional four-year college, such as coding boot camps and specialized coursework providing employer-recognized credentials. That will cause an increasing number of small private colleges to close and pressure public institutions to “right-size.”

One major caveat to all of this: no one can predict the impact that AI, machine learning, virtual reality, and the continued expansion of online education will have on the higher education sector. Someone could figure out how to deliver a quality college education (without the college experience) at a greatly reduced cost. It wouldn’t impact “flagship” prices or operations—at first.

I mean, how many godawful boring commencements, or even ones that are just “fine,” do people have to go to until someone says, “Maybe we SHOULD do this better?”

We don’t give college commencements the time or attention they dissever because we are detached from how important they are. (I did a quick search on Google Scholar and found one paper—behind a paywall—on commencements. However, there were a number of papers about commencement addresses.)

Let’s be honest. How many of these things have we gone to, starting with the stupid but cute cap and gown parade of kindergarteners, that they have the same appeal as re-watching the Academy Awards? What’s the point?  

Canceling commencements because of COVID reminded us that commencements are, in fact, important. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to make us want to do them better. A boring commencement is great compared to nothing.

By not giving commencements greater intentionality, we deprive our graduates, their family and friends, and ourselves of this amazing opportunity we rarely have—celebrate individual achievement while recognizing and honoring the people that, as a community, made it possible.

We miss how profound all of it is.

This makes me incredibly sad.

The Importance of Ritual

There are very few times in our lives when we are one thing on one day and known as something different on the next. Many of them are religious in nature, like a baptism, bat mitzvah/bar mitzvah, or ordination.

For secular ceremonies, there is swearing into the military, becoming a citizen, or taking an oath of office.

Weddings can be both religious and civil.

While they are common events, individuals only get a few a lifetime. There is a reason coming-of-age and other ceremonies existed before recorded human history and continue into modernity. They tie us together as a community and mark a time and place in life as nothing else can.  

When you become a college graduate—it’s a major demarcation in life. It changes how the world sees you and, many times, how you see yourself.

Because administrators, faculty, and staff attend one or two of these a year, they forget it is a once-in-a-lifetime event.

While graduates have been to and participated in other commencements, this is the only time in their life that they are going to get this degree on this day. It is the only time in their lives that this set of family and friends will gather to honor them for an accomplishment.

They’ve got one shot at the day. That’s it.

It can never be done again.

For most undergraduates, it is the last time they will ever wear a cap and gown.

Who Is It for?

If an anthropologist were to examine a commencement with fresh eyes, how would they describe it? Who are the most important people? Who gets attention? Who gets ignored? What are the symbols? Who are they for? What do they mean? Do people understand them?

For events, it is helpful to answer a few basic questions: 

·      Who is it for?

·      What will attendees remember?

·      How will we know if it was successful?

For commencement, all that seems straightforward. It’s not. It’s like a wedding; there are a lot of people to keep happy and various agendas happening all at once.

The alumni pitch? That’s not about the students—that’s about the school trying to get money. The honorary degree recipients speaking (have a short video if you must, it’s far more engaging)—that’s about the university. The president or chancellor giving a long address and then the commencement speaker giving a long address—that’s about them, not about the audience.

While commencement is ultimately about conferring degrees, it is still a communal event. Faculty must be meaningfully recognized for their contributions—the day would not be possible without them. They often feel like props, which is why so many don’t go.

In the same way, time should be spent recognizing the contributions of family and friends. Staff and administration should also be recognized.

People need to be reminded that they are celebrating with the degree recipients, not just for them. While the graduate did the heavy lifting, there were many hands involved.

What Will People Remember?

Not much.

No one remembers a commencement address. It’s ego to think so. It’s entertainment.

People will remember the commencement speaker, but only if they are famous.

Participants and attendees will remember how they felt.

The rest is a blur of logistics, navigating family issues, who showed up and who didn’t, anticipating a name being called, and what graduation means.

You can go to a religious service and generally tell when it’s being done out of rote memory—or an annual requirement—or if people have put thought into it. All the “stuff” might be the same, but the energy and intention are entirely different. It can all feel like an unnecessarily elaborate performance done poorly.

It’s the same for a commencement.

The question is, how can you make an event that makes graduates and as many people as part of this communal event know they are cared for and walk away feeling honored, celebrated, and feeling good?

Some Ideas to Make Commencements Better

Ask Commencement Organizers

They are the people doing the heavy lifting and planning; they will have ideas on how to make the day better.

Steal Best Practices

Because campus leaders are busy with their own commencements, they never get to see how other people do it. Ask around.

When I was a regent for the University of Colorado System, I went to all four campus commencements and each had something special that the other campuses didn’t know about. I suggested the commencement leaders get together—and they shared and implemented the best ideas.

One of which was faculty lining up on both sides, where the students marched in and applauded as they went by. Everyone loved it—faculty and students.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

While I’m not opposed to confetti cannons and smoke machines at the end of commencement, I do think we should honor the traditions that we have inherited.

We don’t need to turn commencement into a WWE event spectacle; we need to do our tradition better.

Have Faculty Involved in Planning

Specifically, I’m talking about faculty from the theater, psychology, and anthropology departments. Their expertise will help see things that others miss on how to make commencement better.

I would also include folks from athletics, as they know how to get people in and out of an arena effectively. And, if we are honest, they know how to put on a good show.  

Quite frankly, I’d have the theater department run the whole thing—but they probably don’t want the job.

PARKING-PARKING-PARKING!!!!!

The feeling of commencement starts at the parking lot. Get more police/traffic directors/volunteers than you think you need to make this as easy as possible. Getting stuck in traffic on the way in or the way out can ruin a day.

You will get no credit for doing it well, but people will be mad if it is done poorly.  

Combined with that, don’t issue any parking tickets or tow people during commencement or a few hours after. Trust me, this actually happens. Talk about a bad look and losing potential donors.

Tell the People What they Are Participating In

Before the ceremony starts, have someone with excellent stage presence go to the podium and tell the audience what all the symbols mean, why they are important, and why the tradition carries on. It’s like getting a libretto before an opera.

While people have attended many commencements, most don’t know much about the ceremony.

While many campuses print what the robes, hats, flags, university mace, president’s chain, colors, and other things mean— most people don’t read that until degrees are handed out. By then, it’s too late.

I would also have the narrator tell the audience how important it is that they came. How honored you are to have them there. That individual can cue the band to start the music and let the commencement begin.

Get a Good Commencement Grand Marshal

Please. I beg you. Don’t give this as a faculty award. Don’t rotate it. Find a person with a great stage presence and let them do it as long as they want. Let them be the person that keeps the entire event flowing.

That person sets the tone and energy for the entire event. If that person is lukewarm, you are doomed.

Get Grounded

When things become routine, we need reminders of why they are important.

I’m an old theater guy, and we had a practice called this getting centered. That’s where you calm yourself and focus, getting rid of other distractions. It’s also referred to as getting grounded or getting present.

In the robbing room for the faculty and the platform party, I think leaders should take a serious moment to remind everyone that this is a once-in-a-lifetime event for the graduates and their families and friends. Their contribution, no matter what it was, made this day possible. Have them be present to that.

Bring Energy

This one shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. The academics and guests are staid in their speeches and presentations, but when students are allowed to address their fellow graduates their excitement, energy, and joy go off like fireworks.

