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On the brink: Challenges for Higher
Education and Manchester College
Picture this:
Graduate student Jo Young Switzer sitting at the breakfast table,
munching on toast while reviewing for a very difficult examination
for Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, who taught the infamously hard classical
rhetoric seminar. I had studied for several weeks, including
sessions with other students, reading and re-reading the original
texts. Across the table is our then 3-year-old daughter, Sarah,
perplexed that I was so intent on reviewing rather than talking with
her. “Why are you reading those papers?” she asked. “Because I have
a really hard test this morning with Dr. Campbell. I need to study
very hard if I am going to know the answers to her questions.” Sarah
looked perplexed. With the simplicity of a child, she tried to
reassure me: “Mommy, just look at the pictures, and if it’s a duck,
say it’s a duck.”
Sarah’s view of
an exam for a 980-level graduate seminar was shaped by her
experience with books where we would point to the animal, and if it
was a duck, she would say “it’s a duck.” She had a clear
understanding of what teachers ask – or at least she thought she
did.
We need to make
sure that we don’t think the challenges facing higher education are
just a duck. It’s not that simple. Our challenges are much more
complex than ever before in human history, and if we don’t
understand that, we will do as well on the exam as Sarah would have
on the questions in classical rhetoric.
It is tempting to
look at current higher education with the blinders of our own
experiences. We succeeded in traditional learning environments. We
are the A students – well, with a couple of exceptions. We submitted
our papers on time and actually went to bed before daybreak. We
didn’t expect to have instant access to computers, phones, salad
bars, and fitness centers. If we drank alcohol, it didn’t taste like
sweet lemonade and tropical punch. If we were sexually active, the
threat of pregnancy was very real. If we were learning disabled, we
didn’t attend college. If we studied abroad, we didn’t see or talk
with our parents for months. If we flunked an exam, our mothers
didn’t call the professor to complain. If our roommates broke our
stereos, we didn’t hire lawyers to sue them. Our own successful
careers demonstrate the “value added” of a good undergraduate
education – we know it is real. We are true believers.
But our
undergraduate experiences are very different from today’s
experiences, and we have to wake up to that reality. If we assume
that we can offer students the same classes, curricula, teaching,
activities, housing, and conduct system that brought us success in
the 1940s, 60s, and 90s, we are saying “it’s a duck.” The challenges
are new, and we’ve been slow to notice.
The political and
social environment for higher education is as challenging as it has
ever been in this nation’s history. Critics attack tuition increases
and the tenure system. Governmental agencies create unfunded
mandates and then threaten access to financial aid for students if
colleges don’t comply. For-profit higher education makes learning
available to people at convenient times and in the comfort of their
own homes. Consumers are looking for easy As and bargain prices.
Business leaders and government officials believe that accrediting
agencies do not hold colleges and universities to high standards.
Students come to us with more identifiable “issues” than ever before
– ADD, alcoholism, learning disabilities, anorexia, dependence on
prescription drugs, steroid use. Many don’t know how to share a
room. They also come with cars and cell phones. It is a new world.
Postsecondary
education is a complex, decentralized enterprise, made up of nearly
4,200 institutions, enrolling more than 17 million students. These
institutions are divided fairly evenly among the publics (32%),
nonprofit privates like Manchester (31%), and for-profit
(proprietary) sector (37%). In contrast to the roughly even split in
institutions by type, 10 years ago, a substantial majority of
all students were enrolled in public institutions (76%), a
fifth (21%) attended private nonprofit institutions, and a small
percentage (4%) were enrolled in proprietary institutions. These
percentages are different today – with much greater numbers of
students enrolling in online proprietary schools. Some of you may
have seen the cartoon in a recent issue of The Chronicle
of Higher Education that showed an undergraduate in bed with her
laptop computer, telling her roommate, “If I take my courses all
on-line, I never have to get out of bed.”
In Indiana, the
increased state funding for IVY-Tech Community College has affected
other colleges and universities in the state, also. For example,
summer enrollments at IVY-Tech’s Bloomington campus increased 25%
from 2005 to 2006, and IU enrollments dropped.1
Tuition at IVY-Tech Community College is $88 per credit hour,
compared to $201 at IPFW and $670 at Manchester. Because credits
transfer, students are becoming bargain hunters.
Several specific
changes have happened in the past decade and each one affects us at
Manchester. The first is a decrease in federal financial aid in form
of grants for students. Students in the 1980s and 1990s received
significantly more grants for their college bills than today. Today,
only those whose families’ incomes are extremely low receive grants.
Most can apply for loans.
Second, the
federal government has increased student loan interest rates.
