Mark Schlissel Sounds Off On Higher Education in Michigan
I just came across a just-published and very interesting interview of U of M President Mark Schlissel in which Schlissel expresses his worries and frustrations in dealing with the state, with politicians, and with a generally short-sighted public.
While Schlissel is very optimistic about the future of U of M and its role in education for state students, he expresses great concern for many of the state's other 14 public universities as state budget constraints make it tougher and tougher for students to afford a college education, as Michigan ranks 47th in the entire USA in per capita spending on higher education and 35th in educational attainment.
Schlissel has many other good talking points in the interview; I can't say I disagree with a single one of them. Isn't it about time that our state leadership worries more about the future of its citizens rather than only what it takes to get reelected?
Lots of food for thought here on a Saturday morning.
Big talk, but when I graduated (2015) kids from New York and New Jersey outnumbered kids from Detroit by like 20:1. It's not like UM cant redress educational disparities without getting more state money (which I think they should get anyway).
Isn’t more government money the reason tuition keeps going up?
No it's the neoliberal strategy of runnin everything like a corporation, but now you're gonna make me get political.
I agree, but would add:
"Running everything like a corporation" is ubiquitous across every single political spectrum we have in the modern world.
Modern people can't imagine any other way of living/existing.
People can imagine zombies taking over, meteors crashing into the planet, Artificial Intelligence turning robots against us, and the return of the historical Jesus in a rapture, but they can't imagine the end of capitalism lol
You're preaching to the choir man. Just sad that this discussion on higher education is a moot point as late capitalism marches us toward ecological collapse.
Uh, socialists have aided significantly in that ecological collapse.
I will point out that the industrial revolution that created this mess(not simply capitalism) generates wealth that made a expansion of universities possible along with advancements in medicine, technology, aerospace, etc.
The above are examples of how poor of a job that higher education has done at developing critical thinking skills.
Capitalism gave us all this. What I find interesting are the morons who think government is the answer. Apparently two World Wars and Cold War weren’t enough to show the lethal dangers of concentrated power.
Yes, there is no shortage of morons in higher education who lack an understanding of economic freedom and freedom in general. They see all the benefits around them and learned about the immense human misery created by concentrated government power - two world wars, mass murder, mass starvation/deprivation - but they somehow ignore it all. They fear private companies but trust government. Socialism has become trendy again. F’ing bizarre.
As for the OP’s point, no we don’t need to further subsidize overpriced higher education.
UM is suffering from Endowment-Envy. Tough keeping up with Harvard and Yale.
Your surface level misguided suggestion ignores that 29 of the top 30 democratically elected industrialized countries, including nearly all if the EU, Canada, Australia, and Japan, have publicly funded health care, publicly funded retirement, and various levels of publicly funded higher ed. The war you referenced was against dictatorships, not government funded benefits. Government funded benefits, like education, help maintain a balanced society where an elite class, either through wealth, power, or monarchy, cannot corrupt our institutions and our freedoms.
No it's actually the opposite. States give less funding to universities now than they used to.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/most-americans-dont-realize-state-funding-for-higher-ed-fell-by-billions
Maybe better stats below though.
That wasn't the point of the comment about government spending being the cause (which it is). While true that state spending is way down, federal spending is way(!) up (by way of federally backed and subsidized student loans). The combination of "free money" by way of those loans, with literally no checks and caps (for the vast majority of students) and the student services and facilities arms race is the reason why higher education costs have gone through the roof. And that's true of public and private. That makes for iterally no cost accountability whatsoever.
You got it exactly right. The cost of paying for higher education has skyrocketed, far in excess of the rate of inflation. Biggest drivers of the increase are administrative compensation and amenities like rock climbing walls. It's no harder for students today to pay for tuition than it was when I was at UM but the debt they take on to do so is unconscionable.
That's the way I see it. Government dangles huge loans before 18 year-old kids, university bureaucracies explode and tuition skyrockets, 20-somethings now buried in unconscionable and relatively high-interest debt to the government. Now we have predatory and downright stupid politicians promising to pay for all that debt in exchange for votes. Lots of abdication of moral responsibility in our higher institutions.
Yes, that’s absolutely the reason. Cheap govt backed loans created more demand than supply which is why tuition has outpaced inflation by several multiples. That’s not even a debate. To prevent the Bolivia button being pressed, that is simple economics not politics. In no way am I opining on the “why”.