Those not graduating might not have the same enthusiasm, but having more oomph on the platform would be most welcome. Yes, it is a solemn ceremony, but it doesn’t have to feel like a wake.

Why do we have more joy for someone catching a football than for students graduating?

Practice

If a person has a speaking role, no matter how many times they may have done it or how small it may be, practice. Out loud. More than once.

I’ve heard too many highly educated people significantly trip over their part because they couldn’t bother to prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime event with thousands of people watching. Hubris.

How are you supposed to have energy or presence if you don’t know the words in front of you?

Short Remarks, Limit Speakers

As noted above, there should be one main commencement address. Keep it to 10-12 minutes. (Speakers are horrible about honoring this, but do your best.)

Chancellor/president gets five minutes.

Everyone else, two or three.

Can a video or someone that reads well cover the ground rather than having more people speak?

Have a Live Band

Recorded music for this? Come on.

Honor All

As I mentioned above, it is essential to honor everyone there and acknowledge that the day would not be possible without them.

Spending a few minutes on this, and shortening speeches, is well worth it.

I’ve seen chancellors ask all the graduates to stand and find their family and friends in the audience and thank them for their support.

Having a student leader at the podium ask all the faculty to rise and be recognized and thanked for their dedication, support, and mentorship is excellent.

End Strong

Let the throwing of the mortarboards be the end. Don’t have another five minutes after that. It’s so anticlimactic.

“We Got Through Another One.”

I heard that phrase at the end of a commencement. It was jarring as it was familiar.

Let’s get rid of it.

To that end, how will you know you didn’t just get through another one? How will you know your commencement was successful?

Doing the hard work to answer that question before planning starts will help make future commencements better for everyone.

As much as faculty, staff, and leadership want to embrace innovation, many campus cultures are resistant, if not downright hostile, to change. And like any large organization, there are significant bureaucratic hurdles preventing great ideas from people closest to the work getting the attention they deserve.

In 2016, University of Colorado Boulder Senior Vice Chancellor and CFO Kelly Fox (now the Vice President of Administration and Finance at Rice University) implemented a “Short Experiment” grant challenge. It was part of an overall effort to shift the business culture at the campus to become more “innovative” in dealing with campus operating issues.

Individuals and teams across university operating units (academic departments were outside of this project's scope) were encouraged to submit proposals for short experiments around innovative ideas to improve an area of campus operations. 

They followed the short experiment process outlined in Creativity, Inc., by Ed Catmull, the former President of Pixar who holds a Ph.D. in computer science,

The short experiment process has three parts:

1.     Identify a clear and specific question or problem.

2.     Create a hypothesis on how to solve the problem.

3.     Design a short experiment, using a small amount of time and money, that will test the hypothesis.

After the experiment is concluded, review the results, learn from the experience, and develop next steps.

Sixty proposals were submitted, with 15 selected as finalists by a seven-member review committee comprised of three professors, two senior administrators including SVC Fox, one student, and one University of Colorado Regent, which was me.

In 2022, the U.S. Military held a similar contest that was compared to the TV show Shark Tank. The TV show has entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to business investors.

Six years and worlds apart, the response from the military brass and our review committee was similar.

A number of the ideas were so good that we considered them no-brainers. We wondered why they hadn’t already been implemented.

But, if we were honest, we knew the answer.

Culture. Hierarchy. Bureaucracy.

It is not bad intent or bad management. It’s culture, hierarchy, and bureaucracy. While college and university hierarchies are not as rigid nor carry the same weight as the military, they still exist, especially for staff.

Budget limitations and time constraints on individual units and managers don’t typically provide time or money for a lot of experimentation.

It’s not fair to ask managers or staff to innovate if the formal and informal rewards of a department, college, or university are all focused on supporting the status quo, and there is no support, training, or budget for innovation.  

However, humans, being what we are, can’t stop developing ideas—sometimes brilliant—on how to solve problems.

To get at them you need to cast a wide net and cut out the gatekeepers. Then, ensure the ideas reach the people with the checkbooks and authority to try something.

At CU Boulder the fifteen finalists—teams and individuals—presented their proposals in person to the review committee. Eight projects were funded, and the remaining seven were assigned to work with senior leaders for further refinement.

Results

All the presentations were excellent. However, the one that stood out was from the custodial staff. It was a way to dramatically reduce the amount of solution needed for carpet cleaning. Their idea would save them a ton of work, reduce costs, reduce storage space needed, and help the environment.

It was a no-brainer.

This idea, along with all its great benefits, would have never come from the top. Only the people closest to the work could find and propose a solution, which was the entire point of the process.

These types of exercises often provide an unintended outcome. Themes arise from submissions of what staff finds ineffective. This is gold. Leaders should not miss the opportunity to do a deeper dive into these areas via surveys, focus groups, etc., as a way to further improve university operations to the benefit of everyone.

Entitled. To. Free. Money.

They deserve it. They’ve earned it. It’s theirs.

Who put this idea in people’s heads that if you do what you are supposed to do, study hard, and get good grades that the universe will reward you with cash for college?

Colleges and Universities!

They all want the “best and the brightest,” the most academically gifted, and the best-prepared students. Why? Because it is good for the school's reputation, they are easier to teach, they require fewer resources, and they make for better future donors.

Merit scholarships—I’m talking about non-need based, those that are just about grades and test scores and are not connected to financial need— are about the school, not the student.

While collees and universities go out of their way to show they care about diversity, equity, and inclusion—and make sure plenty of diverse faces are on their Web site and brochures—they dump a truckload of money in the laps of rich (mostly white) kids. (This is on top of a ton of financial advantages for wealthy families and higher ed tax breaks.)

A 2020 report shows that:

[T]he 339 public universities [examined] spent nearly $32 billion of their own financial aid dollars on students who lacked financial need from 2001 through 2017. During this period, $2 out of every $5 these schools provided in institutional aid went to non-needy students—those whom the federal government deems able to afford college without financial aid.

That’s $2 for well-off kids, $3 for poor kids.

Oh, and we love them for it.

Because if you are reading this—odds are I’m talking about your children.

And, unless you are really loaded—$2k to $5k a year is real money. You want that discount because college is way too expensive, and any little bit helps.

Let’s face it; if your household is pulling down $150,000 a year (slightly more than double the median household income and putting you in the 80^th percentile of all U.S. households) and you have a mortgage, two car payments, and fork out for the kid’s traveling soccer team—you are stretched thin! You don’t have the cash to write a $30,000 check or more every year to cover college costs. A total of $8k to $20k savings is huge!

Because state lawmakers have cut higher ed funding; you don’t want to pay more taxes; colleges, and universities have zero incentive to change and charge less, we remain obsessed with college status; merit students are most likely to complete college and get accepted to graduate, medical, and law school (which also looks good for institutional rankings); and there is an entire ecosystem of vested interests in the status quo—then, why not throw well-off kids—those that have had all the advantages—a little cash.

It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

Trust me, colleges and universities wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have to. You know who will go out of state faster than a speeding bullet—students who can afford it. It’s all about the Benjamins.

For example, if a state college or university loses 100 students that pay $30,000 in tuition, room, and board, that’s a revenue loss of $3 million a year and $12 million over four years. If you pay $500,000 in merit scholarships annually but wind up keeping keep $2.5 million and $10 million, respectfully—it’s a good business decision.

But it’s a bad moral one.

The reward of education isn’t education; it’s scholarship money.

