This very well-written article just appeared in the Chronicle, and it sparked lots of points of discussion, most of which I already spend far too much time obsessing about.
The author of this piece points out some pretty obvious and disturbing trends in higher education – the explosion of branch campuses, adoration of D1 football, multiplication of degree programs, ill-considered founding of medical schools, and so on. The author also correctly points out that in many (or most) places where growth is the coin of the realm, teaching has suffered mightily – presumably to the detriment of student learning (they are different things, after all).
In every case of university expansion, the outcome being optimized for is revenue. Whether it is the growth of existing revenue streams or creation of new ones, higher education – like any self-respecting corporation – must drive revenue through enhancement and diversification of the product portfolio.
Why? Why is revenue growth so vital? Aren’t these non-profits we are talking about?
Well, being a non-profit doesn’t mean you can lose money and still survive. It also doesn’t mean you can operate without the safety net of an endowment. Universities need to first balance the books, and then save for the inevitable rainy day. To the author’s point, large R1 universities have, for the most part, figured out strategies for doing that. It is just that those strategies seem to have caused universities to drift dramatically from their core values.
The bogeyman identified in this article is research, where the growth of research at the university is viewed as the root cause of its maladies. Research, the author claims, detracts from the teaching mission of the university, with the fault being placed on how we hire and incentivize faculty, how we design academic programs, and the seriousness with which we take teaching itself. These are all lovely, but already very well discussed concepts that continue to get back burnered in most places.
Research, the author claims, does little in and of itself to enhance student learning. On this point I could not disagree more. When well done, the intersection of teaching and research can be absolutely transformative for student learning and future success. The problem is that many places don’t manage this intersection all that well.
However, I DO think that research is the bogeyman. Despite the intrinsic value I see in university-led research from the standpoints of education, innovation, invention, and intellectual expansion, it IS the reason ALL universities that do research will continue to scramble for new and growing revenue streams.
Because just like most D1 football teams, research loses money. Building a university research enterprise requires expensive equipment, millions of square feet of specialized facilities, dedicated staff, and a cohort of faculty who teach far fewer credit hours and therefore far fewer students than instructional faculty.
Extramural research dollars and recovered indirect costs don’t bridge the gap…they widen it. Direct costs promote the further expansion of facilities, faculty, grad program enrollment, and research ambition. Indirect costs don’t fully reimburse the university for expenses…those dollars also typically support further growth of the research enterprise. Years ago, universities of all sorts – not just the large state schools – realized that if you are going to do research, you need to figure out new revenue streams that are more scalable to offset the research losses. That puzzle has not really been solved at most places, so revenue through growth has become the de facto (and quite lazy) modality for balancing the books and getting donors to help bolster the endowment.
The author clearly identifies the new threats to this model: NIL, reduced healthcare subsidies, endowment taxes, the federal government’s assault on research funding, etc. As recently stated by the president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, the future looks bleak for research.
But the fault cannot only lie at the feet of the new financial pressures being placed on the universities – the fault also lies with the universities who have failed to figure out how to responsibly and thoughtfully support research, innovation, and its intersection with student learning. Even small and mid-sized universities (like my own), who push forward into “big” research in pursuit of greater reputation, revenue, differentiation, student quality, and enhanced student experiences, have discovered these harsh fiscal realities. At all levels of higher education significant changes are coming, and the winners who emerge will be those with the most transformative and innovative solutions to the revenue-teaching-research conundrum. Growth cannot be the only solution.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-our-growth-obsessed-universities-spiraled-out-of-control
Soft Matter @ Chapman University 