When citizens seek to solve social problems, they are much more effective if they work together rather than alone. This basic, sensible idea is also known as "collective efficacy." And it is what must be inculcated in Wisconsin residents if we are to preserve our world-class public higher education systems.
Our willingness to act, when needed, for one another's benefit, generates long-lasting effects. Unfortunately, there is a strong impulse to turn inward when threatened, to focus on self-preservation rather than community preservation.
Solutions for issues like the fiscal challenges facing the University of Wisconsin System will not emerge if we follow leaders with imperious styles who seek to "win" no matter what the cost. Regardless of the specific policy agenda, the process of policy formation is essential since it dictates the terms of the debate.
This may sound exceedingly feel-good, but it is also deeply pragmatic. The savings that will accrue to individual campuses from any "flexibilities" are small (numbers provided to me by Darrell Bazzell are in the $10-20 million range for Madison) but collectively (if granted to all campuses) fairly large. The same is true for proposed efficiencies such as adjustments in faculty/student ratio. If, as a community, UW System examined that key cost driver across departments and divisions throughout all institutions, it could reasonably begin to make assessments about resource distribution. I suspect that some departments at UW-Madison would actually see that ratio decreased as a result, perhaps because of resources saved at another campus-- and vice versa.
The climate at UW Madison has eroded dramatically over the course of several recent policy debates such as the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates, the Graduate School Restructuring, the Huron Engagement, and now the New Badger Partnership. Faculty, staff, and students are fearful of repercussions from both the success and/or the failure of the NBP. Rumors of the imminent departure of our friends and colleagues fly around daily. Motivation and productivity are down.
The way forward lies in refocusing on what has always made Madison -- and System -- great. That is: our commitment to a community that prioritizes fearless sifting and winnowing and shared decision-making to a degree uncommon in other institutions of higher education. That's the community and commitment that put us on the map. We have been through hard financial times before, and inevitably will go through them again. Stick to what we do best, and what we can do best no matter how many dollars we have at the moment, and we will shine.
Aplication for mobile
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
It's All About the Faculty: Update
On April 25 I blogged about the claim made by some NBP proponents that the policy change was needed in order to stem the tide of faculty turnover at UW-Madison. In that post I referred to some data from a 1999 report, which at the time was all I could locate on the web.
I have now had the opportunity to examine more recent data (UW-Madison faculty have access to it at the APA website) and here are some updates:
(1) In the prior post, I claimed that there hadn't been much change over time in turnover rates at Madison. As I said, I was looking at data up til 1999 and it showed a rate of about 5 or 6% (based on number of leavers divided by total number of faculty). The more recent data shows even lower turnover rates since that time-- no doubt due in large part to the efforts of UW Administration and the fact that the 2005-07, 2007-09 and 2009-11 biennial budgets provided High Demand Faculty Retention Funds (HDFRF) to address recruitment and retention issues. In the graph below, the blue and red lines show the number of faculty (blue is headcount and red is FTE) and green and purple show the turnover rate calculated two ways (green by dividing # leavers by headcount, and purple dividing #leavers by FTE). As you can see, there's no evidence that our turnover is climbing.
(2) The percent of our faculty receiving outside offers declined during the 1980s and 1990s (from a high of 7.7% in 1983 to a low of 2.4% in 1999) and then grew again during the 21st century to a high of 8.1% in 2009. However, after a steady decline in the 1990s, our success at retaining faculty who receive offers has increased from 60% in 2001 to 84% in 2008 and 80% in 2009.
(3) Probably due to the state support in this area, the percent of payroll devoted to these retention offers declined from up to 10% in the 1980s to barely 1% in 2009.
It certainly seems that those funds from the state helped stave off an uptick in faculty turnover rates. What isn't clear is that the NBP--and the Public Authority model in particular-- is necessary in order to continue to use funds in this manner. In 2009-2010 we spent less than $1.5 million on this effort.
