A Better Path Forward: How Corporate Culture Threatens the Quality of Higher Education and What We Can Do to Resist its Encroachment on our Campuses

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A Better Path Forward How Corporate Culture
Threatens the Quality of Higher Education and
What We Can Do to Resist its Encroachment on our
Campuses

• Rudy Fichtenbaum, President

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Roadmap

• Embracing the Corporate Model
• Consequences
• How to Fight Back

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The Corporate Model
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You know you have the corporate model when

• Administrators politicians talk about faculty
  productivity
• Universities colleges care more about bond
  ratings than the quality of education they offer
  students
• Administrators make unilateral changes in
  curriculum and academic policies

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You know you have the corporate model when

• You have merit pay
• Promotion and pay for faculty depend on student
  evaluations
• Students are your customers
• The market is used to explain why faculty in some
  disciplines earn significantly more than faculty
  in other disciplines.

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You know you have the corporate model when

• The majority of faculty have no job security, few
  benefits, and are largely excluded from the
  decision making process on campus
• Your administration tries to break your union
• Your budget system turns each of your colleges
  into profit centers so faculty will be more
  entrepreneurial
• College presidents and politicians call for the
  creation of enterprise universities to complete
  the privatization of public higher education

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You know you have the corporate model when

• Grades Out, Badges In
• Grades are broken. Students grub for them, pick
  classes where good ones come easily, and
  otherwise hustle to win the highest scores for
  the least learning. As a result, college grades
  are inflated to the point of meaninglessnessespec
  ially to employers who want to know which
  diploma-holder is best qualified for their jobs.
• That's a viewpoint driving experiments in
  education badges. Offered mostly by online
  start-ups, the badges are modeled on the
  brightly colored patches on Boy Scout uniforms
  but are inspired primarily by video games

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You know you have the corporate model when

• Professors Compete for Bonuses Based on Student
  Evaluations
• Some faculty members at Texas AM University
  will each be 10,000 richer next month, and they
  will have their students to thank. The university
  system is awarding bonuses ranging from 2,500 to
  10,000 to faculty members who received the
  highest grades on end-of-semester student
  evaluations.
• Oklahoma awards 5,000 to 10,000 to
  participating engineering professors who score
  in the top 5 percent on their semester-end
  student evaluations. Those who score in the next
  15 percent receive half those amounts. Similar
  bonuses are offered for top-rated business
  professors.

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The Corporate Model

• Recently David Schultz published a noteworthy
  essay in Logos entitled The Rise and Demise of
  Neo-Liberal University The Collapsing Business
  Plan of American Higher Education.
• Two models of higher education since the end of
  WW II
• The Dewey model, in which public institutions
  were central, and institutions promoted a
  Jeffersonian view of higher education,
  recognizing an educated citizenry as central to
  democracy.
• The Corporate University, with top-down authority
  with administrators and corporate-led boards
  displacing traditional faculty governance.
  Decision-making focuses on increased revenue,
  using certain programs as cash cows, while
  designing others to attract private/corporate
  donations.

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The Corporate University

• Nationwide patterns since 1980 show that the
  context has transformed through universities
  increasing use of a corporate business model that
  goes well beyond Justice Brennans observation in
  Yeshiva that universities have become big
  business.
• Point Park University Amicus Brief for the AAUP

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The Corporate Model

• Expansion of the administrative hierarchy, which
  exercises greater unilateral authority over
  academic affairs.
• University administrators increasingly are
  making decisions in response to external market
  concerns, rather than consulting with, relying
  on, or following faculty recommendations.
• Decision-making is increasingly made
  unilaterally by high-level administrators who are
  driven by external market factors in setting and
  implementing policy on such issues as program
  development or discontinuance, student
  admissions, tuition hikes, and university-industry
  relationships.
• Point Park University Amicus Brief for the
  AAUP

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The Corporate Model

• Faculty have experienced a continually shrinking
  scope of influence over academic mattersFaculty
  loss of influence over programmatic and other
  academic matters reduces faculty influence even
  in their individual academic course content and
  research.
• Point Park University Amicus Brief for the
  AAUP

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The Corporate Model

• There are embedded structural changes that favor
  top-down decision-making authority by university
  administrators responding to market concerns,
  rather than a collegial process of consultation
  and consensus-building over academic affairsOne
  outcome of this institutional shift is a growing
  conflict between university administrations and
  faculty over unilateral actions taken by
  administrators either without consultation with
  faculty or overriding faculty governance bodies
  recommendations.
• Point Park University Amicus Brief for the
  AAUP

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How Many Administrators Does it Take to Run this
Place?

