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THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE
OF AMERICAN PUBLIC
HIGHER EDUCATION
STUDENT-CENTERED STRATEGIES
FOR SUSTAINABILITY

DANIEL M. JOHNSON
 The Uncertain Future of American
Public Higher Education

“Johnson kicks a hornet’s nest of issues confronting our revered system of

higher education. While various constituents of higher ed may be inclined to
nitpick his litany of insights, they would do so at their collective peril. The
unintended consequences of sticking with the status quo or tinkering at the
margins could have dire effects. This is a clarion call for bold and innovative
change.”
—Lee Gorsuch, President Emeritus, City University of Seattle, USA

“The Uncertain Future of American Public Higher Education is a must-read for

all of our country’s higher education leaders, from university presidents, to
governing boards, to state and federal policy makers. A former university pres-
ident himself, Johnson draws on his many years of experience: first defending
the status quo, then aggressively leading needed change and candidly identify-
ing the sacred academic traditions that have created this crisis.”
—Tom Brady, Entrepreneur and Former Dean of Education at University of
Toledo, USA

“This thought-provoking book goes to the heart of why restructuring our

entire education system is critical for our nation and our students’ future. He
shines a bright light on what changes need to be made.”
—Bob Holden, Governor of Missouri, 2001–2005

“Dan Johnson articulates the necessity for a strong and effective higher educa-
tion system by addressing the critical challenges it faces and offering potential
solutions in the areas of leadership, planning, tuition, educational attainment,
quality and efficiency, tenure, and intercollegiate athletics. This is a must read
for policymakers, university presidents, politicians, journalists, university trus-
tees and regents.”
—James M. Tuschman, Former Chairman, Ohio Board of Regents
 Daniel M. Johnson

The Uncertain Future

of American Public
Higher Education
Student-Centered Strategies
for Sustainability
Daniel M. Johnson
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-01793-4 ISBN 978-3-030-01794-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01794-1

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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 For my life partner Elaine, my grandchildren—Megan, Dan, Owen and
Maia—and the 42 million former college and university students struggling
to pay off their student loans.
 Preface

Each year the pressures on American higher education—particularly

public higher education—continue to grow, challenging the major ten-
ets, traditions and efficacy of the funding model, cost structures, fac-
ulty appointments and contracts, modes and delivery of education
programs, and the social compact with students and their families.
The staying power of these traditions have led to unaffordable costs for
students, ineffective and inefficient delivery of instruction, and failure
to adapt to advanced, lower cost, and more effective technologies and
methods.
“The Uncertain Future” outlines the historic elements that constitute
the fiscal, pedagogical, regulatory, administrative, and social infrastruc-
ture of public higher education and calls for education policy makers,
university/college governing boards, the senior leadership of our insti-
tutions and governors to address and break with these anachronistic
traditions for the benefit of students. Further, it calls on these same
leaders of higher education to begin now to lay the foundation for a
new higher education infrastructure, a new paradigm, that recognizes
the importance and value of investing in human capital—our nation’s
students—and ridding the system of costly, ineffective outmoded

vii
viii   Preface

traditions, unnecessary duplications of programs and services, and inef-

ficient administrative structures.
American public higher education is in crisis, a crisis denied by many
education leaders. Powerful vested interests have co-opted and are using
our colleges and universities for pecuniary purposes and taking advan-
tage of students for their own gain. Public confidence in higher edu-
cation is waning and our universities are paying the price in decreasing
public support, increasingly skeptical legislatures and lower enrollments
in many colleges and universities. Righting the ship will take strong,
collaborative leadership and a collective vision for a new path ahead that
puts students first.
For decades, in my various roles in university administration, I came
to know about most of these concerns and issues first hand. I heard the
complaints from students and their parents and read the criticisms in
the daily papers. And, like so many of my administrative colleagues,
I was a defender and apologist for higher education with all its prob-
lems and challenges. My annual “state of the university” addresses high-
lighted our accomplishments and glossed over the many problematic
“elephants in the room.” I privately fought tuition increases but publicly
defended them citing and justifying my position on the basis of infla-
tion and the continuing cuts in state subsidies. I supported mandatory
fees to sustain athletics and other programs that couldn’t pay for them-
selves. In the safety of my home, I privately complained to my wife,
Elaine, about my growing concerns, but on campus or in the commu-
nity or at a conference, I defended the status quo as strongly as anyone. I
thought that was my job.
Looking back on those years, continuing to watch and staying in
touch with many of my colleagues in higher education, locally and
nationally, I now believe I should have approached some of these issues
differently. Rather than defend the status quo so strongly, I wish I had
spoken out, expressed my concerns, and advocated more strongly for
new policies or practices that, perhaps, could have slowed the decline
or called attention to areas we as leaders in higher education needed to
address.
This book is my attempt to give voice to these concerns, a voice
that is decades late and, as my family might say, “A day late and dollar
 Preface   ix