I have now had the opportunity to examine more recent data (UW-Madison faculty have access to it at the APA website) and here are some updates:
(1) In the prior post, I claimed that there hadn't been much change over time in turnover rates at Madison. As I said, I was looking at data up til 1999 and it showed a rate of about 5 or 6% (based on number of leavers divided by total number of faculty). The more recent data shows even lower turnover rates since that time-- no doubt due in large part to the efforts of UW Administration and the fact that the 2005-07, 2007-09 and 2009-11 biennial budgets provided High Demand Faculty Retention Funds (HDFRF) to address recruitment and retention issues. In the graph below, the blue and red lines show the number of faculty (blue is headcount and red is FTE) and green and purple show the turnover rate calculated two ways (green by dividing # leavers by headcount, and purple dividing #leavers by FTE). As you can see, there's no evidence that our turnover is climbing.
(2) The percent of our faculty receiving outside offers declined during the 1980s and 1990s (from a high of 7.7% in 1983 to a low of 2.4% in 1999) and then grew again during the 21st century to a high of 8.1% in 2009. However, after a steady decline in the 1990s, our success at retaining faculty who receive offers has increased from 60% in 2001 to 84% in 2008 and 80% in 2009.
(3) Probably due to the state support in this area, the percent of payroll devoted to these retention offers declined from up to 10% in the 1980s to barely 1% in 2009.
It certainly seems that those funds from the state helped stave off an uptick in faculty turnover rates. What isn't clear is that the NBP--and the Public Authority model in particular-- is necessary in order to continue to use funds in this manner. In 2009-2010 we spent less than $1.5 million on this effort.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Is Our Students Learning?
Remarkably, one of the topic's of yesterday's blog post (and another I wrote two years ao)-- the limited learning taking place on many college campuses-- is the subject of a New York Times op-ed today. Titled, "Your So-Called Education," the piece argues that while 90% of graduates report being happy with their college experience, data suggests there's little to celebrate. I urge you read it and its companion op-ed "Major Delusions," which describes why college grads are delusional in their optimism about their future.
We don't regularly administer the Collegiate Learning Assessment at UW-Madison, the test that the authors of the first op-ed used to track changes in student learning over undergraduate careers. From talking with our vice provost for teaching and learning, Aaron Brower, I understand there are many good reasons for this. Among them are concerns that the test doesn't measure the learning we intend to transmit (for what it does measure, and how it measures it, see here), as well as concerns about the costs and heroics required to administer it well. In the meantime, Aaron is working on ways to introduce more high-impact learning practices, including freshmen interest groups and learning communities, and together with colleagues has written an assessment of students' self-reports of their learning (the Essential Learning Outcomes Questionnaire). We all have good reason to wish him well. For it's clear from what we do know about undergraduate learning on campus, we have work to do.
The reports contained in our most recent student engagement survey (the NSSE, administered in 2008) indicate the following:
1. Only 60% of seniors report that the quality of instruction in their lower division courses was good or excellent.
This is possibly linked to class size, since only 37% say that those classes are "ok" in size -- but (a) that isn't clear, since the % who says the classes are too large and the % that say they are too small are not reported, and (b) the question doesn't link class size to quality of instruction. As I've noted in prior posts, it's a popular proxy for quality but also one that is promoted by institutions since smaller classes equates with more resources (though high-quality instruction does not apparently equate with smaller classes nor high resources). There are other plausible explanations for the assessment of quality that the survey does not shed light on.
2. A substantial fraction of our students are not being asked to do the kind of challenging academic tasks associated with learning gains.
For example, 31% of seniors (and 40% of freshmen) report that they are not frequently asked to make "judgments about information, arguments, or methods, e.g., examining how others gathered/ interpreted data and assessing the soundness of their conclusions." (Sidebar-- interesting to think about how this has affected the debate over the NBP.) 28% of seniors say they are not frequently asked to synthesize and organize "ideas, information, or experiences into new, more complex interpretations and relationships." On the other hand, 63% of seniors and 76% of freshmen indicate that they are frequently asked to memorize facts and repeat them. And while there are some real positives-- such as the higher-than-average percent of students who feel the university emphasizes the need to spend time on academic work-- fully 45% of seniors surveyed did not agree that "most of the time, I have been challenged to do the very best I can."
3. As students get ready to graduate from Madison, many do not experience a rigorous academic year.
In their senior year, 55% of students did not write a paper or report of 20 pages or more, 75% read fewer than 5 books, 57% didn't make a class presentation, 51% didn't discuss their assignments or grades with their instructor, and 66% didn't discuss career plans with a faculty member or adviser. Nearly one-third admitted often coming to class unprepared. Less than one-third had a culminating experience such as a capstone course or thesis project.