It’s no wonder the majority of people think the reward for a college or university degree isn’t about developing a nuanced, broader, and richer understanding of the world or having a more satisfying life; it’s the credential that gets you a higher-paying job that buys you happiness.

College and university faculty and administrators bemoan that students don’t appreciate the value of education for education's sake. Well, they are major contributors to the problem.

Parents have argued that their kids wouldn’t do as well in high school if they didn’t have the scholarship threat hanging over their heads.

Yeah, right.

Where is the control group for that claim?

Psychology of Desire

Applying for college and university admittance is like applying for jobs—it is often incredibly demoralizing.

Nameless, faceless people decide your fate. You think you know the rules but are never sure—the more selective the institution, the worse the guessing game.

Do they want me? Am I good enough? Do I do everything right? If I don’t get in, what does that mean for my future?

If selected, the university is doing the student a favor. A degree from a “good” college is a scarce commodity, and they are the gatekeeper. Get out of line, and they can kick you out. A future ruined. All the power is in the university’s court.

Instead of begging institutions to get in—like those gross and filthy community college transfer students, working adults, military veterans, and just decent students, none of which are “the best and brightest”—merit scholarship recipients are not only admitted but wanted.

Knowing that someone or someplace wants you is incredibly powerful.

The bigger the scholarship, the bigger the psychological boost. And, of course, the greater the bragging rights. Parents love to drop that their kid got an academic (merit) scholarship, casually mentioning one school offered way more than another. (My goodness, what a great, inspiring, and creative parent you must be to have such talented offspring.)

For all the students that don’t feel like they belong at a college or university, merit scholarship recipients are told that not only do they belong, but the institution believes in them enough to invest in their success.

Add that to the advantage list.

Change?

Martin Kurzweil of Ithaka S&R and Josh Wyner of the Aspen Institute argue there is a way to stop this nonsense. The U.S. Congress can pass legislation that would allow colleges and universities to limit the amount of money they will make available in non-need-based financial aid. It would work like salary caps for professional sports teams.

Don’t hold your breath.

The donor class of politically connected and powerful would scream bloody murder and grab the pitch forks and torches (or, at the very least, light up Twitter and send very nasty emails). The scholarships are theirs. They’ve earned it! They deserve it! What would the kids do if you didn’t bribe them?!?

To put a bigger nail in that coffin, it would directly impact the pocketbooks of Congress members.

Just like the home mortgage tax deduction, non-need-based merit scholarships are here forever.

Because we want them to be.

Too bad the money isn’t going to people that need it more than us.

Or, I don’t know, maybe use those billions to lower the price of college for everyone.

But where is the advantage of that?

During one of my visits, she gave me a cassette tape, professionally done but not that professional, of 70s Catholic folk worship music. (If the phrase 70s Catholic folk worship music doesn’t scare you, lower your meds—the dose is too high.)

All things considered; it wasn’t half bad.

One song stood out, with a lyric I can easily recall 35 years later, “Don’t worry about the dirt in the soil; flowers still grow there. Flowers still grow.”

While a quick Google search to find the difference between dirt (it’s dead stuff) and soil (it’s living with organic matter) wasn’t available at the time, it still made sense.

It was an observation that good continues to blossom even in bad circumstances. While we often can’t change or influence events, people, or situations around us (for whatever reason), we can focus on cultivating what we can, where we can. Most of the time, we continue to have the ability to work on something positive.

It’s not being a Pollyanna, nor a suggestion to stay in an abusive environment, but rather an understanding that we continue to have agency. There are likely more chances to help things grow for the better than we realize.

When it comes to higher education, there are a lot of challenges that seem to be intractable. Obsession with prestige, DEI implementation, the culture war, funding issues, pricing issues, technical challenges, demographic changes, increased competition, and, while we are at it, throw in traditional academic infighting and turf battles. It can all be a bit much.

The odds are stacked in favor of the status quo, an uncaring bureaucracy, a hidebound culture. At times, it can seem pointless to think things will ever get better.

And yet….

The further down into an institution we get, away from the office of presidents, provosts, deans, and faculty council meetings, the picture becomes brighter.

Despite the noise, amazing things continue to happen. Love for art, poetry, music, science, math, literature, philosophy, history, economics, engineering, architecture, and the rest—blossoms. Every day. Every year. At every institution.

Passions are found. Callings are heard. Careers are started. Students’ lives are transformed—forever.

Researchers continue to unlock the mysteries of the universe, develop new medicines and procedures to reduce pain and prolong life, produce life-changing technologies, and give us critical new insights into the human condition.

Faculty and staff have a profound influence on the lives of millions of students, giving them encouragement, support, and guidance, creating an environment where they can thrive.

Memories, romances, and lifelong friendships are forged in study halls, chat rooms, and the campus commons.

We celebrate all of it at commencement. The joy of students and their families, especially first-generation graduates, is palpable even before cheers fill the air when a name is called, steps are taken, and a diploma is awarded.

As we seek to move higher education in new directions, engaging with colleges and universities as they are today while calling them forward to something new, I think of Robert Kennedy’s quote, a take on a line from George Bernard Shaw. “Some men see things as they are and ask, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’"

When hiking in Colorado, I have come across a single tree growing out of a rock wall—more than once.

Life shouldn’t be there, but there it is. It’s amazing what can blossom in places where we think it can’t.

Flowers still grow there, indeed.

P.S. After working on this, I Googled the lyric. It’s from the song “Flowers Still Grow There” on the 1978 “Wood Hath Hope” album by John Foley, S.J. (a Jesuit priest). It’s on Spotify.

ChatGPT-4 came out on March 14, 2023. This A.I. continues to impress—it can write full movie scripts, write software code, and probably figure out a solution for your relationship problems.

This is further fueling the sense of urgency around understanding A.I. for business and higher education.

While we look at how to begin to integrate artificial intelligence—or just start working out the challenges to even start that process, there are lessons from the adoption—or lack thereof—of online education at colleges and universities that provide some guidance on how to move forward.

When I was a Regent at the University of Colorado, I was an advocate for online education. Not a replacement for traditional classroom instruction but a new offering to ensure that people that couldn’t come to our campuses could have access to a world-class education.

Call me crazy for thinking that a public university should try to better serve the public.

The president, campus chancellors, and faculty were not amused.

In pre-COVID times, online was still considered a novelty by many, something less reputable institutions did, something most faculty didn’t want to bother with, and it was certainly beneath a flagship campus. Their bias was that there was no way the quality could ever equal in-person instruction; why even try?

So, it became a political problem. Not a problem of know-how, money, or skill—we had all that—but a problem of will.

Developing a comprehensive integrated campus approach to the university’s online offerings was something individual campuses didn’t want the system involved with because they would lose control (typical behavior in university systems), faculty and campuses didn’t see an immediate upside for themselves, many felt it would set a bad precedent if a board member had too much influence on a subject (this one was legit), and—because of how CU does budgeting—they were afraid of losing revenue to other campuses in the system.

In trying to be reasonable and gain support for what would expand access to the university, I accepted a compromise. I later realized leaders didn’t really want it to win, which turned into a colossal waste of time and money.

That was a big failure and a hard lesson. The question, then, was, how did institutions get this done?

To answer that, a group of university leaders went to visit the University of Texas system, the University of Nebraska system, and had a virtual meeting with the State University of New York system to talk about their approach to online education. They let me tag along.