short.” American higher education is increasingly burdened by its failure

to address the growing inventory of major challenges. Our continuing
acceptance and defense of practices, policies, and even a culture that is
eroding the educational experience of what was once the finest system
of higher education in the world are taking a debilitating toll on our
colleges and universities.
“The Uncertain Future” is a call for leadership, reform, and a more
student-centered approach to public higher education. Promoting a new
perspective and the construction of a new paradigm for public higher
education will require courageous leadership from our university presi-
dents, enlightened trustees, and the informed commitment of education
policy makers including state legislatures and especially the governors
of our states. It desperately needs to happen, it can happen, and it will
happen if the major stakeholders of higher education can find a way to
work together toward a collective vision and collaborative leadership
that puts students first.

Toledo, OH, USA Daniel M. Johnson

 Acknowledgements

Colleagues, friends, and family members have read, critiqued, and

offered valuable suggestions for this book. I have drawn not only on
their assistance and suggestions but, more importantly, on their encour-
agement and enthusiasm for the project. Jim Tuschman, former trus-
tee of the University of Toledo and former chair of the Ohio Board of
Regents, read the full manuscript and offered valuable suggestions only
an attorney can provide. Tom Brady, former trustee of the University of
Toledo, former dean of the UT Judith Herb College of Education, and
fellow trustee at Lourdes University, read the manuscript and offered
useful insights and suggestions. Lee Gorsuch, Chancellor during my
years as Provost at the University of Alaska Anchorage, brought his life-
time of experience in higher education and his passion for education to
his review of the manuscript.
I want to also express my appreciation to Milana Vernikova, editor at
Palgrave-USA, for her patience, guidance, and support throughout the
project. She helped make this book possible and, for that, I can’t thank
her enough.
This book would not have been possible without the many rela-
tionships I’ve been fortunate to have with faculty colleagues at several

xi
xii   Acknowledgements

universities and my “bosses” including department chairs, deans, prov-

osts, and presidents. I am especially grateful to Blaine Brownell, my
provost at the University of North Texas back in the 1990s, good friend
and colleague. Blaine gave me my first real job in administration and
guided me through a rather steep learning curve.
For more than a half-century, I have had the good fortune to work
with many outstanding trustees, donors, and public officials including
several governors. I have also benefitted and learned from my relation-
ship with students over the decades. Students, more than any other
group, are the reason I wrote this book. They deserve better.
Most of all, I want to acknowledge and express my deep appreciation
to my wife, Elaine. As with all my manuscripts, she read every word,
often more than once, caught my many errors, offered suggestions, and
encouraged me along the way. I am so very fortunate to have Elaine as
my life partner.
Any errors of fact, interpretation, or presentation are mine.