4. The main benefit of being an undergraduate at a research university--getting to work on a professor's research project-- does not happen for the majority of students.
While 45% of freshmen say it is something they plan to do, only 32% of seniors say they've done it.
Yet overall, just as the Times reports, 91% of UW-Madison seniors say their "entire educational experience" was good or excellent.
Well-done. Now, let's do more.
Postscript: Since I've heard directly from readers seeking more resources on the topic of student learning, here are a few to get you started.
A new report just out indicates that college presidents are loathe to measure learning as a metric of college quality! Instead, they prefer to focus on labor market outcomes.
Measuring college learning responsibly: accountability in a new era by Richard J. Shavelson is a great companion to Academically Adrift. Shavelson was among the designers of the CLA and he responds to critics concerned with its value.
The Voluntary System of Accountability, embraced by public universities who hope to provide their own data rather than have a framework imposed on them. Here is Madison's report.
On the topic of students' own reports of their learning gains, Nick Bowman's research is particularly helpful. For example, in 2009 in the American Education Research Journal Bowman reported that that in a longitudinal study of 3,000 first year students, “across several cognitive and noncognitive outcomes, the correlations between self-reported and longitudinal gains are small or virtually zero, and regression analyses using these two forms of assessment yield divergent results.” In 2011, he reported in Educational Researcher that "although some significant differences by institutional type were identified, the findings do not support the use of self-reported gains as a proxy for longitudinal growth at any institution."
As for the NSSE data, such as what I cited above from UW-Madison, Ernie Pascarella and his colleagues report that these are decent at predicting educational outcomes. Specifically, “institution-level NSSE benchmark scores had a significant overall positive association with the seven liberal arts outcomes at the end of the first year of college, independent of differences across the 19 institutions in the average score of their entering student population on each outcome. The mean value of all the partial correlations…was .34, which had a very low probability (.001) of being due to chance."
Finally, you should also check out results from the Wabash study.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Making Opportunity Affordable
In recent days, an NBP proponent accused me of hoping to "McDonaldize" UW-Madison. He made this accusation because I dared suggest that the university is not operating as productively as it could be. Our per-pupil spending is lower than at many of our peers, and especially lower than privates, he says. Sure, that's true. But frankly, it's about as relevant as my son proclaiming that he should have two desserts after dinner just because other kids at preschool regularly have three or four! Mistakes made by other institutions don't justify our own. We can, and must, do better.
Lately our attention has been drawn to one particular trend in higher education-- the disinvestment of the state from higher education. Let me add to that three others: (1) time-to-degree is up at the majority of public colleges and universities, (2) socioeconomic gaps in college completion rates are stagnant, and (3) most students are not registering any learning gains over four years of college attendance.
So while students and their families are being asked to pay more for college, it seems like they aren't actually getting anything additional for their money. That means productivity is declining, pure and simple. The fact that a college degree still brings a large wage premium is nice, but that appears at least partly (or even largely) attributable to employers' willingness to accept a diploma as a proxy for learning. Too bad for many universities: researchers are blowing apart that assumption as we speak.
But fear not: improving productivity does not mean reducing quality. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignoring the latest learning science studies. And lest you think that I'm pushing an agenda that aims to demolish the traditional institutions in favor of for-profit models, well, ask around-- nothing could be further from the truth. I focus on enhancing productivity because making gains in this domain is truly the only politically viable way of making opportunity affordable.
High-caliber institutions like Carnegie Mellon are pursuing new ways to educate and support undergraduates that are more productive-- and thus more cost-effective-- than older models. Some colleges and universities feel threatened by this, and loudly proclaim their current practices "work" and are "cheaper." But the culture of evidence in higher education administration is notoriously weak, and thus program impacts are rarely if ever measured in meaningful ways. Absent an approach that considers impacts relative to costs, there's no basis for protecting "business-as-usual."
With that in mind, I'm going to begin to quickly highlight on this blog some key initiatives that appear to be cost-effective, highly impactful ways of educating the kinds of students like those UW-Madison serves. If the basic idea of each intrigues you, I'm giving you links to read more. My intent is to get a serious conversation started-- a conversation about refocusing on our core mission: providing a high-quality affordable education to the Wisconsin residents we serve. (We'd join many other states in this important conversation, for example read about Oregon.)