There were common themes to what worked. I’ve adapted those and other lessons for our purposes.

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Individual or Department Level

My personal observation is that staff and faculty in higher education feel more disempowered than colleagues I’ve worked with in the private sector.

It makes sense as things in higher education move at a glacial pace, benefits to change are not apparent, everyone has an idea why a change is bad or could be done better, and when change does come, it’s often not done well.

These suggestions for an individual or department won’t change the institution, but they are offered to provide some encouragement on what can be done to make a difference for you.

Be curious, not obsessive: Knowledge about A.I. has a very short shelf life, and staying on top of every A.I. development in the coming months will be exhausting. I don’t suggest trying.

However, odds are that someone in your circle is obsessed. Pick their brain over coffee or lunch on a regular basis. (If that’s your personality, please share what you learn!)

There are plenty of reputable news organizations that are tracking all this that can provide excellent summaries. Then, when one finding/idea/technology is particularly interesting, or you think will impact you or your department, go from there.

Gather like-minded people. People often overlook how powerful the simple act of gathering can be. This is not a formal committee, rather an informal salon.

This allows you to gather and share notes. It will help you stay on top of the trends, generate new questions and ideas, and lead to collaborations.

Critically, it will help let you know you are not alone in the wilderness.

Experiment. Either by yourself or with a small group of collaborators. Keep the experiments small and short. See what happens. Repeat.

Ask for forgiveness, not permission: We know to work within or around a system. If you are working around the bureaucracy or someone, find a project you can keep under the radar.

This allows you the freedom to do what you find interesting, as you don’t need permission to do it. You can go where the project leads you, pivot, adapt, or abandon an experiment with no negative consequences—and no interference.

Share your results. This isn’t about publishing; this is just sharing what you have learned with the group you get together with and, if you choose, others. It will help generate more ideas and help get feedback and tips for next time.

Invite others to join you. If you are an early evangelist for A.I. and people become interested, invite them onto the playground with you. The more brains on A.I.—paying attention to its good and ill—the better.

College or University Level

Identify what problem you want to solve. You can’t eat the elephant in one go. What are the strategic areas that need the most attention? Narrow it down to two or three from there.

Create a coalition of the willing. Highly educated people, especially faculty, are critical-thinking experts. It is what they are trained to do, which makes them excellent at shooting down ideas they don’t like.

Don’t try to make converts; rather, invite those interested in the possibilities of artificial intelligence to the table—forget the rest. During these initial phases of exploration, this will help the group move quickly to make recommendations.

Set Aside Funds. It will make it easier to get faculty involvement if you can provide even modest funds to help explore new ideas. At the very least, set aside money to test new technology.

Small Experiments: Trial and error at this stage of artificial intelligence will likely be critical. Give people room to fail and try something new.

Advisory Group: Campus leaders need a group of trusted advisors to track what is going on in artificial intelligence inside and outside of higher education. Create an advisory team comprised of people inside your institution and outside experts. This group can track technology, ethics, challenges of implantation, and other issues and provide advice and guidance.

Ask Other Campuses: There is a weird condition on some college campuses that makes them very parochial. The attitude is, “If it isn’t created here by us, it’s no good.” Which is a shame. Because as we found out during our online exploration, people really enjoy sharing best practices and lessons learned. It’s part of the higher education culture.  

Call for Proposals and Grants: Tap into the intelligence of your staff and faculty. After you have your initial working groups on your strategic areas, throw a wider net.

Odds are people are already thinking about ways to use artificial intelligence on campus. Invite staff and faculty from both the business side and the academic side to form teams and submit short proposals (I mean, really short) for artificial intelligence experiments that would have an immediate or near-term benefit. Make small grants available for the best ideas. For those experiments that prove most successful, fund further implementation.

Remember: The pace of A.I. evolution is exponential. What the technology can do today is likely to be eclipsed in 12 to 24 months, if not sooner. That means flexibility and adaptability—two words not commonly associated with higher education—must be built into how you approach A.I. individually and as an organization.

The ideas I’ve listed are certainly not exhaustive and don’t deal with some underlying issues. What do you think people should consider dealing with A.I.? Drop me a note at Steve@StephenLudwig.net and let me know your thoughts.

(Steve here: This is Part 2; Part 1 can be found here. If you didn’t read Part 1, this column can be understood by itself. Part 3 will come out next week.)

Since ChatGPT launched in November last year, it has created a flurry of opinion pieces.

ChatGPT is artificial intelligence (A.I.) software that allows you to enter a real language prompt, and it will write a response. For example, a prompt could be, “Write a 1,200-word college admission essay that highlights what I learned about leadership from the student council, the chess club, and theater. I have a 3.2 GPA. And how I had to quickly grow up as my mother died from cancer when I was 12.”

The generated essay is here. The result needs editing, it stopped short of 1,200 words for some reason, got a few facts wrong, and won’t win an award. Still, I’ve seen far worse writing from business leaders.

One of the main questions people are asking is how students will use it to cheat and how to catch them when they do.

For those of us thinking about the future of higher education, that’s the wrong long-term question.

Question Me This

Rather, we should be considering the following:

• How can we use A.I. to customize education to help students learn subjects more thoroughly?

• What will A.I. mean for skills we teach around technical writing, business writing, and other less creative forms of written communication?

• Do we need to train professors in how to use A.I.?

• How can we ethically use A.I. for the first drafts of projects?

• What courses will we need to develop to learn how to interact more effectively with A.I. prompts? One of the challenges of working with ChatGPT and Microsoft’s new A.I.-empowered Bing (which is not yet widely available), is knowing what questions to ask. This will quickly evolve.

• How will A.I. like Stable Diffusion, which creates art images, impact how we teach art? (The images in this newsletter were created by AI). How can we teach students to use AI images to make more compelling presentations?

• How will A.I. impact the need for textbooks? How can we incorporate AI into Open Educational Resources (OER, free and publicly available teaching, learning, and resources in the public domain) to help students, faculty, and the public?

• How can A.I. bots be used to provide better student services, including academic advising, career advising, admissions, financial aid, and other areas? In 2016, Georgia Tech started using bots as student advisors in one of its classes—many students couldn’t tell the difference. At one point, the bot was voted best student advisor.

• How do we develop new disciplines, like A.I. Forensics, to help tell the difference between human-created and A.I.-generated material?

• What Ethics courses need to be developed across disciplines to help faculty, students, and staff understand the proper uses of A.I.

• The list goes on.

The questions are all important and will be addressed.

However, for higher education policy makers, leaders, and reformers, there are bigger considerations.

The biggest questions for the future:

• Will A.I. require us to rethink fundamental assumptions about how we teach and how students learn?

• How can we use A.I. to help develop high-quality, low-cost degree programs?

• How will this ability disrupt institutions that are already at risk?

The Dead City

Whichever way the A.I. revolution plays out, there will be a lot of creative destruction in higher education. Here are predictions of how some of this will unfold.

The response:

• Large institutions with strong brands and solid funding will be the slowest to adapt, as they can afford to wait to see how things play out. However, they are not immune to enrollment pressures and won’t be able to sit on the sidelines for long.

• Some smaller intuitions struggling to stay open will embrace A.I. as we saw early adopters of online education that now dominate the market (e.g., Southern New Hampshire University and Arizona State). This focus will lead to significant reorganizations, which will result in the closing and merging of departments resulting in faculty layoffs while presenting new opportunities for others.   

