By Sherman Dorn on February 9, 2012
No, the first words of the title are not the name of a failed indie band (though a mockumentary about it would be fabulous). I am on annual leave for most of this week, escorting my younger child to various colleges in a region of the country colder than Florida. Campus tourguides still walk backwards several years after my first round of parental college visits, which is no real surprise. Nor are the following observations from the start of The Second Go-Round:
- My son’s way of evaluating colleges is different from my daughter’s. (Wow, Dad. Great observation skills.)
- I had time to browse the bookstore at each of the two first colleges; my son didn’t. Bookstores are still a great way for parents to explore the curriculum. (My verdict for the first two places: students are asked to read real books at each.)
- One college’s junk food is The Best Ever, much better than the daily ice cream I have seen at several other places. I hope the endowment income isn’t going to that, though.
- The first two colleges have an almost-identical geographic feature for each. It’s a consequence of the region, but it is a bit eerie.
- “Were these buildings all constructed at the same time? They all look like early-80s–” “Oh, they weren’t constructed at the same time. The later ones were designed to match the earlier ones.” My mental thought: architecture-firm fees??!! Also, this would be taking historicism much too seriously, given the late construction date, except it sort of works for the campus.
- Tour guides have one common semi-adorable flaw: they do not have much of a comparative perspective, so when parents ask for what is unique about a campus, they often spout what is fairly common… but the inaccuracy is usually balanced by enthusiasm.
- On the other hand, admissions officers better be able to explain the strategic choices a place has made that shows what a student can expect (and can expect not to have as well.).
- A better question for students on a campus: What’s the best part of _________? That’s been the best prompt to get them talking about their own experiences.
- Mental thought on walking by several young men trying to leap high against a wall: If you are parkours players, you really need to get more game on.
- Mental thought on hearing about one tradition: Definitely a cool thing to do with liquid nitrogen.
- Mental thought on seeing one aspect of space use: OMFG (not what you think — that stands for Oh My Faculty Gods).
- Mental thought at a random moment: That’s a real fireplace, with a fire in it radiating heat. When was the last time I saw one of those?
- This week, I think I have read the best police-blotter editing in the world.
- My nephew and I lost out on a brunch date with my son to Tour of Cool, Fairly Unique Scientific Equipment. (It’s okay: we caught up with nephew and nephew’s girlfriend for dinner.)
- Two international cuisines and three types of junk food in 24 hours. I am The Dad. (My son is much fitter than I am and can easily afford three types of junk food in 24 hours. On the other hand, I was making sure to abstain from the Best Ever College Junk Food.)
- The admissions office for X does not appear to have its act together. Given what I know about X’s putative market, the basis for this judgment boggles the mind.
And a few personal observations:
- My son is very easy to travel with, as is my daughter. This makes college visiting a pleasure.
- Rental cars without audio input jacks are crimes against nature, or at least more tolerable driving.
Today: another campus, another visit.
Notes
Posted in Higher education, Personal |
By Sherman Dorn on February 7, 2012
The comments on my messy neoliberalism post are focusing on Kevin Carey’s testimony at the affordability hearing this week. Since Carey is usually much more careful in distinguishing between well-endowed private colleges and universities, tuition-driven privates, flagship publics, regional publics, and community colleges, the following passage astonished me:
There is no doubt that colleges have raised their prices in recent years because states reduced their subsidies for higher education. Some states have hacked hundreds of millions of dollars from public university budgets, and universities have responded by reducing access to courses and imposing dramatic price increases on students and parents…. States need strong incentives to maintain their commitment to higher learning.
But it’s also important to note that, over the long term, college prices have gone up in good economic times and bad. When state funding goes down, college gets more expensive. When state funding goes up, college gets more expensive.