·
Changes in national legislation – 2% increase in student loan
interest rates, starting July 1 this summer. Basic Stafford loans
rose to 5.3% on old loans and to 6.8% on new loans
·
According to the Campaign for America’s Future, this means that
Indiana students will pay an average of about $2,500 more in
repayments for their college loans
Third, higher
education is being hammered by critics to be more accountable about
student learning, about tuition increases, about faculty time.
The
draft of the report from the Spellings Commission to the Secretary
of Education identified a series of issues, many of which are
legitimate and important:
·
increasing access to higher education, particularly for low-income
and minority students;
·
recognizing the important role that higher education contributes
both to the common good and to the individual
·
An
increase in federal investment in areas critical to our nation’s
global competitiveness (STEAM – science, technology, engineering,
math)
·
importance of more need-based financial aid (The final draft
suggested that the federal government increase Pell Grant spending
so the average grant covers 70 percent of the average in-state
tuition at a four-year public college.)
·
need
for appropriate accountability to the many stakeholders in
higher education
It
includes, however, some recommendations that are more problematic.
·
development of a federal student database to track student
enrollments, etc. (a source of serious concern about the security of
personal information)
·
more
focus on innovation and increased productivity, through better use
of technology, student transfers (a subtext of which may be a
mandate for all schools to accept credit from all other schools, a
decision that has rested with the colleges to this point),
(ironically) less government regulation, and more thoughtful
accreditation practices
·
dismantling of the entire current array of federal student aid
programs (which presents a danger because of the tremendous number
of complex issues – we don’t want another transition like the one
that occurred when Plan B of Social Security was instituted)
·
possibility that the Department of Education will mandate a single
test to measure student progress and success across all institutions
of higher learning (regardless of campus mission or student body
characteristics)
The
general tone of the report (the final draft is significantly less
harsh than the first one) is still highly critical of a higher
education system that is presently the strongest in the world. This
sharp criticism may have the inadvertent consequence of undermining
a system that is not fundamentally broken.
A fourth
challenge is that our institutional expenses are often for things
that we cannot control. In last year’s budget, anticipating costs
for natural gas that we use to heat our buildings, we increased that
budget line by 17%. Not only did we spend all of that increase, but
the gas costs were actually $300,000 higher than we predicted ...
all this in a relatively warm winter. Our third-highest
institutional expenditure after employee pay and student financial
aid is health insurance. As you know, health insurance costs are
increasing at a rate far exceeding the rate of inflation.
Many things that
we take for granted are more costly than we realize. We need a good
computer system here, and it requires significant personnel to keep
it running, on top of hardware, software, and infrastructure
expenditures. In the 1970s, we had no ITS office at all ... no
costs for personnel, no costs for servers, no costs for computers.
Telephones are
another matter. Our phone system is 15 years old, and it is not
aging well. It is so old that the company that produced it no longer
services it. To replace it will cost $1.8 million for installation
and five years of maintenance. Can we do without phones? Obviously
not.
Another challenge
is the shifting priorities in U.S. families about how they spend
their money. MSN Money reports that the average household has
more than $8,000 in credit card debt, up from about $3,000 in 1990.
A debt of this size (with no new expenditures added!) at a rate of
18% interest will take more than 25 years to repay and cost more
than $24,000. The Federal Reserve study showed that 43% of U.S.
families spent more than they earned. On average, Americans spend
$1.22 for each dollar they earn. Personal bankruptcies have doubled
in the past decade.
For our students
to pay their bills in a timely way requires that these payments
compete with other things. This past July 26, only 167 of our 1,100
students had paid their fall bills completely. We had to be firm
with families to pay or to make arrangements to pay for fall tuition
this year because many were using the college as an interest-free
loan; and it actually made it difficult for us to meet payroll.
In addition to
these challenges to our credibility and to our resources, we face
increased global competition. The European Union has triggered
unprecedented changes in higher education with the Bologna Accord
stressing cooperation among educational institutions in different
countries. Some of you are quite knowledgeable about the role of
professors and universities in the European nations. To realize that
these same faculty members who occupy one of the most highly
respected positions in their countries have begun to cooperate with
colleagues from eastern Europe and the Balkan states is nothing less
than extraordinary. Trust me, if they can begin to do things
differently, we can, too.
How does this all
translate to Manchester College? We have special challenges this
year, the most powerful one being our small first-year class. You
will get more details about this later during workshop, I suspect,
but our first-year class totals 300 or so and we had planned for at
least 330. The fact that we had a small class two years ago
(students who are now juniors) means that we have two small classes
in the pipeline.
We are an
enrollment-driven institution. The money that comes to us from
students for tuition, room, board, fees, auxiliary items accounts
for 76% of our income. This means that a 10% drop in a class is a
significant hit. We simply must improve retention and recruitment.
The more we learn about enrollment, the clearer it is that
“enrollment is everyone’s responsibility.”