The University needs more state money, but the University's spending and tuition have been growing much, much faster than can be explained by state cuts alone. I love UofM and think it plays an invaluable role, but the University (all universities really) needs to make much more serious efforts to control cost growth, and that needs to start at the top with Schlissel.
With the internet and MOOCs, 90% of the stuff you can learn at a University (any University) can be done without classrooms and buildings. With Skype/Zoom/Facetime/etc. most of the discussions can be had online as well. The cost of a University degree should be drastically going down, not up. I read an article recently (maybe linked to from here) that part of the problem is that the non-teaching staff has [quadrupled] in the last 30 years so that most of the money is going into empire building and not teaching. It's hard to cut that stuff back once you have it.
Admin have taken over and raised their own salaries by 400%
Historically, faculty had to rotate through admin positions every 5-15 years.
The benefit was the Faculty had "skin in the game" as the policies they passed, they themselves would be subject to. Professional admin don't have skin in the game (like when politicians pass laws on things they themselves will never be subject to).
The upside (if just isolating one aspect--which is suspect in and of itself) is that professional admin bring in boatloads of money. Faculty, on the other hand, historically, have near zero interest or aptitude in fund-raising or financial prestige. They are eggheads and want to devote every second of their lives to their narrow field and contributions there, (there are exceptions, but they only prove the rule).
Faculty are incredibly easy prey for the corporate-types, as they just want to run their experiments, write their papers, and hole themselves up inside their offices until they've got a new breakthrough to test and/or present at a conference, to the few hundred people (often much less) in the entire world who care/can even understand what they are doing. Sure some of them have become rich incidentally, but, like Warren Buffet, they drive a 1997 Lincoln Towncar with 47,000 miles and still service at the dealership for $3K per year. They're not business people, and they never will/want/can/care to be.
Which is why universities are now run like corporations. The academics are its donkeys. And why more and more faculty are selected primarily on their ability to bring in money (2nd-order effects).
Hence, profit-driven faculty hires, hence increased corporate/private financing, hence even more profit-driven faculty hiring, etc. The flywheel is constantly being revved up.
UofM is essentially a private university. The vast majority of it's endowment is private money, and it is 100% beholden, no matter what they announce publicly, to corporate/private money and interests. They have admitted less and less in-state students as time progresses. Ann Arbor bends to UM's will, what UofM wants, UofM gets. Michigan Medicine is the same way, and has only faced minimal backlash (the Nurses strike a year ago is a good example). All while UofM enjoys tax-free status.
It's a corporation but it masquerades otherwise. Just as politicians are businessmen/women but masquerade otherwise.
Evidence points to tuition rising dollar for dollar with state cuts to higher education.
All your graph shows is that the students share has gone up. Your conclusion is only valid if tuition had been static
For example if (over time) the state's contribution was unchanged at $100 but tuition went from $139 to $285 you could have the exact same graph, the difference that while the state continues to pay $100, the student tuition goes from $39 to $185
Also, I think that graph needs to go back to about 1980, when tuition started ramping up even while state contributions were also increasing
The graph is representing below market loans given to students, raising the student share and clearly showing a reduction in direct constituent tax money not impacting the ability to increase tuition.
Looking at "percentage of total funding" makes it look like state funding has gone down drastically, but calling it "dollar for dollar" is really misleading - the problem is that the total cost has increased sharply while state funding has been flat, with most of the difference being taken up by tuition increases.
I posted a little more on this later in the thread, but at UofM this tuition has increased much faster than state funding has gone down. I looked over the last decade based on UofM OBP reports (available online).
In straight dollars:
2017-18 State Funding: $314,589,100
2007-08 State Funding: $320,156,000
Change: -$5,566,900
2017-18 Tuition and Fees Revenue: $1,490,041,306
2007-08 Tuition and Fees Revenue: $840,565,529
Change: +$649,475,777
The increase in tuition revenue is literally 100x the size of the decrease in state funding! Not "dollar for dollar" at all!
And it's not a total vs. per student thing - total student population has gone up, but only by about 12% (46k vs 41k).
P.S. The data is here: https://obp.umich.edu/budget/budget-book/
The oldest data there is 2001-2002. At that time, state funding was $363.5 million and tuition $541.4 million.
So from 2001-2007, state funding went down $43.3 million and tuition went up $299.2 million. Despite a more drastic state cut over the period it still was more like "7 dollars for dollar" than "dollar for dollar".
How does that quote go? Correlation does not equal causation? Yeah, that's it.
