Statement from the American Association of University Professors chapter at New York University

In ordinary circumstances, most of what AAUP chapters do is reactive—stepping up to advocate for the protection of faculty and student rights when they are under threat. At a time when higher education’s morbid expectation of its future is one of crushing austerity and, for some colleges, extinction, our NYU group decided to be proactive and assemble some principles for a post-COVID university. This was not done because we labor under the illusion that a university can be a morally purified space. Instead, we wanted to honor (by gathering together) the ideas and suggestions and arguments for reforming our institution that we have heard being made by faculty and students over the years. Of course, many of the action items on the list are far above our pay grade, but, at some point, we have to start behaving like self-organizing employees of the more humane workplace outlined here. --Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU

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Principles for a Post-COVID University

How should NYU play its role in a “just recovery” from the COVID crisis? How can we build on the experience of the crisis and from the opinions, grievances, and solidarity that circulated in NYU communities during this period? In thinking about how the university can sustain and rebuild itself, the AAUP envisions NYU as a more transparent, democratic, caring and resilient institution, prioritizing the equitable treatment and rights of its students and employees, minimizing the cost of attendance, and striving more single-mindedly to live up to its motto—“a private university in the public service.”

For too long, NYU policy has been dictated by debt-leveraged expansionary growth, domestically and overseas, and by an institutional desire for upward mobility as measured by national and international rankings. Post-COVID, and in the spirit of social and ecological sustainability, we would like to see NYU focus on thriving in place rather than reaching after “performance” goals that are defined by financial institutions or managerial value metrics. 

Transparency

With the university’s finances under pressure, now is the time to provide faculty, students and staff full access to NYU’s fiscal affairs.

Participatory budgeting should be a key component of the transition to transparency

Executive policy-making should be open to faculty review, and senior administrators should draw more routinely on faculty expertise

Top-level decision-makers should consult and solicit input from the faculty body before making large-scale policy moves, especially on GNU matters

The terms of operation of global branches – in Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, and other GNU “nodes” -- should be transparent to the entire NYU community.

Democratic

The faculty role in shared governance, as recognized by AAUP principles, should be fully restored and clarified.

The NYU administration should agree and affirm that the Faculty Handbook is contractually binding.

Faculty and students should be represented on the Board of Trustees.

Faculty who are elected, and not handpicked, should serve on committees to choose senior administrators, including the Provost and President.

Minutes of BOT and administrative leadership meetings should be accessible to faculty and students.

The right to organize (including that of contract and tenure-track faculty) should be upheld and encouraged, and NYU should recognize any bargaining unit formed by a majority of its eligible members.

Community-driven town halls and plenary assemblies should be instituted on the NYU Calendar to inform and review institutional decision-making.

Caring
NYU should be a sanctuary campus, prioritizing safety and sanctuary to members of the university and its host communities.

Resources and legal assistance should be extended to vulnerable and marginalized community members.

NYU should not operate branches of the university, domestic or overseas, in breach of its nondiscrimination policies.

Employees and students should have (free) access to comprehensive health care at Langone-Grossman if they choose.

Workplace welfare councils (with faculty, student, and staff representation) should be elected in every university unit to safeguard employee well-being and workplace quality.

Affordable

Every effort should be made to lower tuition and retire NYU’s reputation as poster child for student debt.

NYU’s unequal pay structures should be addressed, including gender salary gaps, salary compression, and the role of underrepresentation of minority faculty.

Senior administrator salaries should be sliced, and nonacademic administrative personnel positions downsized.

NYU should establish a much more equitable range spread between the highest and lowest paid of NYU employees, with total compensation packages included in these re-adjustments.

Salary and student fellowship increases should be tied to COLA, and not merit evaluations.

NYU should secure the steady conversion of NTT into TT faculty positions at every GNU location and in its US campuses; as a preliminary goal, NYU should aim for not more than 25% NTT positions in 5 years across the university.

NYU should extend protections comparable to those that accrue to tenure to all full-time faculty who have served continuously for seven years.

Faculty housing rent should be capped at an affordable percentage of income.

Sustainable

NYU’s carbon footprint should be minimized and its endowed funds should divest from the fossil fuel industry, and all enterprises involved in incarceration, immigrant detention, and military production.

Air travel, to global sites and to academic meetings, should be curtailed.

Cross-disciplinary climate crisis research and study should be prioritized.

New environmental justice and climate justice initiatives should be targeted and funded.

NYU should adopt an environmental stewardship role in downtown Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, modelling and propagating just practices.

Public Service

Since NYU sits on occupied lands of Lenni Lenape peoples, it should fully adopt a charter of decolonial ethics and practice.

NYU should extend public access (for meetings, workshops, assemblies) to its underutilized classrooms and buildings when they are not being used. It should also seek to provide students across the city access to its libraries and online research resources.

NYU should prioritize pathways for students from New York public schools and community colleges to matriculate at NYU; it should also extend and deepen support to such institutions in other ways that those institutions identify as arenas for collaboration.

NYU should make special efforts to support DACA and undocumented students.

NYU’s reach as a landlord and real estate owner should be surveyed and redefined to help address the city’s urgent housing crisis.

Representatives from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn communities should have the right to review and participate in the approval of all new building and expansion plans.

Local community representatives should have the right to serve on a committee for developing university-community initiatives that will benefit from NYU’s research and resources.

Racial and Social Justice

Indigenous study and engagement should be instituted and encouraged in all university programs.

NYU resources should prioritize the reduction of institutional inequalities for students, staff and faculty of color, along with LGBTQ, disabled community members, DACA and undocumented students.

NYU should insist on staffing reforms on the part of departments and units with an overwhelming majority of white instructors.

Gender balance and racial diversity should be adopted as an institutional principle of all NYU workplaces.

Truly affordable housing should be made available for faculty of color and first-generation academics who often have higher student debt burdens than their peers and cannot rely on family wealth.

Global University?

NYU should convene a community-wide review of the GNU mission and its record.

Free movement of students and scholars across borders and GNU sites should be guaranteed by NYU and host authorities.

NYU should loudly and visibly protest travel and enrollment restrictions at its GNU sites and NYC campuses and lobby the relevant political authorities to lift those restrictions. In cases where there are boycotts of NYU campuses by faculty and students in other parts of NYU because of these restrictions, NYU should recognize these as fundamental expressions of academic freedom.

Academic freedom protections, in all of the forms and expressions recognized by the AAUP, should be guaranteed across all NYU sites.

NYU should uphold the right of all employees, including those contracted to construct and maintain GNU buildings, to be protected by the ILO's basic international labor standards.

NYU should insist that US authorities remedy the challenges faced by international students and faculty--travel restrictions, embassy closures, and impractical visa protocols.
     
      The Executive Committee of the NYU Chapter of the AAUP
       
         Rebecca Karl, President
         Paula Chakravartty Vice-President
         Andrew Ross, Secretary
         Anna McCarthy, Treasurer
         Fred Moten, Member-at-large
         Vasuki Nesiah, Member-at-large
         Mohamad Bazzi, Member-at-large
         Marie Monaco, Immediate past President
     

The Executive Council approved the following statement in March 2020.