• Midlevel institutions, too big to fail, not quite big enough to thrive, will be in the hardest spot. They won’t have the flexibility to change quickly or have budgets to rapidly implement A.I. to gain a competitive advantage.

• There will be fierce debate about how much class content created by A.I. should/will be approved by faculty groups, academic bodies, and accreditation agencies. As these organizations tend to favor the incumbents and traditional ways of education, they will lag behind the best practices developed by faculty and in the general marketplace.  

The upside:

• With good use of A.I., colleges and universities can improve student retention and outcomes. This has already been proven.

• Schools that successfully implement A.I. in recruiting will have an advantage. Better identification and tracking of prospects will produce a better enrollment yield.

• Colleges and universities that can bring A.I. into the online learning space quickly will have a major advantage.

• A.I. processes could help streamline the business side of the house, saving time and money. That money can be reinvested elsewhere or used to keep costs in check.

Competition and Fallout:

• There will be more non-traditional competitors in the online learning space taking full advantage of A.I. offering high-quality, job-specific credential programs. They will use all available tools available to keep costs down.

• The increasing number of non-traditional options will encourage more students to forgo the traditional college route as they do not see the ROI on time, cost, and debt. This will especially apply to first-generation students and working adults.

• That will accelerate the number of college mergers and closings, already exacerbated by COVID, a decline in traditional-aged college students, and increased competition from online and non-traditional offerings.

Expenses:

• The demand for A.I. talent, like IT talent today, will hit college and university employment budgets.

• Universities will dump millions of dollars into technology to remain competitive.

• Like many new technology rollouts, campuses will be ill-equipped to manage them, and there will be massive cost overruns. (This isn’t a ding on higher education, this happens in business as well.)

• Consulting firms will ramp up their A.I. offerings for higher education. Again, costing millions.

• Many experiments at the campus level and in companies that serve higher education will fail. While a natural part of the process, it can be harmful if not managed properly.  

This list of predictions is by no means exhaustive, and I’m sure you can think of a number of other areas to be impacted.

The point is to start thinking about it now so you can manage it and not have it manage you.

The question now is, what can you and institutions do to prepare for what is coming?

I’ll cover that in Part 3.

(Steve here: This one became a monster, so I split it up. Part 1 provides context and a possible scenario about how artificial intelligence can play out.  Part 2, out tomorrow, looks at questions institutions should ask and what this means for higher education. Part 3, which will come out next week, examines strategies that individuals and institutions can take today, and I share some of my concerns.)

Last week I saw the German opera Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City). Fancy, no?

Opera hasn’t changed much since it was initially created—live singers with live music on a stage in front of a live audience.

In a similar way, a student in ancient Greece, at the world’s first university in Morocco, and at the oldest university in Europe in Bologna, Italy, would recognize how we do classroom instruction today— teachers standing in front of students lecturing.

One of the greatest advances for those who don’t remember anything from their college foreign language classes (ahem) has been opera houses installing subtitle generators. That technology helped keep me more engaged.

Professors have gone from chalkboards to overhead projectors to PowerPoint presentations to help keep students with incredibly shrinking attention spans awake.

For about 400 years, the only way to experience an opera was to go to one. The first way to hear it remotely was in 1881 through a local telephone line that carried music live from the Paris Opera. Recorded music forever changed how and when you could enjoy the art form. The first full opera record was released in 1904—on 40 discs. 

It is similar for higher education content and a degree. Yes, you could read the books, like you could read an opera libretto, but it wasn’t the same. You had to go to a college or university to get an education.

In 1892, the University of Chicago was the first traditional institution to allow students to earn college credit remotely through correspondence courses. Now, there are over 40,000 online degrees available, including many from “name brand” schools.

A lot of well-meaning professors, experts, and administrators poo-pooed the idea that you could get a quality education online. The University of California still insists that you can’t do a degree that way because they are the University of California, and they say so. (I can’t decide if this is hubris, circling the wagons to protect the status quo, or hanging on like professors insisting you couldn’t be considered educated if you didn’t study Greek and Latin.)

Research has shown that online courses are producing “similar student learning outcomes” as in-person courses. Other studies have seen mixed results, but the trend is moving toward consistent parity between the two. 

As recording and streaming technology have forever shifted how and when people can access opera; the internet forever shifted how much time and energy students and researchers must spend gathering information; online education combined with artificial intelligence (A.I.) will forever impact traditional higher education in ways we cannot fully predict, but we can make some educated guesses.

A Scenario  

Meet Professor Akin. He has a 101-second lecture on higher education and artificial intelligence that’s worth a quick watch.

I used ChatGPT, an A.I. program, to write the script. I feed that script into Synthesia.io to create an avatar to present the information.

It’s not perfect, but knowing how quickly technology evolves, what do you think that will look like in 3-5 years? How about 10?

That means that people will be able to enter a script, give emotional direction, and provide charts and images to go with the lecture—and you now have an online class. Artificial intelligence will likely be able to generate many of the images needed based on the script, further reducing human effort. (The header image of the university was generated with Stable Diffusion.)

Traditional institutions will stay away from this as they did (and many still do) with online education. But consider this scenario.

• An underdeveloped country needs to improve the education level of its population quickly but doesn’t have the funds to build an extensive, traditional higher education system. (Or, a state or country wants to offer something new.)

• They hire a small cadre of grossly underpaid and underemployed adjunct faculty with PhDs from respected institutions from around the globe to develop curricula for a new college. (Some would argue that AI will be able to create or co-create the curriculum at some point, but we will set that aside.)

• Let’s assume they develop two majors, Computer Science and Teaching. If you have a strict curriculum with no electives, which would make sense at this stage of development, the content development should cost less than $250,000.

• 120 credit hours for a bachelor’s degree=40 classes in total. Add an extra 11 classes for the second major. Adjuncts average $3,500 per course in the United States. (51 classes x $3,500=$178,500.) Toss in lower labor costs from other countries, more time for some classes than others, and round up.

• The adjuncts write the scripts on a work-for-hire basis (no copyright or royalties), use OER material, and provide them to the country’s higher education department. (Another option would be to grant royalties to the adjuncts on a per-student basis, which would be fairer.)

• The country contracts with a firm to put the material into AI-generated professors, using the lessons learned from competency-based education, and creates courses designed specifically for mobile devices. ($2 million?)

• A cloud computing company hosts the college and the country uses local government offices as proxy testing centers when students need to take a test to show completion of a course. ($250,000 per year?)

• As A.I. presenters and materials improve, the country can upgrade using the scripts they already own. When the subject matter needs to be updated, they can hire new adjuncts on a class-by-class basis.

• While there would be some administration to run the whole thing ($250,000-$500,00 per year?), there would be no admissions office, dorms, libraries, stadiums, sports teams, cafeterias, parking lots, deans, department chairs, alumni associations, faculty, or landscaping to pay for.

• Annual tuition is $0. Perhaps there will a modest fee for testing.

• Let’s say my math is wildly off (it’s just the back of napkin stuff, so yeah), and it would actually cost $10 million to get the whole thing off the ground and at least $1 million a year to run. That’s about the cost of one U.S. Abrams tank; the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has that kind of cash; it’s a rounding error for the endowments of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and others; and the University of Colorado Boulder had a $24 million cost overrun on a football stadium upgrade. The money can be found.  

While many would argue this no-frills, Sprit Airlines' approach to college isn’t college at all, it would be a great option if your current option is nothing.