Daniel M. Johnson
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Tuition Crisis: The Costs and Financing of Public

Higher Education 11

3 Seat Time Academic Credit: What Does It Really

Measure? 27

4 Tenure: Lifetime Employment in a Fast-Changing World 43

5 Campuses: Overvalued, Underused, and Very Costly 59

6 Lectures, Textbooks, Academic Calendar, and

Administration: An Agenda for Change 75

7 Duplication of Programs: Where Do We Draw the Line? 91

8 Intercollegiate Athletics: Challenge to the Academic

Mission 105

xiii
xiv   Contents

9 Presidential Selection, Salaries, and Moral Leadership 123

10 Student Demographics: The Coming Changes and

Challenges for Higher Education 141

11 University Governance: Structures, Roles, and

Responsibilities 157

12 Accreditation: How It Works and Is It Working? 175

13 Attacking the Problems: Student-Centered Strategies

for Governors, Governing Boards, and University
Presidents 193

14 Epilogue: Theoretical Perspectives on Change 209

Bibliography 215

Index 219
 Acronyms

AAC&U Association of American Colleges and Universities

AASCU American Association of State Colleges and Universities
ACE American Council on Education
AGB Association of University Governing Boards
APPA APPA-Leadership in Educational Facilities
CHEA Council of Higher Education Accreditation
CIC Council of Independent Colleges
NAICU National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
NASULGC Nationals Association of State Universities and Land Grant
Colleges
SHEEO State Higher Education Executive Officers

xv
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Percentage reductions in state support for colleges

and universities 14
Table 8.1 Football coaches’ compensation exceeding
one million dollars 108
Table 9.1 Media coverage of university failures 136

xvii
 1
Introduction

The accelerating pace of societal change in the USA and globally is

calling into question the stability, efficacy, and sustainability of institu-
tions and social structures we have long taken for granted. One of those
institutions happens to be among the most important, one upon which
our economy and society depends i.e., the colleges and universities that
make up our American system of higher education.
For more than a quarter century in senior leadership positions at
several major universities, I’ve fought for, defended, and worked to
strengthen the defenses of those universities against the pressures, chal-
lenges, and attacks that come from our critics, our legislatures, the
media, and even some of our closest friends and donors. But these
challenges to American higher education, no matter how strong our
defenses, continue to grow stronger, louder, more threatening and
are taking a toll that needs to be recognized, openly discussed, and
addressed by the leaders of our institutions and policy makers at all
levels.
Now, in my post-administrative days and more on the “outside
looking in,” I see these challenges from a different perspective, per-
haps a little more clearly and certainly more holistically. Inside the

© The Author(s) 2019 1

D. M. Johnson, The Uncertain Future of American Public Higher Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01794-1_1
2    
D. M. Johnson

administration, the problems and challenges made up my daily ­schedule

and while these were always difficult they were seen as part of my job
description as president; it was the world taken for granted. I took them
one-at-a-time hoping to forestall a mini-crisis and to get through the
workday in time to host a dinner with alums, donors, civic groups,
or a campus guest. The general strategy was to break the problem
into small pieces or units and work at solving or eliminating smaller,
less-than-crisis challenges.
What I see today gives me much greater concern than when I was in
the middle of it all. From this “outside” more holistic perspective, the
cracks appear much larger, the current paradigm seems much weaker,
and the sustainability of higher education, at least public higher educa-
tion as we know it, is being called into question.
Unlike the nation’s Liberty Bell with its single large crack, our sys-
tem of public higher education and the paradigm that provides the
conceptual, pedagogical, legal, regulatory, and financial structures for
advanced learning and certification has multiple cracks—some large,
some small—all seriously weakening the infrastructure, the very frame-
work, and foundation upon which our public colleges and universities
currently rest.
Given this picture, we must ask the obvious question: Is the current
higher education paradigm sustainable? Am I misperceiving my old
institutions and the system I fought to defend? Are we in a collective
state of denial, whistling past the graveyard, hoping to hold out another
year, another decade and pass this looming crisis on to the next genera-
tion of university leaders and higher education policy makers?
In his landmark essay, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962),
Thomas Kuhn,1 elevated the concept of “paradigm” and brought it
into the thinking and writings of the academy. Although Kuhn focused
on the sciences, the strength of the paradigm concept has been shown
applicable to other fields and disciplines. American higher education,
viewed holistically, exhibits many of the characteristics of a paradigm.
Kuhn and others have, for example, described paradigms in the follow-
ing ways that apply to American higher education:
 1 Introduction    
3