The Executive Council of the Modern Language Association condemns the termination of employment for graduate student strikers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, calls for their reinstatement, and urges the university to commence negotiations with the students as soon as possible. We consider that their demands for an appropriate augmentation of salary in line with the increased costs of living are legitimate and note that they now have the full support of the UAW, with whom the university is contracted. Graduate students are indispensable workers who cannot be expected to execute their teaching duties and to pursue their own research when housing and food costs are not affordable with their current wages. The Modern Language Association maintains that graduate students should be compensated at a level that makes it possible for them to flourish on campus as research assistants, teachers, and emerging scholars. A fair wage correlated with cost of living increases is a necessary precondition for their own work, essential to fulfilling the educational mandate of their departments, and essential for the dignity of all workers at the university. To punish students for exercising their rights to demand a decent wage is, in our view, unjust and unacceptable, and all penalties should be reversed immediately.

By Ronnie Lipschutz (Political Science, UCSC))

February 20, 2020

To: Chancellor Cynthia Larive, Provost, and EVC Lori Kletzer

From: Ronnie Lipschutz

I write this letter as an individual faculty member who has been at UCSC since 1990.  I am not representing any faculty group, department or Academic Senate Committee.  It is my own assessment after 30 years at this campus.

I attended the Academic Senate meeting on Wednesday, February 19, and felt a growing sense of dismay as I listened to your presentations and your responses to questions from the floor.  I was especially dismayed by EVC Kletzer’s repeated statement that she did not know what would happen after the Friday midnight deadline issued to the striking TAs to turn in Fall grades.  Nor was I reassured by her stated position that, should a shortage of qualified TAs follow, departments and faculty are responsible for dealing with problems of enrollments, class capacity, teaching and workload. While I am aware that such decisions are generally made “locally,” this response is a rather disingenuous one and ignores the fact that the present situation is a consequence of Administration decisions and actions taken over the past decade. Over that time, the Administration has paid little heed to either Senate or faculty warnings about the lack of funding to support new initiatives, such as graduate growth, Silicon Valley and others.  Now the faculty is being asked to address the results of 20 years of poor administration, planning and judgement. 

I will not belabor this last point except to point out that the increase in undergraduate enrollments since 2000—which have greatly exacerbated the local housing crisis—have also required growing graduate student enrollment to teach them, without having in hand the necessary resources to support the latter.  Generally, the formula was something like the following: undergraduate growth would bring in the tuition required to fund teaching while graduate growth would facilitate research and recognition which, in turn, would provide the extramural research funds and private donations that would support such growth.

Moreover, so far as I can recall, during those two decades, a number of strategic academic plans were prepared explaining that such growth was necessary for the glory of UCSC, without any transparent, public explanation of how the necessary funding was to be procured. This hallucinatory vision became dogma ten years ago when UCOP offered “rebenching” funds in exchange for a new “graduate growth” initiative. These funds were accepted with in full recognition that they were insufficient to support the new FTEs and graduates students coming to campus. 

I will not repeat here the many assurances that were offered by the Administration about how such growth would be achieved—those are available in the many documents and studies, none of which clearly explained how this would be financed.  And, until the TA strike, the Administration continued to blithely assume continued undergraduate and graduate growth as necessary from both financial and branding perspectives. Needless to say, we are now reaping the whirlwind. The Administration appears poised to use the TA strike as a pretext for reducing graduate enrollments to levels that can be funded given available resources.  If this is the plan, it is an extremely cynical one. 

Furthermore, to put the onus on faculty for dealing with the resulting crisis is even more cynical.  I do not blame you for this situation; it is the result of two decades of administrative ineptness and opacity as mentioned above.  But to shift the burden of coping to faculty, who will have to scramble to adapt, and undergraduates, who will be shut out of necessary classes and receive a degraded education, is inexcusable.  

Finally, to announce that yet another committee will be established to consider the contradictions is simply kicking the can down the road.  We all know that such committees tend to make reasonable recommendations that cannot be funded, and that their reports end up on a (metaphorical) shelf somewhere, to be ignored the next time a similar problem arises.

Which leads to the fiction of “shared governance.”  Somehow, there is a wide (mis)perception that this means joint management between administration and faculty.  Of course, it means no such thing: the Administration decides what it wants to do and then consults with the Faculty Senate for comments (with objections routinely ignored). Over the past decade, there were ample warnings from faculty that the graduate growth initiative was unsupportable, but these were simply dismissed with the proviso that “we will take care of it.”  So, perhaps you should take care of this, rather than shifting the onus onto the faculty.

If this letter sounds bitter, it is—very bitter. For 30 years, I participated in what was a promising and exciting experiment and that has been transformed from gold to dross.  I am retiring at the end of June and so none of this matters very much to me in practical terms.  But it matters greatly to undergraduates, whose credentials may well be very tarnished by this fiasco, to the graduate students, who were made promises that have been broken repeatedly and many of whom have, at best, a future career of “freeway flying” in store, and to faculty and staff, who have to bear the burden of the Administration’s generally inept administration.  We have ethical obligations to our students and, if we cannot fulfill them, we would do better not to make empty promises to them in the first place.

The month since the inauguration has made it crystal clear that universities and colleges are going to face a wide range of challenges and attacks in the next few years.  President Trumps's appointment of Betsy Devos (known for her contempt both for public institutions and for the faculty within them) as Secretary of Education and Jerry Fallwell Jr. (a major recipient of federal funds through student loans) to chair a task-force on higher education both signal hostility to public higher education.  More generally, President Trump has made clear his opposition to some of the most important core principles of colleges and universities: open intellectual inquiry, the internationalism of knowledge and the free movement of ideas and researchers, and the idea that knowledge is best used when it is public and not subordinated to the interest of the state or political parties.  The Trump Administration and its allies have attacked the legitimacy of scientific research, imposed a gag order on the EPA and other government agencies, threatened the elimination of the NEA and the NEH along with the privatization of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, issued an executive order refusing to admit people coming "from" a set of Muslim majority countries that, among other things, threatened the ability of students from those countries to continue their education.  Faced with a strong judicial rejection the administration is now preparing a new order.   But while it is likely to seek to meet the courts' objections, it is unlikely to veer from either its attack on the free movement of peoples or its false claims about the weaknesses in the refugee resettlement process.

Republican legislators have been equally eager to attack higher education.  From Arizona, to Iowa, to Tennessee, to North Carolina and beyond, legislatures have sought to intervene in the internal organization of public higher education by attacking unions, prescribing the ideological balance of faculties, stripping universities governance of autonomy, and placing limits on what can be taught. Not all these efforts will succeed, but they have marked an intensification of actions against higher education that built on precedents in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

These attacks suggest two, only apparently contradictory, conclusions.  The first is that the ascension of President Trump marks a distinctly new phase in American politics.  The second is that his victory has only made more obvious a pre-existing situation--the well-established domination by right-wing republicans of most of the levers of state government across the country.  Republican control became more extreme under President Obama, though it predated him.   Donald Trump's presidency has released whatever restraints there have been over the most revanchist elements in the Republican Party.  These parallel lines of attack--federal and state--present a set of challenges that higher education cannot ignore.