• The Chronicle of Higher Education Lists 289 types
  of Senior Executives and Chief Functional Officers

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Administratium

• The heaviest element known to science was
  recently discovered by investigators at a major
  U.S. research university. The element,
  tentatively named administratium, has no protons
  or electrons and thus has an atomic number of 0.
  However, it does have one neutron, 125 assistant
  neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice
  neutrons, which gives it an atomic mass of 312.
  These 312 particles are held together by a force
  that involves the continuous exchange of
  meson-like particles called morons. Since it has
  no electrons, administratium is inert. However,
  it can be detected chemically as it impedes every
  reaction it comes in contact with.

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Administratium

• According to the discoverers, a minute amount of
  administratium causes one reaction to take over
  four days to complete when it would have normally
  occurred in less than a second. Administratium
  has a normal half-life of approximately three
  years, at which time it does not decay, but
  instead undergoes a reorganization in which
  assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant
  vice neutrons exchange places. Some studies have
  shown that the atomic mass actually increases
  after each reorganization.

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Administratium

• Research at other laboratories indicates that
  administratium occurs naturally in the
  atmosphere. It tends to concentrate at certain
  points such as government agencies, large
  corporations, and universities. It can usually be
  found in the newest, best appointed, and best
  maintained buildings.
• Scientists point out that administratium is
  known to be toxic at any level of concentration
  and can easily destroy any productive reaction
  where it is allowed to accumulate. Attempts are
  being made to determine how administratium can be
  controlled to prevent irreversible damage, but
  results to date are not promising.
• William DeBuvitz The Physics Teacher January
  1989

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Kent State University
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Division of Business and Finance
8/10/2012
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(No Transcript)
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Responding to the Market What Do Administrators
Get Paid

• E. Gordon Gee President, Ohio State University,
  October 2007Present
• Total Compensation (2011) 1,992,221
• Since returning to Columbus as the universitys
  president in October 2007, the 68-year-old Gee
  has pulled in 8.6 million in salary and
  compensation, making him the highest paid CEO of
  a public university in the country.
• But his expenseshidden among hard-to-get
  records that the university took nearly a year to
  releasetally nearly as much 7.7 million.
• Those records show Gee stays in luxury hotels,
  dines at country clubs and swank restaurants,
  throws lavish parties, flies on private jets and
  hands out thousands of giftsall at public
  expense.
• Source Chronicle of Higher Education Dayton
  Daily News