Achievements, that for a time, provide a model…

Concepts and practices that define a …discipline at any particular time…
Distinct, established patterns…
common methods and standards that frame the object of interest…
Examples of actual practice—
which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together—
provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions…
Commitment to the same rules and standards…

The significance of Kuhn’s work for this candid assessment of p ­ ublic

higher education in the USA is the insight he provides into the
way paradigms change. Paradigms do change, not only in science,
as aptly described by Kuhn, but in other fields and disciplines. The
achievements, practices, methods, standards, and models in any
field, as in science, can and do shift with the pressures from new
insights as well as the changing environmental context in which the
field exists.
New discoveries, new knowledge, changing economics, new tech-
nologies, and even new ideologies can induce paradigm change. These
changes, as Kuhn points out, can be constructive or destructive. With
sufficient pressures from these changes, existing paradigms together
with their standards, methods, rules, applications, and models are dis-
carded, literally squeezed out, in favor of a new paradigm which more
favorably embraces the changes. The failure of the existing paradigm—
in this case, higher education—to meet the challenges of heightened
expectations, negative public opinion, reduced legislative support, new
delivery technologies, unacceptable cost–benefit ratios, and less attrac-
tive demographics bring substantial growing pressures for change.
Kuhn’s lesson applies: With the passage of time, anomalies accumulate
within a field to the point that the entire paradigm itself is required to
change to accommodate them. Structures and systems become anach-
ronistic and can only sustain a limited amount of dissonance; when
that limit is reached, structures and systems that make up the para-
digm change or cease to be relevant. In Kuhn’s parlance, this is a para-
digm shift.
4    
D. M. Johnson

It is increasingly apparent from the rapidly expanding body of crit-

ical research, public opinion surveys, media coverage, and the agendas
of higher education meetings, conferences, and associations that these
anomalies and anachronistic features are bringing increased pressure
and a paradigm shift is increasingly likely, if not imminent. Some argue
that the shift is already well underway in American higher education.
Clearly, the current higher education infrastructure lacks the strength it
had a decade ago. Wave after wave of challenges and crisis after crisis are
taking their toll. For many of those close to the front lines, there is the
feeling that the dam is about to fail, that the twentieth-century struc-
tures, policies, subsidies, regulations, and programs that made possible
the growth and development of American higher education in the twen-
tieth century are failing in the twenty-first century and are in need of
reconstruction and reform.
If we continue to apply Kuhn’s insights, we might reasonably con-
clude that a paradigm shift is not a threat to the need for higher edu-
cation, per se, but rather the manner and mode in which it is provided
and continues to evolve. The current models, modes, and manners by
which higher education functions, particularly public higher education,
are costly, ineffectual and have been increasingly so for the past quarter
century. The dissonance and dysfunctions are more evident every year
with each new cohort of university students and every new budget cycle.
The high cost of tuition and fees alone, with their annual increases out-
stripping inflation, is more than sufficient evidence of the failure of the
system to meet the higher education needs of an ever-larger population.
But the high cost of tuition is not the only dysfunction; it is only one of
a myriad of challenges and pressures that are increasingly evident and are
now interacting exacerbating the combined impact of these anomalies.
Among these challenges are the methods by which we measure uni-
versity performance and account for its various functions; the growing
chasm between the needs of the workforce, marketplace, and the cur-
ricula of our universities; the costly maintenance and growing obsoles-
cence of our campuses; our failure to adopt effective teaching methods
in favor of long-discredited modes; and the ancillary activities being
added to the university experience that detract from learning and add
to the costs students must pay or finance. These anomalies are bringing
 1 Introduction    
5