Although it is true that colleges and universities should not go out of their way to provoke the administration, it is a mistake to think that higher education will fly under the radar if it avoids confrontation.  Higher ed has been far too willing to reshape itself in the image of contemporary business and political culture and in doing so has made itself more of a target for the angers and passions that President Trump has helped consolidate. As Chris has noted, universities were all too eager to identify themselves with the high-tech financialized world that has left so many people behind.  Higher education is already a prime target in the new round of culture wars: its vulnerability has been heightened by a a highly selective misrepresentation of students that denigrates the important social issues they raise while ignoring the realities of their lives in the age of the debt crisis. Secretary Devos' recent comments about faculty indoctrination reveal nothing so much as her distance from real classrooms. There is no way to avoid confronting this hostility without taking a collective vow of silence.  To do that, would be to betray higher education at its core. It would in effect avoid the university's obligations to provide commentary and reflection on society itself.

It is important to recognize one thing as we contend with this new era:  the now traditional tendency of colleges and universities to mirror and incorporate the leading trends of the contemporary business and financial order will not protect its core functions of teaching and research. The notion of an entrepreneurial university whose greatest research value lies in start-ups and patents and whose benefits accrue primarily to individuals has only served to draw attention from the core actions of colleges and universities--teaching and open scholarship.  It has also bound them more tightly to a business culture transfixed by the endless search for monetization and market growth..

But it must be admitted that if administrators have not offered a vision that could meet the challenges of the current moment, neither have the faculty. We have too often accepted the benefits that accrue to us individually from the current system of labor and funding and failed to offer a coherent alternative for the future.  It is a task that can no longer be avoided.

I cannot go into all the areas that need to be rethought and reconstructed here. But an initial if incomplete list would have to include the following:

Colleges and universities will have to confront more directly their own role in the increasing inequality of American society.  It should hardly be controversial to note that in an age of trillion dollar student debt, and with the increasingly unequal distribution of resources across the range of higher education institutions, colleges and universities now are as likely to intensify social and economic inequality as they are to lessen it.  There are numerous reasons for this of course. But the incessant drive for distinction among institutions and their faculties highlights the contradiction between selectivity and access that has made the number of students applicants you reject a sign of quality and price a sign of desirability.  A new social contract that preserves access, funds quality, and ensures academic and intellectual autonomy must be developed and fought for.

It is also past time to address the obscene and immoral system of balancing the finances of colleges and universities on the backs of adjuncts and other precarious workers.  It is time for colleges and universities--including tenured and tenure-track faculty--to recognize that in a system where most faculty work under conditions of precarity, there is no real system of academic freedom (after all the purpose of tenure was to provide the security to do one's intellectual work without fear).  Beyond this, the internal inequity of our labor practices gives the lie to the notion that we function as community of scholars.  This problem will not be easy to fix.  After years of chipping away at tenure--Wisconsin's #faketenure is the most obvious example--legislature are subjecting it to explicit challenge.   Under emboldened Republican governments, unions are likely to face their most concerted attacks in years, thereby throwing into question the gains made by adjuncts and graduate students through their own organizing and collective bargaining struggles.  These problems occur on a national scale.

The faculty will need to take up anew the issues of academic freedom and faculty governance.  The recent series of controversies around Milo Yiannopoulos's appearances on college campuses have, if nothing else, pointed out the confusions that exist around notions of academic freedom and freedom of expression. In part, academic freedom and shared governance are in such confused states because of the widespread precarity of university employment. But faculty (and not boards or managers) need to renew both academic freedom and shared governance.  We need to move beyond thinking of academic freedom solely as a negative liberty that is fundamentally individualist in nature (where the issue revolves around censorship), and think seriously about the responsible exercise of the right as a form of shared governance in higher education.  I hope to discuss this further but for now I can only note that until we are able to articulate a notion of academic freedom as a reasoned if passionate right of argument rooted in a notion of the university as a self-governing community we will find ourselves trapped within the economy of the troll.

To return to where I began, I don't think that it is a coincidence that the Trump administration's most immediate challenges to colleges and universities have come from his travel ban and his threats against undocumented students and workers.  In the Trumpist imagination that spoke to a sizable proportion of the American people, refugees and undocumented workers condense a wider set of issues relating both to the demands of women and internal minorities for greater equality and to international organizations that displaced the power of the traditional nation.  Colleges and universities, despite their failure to achieve many of their proclaimed goals of inclusion and access do represent institutions that exist as much in relation to international communities as local ones.  There is no avoiding that particular status.  Colleges will need to figure out new ways to serve both communities far better than they have done in the past.  The first step in that, though, is confronting the ways that social and economic inequalities as well as a loss of common social purpose have rendered colleges and universities far too much like the dominant culture.   Until, and unless, higher education can reclaim a social purpose beyond return on investment it will be blow in the wind in the face of the challenges of the present moment.

Today Reclaim California Higher Education released its highly anticipated proposal to save the California Master Plan and with it affordable and public minded higher education: The $48 Fix.  The 48 Dollar Fix demonstrates the dramatic effects that California's foolish turn to privatization has had both on the affordability and quality of the state's higher education system and details the practicality of funding all three segments at the level of 2001 state support.  As the title makes clear, if this effort was done through an income tax surcharge it would add just $48 dollars a year to the income tax of the median personal income taxpayer .  The report also discusses other funding options so that the burdens would not be borne solely be personal income taxes.  But the bottom line is that a refunding of the state's higher education system is practical and would enable the three segments to better serve their students and the state at large.  It is worth reading and sharing.

Again, the Report can be found HERE.

Although overshadowed by North Carolina's recent HB2 (forbidding transgender individuals from using the bathroom of their choice), the state's Republican majority has proposed a bill that could seriously undermine the colleges and universities that have traditionally served North Carolina's minority population.  Despite its proclaimed aim to address the problem of student debt, SB873 likely will exacerbate the state's inadequate funding of Higher Education in general (a reduction of over 23% in State funding between 2008-2015) and potentially devastate the finances of four institutions that historically focus on African-American and Native American students. It would also encourage them to increase the number of their out of state students and overturn decisions made by students about projects they wish to support with their fees.

Although notable for its explicit emphasis on institutions that serve primarily minority populations within the state, the North Carolina proposals are simply the latest in a series of legislative interventions into the decision making of public universities.  These interventions combine a reduction of state funding with increasing micro-management in the name of the interests of students.  As with recent cuts in Wisconsin and Illinois, North Carolina's Republican legislative majority has assumed a populist mantle while pursuing policies that would have their greatest negative effects on those colleges and universities that have the fewest resources and that serve the poor and people of color.

SB873 has several key elements:

First, the law institutes a regime that would ensure that tuition prices and student fees are held constant for students who complete their program in 8 semesters (10 for those in 5 year program), and for a time to be determined for transfer students.  There is no provision about tuition raises for each entering class nor any indication of increased state funding, so one likely result is that institutions will expect those who enter later to subsidize those who have entered earlier.

Second, it would simultaneously force a cut in student fees, starting in 2018. Strikingly, the law requires that student fees be cut between 10 and 25% below 2016 fee levels.  Apparently this would all but prevent the construction of a new student union at NC Central in Durham--a campus and location known for its traditions of political activism, especially around civil rights.  It may be a coincidence.  I'll leave that to you.