Initiative #1: Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon.
Students need effective instruction that incorporates regular assessment and supplements with tutoring as needed. Technology can assist professors in accomplishing this.
"OLI courses are developed by teams composed of faculty, learning scientists, human-computer interaction experts, and software engineers in order to make the best use of multidisciplinary knowledge for designing effective learning environments. The OLI design team articulates an initial set of student-centered, measurable learning objectives and designs the instructional environment to support students in achieving them.The instructional activities in OLI courses contain small amounts of explanatory text and many activities that capitalize on the computer's capability to display digital images and simulations and to promote interaction. Many of the courses also include virtual lab environments that encourage flexible and authentic exploration. Perhaps the most salient feature of OLI course design is the embedding of quasi-intelligent tutors—or “mini-tutors”—within the learning activities throughout the course... An intelligent tutor is a computerized learning environment whose design is based on cognitive principles and whose interaction with students is like those of a human tutor—making comments when students err, answering questions about what to do next, and maintaining a low profile when they are performing well. This approach differs from traditional computer-aided instruction, which gives didactic feedback to students on their final answers; the OLI tutors provide context-specific assistance throughout the problem-solving process."
Read more about OLI in a White House commissioned paper here.
Initiative #2: Inside Track
Persisting in college does not equate with making timely progress towards a degree, or even enjoying the academic experience at all. Mentoring can help. The Inside Track student coaching model assigns an executive coach to needy students, at a cost of just $500 for 6 months. It is an increasingly popular program at public universities, including Florida State. An extensive randomized evaluation indicates a 10-15 percentage point increase in retention rates.
POSTSCRIPT:
It's worth noting that UW-Madison has begun participating in the Delaware Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity. This allows us to benchmark instructional spending at the department level against those at other participating institutions (e.g. Ohio State University, SUNY - University at Buffalo, University of Arizona, University of Colorado - Boulder, University of Kansas, University of Missouri - Columbia , University of Nebraska - Lincoln, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, University of Oregon ,University of Texas at Austin). (These aren't the best comparisons but they are all that's given, and at least one of my readers is demanding comparisons no matter what.) The most recent year of our data indicates that our direct instructional expenditures per student credit hour are on the high side--not appalling high, but higher than average-- and importantly that there is widespread variation by discipline and department. Of possible concern are departments where the number of student credit hours per instructional faculty (e.g. the volume) is much lower than that of the comparison group of institutions, while the expenditures per credit hour (the costs) are much higher. Those need to be examined, as I'm sure they are being, for whether the quality produced justifies those numbers. At the same time, the data indicate some very productive areas-- such as law-- where faculty are clearly doing more work at a lower cost. This is a good step for Madison, and hopefully leads to more such conversations--with significant faculty involvement.
Lately our attention has been drawn to one particular trend in higher education-- the disinvestment of the state from higher education. Let me add to that three others: (1) time-to-degree is up at the majority of public colleges and universities, (2) socioeconomic gaps in college completion rates are stagnant, and (3) most students are not registering any learning gains over four years of college attendance.
So while students and their families are being asked to pay more for college, it seems like they aren't actually getting anything additional for their money. That means productivity is declining, pure and simple. The fact that a college degree still brings a large wage premium is nice, but that appears at least partly (or even largely) attributable to employers' willingness to accept a diploma as a proxy for learning. Too bad for many universities: researchers are blowing apart that assumption as we speak.
But fear not: improving productivity does not mean reducing quality. Anyone who claims otherwise is ignoring the latest learning science studies. And lest you think that I'm pushing an agenda that aims to demolish the traditional institutions in favor of for-profit models, well, ask around-- nothing could be further from the truth. I focus on enhancing productivity because making gains in this domain is truly the only politically viable way of making opportunity affordable.
High-caliber institutions like Carnegie Mellon are pursuing new ways to educate and support undergraduates that are more productive-- and thus more cost-effective-- than older models. Some colleges and universities feel threatened by this, and loudly proclaim their current practices "work" and are "cheaper." But the culture of evidence in higher education administration is notoriously weak, and thus program impacts are rarely if ever measured in meaningful ways. Absent an approach that considers impacts relative to costs, there's no basis for protecting "business-as-usual."