ever greater pressures that will, of economic and political necessity,

bring a disruptive paradigm shift in American higher education. And
that shift may well be underway.
These are cracks in the American paradigm of higher education that
contribute to its very uncertain future. They are clearly visible to anyone
reasonably close to or who cares about our nation’s colleges and univer-
sities and the students they recruit every year. But this concern is not
only about the impact of the costly dysfunctions on our universities and
students; it is also about America’s standing and leadership among other
nations. It is about the demands of the knowledge economy and how
we prepare future generations to find meaningful roles in an economy
that is being driven by artificial intelligence, robotics, and the explosion
of digitally based enterprises and industries.
It might be somewhat misleading or disingenuous to refer to these
dysfunctions as cracks when clearly what was once a simple hairline fis-
sure two or three decades ago has now become a huge hole or, worse,
a gaping wound. Whatever the preferred metaphor, it is clear we have
rapidly mounting problems that, if left unaddressed and unreformed,
threaten not only the affordability and cost-effectiveness of American
higher education for our nation’s students but our leadership in the
increasingly competitive international world of higher education.
There is far too much at stake for future generations and our place in
the world to ignore these huge cracks in the paradigmatic infrastructure
upon which American higher education rests. There is an arms race in
global higher education, and it can’t be led or won using the inefficient,
anachronistic systems, structures, and strategies of the 1950s and 1960s.
Every engaged educator and education policy maker knows there are
countless issues and serious challenges confronting the higher education
enterprise. There are those who argue that this is normal and par for the
course. There are defenders of the status quo who argue that American
higher education is fine, in great shape and the best is yet to come. They
argue that higher education, as in every area of human endeavor, regu-
larly encounters serious issues and challenges and this period of change
and challenges is no different. We just have to stay the course, keep the
present systems and structures in place, don’t rock the boat, and con-
tinue learning how to “do more with less.”
6    
D. M. Johnson

The purpose of this treatise is to respectfully take the strongest excep-

tion possible to this view. For the past two decades, we have witnessed
changes and challenges that have gone far beyond the normal range of
issues. The sheer scale, scope, and complexity of the issues defy reso-
lution through normal channels. Even the systems and bureaucracies
that have been put in place to address these issues have become or are
becoming part of the problem scene.
These are the anomalies Kuhn describes as the antecedents of a para-
digm shift.
The anomalies—I call them cracks—I’m most concerned with are
the issues that challenge and frustrate the mission of higher education,
that prevent significant parts of our population from gaining access to
our universities, that threaten public support for the higher education
enterprise, and that open the door to legitimate criticisms that under-
mine the moral authority of our colleges and universities. These cracks
are patterns of institutional behavior that have evolved or developed in
recent years that are, in some instances, inconsistent with democratic
values and do not fit the ideals that enabled American universities and
colleges to become the best in the world a half century ago.
Cracks usually begin as hairline creases barely visible to the average
person or constituent. With the passage of a few years, this anomaly
that many thought was a simple aberration and would disappear in time
becomes the “new normal” and is soon taken for granted. The anomaly
develops its own constituents with their vested interests, rationale, and
justification for the maintenance of the new normal which may have lit-
tle or no relationship with knowledge, learning, or the mission of higher
education.
For the purposes of this treatise, I’ve identified a number of these
issues and challenges, these cracks that are readily visible and that, taken
together, threaten the capacity of our current infrastructure to pro-
vide for the sustainability of many of our colleges and universities and
even our nation’s current system of higher education. I’ve selected these
anomalous characteristics based on my personal experiences as a for-
ty-year veteran of higher education administration, the last ten years of
which were in the most senior leadership positions at major universities.
These cracks—anomalies that have become the “new normal” that now
 1 Introduction    
7