That last claim substantially dismisses concerns about cost-shifting in public higher education, and just does not hold water for many states. In Florida, for example, here are the data on Florida’s state university system in terms of general revenues per FTE and tuition dollars per FTE from the mid-1980s, taken from the Florida Board of Governors budget summary and adjusted by inflation:
| Fiscal Year |
Current Dollars |
2011 Dollars |
| State funding |
Tuition |
State funding |
Tuition |
| 1985-86 |
$4,581 |
$883 |
$9,577 |
$1,845 |
| 1986-87 |
$5,196 |
$850 |
$10,664 |
$1,745 |
| 1987-88 |
$5,351 |
$941 |
$10,596 |
$1,864 |
| 1988-89 |
$5,966 |
$978 |
$11,344 |
$1,860 |
| 1989-90 |
$6,225 |
$1,259 |
$11,292 |
$2,284 |
| 1990-91 |
$5,931 |
$1,336 |
$10,207 |
$2,299 |
| 1991-92 |
$5,524 |
$1,598 |
$9,123 |
$2,639 |
| 1992-93 |
$5,624 |
$1,800 |
$9,017 |
$2,887 |
| 1993-94 |
$5,665 |
$1,884 |
$8,819 |
$2,933 |
| 1994-95 |
$5,897 |
$1,643 |
$8,951 |
$2,493 |
| 1995-96 |
$6,102 |
$1,633 |
$9,006 |
$2,411 |
| 1996-97 |
$6,538 |
$1,762 |
$9,373 |
$2,527 |
| 1997-98 |
$6,988 |
$1,934 |
$9,794 |
$2,710 |
| 1998-99 |
$7,388 |
$2,113 |
$10,195 |
$2,915 |
| 1999-00 |
$7,501 |
$2,183 |
$10,128 |
$2,947 |
| 2000-01 |
$7,752 |
$2,346 |
$10,126 |
$3,065 |
| 2001-02 |
$6,818 |
$2,635 |
$8,660 |
$3,346 |
| 2002-03 |
$7,181 |
$2,627 |
$8,979 |
$3,285 |
| 2003-04 |
$7,044 |
$2,787 |
$8,611 |
$3,407 |
| 2004-05 |
$7,332 |
$3,197 |
$8,731 |
$3,806 |
| 2005-06 |
$7,484 |
$3,449 |
$8,620 |
$3,973 |
| 2006-07 |
$8,396 |
$3,586 |
$9,368 |
$4,002 |
| 2007-08 |
$8,268 |
$3,565 |
$8,970 |
$3,868 |
| 2008-09 |
$7,692 |
$3,792 |
$8,036 |
$3,961 |
| 2009-10 |
$6,432 |
$4,231 |
$6,744 |
$4,437 |
| 2010-11 |
$6,413 |
$4,441 |
$6,615 |
$4,581 |
| 2011-12 |
$5,750 |
$4,960 |
$5,750 |
$4,960 |
There are only two eras in which state funding per FTE increased much: the late 1980s and the late 1990s, and the high point of state funding per FTE in the past quarter-century was in 1988-89. System tuition revenue per FTE stayed basically constant in the late 1980s upswing until the first year that state funding declined (1989-90), when tuition per FTE jumped substantially. In the late 1990s, it looks like tuition revenues per FTE rose along with state funding until you look back to the early 1990s, and then the comparison is startling: $2933 in tuition revenues per FTE in 1993-94 vs. $2947 in 1999-2000. Since then, it’s been a fairly steady downhill run in state funding, with cost-shifting to students. In the last fiscal year, the state university was operating with one half the state funding per student it had in 1988-89.
For Carey to claim that higher education writ large always increases its revenues from students “in good times and bad” is simply untrue for Florida’s university system. I suspect that would be even more evident for community colleges.
I suspect I know where Carey’s statement is true (but would love confirmation or disconfirmation): for flagship universities and for some 4-year systems in the Northeast. I suspect it is least true in the community-college world.
