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Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010

Keith Law: The fight for public higher education

Recent articles in the Sun-Star attest to troubling times for public higher education due to the state's budget problems.

Our troubles were summed up in an alarming commentary, "Save the community colleges" by Merced College President Benjamin Duran.

Another commentary, "Provocative ideas for higher education" by California State University, Stanislaus President Hamid Shirvani proposes delivering higher education with fewer resources. His article was followed by a vote of no-confidence by a majority of the faculty at that university.

There was a notable contrast in the views of these two administrators, as Duran pointed out that California's system of higher education is second to none, and he appealed for sustained funding. Shirvani, on the other hand, blamed educators for creating inflexible organizations that he equated to troubled automobile manufacturers.

Which is it?

The changes to public education that are currently being proposed by many politicians and administrators include increasing class sizes, cutting student programs and using cost-cutting delivery systems like interim courses and all-online (distance) education.

Most of these measures are as old as the Proposition 13 tax cuts, which caused California's slide from one of the top to one of the bottom 10 states in the nation in per-student funding for public education.

There can be no doubt that these measures will further erode public education, and thereby threaten our economic and political well-being.

A friend of mine taught at Head-Royce, a preparatory school in Oakland, where tuition is more than $20,000, and 100 percent of the graduating class of 2009 enrolled in a college or university. One of the keys to success that Head-Royce advertises is its 9 to 1 student-to-faculty ratio.

Contrast Head-Royce with Merced's K-12 public school system, where 25 percent of our students drop out and only 25 percent of those who graduate qualify for college. As a result, 90 percent of the students who enter Merced College must take remedial (nontransferable) courses, and only 500 to 700 awards are granted annually out of nearly 10,000 students.

As I regularly point out to students, one main difference between Head-Royce students and them has less to do with IQ than it has to do with the difference in the resources that where provided to prepare them for success.

The fact that Merced College students are playing catch-up with their peers explains why we should resist adopting the cost-cutting measures. The fact that our students were shortchanged in their preparatory years means that they require more rather than less instructional attention.

Before we raise tuition and cut costs we should address two problems that are suspiciously left out of the conversation concerning the economics of public education:

The first is the costs of increased bureaucracy in school administrations.

The second is the fact that, in spite of all appearances, California is not poor; we just have yet to demand the proper funding of public education.

In an editorial in Forbes Magazine ("Bureaucrat U;" July 13, 2009) Daniel Bennett decried a national increase in high-paying college administrative positions at a rate that has outpaced the growth in expenditure for instruction.

He notes that between 1997 and 2007 administrative and support staff at colleges has expanded by 4.7 percent a year, which is double the rate of enrollment growth.

At Merced College we have also witnessed a massive increase in the number of high-paid administrators, while we have suffered cuts in classroom instructors and student support systems like library hours and tutorial services.

Second, it is assumed that the plight of California's education system is tied to the national recession.

However, though the economy has slowed and tax revenues are down, as of 2008, California's $1.8 trillion GDP was the largest in the country. If California was a stand-alone nation we would be among the wealthiest 10 in the world.

The problem is not that California is poor, it is that the bulk of our wealth goes to the wealthiest families, those who can afford to send their children to schools like Head-Royce.

In Shirvani's article he expressed a desire to use our current "harsh reality" to end our sense of entitlement to higher education. This view breaks with the enlightenment tradition that influenced those of our founders, like Thomas Jefferson, who argued that access to education is essential for genuine democratic governance.

There is a way for Californians to fully fund a quality public education system through college; the bigger concern is whether we have the will that our founders possessed to fight for that right.

Keith A. Law is professor of philosophy and president of the Merced College Faculty Association.