With that in mind, I'm going to begin to quickly highlight on this blog some key initiatives that appear to be cost-effective, highly impactful ways of educating the kinds of students like those UW-Madison serves. If the basic idea of each intrigues you, I'm giving you links to read more. My intent is to get a serious conversation started-- a conversation about refocusing on our core mission: providing a high-quality affordable education to the Wisconsin residents we serve. (We'd join many other states in this important conversation, for example read about Oregon.)
Initiative #1: Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon.
Students need effective instruction that incorporates regular assessment and supplements with tutoring as needed. Technology can assist professors in accomplishing this.
"OLI courses are developed by teams composed of faculty, learning scientists, human-computer interaction experts, and software engineers in order to make the best use of multidisciplinary knowledge for designing effective learning environments. The OLI design team articulates an initial set of student-centered, measurable learning objectives and designs the instructional environment to support students in achieving them.The instructional activities in OLI courses contain small amounts of explanatory text and many activities that capitalize on the computer's capability to display digital images and simulations and to promote interaction. Many of the courses also include virtual lab environments that encourage flexible and authentic exploration. Perhaps the most salient feature of OLI course design is the embedding of quasi-intelligent tutors—or “mini-tutors”—within the learning activities throughout the course... An intelligent tutor is a computerized learning environment whose design is based on cognitive principles and whose interaction with students is like those of a human tutor—making comments when students err, answering questions about what to do next, and maintaining a low profile when they are performing well. This approach differs from traditional computer-aided instruction, which gives didactic feedback to students on their final answers; the OLI tutors provide context-specific assistance throughout the problem-solving process."
Read more about OLI in a White House commissioned paper here.
Initiative #2: Inside Track
Persisting in college does not equate with making timely progress towards a degree, or even enjoying the academic experience at all. Mentoring can help. The Inside Track student coaching model assigns an executive coach to needy students, at a cost of just $500 for 6 months. It is an increasingly popular program at public universities, including Florida State. An extensive randomized evaluation indicates a 10-15 percentage point increase in retention rates.
POSTSCRIPT:
It's worth noting that UW-Madison has begun participating in the Delaware Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity. This allows us to benchmark instructional spending at the department level against those at other participating institutions (e.g. Ohio State University, SUNY - University at Buffalo, University of Arizona, University of Colorado - Boulder, University of Kansas, University of Missouri - Columbia , University of Nebraska - Lincoln, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, University of Oregon ,University of Texas at Austin). (These aren't the best comparisons but they are all that's given, and at least one of my readers is demanding comparisons no matter what.) The most recent year of our data indicates that our direct instructional expenditures per student credit hour are on the high side--not appalling high, but higher than average-- and importantly that there is widespread variation by discipline and department. Of possible concern are departments where the number of student credit hours per instructional faculty (e.g. the volume) is much lower than that of the comparison group of institutions, while the expenditures per credit hour (the costs) are much higher. Those need to be examined, as I'm sure they are being, for whether the quality produced justifies those numbers. At the same time, the data indicate some very productive areas-- such as law-- where faculty are clearly doing more work at a lower cost. This is a good step for Madison, and hopefully leads to more such conversations--with significant faculty involvement.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
What's the Matter with Koch U?
There's much ado in Madison today about the news that the Koch Bros. made a $1.5 million gift to the economics department at Florida State University accompanied by numerous strings, including significant power over faculty hiring.
Over at Sifting and Winnowing, professors and students are debating whether or not we should be concerned about this event given the potential the New Badger Partnership creates for changing the rules of the game at Madison in ways that could increase authority of a governor-appointed board to make such decisions based on pure economics.
One writer, "Patrick," contends that the FSU incident is no big deal, because "I was under the impression this kind of thing has been going on basically forever in one form or another no matter where the funding comes from. Maybe attaching explicit strings to funding like this is a bit more open than usual, but I don’t understand how it’s any different."