These first two elements--in the context of North Carolina's reduced funding for higher education--threaten to further undermine the overall quality of the state's higher education system. On the question of fees, which are often voted on by students, it represents the legislature's continuing intrusion into university life and their undermining of the University System's autonomy.  On both questions it remains unclear how Margaret Spellings, recently appointed as President of the University System, will react.

But the real heart of the Bill is in the sections dealing with the colleges and universities that have traditionally served North Carolina's minority populations.

1) SB873 lowers the tuition per semester for 5 institutions to $500 per semester. 4 of these institutions have made it their mission to serve historically under-represented groups (the fifth, Western Carolina University, has not had the same mission).  To give an example of the effect, one of the institutions (Winston-Salem State University) currently charges $1619 per semester.  So the law would reduce tuition revenue by over 2/3.  Although the prime author of the bill has indicated that the legislature might raise funding to compensate, there is no such clause in the bill or anything on the horizon. The University's Faculty Assembly estimates that this clause of the bill will cost the four minority institutions roughly 60 Million dollars annually.

2) At the same time as the bill would cut tuition revenue from residents, it also encourages the 5 institutions to increase their reliance on non-resident students. Currently, there is an 18% cap on non-resident student populations.  The Bill urges the campuses to reconsider this cap and to consider seeking more out of state students if it would "increase the number, academic strength, and diversity of student applications at those institutions." (3)  The likely result, as the Faculty Assembly notes, would be "non-minority students displacing minority students in the admissions applications pool." (4)

3) The Bill also encourages the University System to consider changing the names of these institutions.  This suggestion is a real puzzler unless the purpose is to ensure that people no longer connect these universities with their historic missions.

4) The Bill does include new funds for merit scholarships to help a small number of students to attend either North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and North Carolina Central University (40 in-state and 10 out of state students at each institution).  These are the State's other two HBCUs and they are currently on a stronger footing. By providing some increased incentive to attend NCA&T and NCCU while cutting tuition at Elizabeth City State University, Fayetteville State University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Winston-Salem State University it appears that the State intends either to push the latter four institutions from their tradition mission of access or into financial insolvency.

Jelani Cobb has suggested that North Carolina's efforts to control access to public bathrooms is a haunting return to the late 1950s and early 1960s battles over civil rights--including the conflict between federal and state authority, and the declaration of state's rights and God's morality against a minority seeking equal access to public facilities.  SB873 is more than an echo.  After all, passed it threatens to undercut access to higher education for North Carolina's minority population while prompting targeted institutions to shift their demographics to out of state students or to students with less connection to the Universities' traditional missions.  Although done in the name of populism, it is a reactionary populism.

If North Carolina's legislators are really concerned with ensuring access at low prices to all of the state's students then they should fund the freeze, as Nicholas Fleisher has argued regarding similar developments in Wisconsin.  Otherwise their professed concern for students is simply empty rhetoric.

You can find the proposed law HERE

Analysis by the University's Faculty Assembly is HERE

UPDATE:  In response to criticism from the University of North Carolina System and the individual universities, the lead sponsor of the Bill has withdrawn the 3 Historically Black Universities from his proposal of a dramatic tuition cut although UNC Pembroke will still be covered..  Inside Higher Education has the story HERE.

This week's Regents meeting's Agenda is chock full of important items.  In particular, UCOP is presenting the 2016-2017 budget proposal along with a three-year "sustainability" plan, a proposal to improve the finances of UCRP through internal borrowing, and a proposal to centralize the management of the Health Care system. Unfortunately, the lessons from this week's Regents' agenda is that despite UCOP's efforts to tout its agreement with Governor Brown, last year's tuition gambit has done little to change the fundamentally underfunded situation of the University.  Nor is there any indication that either the Regents or UCOP are prepared to break from long-standing patterns of strategy in order to begin to ensure a UC focused on its educational mission and on increasing the quality of its offerings.

THE PLAN ITSELF

UCOP's proposed budget is a work up of the deal that President Napolitano and Governor Brown negotiated by sidelining both the Legislature and the Academic Senate.   Chris and I have already commented on the deal itself so let me simply point to some of the more important elements.  The proposed Budget for 2016-2017 assumes another 4% increase in base funding, $96 million in one-time funding in exchange for changes in UC's retirement system, $25 million for enrolling an additional 5000 California residents, $25 million for deferred maintenance, and an additional $68.7 million in new Non-Resident Tuition (NRT) revenue.  It continues to make the annual promises about the fantastic savings that UCOP is gaining through various technological and management initiatives. In all, UCOP reports a total 2015-16 revenue of $28.3 billion of which core funds constitute $7.3 billion.  In 2016-2017 they are budgeting for an increased core revenue of $481.3 million.

Along with the proposed budget UCOP is submitting what it calls a three year "Financial Stability Plan."  The plan restates the Brown-Napolitano deal that calls for continued 4% annual base budget increases through 2018-2019 and fulfillment of the Governor's promise of $436 million over 3 years (although the Legislature has only promised the first $96 million) in exchange for reducing retirement benefits substantially for future employees.  It includes the proposed $25 million that the Legislature has offered for an additional 5,000 California resident students in 2016-17, and offers to enroll an additional 2500 more in 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 (hopefully in exchange for additional funding). It increases the NRT by 8%, the student services fee 5% annually, and proposes tuition increases tied to inflation beginning in 2017-2018.

A first point, which Chris has made many times, is that the 4% increases, while better than the extreme cuts of the late Schwarzenegger and early Brown administrations, are too small to overcome the longer-term under-funding of the University that goes back 15 years.  To make matters worse, both the Budget and the Financial Stability Plan each bake in increasing burdens on campuses and their students, faculty, and staff.  The $25 million promised for the upcoming year's 5000 additional resident students is approximately half of what both UC and the LAO agree is the marginal cost of an additional student (8). The new underfunded students will force campuses to shift funds from other efforts to pay for these costs (costs that will draw on core funds).

In order to help pay for these students, UC campuses will continue to increase the number of non-resident students, although they say at a slower pace (due to political pressures), so that there will be an additional 1200 non-resident students next year and the latter will be paying an 8% tuition increase.  UCOP apparently believes that the State will continue to pay $25 million each year to help support the initial 5000.  This seems a reasonable assumption in the short term, though it is a long-term problem if it is not included in an expanded base allocation.   If the additional 5000 are also inadequately funded, UC will have added 10,000 resident students over 3 years without providing campuses with the resources needed to properly educate and support these students.

UCOP insists that they are determined to lower the faculty-student ratio throughout the system.  But does anyone really foresee an increase in faculty numbers that could do that even as student numbers jump--6200 new students in 2016-2017 plus at least an additional 2500 additional residents in each of the following two years?  For those campuses with significant NRT, at least some of those funds will need to go to supporting the new enrollments.  For the other half of the UC system without significant NRT,  those enrollments likely will eat up a chunk of the monies they will receive from rebenching and the additional 4% in base state funding.  This plan may be sustainable in the sense that the campuses and students will still be here at its conclusion.  But it doesn't suggest that UCOP's stated commitments to increasing quality and improving campus facilities can be met.