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Compensation for Presidents
Name Total Compensation Position
E. Gordon Gee 1,992,221 Ohio State University
Michael D. McKinney 1,966,347 (Partial year) Texas AM University system
Graham B. Spanier 1,068,763 Pennsylvania State University at University Park
Lee T. Todd Jr. 972,106 University of Kentucky
Mary Sue Coleman 845,105 University of Michigan system
Kent R. Hance 757,740 Texas Tech University system
Francisco G. Cigarroa 751,680 University of Texas system
Robert H. Bruininks 747,955 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
John C. Hitt 741,500 University of Central Florida
Charles W. Steger 738,603 Virginia Tech
Source Chronicle of Higher Education
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Salaries for Administrators
Senior executives and chief functional officers Doctoral
Chief executive of system/district 480,000
Executive assistant/chief of staff for chief executive of system/district 154,800
Chief executive of single institution 392,150
Executive assistant to chief executive of single institution 130,391
Executive vice president/vice chancellor 302,500
Secretary of institution 168,830
Chief academic-affairs officer and provost 281,162
Chief research officer 234,600
Chief technology-transfer officer 165,600
Chief business officer 236,022
Chief administration officer 210,810
Chief financial officer 210,250
Chief investment officer 218,000
Source Chronicle of Higher Education
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More Salaries for Administrators
Senior executives and chief functional officers Doctoral
Chief planning officer 154,898
Chief budget officer 131,064
Chief planning and budget officer 173,102
Chief legal-affairs officer 198,005
Chief human-resources officer 154,067
Chief information officer 200,000
Chief physical-plant/facilities officer 155,000
Chief accounting officer/comptroller 139,966
Chief health-professions officer 541,419
Chief administrator, hospital/medical center 566,733
Chief student-affairs/life officer 194,056
Chief admissions officer 112,217
Chief enrollment-management officer 160,750
Source Chronicle of Higher Education
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Even More Salaries for Administrators
Senior executives and chief functional officers Doctoral
Chief external-affairs officer 210,000
Chief development officer 239,120
Chief public-relations officer 162,400
Chief development and public-relations officer 239,798
Chief audit officer 121,056
Chief diversity officer 149,524
Median Salary 196,031
Source Chronicle of Higher Education and
authors calculation
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Growing Inequality Between Disciplines
Discipline 1980-81 2009-10
Fine arts visual and performing -8.80 -12.40
Education -4.00 -4.30
Foreign language and literature 0.90 -4.10
Communications -3.30 -3.20
Philosophy 2.30 2.10
Library science -1.50 3.60
Mathematics 7.60 7.20
Psychology 5.00 8.90
Physical sciences 7.70 12.90
Social sciences 4.80 16.80
Health professions and related sciences 20.30 18.90
Engineering 8.10 25.20
Computer and information sciences 13.40 28.40
Economics 13.90 41.20
Business administration and management 11.40 50.90
Law and legal studies 33.20 59.50
Source Chronicle of Higher Education
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The Pay Gap Between Public Private Universities
Percentage Gap Public v Private Independent Doctoral Percentage Gap Public v Private Independent Doctoral Pcentage Gap Public v Religiously Affiliated Doctoral Pcentage Gap Public v Religiously Affiliated Doctoral
1986-87 2011-12 1986-87 2011-12
Professor 17 34 5 10
Associate 9 23 5 9
Assistant 7 25 2 8
Instructor 16 29 22 34
Lecturer 2 21 -7 4
Source AAUP Salary Survey
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Source The Common Fund Authors Calculations
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• Delta Cost Project, NCES Authors Calculations

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• Source National Center for Education Statistics

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National Report on Administrative Costs in Higher
Education Goldwater Institute and Administrative
Bloat

• But unlike almost every other growing industry,
  higher education has not become more efficient.
  Instead, universities now have more
  administrative employees and spend more on
  administration to educate each student.
• In short, universities are suffering from
  administrative bloat, expanding the resources
  devoted to administration significantly faster
  than spending on instruction, research and
  service.
• Source No. 239 I August 17, 2010 Administrative
  Bloat at American Universities The Real Reason
  for High Costs in Higher Education.
  http//www.goldwaterinstitute.org/

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National Report on Administrative Costs in Higher
Education Delta Cots Project

• The share of spending going to pay for
  instruction has consistently declined when
  revenues decline, relative to growth in spending
  in academic and student support and
  administration. This erosion persists even when
  revenues rebound, meaning that over time there
  has been a gradual shift of resources away from
  instruction and towards general administrative
  and academic infrastructure.
• Source Trends in College Spending, 1998-2008.
  Released July 8, 2010. http//www.deltacostproject
  .org/

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Revenues, Expenses Change in Net Assets at
Public Four-Year Universities

Year Total Revenues Total Expenses Change in Net Assets Margin
2002 278,400,000 295,500,000 (17,100,000) -6.1
2003 296,500,000 295,000,000 1,500,000 0.5
2004 317,600,000 308,800,000 8,800,000 2.8
2005 333,100,000 323,100,000 10,000,000 3.0
2006 352,900,000 341,700,000 11,200,000 3.2
2007 382,900,000 362,800,000 20,100,000 5.2
2008 394,500,000 396,400,000 (1,900,000) -0.5
2009 386,200,000 412,600,000 (26,400,000) -6.8
2010 447,100,000 428,700,000 18,400,000 4.1
Delta Cost Data and authors calculations
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What are the Consequences?
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How Decision Are Made

• A Cornell University faculty senate committee
  report in 2007 recounts a series of
  administration decisions made without adequate
  consultation with the faculty senate, including
  the creation of a new faculty of computing and
  information science, the reorganization of the
  division of biological sciences, and the creation
  of a for-profit distance learning corporation.
• Point Park University Amicus Brief

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How Decision Are Made

• At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in 2006,
  the Board of Trustees ordered the Faculty Senate
  to revoke its amendment to expand Senate
  membership to include clinical faculty.
  Following the Rensselaer Presidents rejection of
  the Senates request to convene a joint committee
  to resolve the issue, the Provost unilaterally
  suspended the Faculty Senate for failing to
  comply with the Board of Trustees order.
• Point Park University Amicus Brief

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Program Discontinuance

• State universities in Louisiana will eliminate
  109 programs and consolidate 189 others into new
  programs or concentrations within existing
  majors, the state Board of Regents announced on
  Wednesday as it decided the fate of 456
  low-completer programs it had flagged for
  review. The cuts include foreign-language majors
  on a number of campuses
• In 2010, Southeastern Louisiana University
  eliminated its undergraduate French major,
  dismissing its three tenured professors with a
  year's noticeand then offering one of them a
  temporary instructorship.