To some extent, Patrick is right: donors often have conditions. In particular, they have interests in specific kinds of work, methodologies, and expertise. But faculty have conditions and obligations too. For example, at UW-Madison right now:
(1) Faculty are protected from pressure to accept every dollar offered by being paid reasonably well by their institution. That includes time for research. Sure, we still feel a desire (in some disciplines) to raise summer money and money to buy out of teaching and money for assistants and supplies-- but the fact that our base salary rarely depends on external funds helps reduce that pressure. In fact, no matter how much external money we raise our base salary is not enhanced by that money (unless it gets us a raise, which I'm told is rare) and it (supposedly) doesn't affect our chances for tenure.
(2) Faculty are further protected by obligations to disclose funders to Institutional Research Boards and on "outside activities" reports. We are asked about potential conflicts of interest.
(3) Faculty are protected by shared governance. No donor can interfere in hiring or tenure as long as that stands.
(4) Faculty are further obligated by a community which (currently) has a strong norms that uphold consideration of ethics and values in decisions about funding. As the professors said in the Campus Connection piece, this wouldn't happen at UW-Madison-- at least right now.
Those protections are crucial, for what they do is minimize the potential consequences of "academic capitalism." That term, according to UW-Madison alum and scholar Sheila Slaughter and her co-authors, means "market and market-like behaviors on the part of universities and faculty.”
The risks of academic capitalism at public research universities include a move "away from “access” (for students who are not employed and do not have easy access to good jobs) towards “accessibility” (benefiting the already employed)....this reverse[s] a pattern established over most of the 20th century: a push to increase access for low-income and minority student populations. Interestingly, academic capitalism in the new economy involves the pursuit not of mass markets, but of various privileged, niche student markets, with the effect being to change one of the basic functions of most higher education institutions in the U.S."
UW-Madison seems increasingly vulnerable to academic capitalism: despite its high rankings it is clearly still on a quest for legitimacy, strongly inclined to try and enhance revenue flows rather than reduce dependency on resources, and seemingly quite open to embracing the influence of globalization. Frankly, it's a prime target for donors with agendas-- but right now, there is a substantial palace guard protecting us. Dismantle that guard-- as I think the NBP with its new Walker-appointed board and focus on private fundraising will-- and watch the chips fall.
Think I'm exaggerating? Here's the report on a top Walker cabinet member, Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch, on the NBP (hey thanks Vince Sweeney for pointing this one out!):
"Speaking in Brookfield Wednesday at a gathering of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, he [Huebsch] told the group it would bring a free-market approach to the university system similar to that of a corporate business..."
UW-Madison -- the new Koch U?
********
This is depressing, so let me end instead on an alterative vision proffered by Slaughter and Rhodes:
"We believe that in place of these policies, faculty and their associations and unions should reprioritize the democratic and educational functions of the academy, in addition to the local economic roles in community development that colleges and universities can play. They should systematically challenge the privilege and success of the private-sector economy that is being mirrored in higher education today, subjecting the increased investment in entrepreneurial ventures to more public discussion and more public accountability. After all, as with the dot.coms in the private sector, much academic capitalism ends up losing revenue and cost shifting to the consumer—in higher education in the form of higher tuitions. We believe that faculty and their associations and unions should redirect attention to just who exactly is benefiting from certain forms and patterns of higher education provision, and in doing so emphasize the importance—particularly during a time in which some states are realizing a new majority population—of expanding educational opportunity for those who have historically encountered social, economic and cultural barriers to entry. In the face of academic capitalism in the new economy, academics and their associations and unions should consider their own participation in this process and begin to articulate new, viable, alternative, paths for colleges, universities and academics to pursue."
Reforming Wisconsin Public Higher Education: Part 2
Here's perhaps the only thing I like about the New Badger Partnership: it's got people talking about reforming public higher education in Wisconsin.
The downside is that the terms of the conversation are constrained by its leadership: right now it's a conversation about how a single, expensive institution can continue to have lots of money to do its work. The state needs to transform this into a broader conversation about creating a more sustainable model with which to provide public higher education to all state residents.
That requires far more than a few "flexibilities" or the creation of yet another governing board. There are fundamental issues we have neglected to tackle for far too long. And these issues make university administrators and faculty members very uncomfortable, for they strike at the core of the enterprise. The trick is how to "strike" at the core in a way that transforms it into something better, rather than something awful.