I believe a considerable piece of overhead comes from the vast sea of regulations that come out of Washington, including the DOE, and the large number of administrators that are necessary to ensure compliance.
In-state Michigan students get a windfall from the large number of OOS students whose tuition payments continue to go to the moon to subsidize what the State doesn't provide in support.
It's not just this University, other schools have the same problems. The primary mission, education, while still there, seems to be just one of many things that large schools do. In the long term, it is not sustainable and will eventually collapse as more and more, a four year degree from a good university no longer guarantees the key to the kingdom that it once did.
Student debt is crippling. In my opinion, before loans are made, students should be educated in the job market relating to the major they plan on pursuing, and be exposed to anticipated debt service and 1, 5 and 10 year growth projections in the field of study to see if the degree can be justified financially.
It's not like UM cant redress educational disparities without getting more state money
I think it's actually pretty difficult for UM to fix something like that by itself.
If you can't say you disagree, can you say that you agree?
I can't disagree with that, East Quad.
If there's one thing I never do, it's agree to disagree.
I mean, I basically have a degree in disagreeing.
So you are an attorney?
Guilty.
He must be a statistician
That would be a liar.
At least we’re not Alaska. University of Alaska is completely hosed.
I don't know what the impact on the U-A hockey program will be, but it can't be good.
A 40% cut in one year is absolutely insane.
The governor of Alaska is another example of a politician who is making decisions based primarily on winning his next election rather than working for the long-term good of the state as a whole and the future of the citizens of Alaska.
Alaskan Governor Dunleavy would rather promise every Alaskan a yearly minimum $3000 state dividend from its oil-funded PFD Fund (recent yearly dividends have ranged between $1022-1600/year) at the expense of the long-term gain for all derived from a well-educated population.
Yes, absolutely insane.
I can and do agree with that, rob f.
If you can butcher a caribou and build a log cabin, your GTG up there.
Going to have to add Alaska to my list. Usually when there is some state socioeconomic indicator and we're low on it, I take my pick from "at least we're not Mississippi" or "at least we're not West Virginia."
What just happened there is totally horrifying and a disgrace. The impact on the general public and students will be very bad, but immediately devastating to some families. Someone I know whose parents are a tenured university professor and a special ed teacher are losing their jobs with virtually no warning. Alaska is not like a lot of parts of the country where you can turn around and get a similar job down the street.
It would be shocking if the UAF and UAA hockey programs aren't both closed within the next year
Hockey is the least of U-A's concerns.
And I'll answer your question about the impact on the hockey program in two words: they're finished.
This thread will get political in a hurry, so I'll just say this: this country really needs to reexamine its educational policies at every level, and a well-educated and informed citizenry with real critical thinking skills cannot continue to exist primarily as a luxury.
From my perspective, the success of a student depends more on the family than the school system, and when the entire school system is in an area where the family structure is broken (for many reasons), no amount of focus on the school will fix the problem in a sustainable way. If we want to fix the educational system, we have to first look at how to address the ills of society as a whole. This is not a political statement. Each party wants to fix society, we just have different views of what that means and how best to accomplish it. And let’s avoid the discussion of what that means.
While I agree family values need to encourage education and success, no matter how much that is true, if a school system doesn't have good teachers or the resources to teach, then those family values don't matter. You can want to learn and become smarter, but if the school you attend doesn't actually teach you and make you smarter than that's a huge issue. A good education can open up a world of opportunities
It’s such a myth that there’s a bunch of awful schools. Where are these awful schools ? I know a lot of people that went to different Detroit public high schools, and they all had every opportunity to succeed. The problem is with the student, and the students problem is with a failure of their family, community, and culture.
I am not sure about this. The fundamental issue is with lower middle class and poor families' ability to send their kids to school. If the education is not viable and the teachers rely on families, I can tell you that it is not going to work. I said below about Asia. Most of the prior generations in Asia are not literates. They take pride in having their sons and daughters get college education. They have a viable school system and dedicated teachers. Without that I am afraid the dedication from students only go so far. We need an affordable school system and the teachers dedicated to motivating the students. Not saying all teachers are bad but it is very difficult to be a teacher nowadays.
That's not a myth.
Ohio.
Too true. My wife is a teacher. She taught in some inner city charter schools (not in MI) and would normally have a sub 10% pass rate on state exams no matter what she did. She got a job out in a better area and bam, she's getting over 90% pass rates now. Same teacher. A lot of issues are socio-economic / cultural in nature and dumping money on the fire isn't going to do much