It’s like if you are an opera fan and your choice is a recording or no opera at all; you will pick the recording. And, if you are pressed for time and might not want to go to the opera, you will pick the recording.

Another thing to consider is how other technologies will work with A.I.

Meta has thrown away billions on their version of a metaverse that people don’t like, VR headsets remain clunky, and people thought we would all be wearing something like Google Glasses by now. So, we dismiss these technologies as more Silicone Valley claptrap.

But some versions of virtual and/or augmented reality will combine with AI to allow a more immersive and meaningful learning experience that will rival the mediocre professors that all campuses deal with.

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What are the broader implications of A.I. for higher education? What questions should institutions be asking? Stay tuned for Part 2.  

One of the many results of his murder was a scramble across the corporate world to institute anti-bias training and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Colleges and universities, especially in the United States, had some of the most aggressive DEI implementations, including making DEI part of an expansive number of jobs, requiring job applicants to state their commitment to anti-racism efforts, anti-bias training classes, bias response teams, and more.

The efforts are aimed at addressing the long-term effects of systematic biases against people of color and members of the LGBTQ community.

There is a growing backlash, which was predicted, against DEI efforts in general and at colleges and universities in particular.

There is fierce debate in academic circles if the values of diversity should trump the values of academic freedom. This debate came into sharp focus when an adjunct art professor was fired from the private, nonprofit Hamline University in Minnesota after the Fall 2022 semester for showing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad, and a student complained.

The college president said that sometimes academic freedom needs to take a back seat to student sensitivity. The college's position on that matter evolved during the controversy.

A study released Feb. 28, 2023, by an activist group says some faculty are now afraid to speak freely on campus due to possible backlash for an unpopular opinion, especially around DEI issues. Although, some question the report’s reliability. 

I’ll let others debate DEI, but it does highlight a critical question: what is the purpose of a college or university?

How we answer these questions as a society and on individual campuses will impact how we look at DEI issues and how we choose to move forward in higher education.

The Elephant in the Room

As an undergraduate, I learned an ancient Buddhist parable that I’ve adjusted for today’s sensitivities.

Five blindfolded people that have never heard of nor previously encountered an elephant are asked to describe an elephant to others.

Each person touches a part of the (very tame) elephant. One person has the tail, one a leg, another the trunk, the fourth a tusk, and the last person feels the body.

Not knowing there are other parts of the elephant, each claims they have an accurate description of the animal. In some versions of the story, people fight over the matter.

This is often how we look at higher education. While we know different parts of a college or university exist, we claim our understanding or point of view is the accurate understanding and the one that should be defended.  

A parent paying tuition, a student putting themselves through school, a graduate student, tenured professor, researcher, dean, business, lawmaker, a student services employee, and others have differing views about what a college or university should be, what it should do, and whom it should serve.

There are a lot of interest groups that a university, especially a public research university, needs to serve.

While not articulated as such, many of the debates about higher education are about insisting that their description of the elephant is the proper one.

I’ll discuss three of the many parts of this beast.

Secular Monastery

In 2000, my former philosophy professor Raphael Sassower wrote the book A Sanctuary of Their Own. In it, he argues that higher education institutions should be a place where students and faculty should be able to pursue a life of the mind outside of the demands of the world at large.

That the rewards for the life of the mind are not “tangible goods.”

A religious monastery is where individuals develop their spiritual selves; the secular monastery can provide personal development without the religious context. 

Music, philosophy, art, history, poetry, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, political science, and a host of other subjects—are things that make us human, understand our place in the world, and help us understand our shared human condition. The marketplace doesn’t know what to do with this as it is not monetizable. 

The question some would have, is this something that taxpayers should support? Of course, we should.

Like national and state parks, museums, and concert halls, we set aside things outside the interest of commerce because they have an intrinsic value. It is worth it because we have made a value judgment that it is so.

There is a pragmatic reason for this education as well. I’ve worked with people from Mexico, Argentina, China, England, Scotland, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Jordon, Iraq, France, Ukraine, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Poland, France, Brazil, Russia, Israel, and others.

It was liberal arts classes that helped me understand my colleagues, bond, and develop good working relationships. An accounting or coding class can’t help you with that.

The raging debates within and about higher education often overlook an important part of what colleges and universities can and should provide students—a deeper and broader perspective on life and people.

In our increasingly interconnected world, this is an absolutely critical role for higher education to play.

The life of the mind also includes space for pure research, where there is no expected tangible market benefit from the research project—knowledge for knowledge’s sake. A challenge with research, there are always more things to explore than money to support the exploration.

Credential Farms

Many people outside of higher education will flatly tell you that the reason for a college or university degree is to get a good job. Getting a degree is transactional.

Full stop.

If you pay that much in time and money, there has to be a payoff beyond having an appreciation for J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor or learning The Lessons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

This is especially true for first-generation students and working adults. It’s not that they don’t want personal development; it’s just that they have a more pragmatic approach to education. It is a means to an end; knowledge is not an end unto itself.

We also must be careful to recognize that people exposed to classes in a college or university can change their minds, regardless of their background. They may shift from something “pragmatic,” like engineering or business, to English.

While some think that is a waste, most English or other liberal arts majors do fine in employment opportunities and have great careers.  

State lawmakers and the business community are less concerned with how developed a person is. They want to know that a college or university produces enough workers educated in the right skills to help the economy thrive.

That being said, when I was a regent for the University of Colorado System, we invited leaders from businesses, nonprofits, and the government to share what they wanted from college graduates.

They told us they wanted employees that could think critically, write well, communicate effectively, work in teams, and problem-solve. Recent research supports what we heard.

While that may be true, employers often don’t practice what they tell researchers or regents. When push comes to shove, resume scanners and HR officers look for hard-skill credentials.  

Intellectual Arena

There is also the view that colleges and universities should be a gladiatorial arena of ideas. Let all ideas out, and only the best will survive. This means that throwing intellectual elbows is welcome and expected.

The thinking goes that in the friction of an intellectual brawl, new fires of knowledge and insight are born, the best ideas will rise, bad ideas will get crushed, and incorrect research will be proven wrong.  

That is why academic freedom becomes important. Professors should be allowed to pursue the “truth” as they see fit (with appropriate guardrails). What is hearsay today can be tomorrow’s truth.

Academic freedom has allowed colleges and universities to thrive and produce new technology, medical cures and procedures, and critical insights into the human condition that have benefited humanity. With academic freedom also comes faculty who are wrong, obnoxious, controversial, or offensive. That’s a small price to pay.

What are a few hurt feelings or bruised egos compared to the great benefits to society?  

This isn’t to say that being rude or disrespectful is okay—although contentious tenured faculty meetings seem to skip that rule—but the fear of offense shouldn’t stop academics from pursuing a line of inquiry or offering their insight on a sensitive subject.

It’s the Whole Pachyderm

Some see higher education’s role as the guardian of knowledge. Wikipedia is not terrible, but it’s not where we want doctors to learn medicine or scholars to gain insight into China’s Zhou Dynasty (1050-256 BCE). We all need something with a lot more rigor and peer review; thank you very much.

Other frameworks include being a place to create knowledge, a research factory, a town square, etc. I have no idea where to put college sports.

Colleges and universities are usually combinations of some or all of these. The larger the school, the greater the complexity, the more needs it tries to meet.