The Budget and Sustainability plan together lock in continued under-funding, increased burdens on campuses, faculty, and students, and further erosion of shared governance at UC.  At its best it is predicated on a set of promises from Governor Brown.  I needn't remind people how well previous compacts with Governor's have held up over time.

THE FUTURE FOR THE FACULTY

A second aspect of the Budget, one of special importance to both faculty and staff, is the proposed reorganization of the retirement system.  In her negotiations with the Governor, President Napolitano agreed to create a new tier for those hired on or after July 1, 2016.  These employees would have a pensionable salary limit (i.e. the amount of annual salary that can be considered in calculating the size of a person's pension) based on the state's PEPRA limits rather than the previous, and much higher social security cap.  In return, the Legislature agreed to release $96 million once these changes have been made, and the Governor has promised additional funds up to the $436 million I mentioned above.  The Legislature has made no commitment to the last two years of the Governor's promise. (For good accounting of these developments there are various posts on this site and by Dan Mitchell on the UCLA Faculty Association Blog).

I have no doubt that there was, and is, political pressure on this from Sacramento.  But to get some sense of the extent of UCOP's concessions on this score it might be helpful to turn to another item on the Regents Agenda--a proposal to borrow money over the next three years from the University's Short Term Investment Pool (STIP) to help pay down the legally defined unfunded liability of UCRP. (As Bob Samuels pointed out long ago, this legal liability is based on the requirement that UCRP has enough money on hand to pay out pensions if everyone retired immediately).  This short term funding is something that the Senate has been pushing for several years, though campuses, perhaps especially those with medical centers, have been resistant.

In very basic terms, the proposal will allow the University to borrow from its own funds to help pay into UCRP, thereby helping to keep the University's annual contribution to UCRP at a steady state and to shorten the time until the unfunded liability has been paid.  Strikingly, UCOP is proposing to borrow $1,463,400,000--or put another way nearly three times the amount of money that the Governor is promising in exchange for a dramatic reduction in the worth of UC benefits.  As UCOP continues to emphasize, perhaps in the hopes of muting opposition, this new plan will not affect anyone employed before July 1, 2016.  But it will affect new generations of UC employees and lead to a significant reduction in overall compensation.  Although theoretically some of this loss could be made up in salary and other forms of compensation,  those forms of compensation do not have the same tax benefits as do pensions. More importantly, they increase retirement risk.  Nor is it clear why anyone should think that state funding for salaries will increase in the future at a rate that will cover the lost compensation value for future employees.

There is presently a Task Force charged with determining what the new pension tier will look like and with coming up with strategies to minimize the reduction in benefits to future employees (since it is unlikely that they can be eliminated).  The Task Force is expected to present its conclusions to President Napolitano next month and there will be a limited period for comment early next year.  But as Dan Mitchell has repeatedly pointed out (e.g., here, here, and here), the proposal for STIP funding includes a statement that "New employees will have the opportunity to choose a fully defined contribution plan as a retirement option, as an alternative to the PEPRA-capped defined benefit plan." (3)  This statement is included despite the fact that even the University's own FAQ on the question insist that no decision has been made as to whether to have a purely defined Defined Contribution Plan (h/t Michael Buroway).

So we have a cut in retirement benefits negotiated outside of the regular shared governance plan, a special Task Force, set up by the President to determine the shape of those cuts, official information on the Task Force site saying that no decision has been made about a defined contribution plan, and an item on the Regents Agenda suggesting that that decision has been made even though the Task Force has not finished its discussions.  This situation exists despite the fact that several years ago, after extensive study, the University recognized that a Defined Contribution Plan was less able to serve either the needs of individuals or the needs of the institution as a whole.  Nor does the amended language of the Budget Bill (section 85) require the University to start a Defined Contribution Plan. This decision by UCOP to overturn the carefully established retirement consensus builds upon other indications that UCOP is perfectly happy to sideline shared governance when it is convenient for them.

THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

There is one other item, or rather the absence of one other item, in the Budget proposal that is significant.  In its Budget Summary (pg. 29) UCOP notes a series of accountability measures required by the State. Interestingly, I could find no mention in the documents (please let me know if I missed it) of another set of legal obligations that are important for the budget.  Those are from section 84 that requires the University to provide much more detailed transparency about its administrative structure--especially concerning the Managers and Senior Professionals Group (MSP) and to rethink its proclaimed market comparisons for the Senior Management Group.  I mention this not because I want to demonize the people in either group but because it is difficult to see how a truly sustainable future can be created for the University that does not seriously rethink its administrative structure, starting with a better understanding of the relation between administration and the educational core.

If UC truly wishes to create a sustainable future for itself, it will need to create a more decentralized administrative structure, one more attuned to the actual teaching, learning, and research that goes on in the everyday life of the institution.   That sort of transformation might have resulted from the UCOF process a few years ago--but it didn't.  It is clear that it will not emerge from UCOP.  But it is needed more than ever.

by Joe Kiskis

COUNCIL OF UC FACULTY ASSOCIATIONS' STATEMENT ON UC BUDGET DEAL

As the Legislature and Governor enter the end game for the 2015-2016 budget, here is a review of provisions related to UC in the Governor’s latest budget proposal—the May revise, which is now being considered by the Legislature.

It appears likely that the final UC budget will have provisions that address access and affordability. What is missing are resources to ensure that the university can maintain quality. It is the hardest to quantify, the weakest politically, and is now the most seriously threatened.

This budget is another demonstration of the truism that the only way to restore access, affordability, and quality is through adequate State investment in public higher education. In spite of strong revenues to the State, the Governor’s budget falls well short of what is needed to reverse the negative trends in recent years. As it happens, it is well within the means of the citizens of the State to restore all of California public higher education to the levels of access, affordability, and quality enjoyed in 2000-2001.

The May revise budget summary starts the UC overview on page 28.

Many aspects of the May revise as they relate to UC are contained in the agreement of the “Committee of Two”  now endorsed by the Regents.

1) Systemwide tuition and fees for California resident students are to remain constant for two more years. Following that, modest increases comparable to the rate of inflation are allowed. On the other hand for non-resident students, tuition will increase by 8% in each of the next two years.

2) Increases in the UC base budget are to be the same as the Governor originally proposed, i.e. 4% per year ($119.5M for 2015-16) but are now continued through 2018-2019. This is much less than what the State should contribute to replace cuts since 2007 and is also substantially less than the needs identified in the UC proposed budget for 2015-2016. (Further detail is here).

The May revise also proposes one time funds of $25M for deferred maintenance and $25M for energy efficiency projects.

3) The May revise contains a tepid and ambiguous recognition of a State obligation to UC pensions. One-time funds of $436M spread over three years (with $96M for 2015-16) are proposed. However, this is Proposition 2 money, which can be used only to reduce the UCRP unfunded liability (about $7.6B in the last annual report). The one-time payment is only modestly significant in the long run and has negligible impact on the University’s operating budget in the near term. This is because the University has not planned to increase the UCRP contribution rate above 8% for most employees and 14% for the employer. Contributions at this rate cover only the current year additional liability and some of the interest on the unfunded liability. i.e. at this point, the regular employer and employee payments are making no contribution to retiring the unfunded liability. Thus in near term years, the Proposition 2 money does not reduce the large negative impact on the UC operating budget from regular UCRP contributions. The Proposition 2 money could be framed as a replacement for or enhancement to UC’s own occasional ad hoc payments to reduce the unfunded liability, but these have been very controversial, and UC has not revealed any plans to make another such payment.

