Comments on the Spellings Commission Report

The Spellings Commission Report begins with a bit of hubris, evoking two of the most decisive and important moments in the history of higher education in the United States: The First Morrill Act of 1862, which created land-grant institutions such as the University of Tennessee, and the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the G.I Bill, which enabled thousands of returning soldiers to receive an education after serving their country in World War II. What is common to these two important congressional initiatives, and what is absent from the Spellings Report is a commitment on the part of the federal government to confront the problems and to contribute to the reinvigoration of higher education. The Morrill Act granted a minimum of 90,000 acres of public land to states, and the proceeds from the sale of these lands were to be used for the establishment of colleges of agriculture, engineering, and military science. The G.I. Bill, probably the last bill in New Deal legislation, provided, among other benefits, funding for servicemen to enroll in institutions of higher education. These bills put their money where their mouth was; by contrast, the Spellings Report is all mouth with no government commitment. It contains the rhetoric of sweeping change, but doesn’t even give spare change.

The Spellings document is a feel-good report for the bureaucratic mind. It harps on accountability and efficiency as if higher education in the United States is currently run by bumbling and profligate incompetents who know little about how to run a college, and less about their clientele. It’s a sad commentary that many of its authors were themselves leaders in higher education. The facts are, of course, that, in comparison to politics and business (and probably to political committees as well), higher education scores significantly and consistently higher in terms of public trust. It is also a fact that an investment in higher education is one of the best investments a young person can make, if we consider the income differential between the average high-school graduate and the average college graduate. It is difficult to reconcile the hyper-critical and carping description of higher education with the reality of a vibrant college campus, where path-breaking discoveries in all areas of research have become routine, and where students are so well trained that the American campuses remain powerful magnets for students from around the world. If other countries are catching up with the United States, it is because they have started to emulate us, as they have recently throughout Europe, or because other nations, not burdened by the fanatical anti-tax mentality that currently plagues all levels of government here, have invested significant funds in their universities, recognizing, as we tend to forget, that future prosperity depends on current investments.

I have not been asked here today to editorialize on the Spellings Report, but rather to address issues of accountability and efficiency. I am happy to make some brief remarks on these two topics, although I do not believe they should necessarily occupy center stage in discussions of higher education in the United States.

Institutions of higher education, and especially public institutions, are accountable to the state governments that support them, to the citizens of the state whose tax dollars are the source of this funding, and to the students who attend these institutions. It is the obligation of public colleges and universities to use resources wisely and to maintain institutional access for diverse sectors of the population. The Spellings Report recognizes that insufficient high school education is a key problem in securing access, and it correctly notes that universities waste resources in providing remedial instruction. It also states correctly that the portions of the population who are most disadvantaged by this deplorable situation are lower income students and minorities. Most universities that I know are endeavoring to do something about these issues, although, quite obviously, the solutions are beyond the scope of universities and involve K through 12 funding and social issues of enormous scope. The University of Tennessee, for example, with its new scholarship programs, the Tennessee Pledge and the Tennessee Promise, provides low-income students with aid that allows them to attend the Knoxville campus, and targets high schools that have traditionally not sent students to the University. We cannot solve the issues of access with these two programs, but we hope that we can maintain a level of diversity that will reflect the population of the state.

The Spellings Report speaks a great deal about affordability and about the significant increases in college tuition over the past two decades. It notes, but perhaps not with enough force, that state funding has declined during this same period, and it mentions obliquely that higher education now finds itself with many mandates, almost all unfunded, placed on it by state or federal authorities. Most institutions in the public domain have sought to mitigate the difficulties of higher tuition with increased financial aid for the neediest portions of the student population. At Berkeley, where I was a faculty member for over a quarter of a century, almost a third of the students are Pell Grant recipients, and one-third of all tuition dollars were devoted to need-based financial aid. Here in Tennessee we are moving rapidly toward more need-based scholarships, allowing those who can afford an education to support the diversity so essential for campus life. Spellings does not mention, and perhaps should, that the trend in the United States over the past two decades has been away from public support of education as a general good, and more toward a system whereby users are expected to pay more directly for the benefits they will receive. It therefore seems strange to chide higher education for increases in tuition that have resulted from a sea change in public policy and perception.

There is more to say about accountability, but perhaps I should turn briefly to efficiency. I agree with the Spellings Report that historically higher education has not been as efficient as it could be. In various fiscal crises over the past two decades, however, inefficiencies have been eliminated or greatly reduced. There are few campuses, for example, that do not focus on enrollment management, trying to squeeze out as many courses as possible from the very few discretionary dollars around. Indeed, one of the most unfortunate trends in higher education is the tremendous increase in courses taught by temporary and part-time employees, whose services are secured at lower levels of compensation than that of regular, full-time faculty members. The reason for the increases in non-ladder-rank faculty across college campuses in all states has been the focus on making the most of scarce funding. Whether ultimately these efficiencies are beneficial for higher education is a question that is very much open to debate. But there can be no doubt that the existence of a large non-tenured work force doing a great deal of teaching on college campuses is the direct result of the response to the demand for efficiencies.

Of course we could further debate what efficiency and accountability really mean in the context of higher education. These terms, taken from the non-academic realm, do not fit all contexts of university instruction. They are perhaps most easily applied in fields of professional instruction, such as engineering or accounting, but they are of questionable value in assessing a liberal arts education. Is there a way to measure the love of learning, the love of art and literature that we may instill in our students? Are students successful when they reach certain predetermined learning goals, or when they become live-long learners? Many students understand the value of a liberal arts education only years after they have graduated: is there a method to measure the latent knowledge, the joy, the inspiration that lies within these individuals? It is obviously not enough to say that when universities cease to be efficient and accountable, students will stop coming. But is it any coincidence that at Berkeley the number of applications grows annually, and that at Tennessee we now have many more applicants than we’ve had in the past, and that we are now rejecting students we would have welcomed only a few years ago? Spellings would have us believe that we are doing very little that is right, that we are in a crisis mode in the areas of performance and accountability, but the simple fact that students and their parents desire, as never before, higher education and its benefits suggests that we are perhaps not so irresponsible and cavalier as the report would have us believe.

The Spellings Report makes many points that are extremely important: we must be more concerned with access; we have to focus on articulation with K-12 and seek to support education below the college level; we need to continue to perform at high levels (and it would be nice if we could show that we do); we have to address the impending crisis in the STEM fields. But the document as a whole is disappointing. It does not signal a radical change for higher education; it implores us to be more bureaucratic and more like a business. It does not come up with a sweeping plan for higher education in the 21st century, but rather scolds us for not pinching pennies hard enough and urges us to develop questionable yardsticks for performance, accountability, and efficiency. Above all it does not itself pass the “Test of Leadership” that is the official title of the report, but rather defers decisive recommendations and the most salutary prescriptions. The real vision for colleges and universities, the “Charting of the Future of U.S. Higher Education” (the report’s subtitle), lies well beyond its ken.

Presented: 9 Nov. 2006