These frameworks often have competing interests and don’t always play well together. If one point of view becomes too dominant, the fireworks start.

Based on your personal history and values, some of these frameworks will resonate more than others.

When we get into debates about what a college is supposed to do, to what end, and for whom, we are often arguing from our framework. And as I have discussed previously, this also impacts how we think about the social contract between higher education and the public.

So, next time people are screaming about something a college or university has done, take a minute to see if you can identify the different frameworks and assumptions. It might help us understand each other better.

Isn’t that one of the goals of DEI?

In the show, no one gets a free pass; we are all compromised.  

This occurred to me during a conversation with a group of liberals that would not disagree with their party's far-left wing outside a small circle of close friends.  

They know full well, commit hearsay against liberal orthodoxy, and the modern Spanish Inquisition will skip the fake trial and immediately burn you on the social media pyre.

This could cost you friends, family, and your livelihood. Most people conclude the risk is not worth it, hoping that whatever the issue is will fade away.

It’s similar for conservatives who dared not speak out against Donald Trump.

It turns out that Democrats and Republicans are both afraid of their own people.

While we like to think we would be the one to stand in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, it’s hard to do if you have kids, a car payment, a mortgage, a 401(k), need health insurance, and lack generational wealth.

When we seek to tell the truth or question popular opinion, we are all compromised by our other commitments.

We all know the fate of most biblical prophets. We don’t like how the story ends.

I Know in my Heart I’m Right

I’m not speaking about bludgeoning people with a firmly held opinion, a personal anecdote or feeling we conflate with evidence, or a vague argument picked up from the cultural ether.  

Rather, I’m speaking of a thoughtful critique or legitimate questioning of what is currently held as undeniable “truth.” Or something that should be benign, such as asking for nuance or allowing dissenting opinions on passionately held positions.  

At some level, we all hold back. We go along to get along. We accept what is clearly stupid and not working at the office, in our communities, and in our families because most of the hills are not worth dying upon. We cannot be in constant conflict, so we stop seeing things that bother us and just accept them as part of what is so.

It’s the only way to survive in life.  

Tenure as a Shield?

You would think that tenured professors with iron-clad job protections would be more willing to challenge the hot topics at their institutions or in society.

While they probably (key word there) wouldn’t get fired, they see the likely resulting turmoil as not worth the risk.

We have all seen how colleges and universities will circle the wagons to protect themselves first. Too bad; so sad if you get caught up in their CYA.

Anyone sucked into the Kafkaesque world of a university “investigation” after an angry social media mob attack or an anonymous complaint of making someone “feel” something uncomfortable would happily volunteer for 20 coloscopies, seven root canals, and an IRS audit as an alternative punishment. At the very least, the alternative would take far less time.

Yes, the investigation itself is a form of punishment. Even if the accused is cleared of wrongdoing, the time, money, energy, damage to reputation, and anxiety it causes are real repercussions for speaking out.

Don’t even think of questioning the wisdom, pace, or process. They will insist that it is how it needs to be, and the question makes you look guilty.  

This makes even the hint of a possible investigation an excellent form of social control.

That is why we need to give a lot more grace to one another.  

Grace, Understanding, and Support

We need to understand that college and university presidents, provosts, deans, tenured and tenure-track faculty, instructors, adjunct faculty, and staff are all compromised. While some are far more vulnerable than others, no one has a free pass from being worried about offending the wrong people.

While we need to honor the people that claim offense, we also need to give the accused a more robust benefit of the doubt. I know, I know, it’s a crazy notion to think a person is innocent until proven guilty when the mob is howling.

One of the best public relations strategies to calm the mob is to announce an investigation. It allows the passion of the moment to pass and to take advantage of the public’s short attention span. By the time the investigation is complete, people will have moved on. The only problem, you sacrificed a person and maybe their career in the process. Colleges and universities need to exhaust other ways to address concerns before turning people over to a star chamber.

Heretics need to have space to be heard and debated. And, as radical as this might sound, we need to be okay with students and ourselves being offended, having feelings hurt, and having our most fundamental beliefs challenged. Ideally, that’s what colleges and universities should be—a place for debate. But, again, we are all compromised, and public pressure is real. So, it is up to administrations to decide how to provide this space and deal with possible blowback before it arises, so there are no knee-jerk reactions.

It is important to support those who we believe are challenging the status quo in ways that we wish we could. They can be the spokesperson for things you know need to be said.

Most importantly, no one wants to get kicked out of their tribe. If that happens to a colleague, reach out. Offer kind words and support. They will appreciate it.

Colleges and universities have practices so ingrained we don’t even think to ask that question.

These were developed for good reasons, but their intended or original purpose is gone. We often serve habits and traditions instead of them serving us.  

Let’s look at a few.

You typically need at least 120 class credit hours to earn a bachelor's degree.

For each class credit hour, you need a certain amount of contact time in the classroom and expected work outside of the classroom. (The mental model here is the time it takes to assemble widgets on the assembly line. Or, perhaps, ferment grapes into wine.)

Why 120-hours? Was it based on extensive research? Was it proven that an individual with that much classroom instruction and work, along with requirements for their major, was better than 100 hours or 140, or 200 hours?

No.

It was so college faculty could qualify for a pension plan.

While 120 hours was the requirement at some colleges and universities, in 1906, it became the standard as the Carnegie Foundation required it of institutions for their professors to qualify for a pension plan (now TIAA). 

There are ways to organize instruction outside of the current industrial model.

This includes block systems (one class at a time), “Maymester” (classes in sprints in the winter and spring, similar to a block system), competency-based education (where students test at intervals to determine if they move on to the next section), and others.

Do professors stand in front of the classroom and lecture students because it is proven to be the best for students over more interactive learning?

No.

It started in the 5^th century BCE. It was widely adopted in early universities as the professor likely had the only copy of the book.

Now, it’s tradition. Since most of us grew up with this type of instruction in K-12, it is incredibly familiar and comfortable. My personal preference is for this type of class—usually.

As we all know, the quality of instructors varies widely within any given institution.

Those Summer Nights

Do colleges and universities need to idle very expensive facilities over the summer? Is it proven to provide excellent outcomes for students and faculty to have a few-month break between studies?

No.

It was so students could go home and help with the harvest. Now, it’s just a habit we defend to the death because we are entitled to summers off from school.  

Schools say that’s when professors do their research and students do internships. Both research and internships are also done during the regular academic year. Not sure what makes summer the season of magic.  

A true summer semester would help students complete college more quickly, providing tremendous cost savings.

Do you need a multimillion-dollar athletic program to be a successful college or university? Could you attract students and donors without it?

I don’t know. A few specialized schools do without sports teams, but no one else is willing to give it a try.

NCAA Division 3 schools, the least competitive in college athletics, median annual spend on athletics is $2.5 million.

All Division 3 schools lost money on athletics in 2019.

Are large lecture classes the best for the students?

No, they are best for the institution because they are insanely profitable.

The average price for a 3-hour credit course at a public university is $1,170. That means a 500-person lecture class brings in $585,000. The average pay for a person teaching a college course is $3,556. Even if the class is taught by a full professor making an annual salary of $100,000 and they only teach three classes per year, that’s $33,333 for the class. Either way, that’s one amazingly profitable model.

Were admission standards developed to ensure students could perform at a collegiate level? That they wouldn’t be wasting their or the institution's time? That a specific cohort of students needed the right blend of students?

