Robber Bursars

Or how regressive economics has captured higher ed.

It has become something of a cliché to describe the prevailing political culture of college campuses as “regressive” in reference to their speech codes, disinterest in due process, and insistence that one’s demographic markers are their most important defining characteristics.

By contrast, when we discuss the cost of higher education, rarely do we couch it in terms of the political left betraying their traditional values. And yet, if we believe that one of the central tenants of the left’s politics is fighting back against the wealthy and elites as they gut the middle class and exploit the poor, then we would have no choice but to label higher education as one of the most regressive industries in America.

During the spring and now into the summer, I listened in on a number of Zoom meetings hosted by various administrative units at the university where I teach. (I say ‘listened in on’ rather than ‘attended’ or something else not because it was in any way surreptitious, but because my habit became to turn off my camera, put on my headphones, and go do chores away from my computer so as to not make a total loss of my hour and a half on the call.) A recurring theme during these meetings was our role as educators in making sure students returned to campus in the fall.

If incoming freshman decided to take a gap year, or attend an online community college instead, or if current students decided not to return, we could face financial ruin. Like many colleges now, we are increasingly reliant on tuition dollars to keep the ship afloat. And, like many colleges now, we are not only in the educational business, but also the hospitality business. A significant portion of our revenues come from dorm fees and meal plans, both of which we sell to students far above market rates. We need students not just to enroll so we collect their tuition dollars, we need them to return to campus to shore up our hospitality side-gig.

Not once in these conversations did I hear anyone seriously engage with the question of whether students ought to return this fall. There of course has been some acknowledgement that students who are in high-risk groups for COVID-19 ought to avoid returning to campus where we can expect the ordinary petri dish conditions to continue, even with new safety standards in place. But that’s about the extent of our concern.

Where are the college administrators acknowledging that while we are doing our best to transition our courses to an online format, we are staffed with novices who are making things up as they go? Where are the admins acknowledging that community colleges are lightyears beyond us when it comes to online education, and they surely now represent a monumentally better value proposition, especially for new students who are mainly focused on fulfilling their Gen Ed requirements? The tuition for a 3-credit course where I teach is just over $5,000, up 3% from last year. The cost for a 3-credit course at a local community college is less than $600.

At this point I realize I’m asking why university administrators and professors are not out advocating for their institutions to collapse in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdowns. If you believe in the idea that there are no stupid questions, I urge you now to reconsider because I believe I’ve found one.

And yet, I find this question still worth asking in light of the political self-identification of administrators and professors. In an essay published on Inside Higher Ed, Professor Samuel Abrams said that his survey results found a ratio of 6 liberal professors for every 1 conservative professor. More striking though was the 12:1 ratio among administrators. Inside the administrative class there were 5 on the far-left for every 1 conservative of any stripe.

The result of this overwhelmingly leftist leadership at universities has been nominally progressive social policies of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion variety coupled with what is a facially regressive economic structure.

Just as my question as to why universities have not been self-sacrificing must sound stupid, my observation that universities have been enriching on the backs of debt-financed student tuition dollars must sound as if I have been painfully naïve.

However, my intention here wasn’t to show that I’ve had some red-pilled wake-up-sheeple eureka moment. Instead, I want to note an important, but subtle, shift in the way these conversations have been taking place, at least within the conversations I’ve been privy to.

This requires a brief explanation of communal knowledge. There are things I know, and that’s my knowledge. There are things you know that I know. And, once there are things that I know, that you know that I know, and that I know that you know that I know, and that you know that I know that you know that I know, then we have communal knowledge. Or as Stephen Pinker has described, there’s a world of difference between all of us knowing the Emperor has no clothes and all of us knowing that everyone else also knows the Emperor has no clothes.

That’s what has changed. Were we encouraging students to mortgage their futures in order to extract as much wealth from them as possible? Of course, and we all knew this. But we didn’t have presumably-sober people in the higher ranks of the academic hierarchy openly discussing the scheme in official meetings.

What’s changed is that we can now have meetings start with someone saying with a straight face, “so we all know what the racket is, right?”