Edification from Higher Education

The study is entitled “The One Percent at State U,” and its focus is how a number of publicly-funded state universities have an ugly combination of using more low-paid “adjunct” faculty (part-timers with no tenure), administrative costs outpacing teaching expenditures, student debt soaring to intolerable levels to too many students while university presidents are earning more than ever. Released on May 18^th by the Institute for Policies Studies (“IPS”), the report offers the following sobering summary findings:

State universities have come under increasing criticism for excessive executive pay, soaring student debt, and low-wage faculty labor. In the public debate, these issues are often treated separately. Our study examines what happened to student debt and faculty labor at the 25 public universities with the highest executive pay (hereafter “the top 25”) from fall 2005 to summer 2012 (FY 2006 – FY 2012). Our findings suggest these issues are closely related and should be addressed together in the future.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, executive pay at “the top 25” has risen dramatically to far exceed pre-crisis levels. Over the same period, low-wage faculty labor and student debt at these institutions rose faster than national averages. In short, a top-heavy, “1% recovery” occurred at major state universities across the country, largely at the expense of students and faculty. 

• The student debt crisis is worse at state schools with the highest-paid presidents. The sharpest rise in student debt at the top 25 occurred when executive compensation soared the highest.

• As students went deeper in debt, administrative spending outstripped scholarship spending by more than 2 to 1 at state schools with the highest-paid presidents.

• As presidents’ pay at the top 25 skyrocketed after 2008, part-time adjunct faculty increased more than twice as fast as the national average at all universities.

• At state schools with the highest-paid presidents, permanent faculty declined dramatically as a percentage of all faculty. By fall 2012, part-time and contingent faculty at the top 25 outnumbered permanent faculty for the first time.

• Average executive pay at the top 25 rose to nearly $1 million by 2012 – increasing more than twice as fast as the national average at public research universities. 

It’s always about priorities. Just looking at the most egregious violators screams out the nature of the problem. “Meanwhile, the Chronicle of Higher Education on [May 16^th] issued its ranking of executive compensation at public colleges for 2013, with Ohio State University president E. Gordon Gee [pictured above] topping the list with total earnings of $6.1 million.

“Ohio State University was ranked in the IPS report at the top of its list of ‘worst overall offenders,’ citing the university's 23 percent jump in student debt. It also hired 670 new administrators from 2010 to 2012, while only hiring 45 permanent faculty during the same period… Gee resigned from Ohio State last year, after he apologized for making gaffe-filled jokes. Earlier this year, he was tapped as president of West Virginia University.

“But separating from top-paid college presidents can also cost their schools a pretty penny, the Chronicle reports. Ohio State provided Gee with a $1.5 million ‘release payment,’ just one example of how colleges can find saying goodbye to high-paid presidents to be an expensive endeavor.” CBSNews.com, May 19^th.

We’ve turned our educational system upside down, costs have increased for decades at well beyond any cost-of-living index, and the number of students moving from high school to college is plunging as I have blogged before. We need to address educational reform embracing all issues in a single package, from top to bottom. If we don’t, our middle class will continue to contract, our global competitiveness will continue to fall and we will become an also-ran country with an economic polarization that skews rich and poor exactly in conformity with the economic parameters that once defined banana republics.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we are slowly turning the United States of America from a nation that “is” to a country that “was.”