RALEIGH – Presentations by Richard Vedder and Mike Adams were among the highlights of the annual John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy Conference held Oct. 8 at the Hilton-Raleigh-Durham Hotel at Research Triangle Park.
This year’s conference was built around the theme of “Higher Education in America: Do Students and Taxpayers Get Their Money’s Worth?” A group of 12 speakers, including a panel of students, debated various topics in higher education today including the lack of core curriculum, taboo subjects, and what is actually taught in the classroom.
Executive Director George Leef said he was pleased with the turnout of the conference, which was estimated at more than 100 people, and with the discussion of serious topics during the event.
“We frequently hear that America has a higher education system that is the envy of the world,” Leef said. “That might be true, but even so it doesn’t mean that we are getting the most educational benefit we can for the money we commit to higher education. A lot of careful and objective observers of American higher education find that its results are not commensurate with its costs.”
Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University, was the keynote speaker at the conference was awarded the center’s Caldwell Award for achievement in higher education. He is the author of the recent book Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much.
During his presentation, Vedder spoke on problems that he believes are contributing to the increases in the costs students and taxpayers pay to fund higher education. The problems Vedder listed were increased costs, failing productivity, wide variations in higher education participation among races and genders, increased college dropout rate, students being unchallenged in the classroom. He also discussed how the United States is no longer leading the world in higher education participation and that institutions that promote diversity are becoming less tolerant instead of becoming more tolerant.
Vedder compared the rising costs in higher education to similar increases that have been seen in the health care industry.
“There are two things that families buy that have been rising sharply in price for decades,” said Vedder. “One is health care, and the second is higher education. It is no accident, I think, that both of them are services produced in markets with significant governmental financial involvement and regulation.”
Such as with the health care industry, when a third party pays for the majority of the costs consumers become sensitive to the costs and any increases, Vedder said. In the case of higher education, the third party would be a taxpayer.
“Universities have raised their prices because they can get away with it,” Vedder said.
Vedder suggested that tuition and fees would continue to increase because it is hard to get an accurate account for the actual bottom line at not-for-profit higher education institutions. He also said it was hard to get a measurement of productivity for professors.
“Wal-Mart and the University of Phoenix have clearly defined bottom lines,” Vedder said. “By contrast, not-for-profit universities don’t have a clearly defined bottom line.”
Adams spoke on a panel focusing on taboo subjects on college campuses, that also included Duke University Professor John Staddon and Pope Center Senior Fellow Alston Chase. Adams spoke and discussed examples of how liberalism within higher education is destroying institutions and how some professors are misleading students with inaccurate teaching.
Adams said you combat the problem by bringing more to the table.
“You tackle taboo subjects by adding to the market place of ideas,” Adams said, “by placing bad ideas in appropriate context.”
Adams also discussed the problems with speech codes on campus.
“Speech codes are enforced to ban selective ideas on campus,” Adams said.
Staddon discussed different aspects in higher education and also addressed the controversy surrounding comments made by Harvard President Lawrence Summers regarding why women do not take up fields in math and science because they don’t want to work the schedule and intellectual differences between men and women. Staddon said the statements were accurate.
“Nothing should have been controversial about this,” he said.
Nan Miller spoke in the first panel on how colleges are failing at teaching students how to properly write. In that same panel, David Mulroy discussed the need to get some of literature’s greatest books back into the curriculum in college.
The final session was a unique panel that focused on how trends in higher education affect students from the viewpoint of students. The panel included UNC-Chapel Hill students Kat Rodgers and Trey Winslett as well as recent UNC-Charlotte alumni Elizabeth Beck. Each spoke about their personal stories of college life and what they experienced on campus.
Winslett said students purposely take easier classes in order to enhance their own grade point averages to get into graduate school, law school, or to earn some position when they graduate from college.
“Any student acting in their own self-interest are going to take the easiest courses,” he said.
Rodgers, a senior education major, said she was a voice of confirmation to what was said during the conference about the state of higher education.
“Despite my apple pie dream of teaching children and being around children, I went to school knowing that I would face opposition to my political views,” Rodgers said.
Audio of Conference Sessions
Introduction (36:46)
Introductory remarks by Executive Director George Leef, and thoughts on “How Colleges and Universities Ignore Their Undergraduates” by Dr. Murray Sperber.
Streaming Audio | Download (6.3MB MP3)
Session 1 (1:04:46)
An expose on “Readin’ and Writin'” by Professor David Mulroy and Professor Nan Miller.
Streaming Audio | Download (11.2MB MP3)
Session 2
A discussion about “Zip It-Taboo Subjects on Campus” given by Professor John Staddon, Professor Alston Chase, and Professor Mike Adams.
Luncheon (43:40)
Professor Richard K. Vedder’s Keynote Address on “The High Cost and Low Productivity of Our Colleges and Universities.”
Streaming Audio | Download (11.2MB MP3)
Session 3 (1:03:49)
“What About the Curriculum?” given by Melana Zyla Vickers and Gary C. Brasor.
Streaming Audio | Download (7.5MB MP3)
Session 4 (55:27)
Trey Winslett, Kat Rodgers, and Elizabeth Beck offer “A Student’s-Eye View.”
Streaming Audio | Download (9.5MB MP3)