Unfortunately this modest one time contribution comes with permanent strings. In return UC is required to introduce yet another tier to UCRP that would apply to new employees. The new tier will mirror state law for other state employees. In this tier, UCRP eligible salaries are to be capped at the inflation indexed PEPRA/Social Security limit ($117k for the current year) rather than with the IRS limit of $265k currently used by UC. Employees in the new tier will have the option of either a defined benefit plan with the new cap and an add-on defined contribution plan to supplement the defined benefits or a fully defined contribution plan. It is this second option that is particularly troubling.

The relative merits of defined contribution and defined benefit plans were thoroughly evaluated and debated during the extended review that led to the 2010 reforms of the UCRP. The conclusion was that a defined benefit plan is the more advantageous option for both the University as an employer and for its employees.

The main concern is not so much that UC has cut a deal on this issue but rather that it has made such a poor deal. For very modest one-time money, it has agreed to make permanent changes to UCRP including offering a completely defined contribution option that will put at risk the whole of the defined benefit plan. (Chris Newfield has previously made similar comments.) In addition the closed process by which this agreement between the Governor and the President was reached has undermined shared governance and collective bargaining.

4) UCOP has stated that the Governor has agreed not to veto additional appropriations for UC that come out of the legislative process. The University is asking legislators for additional funds to increase California resident enrollment.

5) There are several areas in which the President has committed UC to the implementation of additional efficiencies. These include transfers, time-to-degree, advising, and use of technology. Some of these Presidential promises relate to topics that are squarely within the authority of the Academic Senate, and all of them would normally be addressed through shared governance.

You can find more information on CUCFA's activities here

Governor Brown released his 2015-2016 budget proposal today. As expected he demonstrated no willingness to back off in his opposition to tuition increases at UC and CSU or to attempt to buy them out.  Instead, he insisted that his own long-term proposals for Higher Education funding were correct and demanded more responsiveness from the segments.  We will be back with more in the near future but I wanted to point out some of the most significant points.

1. The Governor has kept to his plan to provide approximately 4% increases to both CSU and UC. (38)

2) But he has reaffirmed that this additional funding is contingent on the segments not raising tuition and, in the case of UC, not increasing non-state enrollment.  The language is as follows:

For UC:

General Fund Increase—An ongoing increase of $119.5 million General Fund
contingent upon the University keeping tuition at 2011‑12 levels in 2015‑16,
not increasing nonresident enrollment in 2015‑16, and taking action to control costs. 

For CSU:

General Fund Increase—An ongoing increase of $119.5 million General Fund.
This funding should obviate the need for CSU to increase student tuition and fees
and can be used by the University to meet its most pressing needs.  

3.  The Governor also makes clear his intention to take on the political fight with the segments (particularly with UC) over the nature and extent of state funding.  Unlike last year's budget proposal the Governor's office makes clear the extent to which increased tuition revenue has itself been underwritten by state funds (36-37).  This has been an issue waiting to blow up for several years now.  Apparently the Governor's office has decided that now is the time.

4. The Governor is also insisting that his proposed task force on costs be instituted immediately. (40-41).  As with most of the Governor's approaches to the University the possibility that quality may cost more rather than less money is ruled out from the start and there is little evidence that he expects academic value to enter into the discussion.  Again, here is the language:

To this end, at the Governor’s request, the UC Regents are expected to form a
committee, staffed by the Administration and the UC Office of the President, to reduce
the University’s cost structure. This committee will solicit advice from a broad range of
experts, review data and develop proposals that allow the University to deliver quality
education at a lower cost and obviate the need for increased tuition or increasing
out‑of‑state enrollment. Specifically, the committee will gather information and develop
proposals to decrease University cost drivers, enhance undergraduate access, improve time‑to‑degree and degree completion, review the role of research, and explore the use of technology to enhance education. The committee’s proposals will be considered by the full UC Board of Regents. These proposals, in conjunction with the University’s sustainability plan, will inform ongoing discussions on efficiencies and reforms to improve the cost structure, student access and outcomes at the University.

It should be understood that in this context "outcomes" does not refer to learning but to degrees or certificates.

5.  Most of these proposals were predictable.  There is one oddity worth noting in the Budget. In discussing State debts and liabilities the Governor includes UC Retirement.  His proposal does not, suggest that he is putting any funds towards helping with that issue.  But in treating UC Retirement as a State debt is he conceding the point that the State has obligations towards the UC Retirement system or is he attempting to pressure UC to move even further in reducing the benefits of the UC Retirement system by lumping it with other systems more immediately subject to political control? Only time will tell.

If you are only interested in the Higher Education section of the Budget you can now find it here.

As you have no doubt seen, UC and Sacramento have already begun the public relations war over UCOP's proposal to hike tuition up to 5% a year over the next 5 years.  President Napolitano and Chair Varner took to the appropriately named "Soapbox" section of the Sacramento Bee to try to justify their plan.  If they hoped to win over the Governor, Sacramento, or students, their efforts clearly failed.  As both the LAT and the Sacramento Bee are reporting, opposition is already intense and the Governor's office is suggesting that the State may lower proposed funding increases if UC increases tuition.  The LAT has more on the long debate ahead.

First off let's admit that there is a problem.  UC's costs are going up and recent small increases in state funding neither make up for previous deep cuts nor keep pace with the costs of supporting undergraduate education or sustaining graduate training and research infrastructure. State General Fund funding in 2014-15 ($2,990,671,000) (in nominal dollars) will still be lower than it was in 2007-08 ($3,273,917,000).  This despite an increase of nearly 20,000 state residents on the general campuses.  For too long time the amount of money the state contributes per student has been in decline.

Not only has state funding per student declined over time but it has done so in unpredictable ways. Consequently, tuition has not only increased tremendously but has done so in a crazy fashion.  Take the following chart that you can find at UCOP:

Now it should be clear that this is not an acceptable situation.  The question is how to get out of it.

Jerry Brown argues that 4% increases combined with some cuts and the magic of online classes is enough. But Brown's support for online is symptomatic of a fundamental mistake: the notion that the rising costs relate primarily to undergraduate instruction.  Between increased class sizes and greater use of contingent faculty UC has been lowering the cost of undergraduate education for years. In fact, upgrades to technology have increased costs, as has expansion of student services that help the full range of students complete their degrees (something dear to the heart of Brown's accountability regime).  But these costs will not be lowered by online education which, if done well, will increase costs at least in the short run. Brown's position seems to be simply a continuation of his life-long mantra of austerity for its own sake.

UCOP wants to take the 4% from the state and then add a 5% tuition hike onto students, while also maintaining the current high level of non-resident students (or even increasing them).  It is important to recognize the assumption that state increases will continue: although most of the discussion and argument has been about the 5% figure UCOP's proposal actually leaves open the possibility of up to a 9% tuition increase if the Governor follows through on his insistence that he will only allow General Fund increases if tuition remains frozen. I am not sure if UCOP simply fumbled the roll-out (so that now the university will look even worse if it tries to increase tuition by more than 5%) or if it was trying to pin down the state.  But whatever the explanation, the possibility of further overburdening students is real.

