Don't Foreclose On Our Future: Invest In Public Higher Education

President Barack Obama declared in his first speech before a Joint Session of Congress that the answers to America's economic crisis "exist in our laboratories and our universities..."

Yes, but.... Higher education is itself jeopardized by the recession, and its ability even to cope with the next few years is threatened. Well more than half of the states face budget shortfalls, some of them catastrophic, and among the first areas to be slashed are the public institutions of higher education. These cutbacks are profoundly affecting public university systems from coast to coast.

Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons has proposed a 36% cut for higher education -- which is three-quarters of the entire $633 million he wants to cut from the state budget. In Washington, Governor Christine Gregoire is seeking to solve her state's economic woes with a 13% cut in the state university system. And just prior to being tapped by President Obama for the Cabinet, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius proposed an $81 million cutback in higher education spending over the next two years.

In New York, Governor David Paterson has taken a Draconian stance in regard to the SUNY system, proposing massive aid reductions and, adding insult to injury, also taking 90 per cent of the funding from a compensatory tuition increase. Students will be paying more, but most of their money will be funneled toward the State deficit. Even before the severe mid-year cuts in his 2008-09 budget, state aid to SUNY's four-year colleges and graduate schools had fallen below the level of the early 1990's, despite steadily rising costs and inflation.

With such utter disregard for higher education, America is losing ground on a number of fronts critical to our future prosperity and progress. Once the U.S. led the world in the percentage of its population with higher education degrees. Now, among individuals ages 25 to 34, we have fallen to 11th, behind such countries as Russia, South Korea, and Japan. For the first time, the cohort of Americans of that age group is less educated than the cohorts that preceded it. Playing catch up will not be easy; a recent report shows that to keep up with international competitors, the U.S. will have to educate an additional 15 million-plus with either associate's or bachelor's degrees by the year 2025. That's a whopping 37% increase over current production.

At the same time, tuition and fees have risen nearly three times as fast as the median family income, after adjusting for inflation, over the past two decades at public colleges and universities. And rather than equipping labs and classrooms and hiring faculty, these institutions are being forced to use increased revenues primarily to meet inflation and to offset the losses in state appropriations. The shortfall -- and the burden -- is passed on to already cash-strapped families, who are faced with increased debt load.

As in other states, Gov. Paterson's budget measures come with several sad and ironic twists. Next year's enrollment at SUNY and CUNY is expected to be larger than ever. Many more high school seniors will be choosing public universities rather than face tuition costs at privates that sometimes rise above $40,000. Moreover, with the rapidly rising unemployment rate, a significant number of men and women will opt to return to college to pursue new careers. Enrollment pressures are expected to be greater than ever.

So, there's an obvious and serious disconnect by the Governors of all states who have made supportive pronouncements for higher education while wielding their budget axes. Funding cuts and tuition increases at public institutions, which educate three-quarters of America's college students, are exactly the wrong approach. Indeed, public investment in higher education, especially in recessionary times, is sound economic policy. What else but education can turn out the brains that create new science and technology, then use the discoveries to develop more and better jobs?

Consider Stony Brook University. It is far more than a "flagship campus" of the SUNY system; it is also a driving force of the Long Island economy. In fact, its annual economic impact on Long Island is a staggering $4.67 billion, and it generates nearly 60,000 jobs. Furthermore, Stony Brook accounts for nearly four percent of all economic activity in Nassau and Suffolk counties and roughly 7.5% of total jobs in Suffolk County.

The economies of a Silicon Valley or Austin Corridor are similarly fueled by their local state research universities. Berkeley, for example, receives about a half billion dollars in research support from external sources each year, about 70% of which is public money. These funds support research that addresses children's health problems, global warming, poverty, and disease, as well as innovative products for the benefit of society. At the University of Texas at Austin, research funding exceeds $400 million annually, while the return on this investment is approximately $1.4 billion in business activity per year.

The states must stop viewing their universities as cash cows in hard times and invest in them instead. But the states can't do it alone. It is time for a new National Education Act that protects our country's prosperity and security by developing the raw talent and channeling the untamed energy of our whole population. It is time to legitimize K-16, not K-12, as our national commitment.

A college education should be every American's birthright. Young people need it - and more importantly, the country needs them to have it. Our economy depends on education beyond the high school level; President Obama noted in his speech before Congress that three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require it.

It is important to remember that the greatest advances in the American higher education system have come through federal initiatives. The Morrill Land Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 spawned the great state universities by establishing funding for higher education in agriculture and industry. The creation and growth of the public universities democratized higher education and fostered a climate of intellectual achievement essential to America's international stature.

The GI Bills enacted to benefit veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam benefited the country incalculably, multiplying the population of college-educated professionals who turned their energies to multiplying the nation's productiveness. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, passed in response to the wake-up call the Russians sounded by launching Sputnik, re-focused the country's attention on scientific achievement and the knowledge needed to accomplish it.

But as nations in Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere are now investing huge government funds in their public university systems, our nation, which pioneered the concept, is losing ground. This is one contest we can not afford to lose.

