This is the time of year when high school seniors across the country (and around the world) are opening their mail hoping for what, back in the day, was the thick envelope from one's top choice school. Many will do the opening electronically, but the feelings of hope, anxiety and anticipation will be the same. In the next weeks students invited to join the class of 2013 will be comparing notes, preparing to revisit campuses, and trying to imagine themselves thriving on a campus often far away from home.
Of course, just being in a position to make a decision about which school to attend is a luxury, and for a select group of high school seniors an enormously valuable college experience is being made available without charge. The highly selective schools (like Wesleyan where I work), which remain "need blind" (accepting students regardless of their ability to pay) devote a considerable part of our operating budgets to financial aid. For those paying full fare, tuition and fees for an academic year are north of $50k, but at the most selective schools somewhere between 40-60 percent of the students receive significant financial support. At Wesleyan, our average grant is around $30k, and there are schools that can afford to be even more generous to those students who are fortunate enough to get in.
For many of those heading off to college it is the public university that will seem the economically sensible choice. Large state schools have reported record numbers of applicants, even while in many parts of the country state legislators are cutting the budgets of their flagship campuses. In my home state of Connecticut, we recently saw students at the main state campus asking for higher tuition increases to make up for the inadequate funding from the state. Students asking for higher tuition? These are strange times.
Today's New York Times reported that many of the Ivy League Schools continue to experience an increase in applications. Some of the highly selective liberal arts colleges in rural New England, by contrast, have seen declines in their applicant pools. At Wesleyan University, where our entering class will number under 750, we have experienced our largest surge in applicants ever -- more than 22%. Like many of our peer institutions, we have expanded our financial aid budget in order to make it possible for qualified students to attend. And we are also trying to cut discretionary spending to focus our resources on core academic programs. Like all universities, we are juggling selectivity, affordability, costs and access in an effort to sculpt an entering class ready to learn from the faculty as well as from one another.
The "class sculpting" that goes on at liberal arts oriented colleges and universities is from the administrative perspective a luxury of its own in these days of cutbacks and underfunded state campuses. Many, many qualified students are rejected at a place like Wesleyan, but I take some solace in the fact that the US higher education system offers an extraordinary number of access points to a high quality experience -- from fine community colleges to sophisticated public research universities to distinctive private institutions offering an array of learning opportunities in and outside of the classroom. Higher Ed, of course, is just one part of the entire array of teaching institutions. It has been clear for some time that we need to do a better job of preparing our high school graduates to get the most out of the range of choices available to them. Too many of our colleges are re-teaching high school rather than expanding the horizons for our undergraduates.
In the coming weeks thousands of students across the country will be looking at the equivalent of those thick envelopes and asking: Which school can I afford, and which school will be the place where I will really thrive for the next four years? Many of us will be asked to offer advice to friends and relatives. Where will I (or where will my son or daughter) be happy? Which school will better prepare me for life after college? Our higher education sector recognizes that young people learn in a wide variety of ways. Some people want a very structured environment in which their education will be institutionally directed. Others want a homogeneous climate in which they can find other people like themselves working toward similar goals. Some will want large campuses that function like mini-cities, while others will want small residential communities. In this economic climate, students (and their families) will want to know how the years in college will enable them to enter the work force. Weighing the relative advantages of the schools that sent those thick envelopes may be a luxury, but it is a momentous one.
It's my hope that students choose schools at which they can learn how to be more effective in whatever field they decide to apply themselves, and in this process also discover core things that they really love to do. That's the best way for them to gain the ability to continue doing those things about which they are most passionate long after they receive their diplomas. Graduates who have become effective in doing what they find personally satisfying are the ones we may expect to add the most value to the economy and the culture of the future.
I applaud your efforts at Wes.
To help offset the state's decision to slash $115.5 million from UC over two years, university officials have also eliminated scores of staff positions at the 10 campuses through attrition, buyouts and layoffs.
Officials claim to have reduced the UC Office of the President's budget by $67 million from two years ago by cutting 628 full-time employees at the Oakland headquarters, but some of these employees took jobs at other campuses. Those reductions were also accomplished with the aid of about $10 million worth of contracts paid to outside consultants.
The Board of Regents last week ratified two hires for vacant slots at the UC Office of the President.
Former investment banker Peter J. Taylor was hired as the university system's executive vice president and chief financial officer at a base salary of $400,000 a year. His perks include a relocation allowance of $64,000, reimbursement of his actual moving expenses up to $15,000, additional funds for house hunting, an $8,916-a-year automobile allowance, and eligibility to receive a low-interest mortgage loan.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/25/BALI16MDSL.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea
Last week, for example, the governing Board of Regents appointed two executives at salaries of more than $350,000 a year and authorized paid administrative leaves to two former campus chancellors - one receiving $402,200 a year and the other $315,000.
Over the last two months, the board also granted pay increases of as much as 22.3 percent to a half dozen senior managers and approved higher salary ranges for several additional department manager positions at UCSF and at the university's headquarters in Oakland.
But such appointments, pay raises and perks have infuriated UC's primary union of 11,000 staff members, University Professional and Technical Employees Local 9119, which called Tuesday for a hiring freeze of UC administrators earning more than $200,000 a year.
"We are very outraged. We confronted Chancellor Robert Birgeneau (of UC Berkeley) today about it," said Tanya Smith, the union's local president. "The chancellor responds that this is an exception, but we have seen too many exceptions. The exceptions are becoming the rule at UC, and we have had enough."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/25/BALI16MDSL.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea
Top officials with raises, perks
Among the top UC administrators who received pay raises and other perks:
-- John Gary Falle was appointed as associate vice president of federal government relations of the UC Office of the President. His annual salary was increased 10.4 percent from $244,500 to $270,000.
-- Henry E. Brady was appointed dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley at an annual salary of $283,200 - a 15 percent increase from his faculty salary of $246,228.
-- Dr. J. Michael Bishop, the former chancellor of UCSF, was granted a paid administrative leave (in lieu of sabbatical leave) for one year at a salary of $402,200.
-- Larry N. Vanderhoef, the former chancellor of UC Davis, was granted a paid administrative leave (in lieu of sabbatical leave) for one year at a salary of $315,000. He was provided offices on campus, an executive assistant at a base salary of $91,000 a year, and an office budget of $39,000 for the 2009-10 fiscal year.
-- Paul Staton, the chief financial officer of the UCLA Hospital System, was awarded a "pre-emptive retention" pay raise of 22.3 percent to increase his annual base salary from $310,800 to $380,000.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/25/BALI16MDSL.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea
Having been part of a relatively privileged high school community, I know how much students can be driven to do well in class by the knowledge that their hard work will get them into a good college. Sadly, many American high school students don't get that incentive--they think they won't be able to afford a good university education, no matter how well they do in school, so they see no reason to prepare themselves for college. And I believe that this problem of unmotivated students will sink any attempt at secondary-school reform. If our poorer high school students could be assured that graduating near the top of their class would win them a good education, they would not only work hard but compete for good grades. And knowing that they would get a real chance to go to college, they (and their parents) would begin to demand better teaching to help them get into a good one.