Second, because
we have many students who are the first in their families to attend
college, we must provide them and their families more services. They
need assistance as they learn about the financial aid cycle and
about the importance of completing a FAFSA. Our commitment to help
students learn means that we will go the extra mile to provide
support for these special needs. It takes time and it takes money.
Third, we have
discovered a profound difference between what faculty believe are
the most important qualities to choose in a college and what the
prospective students’ priorities. Faculty believe the most
important qualities are academics, well-educated professors, and the
liberal arts. Prospective students’ top priorities are learning,
professors who are available, and fun. We need to find a way to
attract students and achieve our mission. If “liberal arts”
is not a concept that they relate to, we need to attract them with a
different message. Then, as we have been doing for decades, once we
get them here, we educate them well – including the liberal arts.
It has always
seemed ironic that we expect our students to be open to new ideas
and experiences, but that we ourselves are more often resistant
(than open) to newness. You would be surprised, I think, at the
negative reactions we receive to changes like moving the welcoming
dinner to a reception because of the Union renovation. We nudge our
students to leave the country, but sometimes we’re uncomfortable
sitting in a new seat at faculty meetings.
My father’s
advice about life and work continues to guide me to this day. Dad
talked often about the importance of “margin.” He would give the
example of the dangerous work of pilots who flew crop dusters. If
the plane caught onto a telephone wire, the result was an inevitable
crash because the pilot had no margin for correction. If our family
checking account is at zero right before payday, we have no margin
to pay for a broken water heater or, as always seemed to happen to
me in my early 20s life of poverty, a water pump for a car. Less
margin means more stress and fewer options.
Our enrollments
this fall have taken away significant margin for us. Unless we can
rebuild enrollments and find ways to reduce costs, we won’t have the
margin we need for spikes in utility costs or for sabbaticals. We
won’t have enough margin to host the very recruiting events that we
need to get out of the hole.
We can hold onto
our mission for a while without margin, but not for long. No margin,
no mission.
What do we do on
the brink of the year with these kinds of challenges?
We remember our
mission, and we live it.
We realize we are
in this together, and that actions by every one of us can make an
impact on our future – negatively and positively.
We make new
alliances to respond to opportunities. Groups like the retention
committee, the futures group, the team that is working on a
biotechnology major, and others are working across units to help
recruit students and serve them once they are here.
We accept the
fact that we must market ourselves more effectively. Marketing, long
considered the “m” word by faculty members in the U.S. is now an
essential part of our drive to stay healthy. The President of the
Council for Advancement and Support of Education, John Lippincott,
argues that “to apply marketing to higher education is to be willing
to ask questions about the very product itself and whether indeed it
is responsive to the people that the [college] is dedicated to
serving.2 His
argument is that we need to realize that the value of our colleges
is not self-evident to prospective students the way it is to us.
We have a sound
“product” – an undergraduate education that has “value added” in
many, many dimensions – opportunities to work side-by-side with
faculty and staff, a residential experience that teaches about
responsible citizenship, a fine intercollegiate athletic program,
opportunities in the fine and performing arts, many academic
enrichment opportunities like study abroad, internships, January
session, and more.
But too few
people know about this added value. We need to improve how we market
it and sustain how we deliver it.
Finally, please
remember that we teach by our words and by our actions. Students
learn as much from us in how we engage them in learning as in the
content of our courses. It’s healthy that they see your children on
campus because they learn about adulthood and parental
responsibilities. It’s instructive for them to see you in line for
lunch at the Union. It’s motivating for them to see you in the
audience for their performances. Your involvement in your churches
and in your volunteer work instructs them. But lack of preparedness
for a class teaches them something, too. Or our gossip, which they
overhear. Or our complaints about their high school teachers. We
teach them a lot more than history and chemistry…
When I was on the
faculty here from 1982 through 1987, then-President A. Blair Helman
gave this opening speech. Without letting him know, I always
referred to it as his “gloom-and-doom” speech in which he told us
about the low enrollments and the budget problems. Along with my
colleagues, I would arrive at workshop energized for a new year. My
syllabi were ready, and I wasn’t behind on my grading yet. Life was
good. Then the “gloom-and-doom” speech would make me worried and
discouraged.
I hope that my
reflections have not had that effect on you. There is no question in
my mind that we can recruit a strong class next year. There is no
question that we can improve retention as long as everyone helps.
There is no question that we have an excellent faculty and staff who
are deeply committed to student learning. There is no question that
the campus is equipped and cared for in ways that support student
learning.
When I look out
on this small group of people who have ability and conviction, I
think of Margaret Mead’s words: “Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is
the only thing that ever has.”
Let’s change the
world, one student at a time.
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Indiana Education Insight,
July 10, 2006
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