For each generation's future, for the nation's future, nothing comes close to the benefits of enhanced brainpower. But how can we help shape those brains for the long haul if we shortchange our universities today?

Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny has served as president of Stony Brook University for 15 years and was chairperson of the landmark Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University.

Comments

[goseawolves]

These are times when SBU needs support. Unfortunately in the last 5 years there were extraordinary expenditures on public relations, private housing, private contracting, and beautification projects that eat up millions of funds that could have been spent on the academic campus, instructors, and programs. There is real hypocrisy in the author, seeking to tar Albany, when the campus runs on its own budget. Academic programs have suffered, great world-class faculty have left, major funding is down, standing are falling. Although the campus refers to some esoteric surveys that include thousands of colleges/u­niversitie­s world-wide, it does not reflect that within the peer group that USB once had, it has little standing. Physics, cell biology, sociology, and the languages were once treasured areas of investment. Engineering 2000 came and went. Some divisions have to make hundreds of offers to secure a dozen graduate students. Computer sciences is locked in the past decade, but yet the fountains, artificial brooks and unimaginative lighting and sports dreams go one. Good bye and....

[Facultyinterests]

There is a certain irony to this article. Stony Brook had many departments and program that ranked in the top 20 when the new president arrived, now it has few. The strengths of hard sciences as well as biomedical engineering, medical research, and scholarly work in the humanities are no more. Stony Brook has the worst matriculation record in 64 campuses (look in USNWR rankings) because many students cannot find the classes they need. This is especially true in the languages. The beautification of the campus was long overdo, but nobody I know would have swapped the academic excellence of the university for some grass, plantings, and artificial brooks. The president now lives in a mansion and enjoys the perks of a CEO. The former presidents drove themselves to campus and lived in a house provided by the campus which was considered unsuitable by the current president. We all hope and pray for a real academic as a new president. The current president was stubborn and her critics are many. We still wish her well.

[wolfiewolferson]

The current president of Stony Brook University lives in a university-owned facility, where conferences and events also occur. The current president of Stony Brook University secured AAU designation for Stony Brook. Under the current president, SAT scores, diversity and enrollment have all increased. Under the current president, Stony Brook University was cited as one of two flagship institutions among SUNY system. Misinformation is critcally destructive, and your post is rampant with it.

[SBU]

Check the AAU ratings indeed, SB fell from 33 (on admission to AAU based upon the productivity of the faculty before current president was on board) to last place (current). SAT values reported are not raw scores, they have been amended by declaring some (significant percentage) as "disadvantaged". I see no comment about SB's poor attrition rate, but that can be viewed online. Check out USNWR on SB rankings: falling, falling, falling. One set to compete with the best of the CA system, SB is now excited to compete best against UB (check the web-sites). No talk about the failure of the campus to report crime on campus to the Feds, as directed by the FBI. OOops, someone forgot to provide this information to the prospective students. The number of functions held at the mansion that are not ostensibly the president's own use is rather small, check the log book at the place. See Newsweek articles on faculty no confidence votes, it is all there.

[InfoGeek]

People are complaining about the inflation rate in higher education. Others attribute the cost increases to declines in state support (in the public sector). Could somebody point me to a source of reliable numbers, please? I would really like to see what the real inflation in public university costs has been.
With reliable information, maybe we can begin to discuss what can and should be done about it. Useful numbers must, of course, separate capital and current costs.

My feeling is that the reduction in state funding is not the only reason for the increase in costs; the private universities have had the same kind of increases, and up to recently, their endowments were doing very well.

[darker]

Universities that follow the CORPORATE MODEL in their operation, values and administrative
compensation WASTE MONEY. Tons of money. Increasingly money is wasted on administration cost inflation and creased numbers of administrators while the purpose of the university --EDUCATION--is itself underfunded.

Universities are businesses that keep up with the Joneses and that's how money is spent.
Universities jump on TREND bandwagons that cost billions and contribute little toward education.

One current trend is "assessment & testing". "Experts" are hired to show professors how they should teach.

Those "education experts" WHO FAILED to improve primary and secondary school education now see universities as their next CASH COW to sell a failed approach that helped to crash pre-university education after taking teaching out of teachers' hands and replacing it with the fraud of "policy".

Hello?! EDUCATION POLICY DOESN'T TEACH. TEACHERS DO.
Teachers must be the experts who decide. Not PROFITEERS posing as "education experts".
Continuous meddling with teaching will completely crash education on all levels in America.

[evo-bio]

I agree with Shirly Kenny’s critics. While she has made Stony Brook more pleasant and acquired land the University will need in the future, she sacrificed intellectual quality to accomplish these objectives. She drove away some of Stony Brook’s finest researchers with broken promises, steadily deteriorating physical and intellectual infrastructure, and hostility to quality. She promoted incompetent cronies to create a bloated bureaucracy that is indifferent to needs for teaching and research. She has failed Stony Brook.
As a tax payer, I hesitate to place more public funds into the hands of mediocre university administrators like Dr. Kenny. However, that does not mean her plea for support of public higher education should be ignored. Just as the country must bail out banks managed by short-sighted, greedy managers, it is also stuck with Kenny and her kind while it invests in public higher education. Public higher education is “too big to fail.” Cutting its funds to get rid of “fat” is a conservative myth. That only drives out talent. Other measures are needed to improve administration of public universities and bring inflation of its costs under control. Financial starvation will kill public higher education, not improve its health.

