Money-Sucking Flagship Universities

I went to an event at the Rayburn House Office Building yesterday morning which was keyed to the release of a new book from the College Board, titled College Success: What It Means and How to Make It Happen. It was well above average as such events go and I'm looking forward to reading the book, which was edited by two economists: Morton Schapiro, president of Williams College, and Michael McPherson, former president of Macalester College and current president of the Spencer Foundation.

At one point in the discussion, (which also featured the president of Miami-Dade College, a gargantuan (i.e. 100,000 + students) community college in Florida, as well as the dean of student affairs at the University of Maryland) President Schapiro noted some of the findings from the book's first chapter, which found that a disturbing number of reasonably well-prepared graduates of Chicago Public Schools attend non-selective public universities like Chicago State University, where their odds of graduating on time are about the same as being hit by a bus on the way to Grant Park. (I exaggerate only slightly; the six-year graduation rate at Chicago State is less than 20 percent.)

But Schapiro was quick to follow this by saying that (A) this is probably because Chicago State doesn't have very much money, and (B) while lack of resources at big urban campuses is ususally in part of a function of more prestigious flagship campuses going to the legislature and grabbing all of the money for themeselves, he would not (nodding to the University of Maryland person on the panel) argue against that. So when the event turned to Q&A, I stood up and and asked, in so many words, "Why not argue against that? Resources are limited and graduation rates at CSU and its ilk are terrible; why not spread the wealth more evenly?"

Normally people in higher education will answer this question with some vague allusion to the need for a better world where there's more than enough money for everybody and we all hold hands in peace and harmony. But Schapiro is an economist, and one of the virtues of economists is that they're trained to think about things from the perspective of limited resources and unavoidable choices. So he did what most people won't do, which is actually answer the question honestly. He said, (I'm paraphrasing, here and below) "I take your point, it's a tough question, but I think about how the state of Wisconsin has let the flagship UW-Madison campus decline relative to Michigan-Ann Arbor over the last couple of decades in favor of its regional campuses, and I can't honestly say I think that was the right choice."

Similarly, McPherson spoke about how important it was that states like Michigan have managed to maintain an elite world-class research university, how it was just intrinsically important that such institutions be supported, beyond even the many research benefits they provide, and that they're a tremendous source of pride, both within the state and nationwide.

What I found most striking was that here you have two extremely knowledgeable, smart, and accomplished researchers, people of good faith who have experienced higher education from the president's perch and studied it extensively from an empirical perspective, and yet their opinion on this issue seemed significantly informed by a gut feeling that the traditional elite research university should take precedence, come what may. There was nothing utilitarian about it, no calculus of best return on public investment or cost / benefit in terms of student outcomes, graduation rates, earnings, or what have you at different campuses. Instead it was: These are the flagship universities!

All of which is to say that there's a tremendously powerful underlying psychic investment within higher education in the traditional status hierarchy, a sense that the comprehensive tier-one research university represents a kind of pinnacle of thought, virtue, even civilization. And I understand why. But at some point we're going to have to fully come to grips with the fact that the large majority of citizens and workers in this country need a high-quality postsecondary education of some kind, most of them will never get anywhere near a flagship research university, and if we continue to seriously short-change their education, the consequences will often be (e.g. Chicago State) very dire.