Neither strategy makes long term sense for the State or the University or especially the University's students. Let me start with the University's because that is simpler.

The University has been committed for many years to a high tuition/somewhat higher aid model. Although the credit agencies prefer to have universities rely on tuition as opposed to state funding, the main argument for the model goes something like this: given the existence of return to aid for in-state resident tuition (but not NRT) it only serves the wealthier students to hold tuition down because financial aid pays the tuition of lower income students. What this argument overlooks is that the rise in tuition means that other funds (like Pell grants) that might have been used to cover non-tuition expenses will be diverted into tuition and that students will end up working longer hours and therefore taking more time to degree.   (Look for instance at "Sonja's" case here.)  I don't know of anyone who has has a way to calculate the number of potential low-income students who were discouraged from applying because of rising tuition and prices, but I doubt it is zero (although UC's figures suggest that the percentage of low income students did not decline in the years leading up to 2012-13 which is the last year that I could find figures for).  And UC acknowledges that the amount of debt taken on by students has risen in recent years. (Figures 1-15 and 1-25)  Chris has laid out the case against this model in this post.

Not only is UC's strategy bad for students but it is bad for the University.  Although the Governor likes to point out that UC's rise in tuition has more than compensated for the gross losses in state funding that overlooks the reality of the way that financial aid works.  As Bob Samuels points out in his own dissection of the UC tuition proposal, the net revenue from tuition is still below that provided by the State because 1/3 of in-state tuition goes to return-to-aid.  In fact, the latest proposal only intensifies the long-standing error on the part of UCOP of insisting that they could keep securing access and quality through the high tuition/somewhat high aid model (one of a series of errors Bob identifies in his post). UC has, in effect, allowed the Governor and the LAO to begin treating student tuition as public funding.  Unless UC is willing to turn its back on access and its public mission and only allow the well-off to attend the University it simply will be unable fund its way out of this situation on the backs of students and their families.  Put bluntly, the present strategy does not offer a way for UC to retain its proclaimed commitments to quality, affordability, and access.

Now I am not naive.  As I suggested at the top of the post, the Governor is not a friendly audience for requests for increased funding.  One of the uncertainties introduced by UCOP's tuition proposal  is whether the Governor will insist on reducing or eliminating proposed state funding increases in response.  If this happens either UC will receive little if any financial benefit from the added tuition unless it places even greater burdens upon students.

But the Governor's position makes no more sense than does the University's.  The problem lies in his indifference to, or ignorance of, the effects of his austerity policies.  To take only the most immediate example, the Governor placed his political capital and fundraising skills to pass his rainy day fund. Unfortunately for too many Californians the storm is still ongoing.  As Dan Mitchell has pointed out the latest figures for tax revenue while higher than the Governor predicted remain highly dependent on capital gains revenues; sales taxes--a better indicator of how the majority of the state's citizens are faring economically--remain low.  His obsessive parsimoniousness is exactly the wrong policy at the present time.

But there is a longer-term problem here.  The Governor insists that the state needs a larger rainy day fund and to hold back on counter-cyclical investments because of the volatility of tax revenue.  But the volatility of tax revenues is deepened by austerity because austerity deepens inequality and inequality exacerbates the volatility of revenues.  Although the overall effective tax structure of California is regressive the volatility problem exists because of the state's dependence on capital gains taxes.  The only long-term sustainable way to move away from that dependence is to create new ways to increase the income and opportunity for the mass of the state's population.  Cutting back state investment does the exact opposite; it insures that the state will become even more unequal and dependent on capital gains income that bears a tenuous relation with the state of the real productive economy.

One of the prime mechanisms for creating mass income, opportunity, and what used to be known as public happiness has been public education.  In the present state of society that needs to include greater--not lesser--access to higher education through the Community Colleges, CSU, and UC.

But just as it is reasonable to argue to Sacramento that it is in California's interest to reinvest in higher education to be able to break with the high tuition/somewhat high aid model it is also reasonable for Sacramento and the California public to insist that this not be done along the business as usual model proposed by UCOP.  Instead, something deeper is needed.

First, if UC wants to make a stronger case for increased state funding UC needs to stop insisting that even if it keeps raising tuition students will be fine. Instead, they should enter into negotiations by taking the position that what is needed is to increase state funding so that student tuition can be rolled back.  UCOP cannot take the "we need more money trust us" position that it has assumed in the past.

Second, UC needs to become more transparent in its budgets.  As Charlie Schwartz has been arguing for decades the budgetary categories UC uses (e.g. instructional costs; student services) are simply too vague.  UC's core activities are instruction and research but the University has never made a good enough case for the importance of State support for research nor have we done a good enough job in explaining why being at a research university is good for students.  UC also needs to genuinely confront managerial over-expansion.  UCOP likes to dismiss criticism by pointing to the relatively small amount of money that goes to senior management salaries.  But that is a red herring: the real issue is that senior managers bring in their wake ever increasing administrative staffs which generate their own tasks and costs.  It is the entire management ideology and structure that needs to be rethought.  

Third, it is time to have a serious discussion of UCOP role and structure in the contemporary moment.  I am not one to call for the elimination of UCOP.  I think that there are still important system-wide functions that it performs.  But we have to recognize that the question of why it performs the functions it does and at such cost is something that needs to be rethought.  Just to give you a sense of scale, the budget for UCOP in 2013-14 was about $587M.  The budget in the same year for the Santa Cruz campus was $633.2M.  Now granted, some of the UCOP budget is due to system-wide programs that happen to be sheltered under UCOP (especially agricultural programs). But do we really think that the Office of the President should have a budget nearly as large as an entire UC Campus?

Finally, as part of a larger public discussion of a new Master Plan for Higher Education UC needs to move beyond the missed opportunity of the UC Commission on the Future.  It is time to recognize that that effort was misconceived and wrongly organized.  Under the leadership of President Yudof, Regent Gould, Senate Chair Croughan, and Dean Edley, UC pursued the wrong effort with the wrong goals: top down, administratively driven, obsessed with online education and far removed from campus life.  As part of any new Master Plan UC needs to engage in a different sort of self-scrutiny: centered on faculty, staff, and the campuses; geared to re-energizing the teaching and research functions of the University, willing to mark out new ways to serve the public in realms far beyond the commodification fetish manifested in UC Ventures or Westwood Tech Transfer.

To regain this sort of public investment and to renew UC's public mission is, to be sure, a long-term endeavor and one without guarantees.  I think that by challenging the logic of continual cuts, President Napolitano has taken a step beyond the Eeyore like passivity of the previous administration. But more needs to be done to decide what the money is for.  If faculty want to regain their role in governing the university we need to take up the challenge in alliance with parents, staff, and students. And to do that we may need to invent new forms of organization and communication.

