Meranze of UCLA Calls For A New Social Contract

This is in response to a recent post by a fellow advocate for HE reform, Michael Meranze of UCLA.

Hi Michael,

I wonder, what is the disposition of Conservatives and Liberals toward professions? Equally inimical, I suppose? Trump can treat HE the way he does – as can any government – because the current HE model substantially depends on public money. I gather you would like to increase this dependence, since you would like to see increased public funding for this model.

You say, “A new social contract that preserves access, funds quality, and ensures academic and intellectual autonomy must be developed and fought for.” I have developed such a social contract. And as I can, I have fought for it.

The PSA Tax Relief Master Plan for California HE

The Reclaim California Higher Education (RCHE) Master Plan maintains that an additional $48 in annual taxes per median household would be enough to fix the system. The organization claims that this additional tax revenue would make all college and university education tuition-free and restore state funding to the 2001 level of 1.17% of AGI.

For several reasons, I think this “$48 fix” is broken. As an alternative, I will present the financials for what might be called, the PSA HE Tax Relief Master Plan.

My model – the Professional Society of Academics (PSA) – does not require additional tax money, but rather far less public money than is currently spent on HE. Of course, even if PSA were implemented, the government would not reduce taxes or give out refund checks; but nor would they be legislating new taxes, as RCHE recommends. And anyhow, one of the benefits of PSA is that the tax money it saves and earns the state can be used to improve the finance of other valued social goods such as healthcare or primary/secondary education.

But just for amusement let’s look at what that tax relief might look like under the PSA Master Plan. First, I’ll show what it costs to establish and operate a baseline academic practice under my model. Then, on a national scale I’ll look at existing sources of funding to see what can be accomplished with far less money, not more. Finally, I’ll apply the PSA finances to the California circumstance and estimate the scale of tax relief.

The $48 Fix Is Broken

$48 per median household is what Reclaim California Higher Education (RCHE) estimates is needed to restore postsecondary education in the state. They claim the $9.43 billion in new taxes would not only restore state spending on HE to the 1.17% of AGI it enjoyed in 2001, but also provide tuition-free HE to all qualified in-state students. Importantly, the only new money in the Reclaim Master Plan (RMP) is $4.71 billion that RCHE calculates would restore funding to comparable 2001 levels, since even without their plan, by state or by student, $4.72 billion in tuition revenue will find its way to institutional coffers in 2016-17.

I like the RCHE approach to this problem, using straightforward, basic funding calculations, rather than administrative or bureaucratic redesigns. Weissmann, from The Atlantic, has made similar calculations in support of nationwide tuition-free HE. His estimate is an additional $62.6 billion in public funding. And across the country there are other initiatives that promise 2-years of tuition-free college, which also require either additional funds or funds diverted from other social responsibilities.

I have responded to one of these proposals in detail (F2CO, from Sara Goldrick-Rab) and all of them in general. I will now do the same with the RCHE proposal, raising concerns and drawing comparisons with PSA.

Paying the Price with Vulnerable Funds

Sara Goldrick-Rab's book, Paying the Price, underscores how the crisis in HE severely impacts the personal and academic lives of students. Her student-centered research provides perspective that helps shape her reform recommendations. This approach to HE reform is not a new tactic.

The data-driven personalization offered by such advocacy research is also popular with those that hope to reform HE through the faculty narrative, who, like students, both have a stake in HE and suffer the current crisis. In concert with faculty-centered researchers, Goldrick-Rab calls for more money to fund the reforms she believes will improve the current HE model.

In the introduction to, Paying the Price, she says, “The price of college must be lowered much further than the current system allows. Money must be brought to the table - there is no way around it.”

This current system is institution-centered, expensive, underfunded, without sufficient transparent information and complex in terms of its finance and student aid apparatus - among other serious deficits.

But whether the research is student or faculty oriented, if advocates aim to improve the lot of these individuals, they must be more creative in their solutions. They must do more than devise system tweaks and demand additional or reallocated funding. There is a serious problem with such an approach, it suffers from what might be called the Vulnerable Funding Problem.

Irony in the Alt-ac Movement

I am a post-ac, but not by choice. I have a PhD in philosophy and for a decade worked as an adjunct. Affairs of the heart seduced me from my university hometown where I was fortunate enough to enjoy seniority on a couple of part time hiring lists, affording me a modest living. But my romantic love meant the forfeiture of my academic love. And even if I was to return home I would no longer enjoy seniority, without which I could not make even a modest living. I was very good at my job and would love to be doing it still.

This, or some more or less tragic version of it, is a common story in the academe.

As such, I understand those who seek a PhD with the intention to pursue a career other than as a traditional academic.  If only a small fraction of those with the degree land full time faculty positions, while the remainder are left scrounging for part time work, then a reasonable response is to generate alternative career paths for the degree.  Less dramatically, some PhD candidates simply discover that the traditional work of an academic or the environment in which it is done does not suit their tastes.

In either case it makes sense that institutions develop programs that facilitate the pursuit of alternative, non-traditional career paths. In this way the degree is not retired and graduates enjoy productive, fulfilling work lives - and love lives.

There is, however, a problem with the alt-ac response. Ironically, the response utterly depends upon the traditional academic career it is meant to avoid and so ultimately reintroduces the very employment perils of the PhD it is meant to avoid.

Fantasy From Fact: All Higher Education Can Be Tuition-Free

I have read the submissions published by Evolllution on the two-year tuition-free initiatives that are the rage these days in higher education:

J Noah Brown, President and CEO, Association of Community College Trustees and a member of Obama's College Promise Advisory Board, considers them a mend for the American economy and a long overdue fulfillment of a promise made by the Truman Commission. Barmak Nassirian, Director of Federal Relations and Policy Analysis, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, considers them "frivolous escapist fantasies." Claude Pressnell, President, Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities, worries about "under-matching" and the undervaluing of education in favour of training. Others such as Shannon McCarty, Dean of Instruction and Academic Affairs, Rio Salado Community College, and Lenore Rodicio, Provost, Miami-Dade College, see opportunity to introduce more technology and more government funding to accommodate the intended increase in student demand.

But whether fantasy or fact no one is aiming for tuition-free higher education at all levels. No one is aiming to realize the right to free higher education, as ratified by America in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  And though Nassirian calls for it, not even he is offering "discussion on a radical overhaul of the American higher education financing."

Well, no one it seems except me. And the discussion I offer is not predicated on the further introduction of technology, government funding or philanthropy.  In fact, it is predicated on their reduction.

Tuition-free, high-quality, universally accessible, face-to-face higher education can be achieved if we change the relationship between institutions and individuals. As a model, Professional Society of Academics (PSA) does just that.