Here are big questions we must begin to consider and address if the overarching goal of sustaining a public higher education model in the state will be met:
(1) How can we best increase institutional performance on several metrics related to undergraduate and graduate education?
(2) How can we tie some of the funding for higher education to performance? (Right now we pay for "butts in seats" not completed credentials)
(3) How can we best assess duplicate or similar programs that could be meaningfully consolidated?
(4) Are there too many public higher education institutions in the state?
(5) Are all senior administrator positions adding value? What about all professors?
(6) Are all degree programs at each institution adding value?
The downside is that the terms of the conversation are constrained by its leadership: right now it's a conversation about how a single, expensive institution can continue to have lots of money to do its work. The state needs to transform this into a broader conversation about creating a more sustainable model with which to provide public higher education to all state residents.
That requires far more than a few "flexibilities" or the creation of yet another governing board. There are fundamental issues we have neglected to tackle for far too long. And these issues make university administrators and faculty members very uncomfortable, for they strike at the core of the enterprise. The trick is how to "strike" at the core in a way that transforms it into something better, rather than something awful.
Here are big questions we must begin to consider and address if the overarching goal of sustaining a public higher education model in the state will be met:
(1) How can we best increase institutional performance on several metrics related to undergraduate and graduate education?
(2) How can we tie some of the funding for higher education to performance? (Right now we pay for "butts in seats" not completed credentials)
(3) How can we best assess duplicate or similar programs that could be meaningfully consolidated?
(4) Are there too many public higher education institutions in the state?
(5) Are all senior administrator positions adding value? What about all professors?
(6) Are all degree programs at each institution adding value?
What the NBP Really Costs
UW-Madison is a rock star. Look at how we stack up in nearly every ranking imaginable! It is a public Ivy, and there is no objective indication that the model that built this institution has stopped working, causing a consistent downward slide. Indeed, its own press office notes that it "continues to be lauded" and the Badger Herald reports the same from key members of the Administration.
Now consider this: For the last 18+ months, University Administration has spent an enormous amount of time trying to change the way UW-Madison is governed and financed. They've pushed a plan that includes no specific, demonstrable cost savings. And their efforts have consumed enormous resources, including but not limited to a preponderance of the time and attention of all Bascom Hall leaders (at least 10-12 people, if not more), their staff, deans and other administrators, faculty from across campus, and graduate and undergraduate students. Plus all of those media resources (town hall meetings, flyering, computing time, etc). Not to mention the resources spent by our alumni on the Badger Advocates and the WAA's robocalls promoting the NBP.
And for what? All that money spent to promote a plan without a single demonstrable $ savings attached to it? And now, rumors that instead of "money-saving" flexibilities we are going to get not one but two new governing boards?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again-- a hard look at this plan indicates that it's not about money, it's about power.
My crystal ball says the first thing to go is shared governance. It is undoubtedly inefficient. And many of those in charge give us every reason to think they don't truly believe in it.
The big question is this: Do you? What are you willing to do to protect it?
Or perhaps, instead, you'll welcome a shift to professor accountability, such as that being implemented at public universities which lack shared governance.
Now consider this: For the last 18+ months, University Administration has spent an enormous amount of time trying to change the way UW-Madison is governed and financed. They've pushed a plan that includes no specific, demonstrable cost savings. And their efforts have consumed enormous resources, including but not limited to a preponderance of the time and attention of all Bascom Hall leaders (at least 10-12 people, if not more), their staff, deans and other administrators, faculty from across campus, and graduate and undergraduate students. Plus all of those media resources (town hall meetings, flyering, computing time, etc). Not to mention the resources spent by our alumni on the Badger Advocates and the WAA's robocalls promoting the NBP.
And for what? All that money spent to promote a plan without a single demonstrable $ savings attached to it? And now, rumors that instead of "money-saving" flexibilities we are going to get not one but two new governing boards?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again-- a hard look at this plan indicates that it's not about money, it's about power.
My crystal ball says the first thing to go is shared governance. It is undoubtedly inefficient. And many of those in charge give us every reason to think they don't truly believe in it.
The big question is this: Do you? What are you willing to do to protect it?
Or perhaps, instead, you'll welcome a shift to professor accountability, such as that being implemented at public universities which lack shared governance.
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