Guest Post: Why "New Badger Partnership" Means Loss of Independence for UW-Madison

The following is a guest posting from Harry Peterson, a UW-Madison administrator from 1978-1990, Chief of Staff to Chancellor Donna Shalala from 1988-1990. Harry is also President Emeritus, Western State College of Colorado, Gunnison, Colorado

The demand for Professor Bill Cronon’s emails by the Wisconsin Republican Party prompted the UW System Board of Regents to review its support for academic freedom throughout its history. At its April board meeting the Regents again was emphatic in its interest in continuing that tradition. This received virtually no notice in the media because it was not news. The Board of Regents has been supporting academic freedom throughout its history. It is one of its most important legacies. The board has done such a good job it is taken for granted.

We know in our personal lives and in public policy that decisions can have unintended and unanticipated consequences, sometimes with tragic results. Goals that are pursued sometimes have the opposite result. The proposal by Chancellor Martin and Governor Walker to create an independent authority for the UW-Madison, in the name of autonomy, will result in outcomes that are the opposite of the independence the Chancellor seeks.

There are several reasons why our autonomy at the UW-Madison will be decreased. This post addresses one of them.

On May 1 the terms of two members of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will expire and Governor Walker will nominate two people to serve seven year terms on the Board. (Also, two student Regents who will serve shorter terms.) Those individuals will appear before the Senate Education Committee. It will be an opportunity for Senators to ask these nominees about their understanding of higher education and support for academic freedom and tenure, research on climate change and evolution. They can also be asked about whether they support stem cell research, and if they believe that the UW Medical School should continue to train its students in abortion procedures. They will surely be asked their position on political parties soliciting emails from faculty members.

The Senate Education Committee will then make a recommendation to the full Senate about whether to confirm these individuals to serve as members of the Board of Regents.

These two new Regents will join a seasoned Board of Regents who have learned, through years of service, about the complexities of higher education and the traditions of public higher education in Wisconsin.

After July 1, if the Biddy Martin/Scott Walker proposal for the UW-Madison to leave the UW System becomes law, Governor Walker will appoint 11 members of the newly created board of trustees. This appointments will be made by the Governor knowing they will not be subject to a public hearing and subjected to the questions the Board of Regents members might have been asked. These individuals will immediately constitute a majority of the board.

The Scott Walker board will likely support significant tuition increases, consistent with the conservative philosophy of smaller government, with an emphasis on individual responsibility to pay for benefits they receive. If the next governor is a Democrat the new governor will have a majority in his or her first term. That liberal board will undoubtedly focus on access to higher education, and will very likely oppose significant tuition increases. Long terms of service are designed to prevent this kind of abrupt policy reversal. That is why the UW System Board of Regents have seven year terms. Even if the number of years per term is increased, the current language reflects an alarming lack of understanding of public higher education by the people who proposed it.

The Scott Walker board members will not become part of a governing body that has a tradition of almost 40 years of supporting academic freedom. They will establish their own traditions and will do so in a climate of unprecedented mistrust and partisanship. The UW-Madison, in its quest for greater autonomy, will have left behind a board which has defended academic freedom for almost 40 years.

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited our country in the 1830s he marveled at the democratic traditions that had already been established here. He called them “habits of the heart.” Academic freedom is a “habit of the heart” for the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. They have done it so well we take it for granted. The new board will inherit the language from Chapter 36 of the Wisconsin Statutes, but none of the tradition of the people who served before them.

If the Biddy Martin/Scott Walker proposal becomes law, the UW-Madison will have become “independent” from the other UW System universities, its legislative allies, and will have also gained “independence” from a strong and supportive Board of Regents.

It will acquire a different kind of dependence. Because of the appointment of majority of board members by Scott Walker, without Senate review and confirmation, it will have become much closer to and dependent upon the current and future Governors.

Someone's Not Listening...

I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old so I'm used to people who don't listen. I repeat myself, say it more firmly, and find new ways to express the same message.

So let's try this one more time--

Governor Walker and the Legislature:
The State of Wisconsin is doing a very poor job of securing the future of its citizens by investing so little in public education at all levels, including higher education. However, if it has such poor judgment so as to slash education at this critical time, it is in the best interest of the state to give the institutions some additional flexibilities as outlined in the Wisconsin Idea Partnership (WIP). It is, however, not in the state's best interests to allow UW-Madison to be swept from the UW System and placed under the direction of its own Board of Trustees.