Again, no.

The modern admissions system was started as a way for small private liberal arts colleges to keep out Jewish people.

Do we need some admissions process? Yes. But we can do better.

Searching for Meaning in so Many Meetings

Do granting tenure and post-tenure review need to go through more than two or three levels before being decided?

No.

It’s a lot of CYA for the occasional lawsuit. The excessive review process puts candidates and faculty under review through hell and has massive hard and opportunity costs.

Is anyone willing to admit that their level of review might be redundant or unnecessary and give up a little power and influence? Not without a major fight and lots of accusations about bad intent.

Are search committees absolutely necessary for so many positions on campus? Is the value these committees provide equal to or over the lost time and productivity of the people on the committees?

Incredibly doubtful.

Search committees were about inclusion to ensure that things were not missed due to bias; now, it’s about not trusting others.

The attitude is that if staff, faculty, student, or member of a certain group is not on a search committee, it will be incapable of hiring the right person. “We” don’t trust “you” to get it right without our input.

And there is a valid question if they always produce the “best” candidate or just the best compromise for all the personalities in the group. 

The whole process has become ludicrous.

Is requiring or preferring a master’s degree for staff positions on campus necessary to ensure that the best possible candidates are hired?  

Please.

Experience would work just fine. The requirement is nothing more than self-justification. I would guess a number of those positions probably don’t need a bachelor’s degree, either.

But Wait, There’s More

Do we need departments as the world needs more cross-disciplinary approaches to problems?

Are PhDs and a faculty background necessary for college presidents to be effective leaders?

Are transfer credits from other colleges or universities deficient in some way that the student needs to retake a class?

Is it important not to offer many classes on Fridays, weekends, or after 5:00 p.m.?

Should professors be required to go through continuing education about the latest research on teaching effectiveness?

No, no, probably not, no, and yes.

Are there dozens of processes, procedures, structures, habits, and traditions that could be critically examined that I can’t see because I’m too close to higher education?

Yes.

Will most colleges and universities invest the time, energy, and money to look at what is considered sacrosanct or just part of university “culture?”

Yes and no.

Smaller colleges and universities in danger of closing, merging, or facing significant budget challenges will be forced to.  

The rest will live with the status quo or make changes on the periphery that don’t upset incumbent administrators, staff, and faculty.

To make changes, a great place to start is to start asking questions. “Why do we do it this way? Does it still serve us? What is the latest research on this process or approach? Is there a better way that we haven’t considered?”

What did I miss? I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject. Please email me at steve@stephenludwig.net with things in higher education that have outlived their usefulness or anything else on your mind.

Politicians are happy to provide answers.

That’s not good news for higher education leaders.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is getting a lot of ink, clicks, and political points by seeking to shake up higher education in his state by attacking “woke” universities and faculty, seeking to change tenure laws, preventing diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts, and installing a new board at a small state school that quickly fired one president and hired another in an attempt to turn it into Florida version of the conservative Hillsdale College.

The immediate reaction from the higher education community is that this threatens faculty academic freedom and institutional autonomy—two of the highest values in higher education.

Which, in this case, is probably true. However, faculty, academic leaders, and the influential American Association of University Professors cry academic freedom anytime a college or university seeks to change and institutional autonomy when the public seeks more accountability.

Crying wolf one too many times has hurt their cause.

DeSantis is not the first governor to influence higher education, nor will he be the last. He is just the most aggressive and vocal about it as he considers a presidential run. 

While it is easy to dismiss that as part of the ranging culture war and naked political opportunism, it points to two larger issues.

Make it Better!

For first-generation students, students of color, and working adults, higher education is not designed for or welcoming to them; many conservatives see higher education as an arm of the Democratic party, and institutions don’t seem to care about price or student debt, among other complaints.

Reforms will be forced upon institutions through the political process if schools do not start doing a better job of responding to the public’s concerns.

Explaining to people that they are mistaken and, in fact, your college or university is great would not be a good place to start.

The Trust is Broken

The implied social contract between higher education and the public is broken.  

When public colleges and universities were founded, the social contract was something like this, “We, the taxpayers, will give you money and leave you mostly to your own devices as long as you provide opportunities for our young people for careers that our community needs. And don’t charge too much.”

The understanding was that a community could not thrive without teachers, ministers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. The community created higher education institutions to serve the public by providing education to citizens.

As the needs of the community and the country grew, the mission of higher education adapted and grew, which began to include research.

The organizing principle was to produce needed professionals for the community.

However, over the years, colleges and universities have drifted away from this service as their main orientation to focus on self-preservation, furthering their interests, becoming the “academe,” status-seeking, and maintaining the status quo.

The way many colleges and universities (public and private) see the social contract is, “You give us money, you leave us alone, we know what we are doing—you don’t.”

And, of course, reserving the right to howl oversight on how they use tax dollars is excessive and burdensome.

Forgive me if I think that colleges and universities are supposed to work for us, not the other way around.

Get Out in Front of It

The fight between incumbents and reformers to define a new social contract is underway.  

Part of the debate will be around defining the role of a college or university and who gets to determine what that role is.

Right now, college administrators and faculty argue it is up to them to make that choice. Public institutions point to the legislation that enables them to operate and say they are within those parameters, “so what’s the problem?” Private colleges and universities think, “Hey, we are private. Leave us alone.”  

Neither is a strong public position, as both types of institutions require generous government subsidies.

In an admittedly gross overgeneralization, the public mostly sees a college or a university as a credential-granting agency. Those credentials are needed to get a job.

Others would argue that a college or university needs to be a secular monastery. Like a national park, a college or university should be outside the demands and rhythms of a volatile market economy.

I would suggest, at their best, colleges and universities are both. Many do a good job balancing those demands.

Far too many do not, and they don’t seem to care.

Then again, maybe higher education will just be hated like airlines. People complain, but they still fly. What choice do they have?

“Hello, Governor DeSantis?”

A New Social Contract

I do think we need a new social contract.

As it turns out, I have one.

It would be along these lines:

In exchange for public money in the form of direct investment via the local, state, and federal governments in the form of grants, federally subsided student loans, and tax-free status; and in exchange for direct support and awards from individuals, philanthropies, professional organizations, and others; you will focus on 1) providing education opportunities for students that reflect state demographics; 2) meet the higher education needs of working adults, underserved populations, and first-generation college students, while keeping tuition reasonable; 3) serve the needs of the community through partnerships with k-12, other colleges and universities, business, and government agencies and; 4) public research universities should focus a significant portion to a majority of their research portfolio to addressing local and regional community challenges.

Basically, it focuses on students and service, FS², if you prefer. The goal here is to bring the focus of higher education away from the academic arms race back to its intended purpose to meet the community's needs. 

Now, you can drive a truck through, “reasonable,” “partnerships,” “significant to a majority,” and “community challenges.” How do you decide what those things even mean? How are they changed or adapted over the years? Or, worse, how do you measure it and hold people accountable to those standards?

Fair enough.

Anything more specific is not adaptable to changing needs; anything vaguer is worthless.

The particulars should be debated and decided upon between the public and higher education leaders on an institution-by-institution basis.

Agree or disagree with my proposal, have one of your own, or think that things are fine the way they are; the fight over a new social contract will be messy and long.

Sadly, as we desperately need change in higher education, incumbents and beneficiaries of the status quo —and there are many in higher education, business, nonprofits, and government—have the advantage.