In two recent posts (here and here) Chris made an educational and ethical case for the public research university shifting its attention to increasing educational intensity and to committing itself to a vision of universal capacity rather than its present practice of intensifying pre-existing social inequalities.  There have been, as far as I can tell, two primary responses to his arguments: 1) an enthusiastic agreement with the basic principle and suggestions for ways it could be extended and 2) a resigned gloom rooted in the widespread sense that our institutions are simply not receptive to the notion.

I want to suggest here that both of these responses are apt but that they should lead us not to resignation but to a recognition that thinking outside the normal structures of our institutions is both desirable and necessary in this instance.

The reasons are several:

First  is the serious probability that the public university as we know it is dead.  That isn't to say that it won't continue to function producing knowledge and graduates of various kinds, teaching as it does, etc. But it is winding down. It has become clear over the last decade that the public university is not fulfilling its fundamental social functions in terms of social mobility and mass education. Nor is it clear that it will be able to continue its research funding given the commitment to austerity in both state capitals and Washington D.C.

To a significant extent these issues are financial. In its present form public research universities are caught in what we might call a "low level equilibrium trap." Despite all the rhetoric about how crucial higher education is to the future, the actual visions of the political class is narrowly focused on their perception of today's job demands, a perception which is instrumentalist in teaching and indifferent to research. Comparatively, the state of California still funds a large percentage of UC and CSU's core costs. But the state's political leadership seems willing to accept the system that we have now and slowly reduce it over time (or not so slowly given the problems with the pension system and the uncertainties facing the medical centers).

We all know the obvious signs of this situation. Governor Brown is openly hostile to investing in higher education, and despite some increased funding in his budget he has made it clear that he has no intention of overcoming the years of austerity or aiding the University facing in facing its increasing costs. Given his support for Patrick Callan's latest report, Lieutenant Governor Newsom appears to think that the answer is something akin to Western Governors University.  But the clearest indication of the problem, I think, lies in the Legislature's preference for scholarships over University funding.  By agreeing to increase funding for Cal Grants the state is committing to holding down effective price without increasing funding for universities.   This does not necessarily mean that the state, Jerry Brown aside, is unwilling to support higher education.  It does mean that the State is no longer willing to support the research university in its present form. 

There is a second component to this slow death of the public research university.  As science faculty have pointed out repeatedly, they spend an inordinate amount of their time applying for grants and seeking to raise the funds necessary to support their research.  I do not want to revisit the arguments about the cross-subsidies (in whatever direction) that complicate the issue of indirect cost recovery.  My point here is that the Federal support for scientific research is in decline, that this will only increase pressure on science faculty, and that in the long-run without increased state funding for basic research the scientific enterprise as we know it cannot be sustained.  In today's "the only thing that matters is the next six months" political economy, political and business leaders may not worry about the long decline of research infrastructure but anyone concerned with the research university must be.

Now I don't think that the end of the public research university as we have come to know it is entirely a bad thing.  We are all aware of its overly bureaucratic nature, the unchecked and hidden expansion of administration, the growth of an overly intrusive audit culture, the threats to faculty rights and academic freedom threatened by online contracts and administrative policing of employee speech, its rising financial burdens on students as well as the expanding size of classes.  Even at its finest, it was a high modernist institution that tended to extended and unnecessary hierarchies.  The triumph of finance in the inner circles of the university has only made matters worse.


But are there alternatives?

One way to begin a discussion is to look at the extremely different notions of cost that exist between UC and Sacramento. Sacramento, in particular the LAO, is convinced that CSU and especially UC are inefficient in the way they provide education to students.  They make this claim based on a fairly simple calculation--dividing total core revenues by the numbers of enrolled students and claiming that the result is the real expense per student. Because UC has never been willing to actually figure out how much goes into the instructional program per student, UCOP and the campuses have been unable to challenge this idea effectively.  So long as the universities are unable to demonstrate to legislators and the public that the funding is necessary for instruction and that it will go to instruction, we will be unable to regain support for higher education institutions.  

There are, to be sure, two different sources for this gap in perception: the cost of research and the growth of administration.  To some extent they overlap (the increased oversight demanded of research funding, questions of safety, legal issues, the growth of IT) but not entirely.  And one thing that would need to be done would be to finally get transparency on where the costs lie and which ones are actually necessary for core function

But there is an even larger conceptual issue at stake here.  We can, I think, approach it by thinking about the ideas of "faculty centered" vs. "student centered" universities.  It is possible to look back at the universities of the 1950s and 1960s (during what Christopher Jencks and David Reisman called the "academic revolution") as "faculty centered" universities.  In that moment of institutional expansion (and especially expansion in the importance of graduate education) universities were centered around the interests of growing disciplines and departments.  Although some radical activists were able to compel the creation of new fields of study in the humanities and social sciences, for the most part academic fields were driven by faculty and academic fields shaped student experiences.

This university (and I know I am overstating its practical reality a bit) was quickly displaced by what we might think of as "Student-Centered University I."  In part "student-centered university I" was driven by the desire for improved rankings that took off in the 1970s and by the increasingly dominant notion of consumer choice in the 1980s that turned students into customers.  But the effort to attract customers, in particular, led to an increasing displacement of the classroom in student lives and the growing importance of both material surroundings in the university and the separation of student services from the instructional core.  Although "student centered university I" continues in part, it has  been replaced by "student-centered university II." "Student-centered University II" is marked by dramatically increasing economic inequality within the student body and it means the worst of both possible worlds for many: rising costs needed to pay for administrative services and material upkeep, worsening conditions of the classroom, increased student debt, and the managerial turn to massive numbers of poorly paid instructors with little to no job security or long-range benefits that they can count on..

What we need is the end of "Student-Centered University II."  Instead, and with acknowledgments to Paul Goodman, we need a new "community of scholars." Goodman rightly argued that the core of any university or college worth its name lay in scholarship--understood as both the creation and communication of knowledge and insight through the educational process.   To achieve a new "community of scholars" increasing educational intensity would be central.  Now, I am not trying to claim that the only spaces that matter in a university are the classrooms, laboratories and libraries. But it does seem fair to me to rethink the University as a place where these spaces are the core of the University in more than name only and in which the interplay between faculty and students is the central dynamic of the institution.  

This would entail a widespread reorganization of resources--one in which student services would be reintegrated with instruction, staff moved back into departments, and faculty involved in advising. Administrations would need to provide greater transparency of costs, and undergraduate programs would be more fully integrated with research.   

It would also entail a serious engagement with students and parents.  At least one central problem would need to be addressed in terms of the infrastructure of the university: would students and parents accept a materially less rich extra-curricular apparatus in exchange for more resources in instruction and a lower overall price?  If it is possible to offer less expensive higher ed, could it be done outside of the branding race rather than--as people like Gavin Newsom propose--by eliminating the rich intellectual life that could be offered on residential campuses?  And would parents and students buy into that vision?

As even a quick look at the questions that need to be addressed will indicate, such a reorganization of the university cannot be done from the top down.  We already had one version of that in Gould Commission.  If anything could demonstrate that real educational imagination and re-thinking will not come from the top, the Gould Commission, with its rush to accept all the conventional wisdom of educational austerity and its displacement into the fantasy of UConlline, should have done it.  The only way that a new public research university can be created will be from the bottom up, with faculty, students, and parents attempting to create a new public discourse.