A common refrain among observers of American higher education is that it changes at a glacial pace—if even that fast. The structure of our colleges and universities serves largely to protect faculty and administrators who are comfortable doing things pretty much the same way they were done a century ago. Many argue that our colleges desperately need to make changes but cannot.
One of those observers is Brian Rosenberg, former president of Macalester College in Minnesota. He has written an engaging, informative, and sometimes frustrating book entitled Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education.
Higher-ed insiders have long noted that the industry is stuck with old if not ancient practices.In the book, Rosenberg calls upon his years of experience as a professor and administrator to present a bleak picture for much of higher education (specifically schools other than those with gigantic endowments) because of institutional features including shared governance, tenure, and the fixation on scholarship and reputation.
He writes, “Yet this industry that ostensibly fosters growth and transformation in its students just cannot seem to change or transform itself in ways beyond the incremental.”
There isn’t anything new in Rosenberg’s analysis of arteriosclerosis in higher education. Higher-ed insiders have long noted that it is stuck with old if not ancient practices, but Rosenberg makes his case in an appealing and often humorous way. Isn’t this, however, a case of crying “wolf”? After all, our higher-ed system has managed to survive despite its resistance to change.
Rosenberg argues that although American higher education has coasted along fairly well in the past, conditions are changing dramatically. The “fat years” it has enjoyed are about to turn into “lean” ones, mainly because significantly fewer students will be graduating from high schools in the future, more of those who do will choose a path for themselves other than the traditional college degree, and the political landscape is apt to be less favorable than it has been in the past.
The book is packed with personal experiences showing how the structure of higher education opposes change—or even discussing it. Here’s an example. When Rosenberg politely advanced the idea that Macalester students might be better off if the college put less emphasis on faculty research and more on teaching, the reception was hostile, with such comments from professors as “we won’t let you turn Macalester into a kindergarten.” Rosenberg wasn’t suggesting an end to faculty research, just a marginal move toward more time spent in the classroom, but the faculty treated his idea as an attack on the fundamental values of the college. After that, Rosenberg gave up fighting the immovable object of the faculty.
When he sticks to analyzing the structural impediments to needed change in higher education, Rosenberg is on firm ground. Unfortunately, he occasionally wastes pages by going off on ideological tangents that aren’t germane to the book’s message. In his first chapter, to give just one instance, he delves into the debate over the rising cost of college and picks a fight with those who have argued that increases in college tuition were mainly caused by the availability of federal financial aid beginning in 1965.
Rosenberg dislikes the “Bennett Hypothesis”—the argument by Reagan’s education secretary William Bennett in 1987 that tuition increases were due to “greedy” college officials. He claims that research on this matter demonstrates that Bennett was wrong and only a few “right-wing” critics think otherwise. He points to a 2018 report by the American Council on Education that supposedly slays the Bennett dragon.
Most faculty don’t have lucrative alternatives to their college careers.In a footnote, Rosenberg acknowledges other scholarly work that buttresses Bennett’s argument, such as Andrew Gillen’s study for the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, but he doesn’t bother to explain why he thinks the ACE paper is right and others wrong. Gillen makes a strong case that Bennett was fundamentally right in arguing that colleges began raising tuition because of all the additional money available for college thanks to Uncle Sam. I don’t think Rosenberg did his homework on this.
At the same time, Rosenberg latches on to the argument made by economist William Baumol that rising tuition is explained by the “cost disease” of having to pay faculty more so they won’t leave for more lucrative positions. Higher-education leaders like this exculpatory claim; it seems to let them off the hook for tuition increases that couldn’t be avoided.
While Baumol’s point is rooted in sound economics (you have to pay your workers enough to keep them from pursuing their best alternative), it does little to explain the skyrocketing cost of college from the late ’60s on. For one thing, most faculty didn’t and don’t have really lucrative alternatives to their college careers. The tech boom might have made it hard to keep some STEM faculty without raises but not English or sociology profs. Furthermore, colleges increased their spending enormously during that time, adding many new programs, administrators, and buildings. They weren’t just struggling to retain their faculty. Rosenberg’s effort at defending colleges from the charge that they took advantage of their favorable circumstances is not persuasive.
Let’s return to his obstacles to change in higher education. Another of them is the tradition of shared governance. That sounds nice, but it doesn’t mean that all the people involved in a college get a say. Rather, Rosenberg notes, governance is shared among three groups: the board, the president, and the full-time faculty. If any chooses to go its own way instead of working cooperatively, “the system breaks down or, more often, freezes up.”
Because the faculty so often put their short-term interests ahead of long-run changes advocated by the president or board, they have and usually use veto power. The president might, e.g., suggest that some majors are a drain on the budget and should be dropped, but the faculty are apt to close ranks to protect the status quo. Shared governance facilitates obstructionism.
Tenure is another big obstacle to change. It has long been defended as essential for protecting academic freedom, but Rosenberg argues that there are other ways of doing that, and schools should explore them because tenure locks in high-cost, low-productivity faculty members. True, but can colleges escape the trap of tenure? Rosenberg isn’t very optimistic about that.
I agree with Rosenberg when he says that American colleges must “move toward more emphasis on students as the highest priority of the college and as the drivers of their own learning.” The problem with getting there are the various obstacles he has identified. What if colleges can’t overcome them and therefore can’t adapt to the changing higher-ed marketplace?
It’s likely that many colleges and universities will fail, and new ones will emerge that better satisfy students.The economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote about the power of “creative destruction” in the market, and that’s also true for non-profit educational institutions. Owing to their resistance to change, it’s likely that many colleges and universities will fail, and new ones will emerge that better satisfy students.
My guess is that many of them will be for-profit, using entrepreneurship to discover just what educational consumers want and providing it at the lowest cost. While Rosenberg looks down at for-profit schools (and some of them were bad, but that was due to the lousy incentives created by federal student aid), the for-profit structure is what efficiently gives consumers what they want, just as much in education as in food, clothing, and other industries.
Rosenberg hopes that most of our traditional colleges will somehow muddle through. That’s doubtful. Their non-profit management and change-resistant features didn’t do much damage in an environment of growth and heavy subsidization, but they’re going to drag many under now that the market and the subsidization are shrinking. Students and taxpayers will benefit while entrenched higher-education interests will finally lose. So there’s a silver lining to all those obstacles to change.
George Leef is director of external relations at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.