The assault on The Academy continues – this time in an op-ed commentary by Dr. Robert Zemsky, another person generally regarded as a nut case by The Academy, in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  What is the latest barbarian at The Academy’s gates saying?

The history of American higher education is well supplied with reform movements that have gone nowhere.  Despite fervent calls for change in a number of areas, most often issued by a commission with an impressive masthead, nothing much happens – or worse, the only visible result is hurt feelings and a hunkering down by the college leaders on whom change depends.

Of all the groups I have dealt with over the years, higher education is the most resistant to change, which may seem counter-intuitive given that The Academy is supposed to be all about thinking the great thoughts.  But it is about precisely that – thinking, not changing.

Like outside reformers, state agencies cannot prescribe change (unless they are prepared for a long, exhausting battle) but must create the conditions that make change possible… The nature of the academy sucks the air out of piecemeal reforms.

More than anyone in West Virginia higher education over the last few years, I was involved in those lll-ooo-nnn-ggg, exhausting battles with the Death Eaters and have two observations.  First, don’t focus primarily on trying to build consensus from within The Academy.  You’ll accomplish more by hitting your head against a wall repeatedly.  Second, you really can create the conditions that make change possible – just look at how West Virginia’s community college system has been transformed over the last 5 years (a subject for some future blog posts, I suspect).

… and most important …

The problem, as the economist Richard Vedder and others have noted, is that the classic rules of supply and demand apply at best imperfectly to higher education. In a market so awash with federal money—for research support, for grants and loans to students and parents—competitive pressures aren’t sufficient to change the system.

That’s the real issue: there is little change – and tuition costs are going through the roof – because The Academy is very well insulated from the effects of the market.  In my experience, the two higher education groups most receptive to change – academic research and community colleges - actually prove the rule.  Why?  They are expected to be entrepreneurial and address real-world concerns.  If they do not, their “business” models do not work very well.  Over time, we will follow the money … and thus gain a better understanding of higher education’s strengths and weaknesses.

Last week Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, wrote a thought-provoking commentary aptly titled “The Potty Trained Trustee” in Inside Higher Ed. Like Ms. Neal’s organization, her commentary is sufficiently outside the mainstream of “HigherEdThink” that I’m sure Ms. Neal will be dismissed as a crackpot by “The Academy.”  But I am convinced that several of her main points are correct and deserving of some attention.

• First, Ms. Neal castigates the Association of Governing Board’s (AGB’s) “Survey of Higher Education Governance.” I must admit that I had been puzzled when I first saw a list of AGB’s supposed five major higher education issues, according to board trustees, several weeks ago.  Not only was the football team’s record (or even athletics more generally) missing from the top of the list; it was not even ON the list.  (Seriously, I wouldn’t expect athletics to be at the top of the list, but I would expect it to be on the list.)   It turns out that, in an effort to figure out what trustees think is important, AGB surveyed, not trustees, but presidents and other administrators.
• Ms. Neal also criticizes HigherEdThink on the proper role of boards:  “According to this view, higher ed administrations are the governance structure. Trustees for the most part should keep to their place and do as they are told by administrators. One might call it the potty-trained trustee….” She goes on to illustrate how pervasive the conventional wisdom is by pointing to a question on the survey that assumes that presidents select their own board members (their bosses!!!), which they frequently do.  She also – very rightly – points out that private sector boards have been headed diametrically in the opposite direction over the last few years thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, Enron, etc. and wonders why higher education has not been paying any attention.
• Third, Ms. Neal identifies the first of two issues concerning which board members should be paying particular attention:  Current levels of higher education expenditure are unsustainable.  Higher education costs are increasing at a faster clip than health care costs and a much faster clip than either personal income or consumer prices.  Ms. Neal knows this trend cannot continue.  She also knows that too many administrators’ heads are buried in the sand when it comes to meaningful cost controls.  She thinks boards made up of people who have had to operate within a profit-and-loss statement’s bottom line could provide meaningful leadership on this front.
• Fourth, Ms. Neal identifies a role for board members in the academic arena.  She thinks board members need to push The Academy to evaluate learning meaningfully and address issues like grade inflation.  As Ms. Neal is well aware, the pressure to evaluate learning has come almost exclusively from outside The Academy in recent years, and no one can seem to tell you much about whether a student learned anything while attending college.

Over the next several weeks and months, I will discuss at greater length some of the main points that Ms. Neal raises.  All are very relevant to West Virginia’s higher education system and some are key to escaping from the received wisdom of “HigherEdThink.”

PS: My favorite statistic from the AGB report: For 64% of private institution boards, the full board is told the president’s compensation … which logically means that in 36% of cases, the full board is not told and does not know the president’s compensation.  How on earth could you claim to be fulfilling your fiduciary duty to the institution if you aren’t told the president’s salary?  It makes you wonder what else those trustees are not told – a lot, I suspect.