Chancellor Martin:
First, what you have proposed in your new "compromise plan" is a scary version of the WIP. Why scary? Because now it's just even more painfully clear: You seek to privatize UW-Madison, period. Why else would you seek to ensure it keeps all of its own revenue and is governed by a new board that is led by Scott Walker and his appointees as of July 1? Under the WIP you could get a nice set of flexibilities minus those that directly threaten Madison's future as an accessible public institution: tuition-setting authority, full financial management, and the Board of Regents. In order to control tuition, keep all the cash, and install people appointed by Scott Walker, you are willing to divorce System. That's it, I'm done wondering whether this could be about money. This isn't about money nearly as much as it's about power.

Second, your campus community has made it abundantly clear that we want to know what's going on. Sending a letter proposing a compromise to other chancellors and the Legislature without bringing it to us first is not ok. Finding out in the newspaper--only after a reporter has to do some sleuthing --- NOT OK.

**********

Compromise is a good thing. The Board of Regents has shown a remarkable ability to compromise by proffering the Wisconsin Idea Partnership to everyone, including Madison, while not simultaneously demanding Biddy Martin's resignation. Can such a partnership be implemented with her present? I guess that depends on whether she starts following her own request for input and starts listening.


UPDATE: Biddy Martin tweeted this at me: "Not meant to be a compromise; a third option that adds, not subtracts."

Does anyone see any value-added in this? I sure don't.

Let's Develop Solutions

Tired of the rhetoric? Want to take a stab at cutting costs in Wisconsin public higher education yourself-- or even try increasing productivity?

The Lumina Foundation has supported the development of an amazing interactive tool that helps you do just that.

Here's one result I generated:

Let's say we need to close the 2025 budget gap for Wisconsin public research universities to maintain current spending per FTE student. We can do that by increasing student/faculty ratio from 13:1 to 17:1. Period. Gap closed. No increases in tuition or state & local revenues necessary. And research suggests that such an increase will come at no significant cost to degree completion rates. If you want to suggest it will hurt instructional quality, you'll need to provide hard causal evidence to support that case-- I'd love to see it--email it to me!

Better yet, let's first increase faculty salaries per FTE to the 75th percentile (which means an increase of about $1,000 from a starting point of about $6,300) and do the same for student support services too. Let's further commit to no tuition increases, and assume no increase in state or local revenues either. We can do ALL that and still have no budget gap if we increase student/faculty ratio from 13:1 to 19:1.

What is required to increase student/faculty ratio? Obviously we either enroll more students, retain more students, or reduce the size of the faculty. Here are the two main challenges:

(1) There is a widely held belief that student/faculty ratio is THE measure of quality in higher education, despite an overwhelming dearth of evidence to support that belief. It's no coincidence that rankings systems rely so heavily on that measure--and that all this talk of being competitive seems to set aside any possible changes to the student/faculty ratio. In fact, since the ratio is actually interpreted to mean "commitment to teaching" that effectively precludes any real re-consideration, lest we come across as not committed to education! But come on-- what evidence is there that the number of faculty allocated to students is the best indicator of commitment? How about the number of highly-trained faculty? The amount of professional development offered? The valuation of teaching in tenure decisions? This reeks of a system that responds to the needs of faculty more than students (for more, see my next point). There are alternative ways to measure quality.

(2) Faculty. Faculty at research universities tend to strive for as little student interaction as possible. Yep, I said it. There are some exceptions, but generally we spend our time vying for smaller classes and less advising. Could we learn to teach bigger classes and do it well? Could we be required to do so at least semi-regularly? Could the advising load for undergrads be spread across a wider range of faculty (including those in departments that don't teach undergrads)? Sure. But you'll face resistance.

So let's stop pretending that there's only one way to skin this cat. We don't have to break from UW System, hike tuition, and/or become semi-private in order to solve our fiscal crisis. We have to have tough conversations about the best ways to deliver higher education in the 21st Century. Sure, that's a tall order-- but it's one that the smart communities of Wisconsin's public universities can no doubt handle.

Students Keep Hope Alive

When I was in high school, I dreamed of going to UC-Berkeley. The stories of protests against social injustices conveyed by my AP History teacher got me excited. I was determined to attend a college where students fought against elitism and embraced diversity. The computerized college match programs I tried out told me that only CUNY would fit my bill (every other school was too white). And my mom told me that I was about 30 years too late for the Berkeley of my imagination.

I ended up (sadly) at William and Mary, then George Washington University, and finally at University of Pennsylvania--entirely out of financial constraints (VA was in-state, GW was tuition-free thanks to Mom's job, and Penn offered me a full ride for grad school). In all cases I was surrounded by smart but highly privileged kids who had little sense that many had been born on 3rd base.

My heart is therefore warmed by the sudden realization, brought on by recent events, that many of the undergraduates at UW-Madison and around Wisconsin are similarly committed to doing what's necessary to make this a fairer, more just world. Despite rampant rhetoric from Richard Vedder and others who claim that they are lazy, adrift, partying fools, in fact some (many?) of the college students I've been observing lately seem downright committed. It's fantastic.