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Program Discontinuance

• Auburn U. Trustees Eliminate 6 Programs
• Auburn University's Board of Trustees voted this
  month to cut six degree-granting programs,
  including a doctorate in economics that the
  university's president and a faculty review
  committee wanted to keepThe 7-to-3 vote in favor
  of cutting the economics program infuriated many
  professors and one trustee, who argued that the
  board should have abided by the president's
  recommendation.

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Program Discontinuance

• More Than 70 U. of Northern Iowa Programs Face
  Elimination or Overhaul
• Among the programs being considered for
  elimination, all of which have produced an
  average of fewer than seven graduates over the
  past five years, are several degree programs in
  the languages, chemistry, computer science, and
  the earth sciences, according to an
  administrative document that the newspaper
  obtained. The universitys faculty members
  have been protesting their lack of involvement in
  the budget-cutting process and last week voted no
  confidence in the institutions president and
  provost.
• Chronicle of Higher Education

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Program Discontinuance

• A University Plans to Promote Languages by
  Killing Its Languages Department
• Last month, a year and a half after Mr. Maxwell
  took over the presidency of the Des Moines
  institution, the Board of Trustees voted to get
  rid of Drake's foreign-language program and the
  eight tenured and tenure-track professors and
  seven part-timers who teach in it.
• Chronicle of Higher Education

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Searches

• AAUP Criticizes Michigan State U. for Not
  Listening to Faculty
• Student-Affairs Job Goes to Wife of Bowling
  Green's President
• Regents Broaden Presidential Search at Texas AM
  Without Faculty Input, Drawing Criticism
• Chronicle of Higher Education

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Curricular Changes

• CUNYs Pathway to Whatever
• As chair of the University Faculty Senate a
  body chartered by the Trustees to deal with
  cross campus curricula issues, I can state
  clearly that the process by which this core was
  developed did not reflect any campus or
  university wide elections and involvement of
  faculty with experience in general education. 
• Chronicle of Higher Education

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Dumping Faculty Governance

• New President and Faculty Tangle at U. of the
  District of Columbia
• Just a month after becoming president of the
  University of the District of Columbia, Allen L.
  Sessoms is locked in a battle with the
  institution's faculty senate, which he wants to
  shut down and replace with a new forum of
  students and faculty and staff members.
• After Professors Unionize, Miami-Dade Community
  College Abolishes Faculty Senates
• Union In, Governance Out
• Faculty governance at Akron, some say now, was
  gutted, and without a word of debate.
• Chronicle of Higher Education

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Dumping Faculty Governance

• Tennessee State U. Disregards Faculty Senate's
  Vote to Retain Its Leader
• Tennessee State University's administration is
  disregarding a Thursday vote by the Faculty
  Senate to retain its chairwoman, whom the
  university's president had previously declared
  removed from the job.
• A Professor at Louisiana State Is Flunked Because
  of Her Grades
• Kevin R. Carman, dean of science at Louisiana
  State University at Baton Rouge, decided to pull
  a senior professor, Dominique G. Homberger, from
  an introductory biology course this semester
  because many of her students were failing.
• Chronicle of Higher Education

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Dumping Presidents

• New Statements on Ouster of Virginia President
• The Council of Chairs and Directors released a
  letter blasting the way events have transpired.
  The letter said that these academic leaders were
  "very pleased" with Sullivan's "superb"
  leadership, and that they were stunned by her
  ouster, and frustrated by the lack of faculty
  knowledge of the reasons behind the board's
  action.
• State Higher Ed Board Votes to Dismiss U. of
  Oregon President
• Oregon's Board of Higher Education voted
  unanimously to cut short the presidency of
  Richard Lariviere at the University of Oregon,
  despite impassioned pleas from faculty and staff
  members and students at a highly contentious
  board meeting Monday.
• Inside Higher Ed

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Affordability Gap

• The College Board Bureau of Census

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(No Transcript)
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Crushing Debt for Students
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Grants and Loans Millions 2010100
The College Board
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Average Aid per Full-Time Equivalent
Studentconstant 2010
The College Board
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Percent of Need Based Aid
The College Board
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Are We Doomed?