[IhateNeoCons]

While Kenny is correct in everything she has said, she would be a far more convincing advocate in my mind if she weren't known by all those who have attended or worked at Stony Brook as someone who was much more interested in investing in bricks and mortar than in individuals. Researchers win prestigious HHMI funding, are promised an empty building for lab space so they won't leave, and are then screwed over, prompting their eventual if delayed departure. Prestigious individuals are recruited to head new departments, with promises of five story buildings to house them, that end up being three stories high. Promises made in recruiting talented faculty, regularly reneged upon, prompting losses of the most established and prolific researchers. All while she builds new sports stadiums (with only one dressing room to be shared by both teams!), and uses imminent domain to abscond with large tracts of land adjacent to university property to further expand her little empire. She has been good for the university in many ways, unfortunately, she took things to such a ridiculous extreme, that at least in the case of Stony Brook, she has been more of a threat to her own institution's ability to do first rate research and to retain first-rate faculty than any temporary economic downturn.

[henrywolff]

Check it out. From 1989 to 2005, college costs grew every year at twice the rate of inflation. Considering the impact of the compounding, those are HUGE increases.
http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml

[henrywolff]

Professional educators need to figure out how to contain their costs. The inflation in education is appalling. The only thing that is growing faster is healthcare. Where are the true innovators in education? The amount of debt they saddle with society for four years of college is a travesty. Fortunately there are open source models coming on line that will enable low cost models. Think outside the box people.

[cloudminder]

if senior administrative officials in public higher ed would act with integrity than there would not be so much of a problem

currently the senior admins in public higher ed act as scandalous as the financial products division of AIG

and I say this from real first hand experience-- it is not an abstraction for me

could cite incident after incident of raiding the coffers of public higher ed by senior admins and tenured faculty

[MFZ]

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Education is an investment that pays multiple public returns. Instead of cutting education budgets to fit constrained government revenues, which have been grossly limited by decades of bi-partisan tax cuts, we need to raise taxes on the wealthy back to where they were when our economy (and public higher education) was growing quickly and the benefits of greater productivity were widely shared. In New York state, for example, we are facing a budget deficit of some fourteen billion dollars. But the Fiscal Policy Institute has calculated that if we were to restore the top state income tax rate to the 14% it was when SUNY was expanding, the state would collect an additional twenty billion in revenues this year. Problem more than solved, not just for education but for Medicaid, child welfare, and all the other vital areas of public policy now being ruthlessly cut.

The state tax cuts are bi-partisan in origin - in New York, first under Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo in the 1980s, trying to emulate the Reagan tax cuts on the federal level, then continuing under Republican Governor George Pataki. It's past time to discard this relatively recent and clearly destructive approach and return to a progressive tax system that fairly and reasonably finances a robust public sector.

[henrywolff]

There is no reason that education should cost so much. Waste is waste is waste. The rate of inflation in education is sickening, and the quality of education has not gone up accordingly. There is a tremendous amount of fat that can be taken out of education. There is far, far too much investment in infrastructure.

[MKCNewYork]

And where exactly are the students supposed to study? Live? Eat? Work? Education is more than just ideas.. it is books, computers, people, beds... investment in infrastructure means that student have state of the art wireless classrooms, access to the best minds in the world, places to meet and share ideas or a pizza! Where would you propose they become the leaders, financiers, doctors, educators and researchers of the future? In their mom's basement ? Seriously?

Public education is a BARGAIN! And in NY SUNY is relegated to agency status rather than having a seat at the table. Our kids get short shift..... and what could be (and should be!) the greatest University system in the greatest state from the greatest nation is merely a poor city cousin! It is time that NY took a stand and put education FIRST not last.. for all the students.. K-16, and beyond!

[Lulu55]

President Kenny hits the proverbial nail on the head. We need to fund PUBLIC higher education at higher levels of support than ever before. Stony Brook is one of the finest universities in the nation, and it gives its students a world-class education. Help them open the doors to their dreams, and we will all walk into a brighter future together. Trust me, I know a lot of very, very impressive Stony Brook graduates.

[lhelner]

I agree totally with Dr. Kenny

[GTPhoole]

These foolish, shortsighted attacks on public higher education are just one more example of how our so-called leaders are the worst kind of political hacks whose vision sees no further than their next campaign fundraiser.

[Goldadorfan]

As a citizen of New York and a mom, I am in complete agreement. Paterson's actions are misguided and short-sighted. Now more than ever we need to invest in higher education so our children will have the tools they need to build a better future. We want our children to go to the best schools possible but will we be able to afford to send them? True, many administrators make salaries that would make AIG executives envious, but isn't that true everywhere, even in our local school districts?

[AnnfromCA]

I completely agree, but we need to expand our scholarship programs quickly. Too many families are having to pull their kids out of school. Home equity loans aren't available now that housing has dropped.