threaten America’s higher education infrastructure—cut across the very

fabric that holds our system together, i.e., tuition, credit hours, tenure,
campuses, teaching, programs, textbooks, sports, salaries, demographics,
governance, and accreditation.
These topics have played an important, long-term role and func-
tion in American higher education. They are terms and entities with
which every student, faculty member, administrator, policy maker, and
informed citizen are familiar. These elements constitute what many
might consider the core or engine parts of higher education. These are
the key elements of our system; they constitute the gears that make the
higher education engine run. Each one, in its own way, is important;
taken together, however, their dysfunctions and failures create a genuine
crisis that can only be addressed through a major overhaul.
What is it about these elements of our higher education system—
our paradigm—that qualifies them as cracks or anomalies that must be
addressed? What is the rationale—the justification—for singling out
these particular challenges? Why these and not others? To answer this
question, I draw on my own experiences as a faculty member, depart-
ment chair, dean, provost, and university president as well as my years
leading a new university in the Middle East. Each of these issues seems
to grow more problematic and difficult every year. Our solutions to
these ever-growing problems are almost always focused on the symp-
toms, rarely the cause. We seem to have no capacity, power, or authority
to solve the real problem; we deal only with symptoms.
To be honest, during my years in leadership roles, I did not—nor did
my colleagues at the time—see these problems and issues as weaknesses
in the system, much less anomalies in the higher education paradigm.
We viewed—and blamed—most of the problems on ill-informed gover-
nors, legislators, bureaucrats, unions, and even our own university lead-
ers. Looking back, it is much clearer that those were the hairline cracks
in the 1990s and early 2000s that were not recognized as such but have
now expanded to threaten the way we provide higher education and to
whom we provide it.
Beyond my own experiences in university leadership roles, there
are the policy and programmatic issues of our nation’s higher educa-
tion associations that validate these concerns as major issues. These
8    
D. M. Johnson

associations represent the American higher education establishment

and collectively pursue the maintenance of a collaborative policy envi-
ronment that supports the current infrastructure. Even these conserva-
tive establishment associations are tackling, in their own ways, one or
more of the anomalies threatening the sustainability of our colleges and
universities.
A review of the websites, programs, and conference agendas of these
associations—ACE, AASCU, APPA, AAC&U, AGB, CHEA, CIC,
NAICU, NASULGC, SHEEO,2 and others—provides a grand over-
view and inventory of the important issues and challenges they seek
to address. Each of the issues that I now view as a serious challenge to
the higher education paradigm, associations present as a topic at a con-
ference, the task of a committee, an assignment to or job description
for a member of the staff. These associations meet with and send let-
ters to members of Congress outlining their collective concern and ask
for their assistance if they think the problem is serious. Their missions,
strategies, programs, and actions are geared to help keep the current
paradigm working and, in all fairness, without the great work of these
associations, the paradigm would have collapsed decades ago. But, the
collapsing of the system, the breakup of the paradigm may be beyond
the point of no return. The trajectory is clear. There is little the higher
education associations can do that will stop the erosion. The forces of
societal change are beyond their capacity to alter in any significant way.
The higher education associations are, at best, a rearguard action.
If more justification is needed to accept these issues as cracks in the
higher education paradigm, one need only to Google “crises in higher
education.” In addition to the hundreds of scholarly articles listed,
there are scores of pages of references to a virtual library of material on
the many crises in higher education, not only in the USA but in those
nations that have modeled their systems after ours. I do not claim that
the dozen or so issues that constitute the subject matter of this trea-
tise are the only problems or anomalies challenging the infrastructure
of American higher education. Those selected for this work are those
that have been part of my experience, those that make up the agendas
of our nation’s higher education associations and, finally, those that
 1 Introduction    
9

form the basis of the growing body of crisis literature so prevalent and
voluminous.
My hope is that we look at these challenges to our system of higher
education for what they really are; they are clear signals that we must
find a new way, a new course, and a new mode and paradigm for meet-
ing the higher education and research needs of our nation’s population,
workforce, and marketplace.

References
1. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago
Press, 1962).
2. See Acronyms for names of associations.
 2
Tuition Crisis: The Costs and Financing
of Public Higher Education

“Beyond the reach of the middle class. ” This is a phrase you can find in
literally hundreds of articles that have been written about the soaring
tuition rates over the past decade. Even our public universities—a bar-
gain compared to most private institutions—are increasingly beyond
the reach of many of those who most need a college education as a way
out of poverty, minimum wage and dead-end jobs. Lacking resources,
information, and understanding of their options, middle-class kids and
those from lower socio-economic situations turn to the many lending
institutions all too ready and eager to provide student loans, semester
after semester until graduation if the students are fortunate enough to
complete their studies. Sadly, the pressures of financial stress and fam-
ily responsibilities combined with the academic workload from classes
delay graduation for many an additional year or two turning a tradi-
tional 4-year degree into a five, six, or seven year degree. For many, the
obstacles are just too large resulting in dropout rates that exceed 50% or
more in some states.
The hidden tragedy in this scenario being played out all across the
nation is a growing population of young people who have borrowed
tens of thousands of dollars to pay for tuition, mandatory fees, and