• Returning to the Schultz article, he concludes
  the corporate model has now collapsed
• Predicts rather pessimistically that the next
  business model will negate the democratic
  function of higher education that existed since
  World War II
• De-emphasizing liberal arts in favor of
  professional education

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Are We Doomed ?

• The pessimistic view in the Schultz article
  misses the fact that contradictory forces have
  always existed in American higher education.
• Ruling elite in our society
• The working class majority

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Contradictory Nature of Higher Education

• Higher education was central in defending both
  religious and secular values central to the
  preservation of capitalism
• Somewhat later, as science and technology became
  more important, the idea of higher education as
  vehicle for providing practical training also
  emerged

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Education as a Force for the Common Good

• Others (e.g., Thomas Jefferson) have seen higher
  education as the great equalizer, a vehicle for
  educating citizens and the common good.

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The Era of Expanding Access to Higher Education

• During the period leading up to World War II,
  most scientific research and the innovation that
  drove American industrial might occurred in
  private research labs
• Bell Labs, Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co.
  (DELCO), Battelle Memorial Institute).
• Only after WWII, with the onset of the Cold War,
  did universities became centers for research.
• The GI bill first opened college admissions to
  the unwashed masses.
• The elite universities all opposed the bill they
  thought that helping ordinary people who had been
  drafted go to college would dilute the pool of
  college students with mediocre students.
• However, hundreds of thousands of veterans were
  returning to the US with little prospect for
  employment, and left-led unions of the CIO were
  pushing a social agenda, so the GI bill was
  enacted.

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Expanding Access the Dewey Model

• The big expansion of access to college, however,
  came in the 1960s
• Increased funding for public higher education
• Urban universities
• Community colleges
• Greater access to higher education was a
  component of the reform era that began in the
  1950s
• Civil rights
• Womens rights
• Antiwar movements

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The Social Upheavals of the 1960s

• The social upheavals of this era
• Greater access to college
• Medicare and Medicaid
• Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and the EPA
• OSHA
• Greater income equality
• The Dewey model was a facet of the of mass
  movements for social justice and equality

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The Death of the Reform Era Corporatization

• The death of the reform era by the late 1970s and
  rise of the corporate university
• Part-time faculty have replaced tenure line
  faculty, undermining both academic freedom and
  shared governance
• These changes must be seen as part of the broader
  neo-liberal attack on organized labor and the
  achievements of the 1950s-1970s reform area

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Fighting Back

• Changes in higher education do not occur in a
  vacuum
• If there is any hope of reversing the deleterious
  effects of corporatization on higher education,
  it is in faculty and academic professionals
  aligning ourselves with the labor movement and
  the broader movement for social justice

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Fighting Back

• Strengthen Existing Chapters on Campus
• Have a membership drive on campus at least once a
  year
• Make office visits to get faculty to joint AAUP
• Every chapter should have a website and the
  national AAUP should provide a template for the
  website.
• Have a presence on social media i.e., Facebook
  and Twitter
• Use the website to communicate with faculty with
  an online newsletter and links to other AAUP
  chapters.

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Fighting Back

• Use the AAUP salary data to create a comparison
  with your peer institutions
• Put IPEDS data on your site to show how much your
  institution is spending on instruction

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Fighting Back

• Build alliances on campus with students, parents
  and unions on campus
• Think about contacting alumni who have a stake in
  the institutions reputation
• Build alliances with community organizations
  including K-12 teachers
• Work to make your state conference more effective
• Build linkages with other higher education unions
  by participating in CFHE

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Fighting Back

• Get involved in politics
• See if it makes more sense for your chapter or
  state conference to be a 501c(6)
• Conduct voter registration drives on campus each
  year
• Your chapter or conference may want to endorse
  candidates, particularly for state offices, based
  on where they stand on issues that relate to
  higher education
• Mobilize members to work on legislative
  initiatives

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Presented at the 2012 Governance Conference

• www.aaup.org

• Rudy Fichtenbaum
• Department of Economics
• Wright State University
• Dayton, OH 45435
• Rudy.fichtenbaum_at_wright.edu
• 937-775-3085