Notes
Posted in Education policy, Florida, Higher education |
By Sherman Dorn on February 4, 2012
I am not an every-day-a-post blogger, so the fact that I am headed out this week on a trip visiting colleges with Younger Offspring will not otherwise be noticed, except that I will be taking notes on the Art of Visiting, which some readers may remember from a few years hence with Older Offspring (who is now a college sophomore).
Posted in Higher education, Personal |
By Sherman Dorn on February 3, 2012
Charles Murray “has said all of these things about black people before” — Joan Walsh, review of Coming Apart in Slate.
When you’re well past your prime of peddling racist venom to elites who want to feel better about themselves, you have to reinvent things for the new century. Charles Murray has long argued the intellectual inferiority of African Americans, but arguments such as those in The Bell Curve depend on a readership with sufficient unearned wealth, well-funded leisure that makes the case for “you’re just smarter than the little people” attractive. In an age when many very wealthy people work long hours–and whatever else you think about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and many others, “layabout” isn’t a descriptor–that argument doesn’t hold water, because many wealthy people think the reason why they’re wealthy is because they busted their butts all those years, in addition to any native talent. So the explicit arguments about intelligence may appeal to the heirs of Sam Walton, but the real audience for such dreck is very thankfully a rapidly-shrinking pool of monied troglodytes.
In the new year, here comes Murray with a brand-new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, and if you want a taste of it, you can read his January 21 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. There’s a growing cultural divide between professional and working-class whites, Murray argues, and he’s worried. I would be, if I were him–oh, not the inequalities in the United States (which he attributes to cultural differences a la David Brooks) but his own work ethic. Okay, so he figured out he has to eliminate the argument that he’s a racist, so he’s now picking on poor white people instead of minorities. But he didn’t go much further. I mean, if I were a racist wanting to make this type of argument, I’d scour the world for social-science arguments about class differences and work ethic, to paper over the recycling of old ideas you’ve used many times before with both old and new ideas people haven’t picked apart when you use them (because you haven’t yet). So Murray refers to David Brooks a few times–good enough, mate. But I did a quick check using the Google Books internal search (that’s the link above to the book: GB, so you can replicate my search), and there is no reference to recent social-science research that a skilled polemicist might turn to one’s advantage. Look, all you haters, the “marshmallow test” meme has spread far and wide, so you might as well misuse Roy Baumeister’s research on willpower. And while you’re at it, scoop up everything Annette Lareau says about concerted cultivation, because you can easily turn that into a “the parents’ fault” argument you can dress up with carefully-selected and partially fabricated anecdotes.
But Charles Murray didn’t do that. He didn’t even look to his bookshelf for the old standby from Weber about the Protestant work ethic. And that’s what worries me: what is the world coming to when Charles Murray won’t use what’s in front of his nose for a new book? The racist for the chattering class has become even lazier in his old age, and one must then worry about the fate of the world.
Posted in Out of Left Field Friday |
By Sherman Dorn on February 2, 2012
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.
“… And homo economicus,
and sanctions that might sting
the many college presidents
who’d rather dance and sing
for supper from the wealthied class.
Grab not the brassy ring!
At the risk of bloggy immolation, I’m going to jump into the boiling water of ongoing debates over President Obama’s few words on higher education in the 2012 State of the Union Address, wherein he said nothing of Pell Grant awards and yet talked about constructing new policies to make it easier to afford college, especially ones attempting to give institutions incentives to slow down tuition hikes. While I define neoliberalism here in fairly bold strokes, focusing on market rhetoric, public disinvestment, and inconsistencies between rhetoric and reality, this is a tentative judgment for someone who is not an intellectual historian. I am well aware that many terms of political economy are fuzzy or malleable, and my understanding of neoliberalism as a post-WW2 construct is tentative. Yet the term has some core uses in understanding how people talk about and use talk about markets.
Continue reading “An historian’s messy attempt to understand neoliberalism”
Notes
Posted in Accountability Frankenstein, Education policy, Higher education, History, Politics |
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