© The Author(s) 2019 11

D. M. Johnson, The Uncertain Future of American Public Higher Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01794-1_2
12    
D. M. Johnson

books but who fail to complete their degrees and reap the advantage of
increased compensation that comes with graduation that enables them
to repay these student loans. Barely half of those who enroll actually
complete their degrees in six years or less.
This is a tragic tale that is being retold on a daily basis. I’ve been
with undergraduate and graduate students and listened to the stories
about their loans, their indebtedness and their fears about the future.
I recently talked to a graduate student finishing his Master’s degree in
education. He had borrowed $70,000 so far for both his undergraduate
and graduate studies and still had a semester to complete the require-
ments for his degree. Part of his story was that he was also assisting his
parents—an immigrant family—through this period. He was engaged
to marry a young lady—also a student—who had borrowed “a lot of
money.” I can imagine that their combined indebtedness could easily
exceed $100,000; at this point neither the graduate student nor his
fiancee had a job nailed down. My student friend was now—perhaps
for the first time—facing the stark reality of his financial situation and
future of indebtedness.
In addition to my personal knowledge of students with these huge
loans, there are countless stories in the popular press, periodical litera-
ture, and scholarly journals documenting the tragic financial situation
of a growing proportion of today’s graduates. It is one of the indisputa-
ble facts about higher education in the USA that has turned what was—
and should be—a sense of great accomplishment for graduates into a
time of reckoning and sober reflection on the price they paid for their
college degree. For the first time in my experience, I am hearing stu-
dents question whether the degree was worth the price. Sadly, the voices
of those questioning the value and cost of a college education are grow-
ing louder. Many are opting out or dropping out altogether.
Anyone who has looked at this state of affairs quickly learns that the
high cost of higher education and the problem of student loans and
indebtedness is complex with its causative tentacles reaching back to
rising inflation, institutional practices, education policies, government
programs, competition among universities for students, availability of
easily obtained loans, and even deceptive practices among some of the
 2 Tuition Crisis: The Costs and Financing …    
13

institutions involved. It truly is a very complex problem the results of

which millions of young people will be living with for decades.
There is no silver bullet nor simple solution to what has become one
of the most serious and complex problems in American higher educa-
tion. The seriousness of this problem and its financial and psychological
impact on a generation of students and graduates, with no solution in
sight, combined with the drag it creates on local economies has weak-
ened our nation’s system of higher education and for the first time
begs the question of the cost/benefit of a college degree. The high cost
of higher education and the resulting student loan problem has, for a
growing proportion of young people—mostly from lower income and
blue-collar families—cast doubt on the affordability and even the wis-
dom of pursuing a college degree.
Over the past decade, I have talked with many students, parents,
and interested citizens about the high cost of higher education. Most
want to know why it costs so much. Parents and grandparents fre-
quently recount how inexpensive it was for them in the 1960s, 1970s,
and 1980s making it possible to work their way through college without
leaving them in debt. Everyone recognizes the impact of inflation and
accepts that as a factor; what they don’t understand is why and how the
cost of higher education has far outstripped inflation. “What,” they ask,
“is going on? We just don’t understand how this can be. Please explain it
to us. Please, just tell us the truth.”
My response to these students and their parents reflects what we
know about the rapid increase in tuition and the cost of public higher
education in the USA over the past two decades. The increases are the
result of two significant arithmetic changes: One is the additions to uni-
versity programs, services, amenities, facilities, technologies, and sala-
ries. The second is the subtractions of state support at public universities.
Widespread reductions in public support for state universities combined
with the rising costs of remaining competitive have forced universities
to find needed resources in the only other renewable source available,
i.e., student tuition.
But there is much more to the rising cost of higher education than
the arithmetic changes of additions and subtractions. Those who seek
to fully understand the factors at work in the economics of tuition and
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