Tonight we get this news from Minnesota: “Students and community supporters...are outraged over soaring tuition, budget cuts, skyrocketing administrative salaries, mounting student debt, attacks on cultural diversity groups on campus, and blatant disregard for workers’ rights across the nation. In light of recent student and worker uprisings around the world, students in the Twin Cities are no longer willing to bear the burdens of the economic crisis while the rich only get richer. Inspired by the actions of students at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Madison, and other campuses around the state, U of M students are standing up against injustices in their own state and their own university.”

The students are occupying the Social Sciences Tower of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, home to that university's sociology department.

What's next? Perhaps Bascom. Perhaps the Sewell Social Science Building -- named for William Sewell, the late sociologist who named his presidential address to the American Sociological Association "Inequality of Opportunity for Higher Education." I dare say, Bill might be proud of student efforts to prevent Wisconsin's flagship university from becoming a gated community. After all, back in 1971 he wrote of his great concerns about the future of equality of opportunity in higher education, as universities found themselves in severe financial trouble, moving to increase tuition without sufficient compensation in financial aid. "Equality of educational opportunity," Sewell wrote, "is an essential prerequisite for a well-functioning democratic society."

On Wisconsin!


Photo: Jeff Miller, UW-Madison Communications

The Academic Inquisition

The witch hunt is on. Last night, my colleague William Cronon -- a highly respected, tenured professor of history -- revealed that the Wisconsin Republican Party made an open records request for his university email following the publication of his first-ever blog post. What was in that post? A thoughtful set of questions about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The investigation of Bill Cronon scares the crap out of me, quite frankly. And obviously, that's the intent.

We are told as university faculty that we are state employees and our writing is subject to these requests, but many of us operate (have operated) under the impression we are living in a rational, civil society that understands the importance of academic freedom. No longer.

I'm betting that a request is coming my way soon. I lack Cronon's long track record in academia, I lack his tenured status, I lack his measured way of saying things, I lack his status as a white male, I lack his apparent consummate ability to separate professional vs. personal life.

And, unfortunately, I lack the ability to say I've never blogged on ALEC. Well, actually, I didn't, but my husband did. On our blog-- which we, in the public impression, write together.

So, what can I say? I sit and wait.

This is horrible, terrible, awful time to be an untenured professor in public higher education. Am I a witch?

Increasing % Pell-- What Does it Tell Us?

Over the last several years, UW-Madison has increased its tuition at a higher rate than its System peers, thanks to the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates. That shift has not been accompanied by a decline in the percent of students receiving Pell Grants--in fact there's been a 5.5 percent increase in % Pell since 2000. Some are saying that this means that low-income students have been "held harmless" from the rising tuition, and that further increases would likely not lead to diminished economic diversity on campus. Furthermore, we are told, we can look to the outreach campaigns of institutions like UVA and UNC-Chapel Hill (home to Access UVA and the Carolina Covenant respectively) for models of anti-"sticker shock" programs that "work."

These claims are terrific examples of why it's a bad idea to make causal claims based on correlational data. If you want to make those statements, you can look to those examples and find support for your agenda. But you shouldn't.

In fact, the increase in the percent Pell at UW-Madison over the last few years is consistent with increases in % Pell at many colleges and universities nationwide over that time period. The cause lies not in successful outreach campaigns, or the failure of tuition increases to inhibit student behavior, but mainly in the recession. The recession had two relevant effects: First, many people were laid off-- and thus saw a temporary loss of income. Thus, students from families that in 2007 were not Pell eligible found themselves eligible for the Pell in 2008. The Pell is based on current and not long-term disadvantage. So an increase in % Pell doesn't mean you coaxed "new" low-income students into attending Madison or did a better job retaining those you already enrolled, but rather that a greater proportion of those who were already UW-bound (or already enrolled) now found themselves eligible for the additional help. Second, the Pell reduced the number of jobs available to students not enrolled in college--thus lowering the opportunity costs associated with college (e.g. foregone earnings). This could have independently increased both enrollment and persistence.

Furthermore, during the same time period, as part of the legislation that increased the maximum Pell the federal government also increased the family income (AGI) a student could have and qualify for the Pell-- from $20,000 to $30,000. Thus, a whole bunch more people became Pell-eligible during the period in which the MIU was implemented. And, the maximum Pell was increased-- possibly helping to offset the increase in tuition.

Thus, it should abundantly clear that it would be incorrect to state that the increasing % Pell at UW-Madison over the last several years is evidence that tuition increases do not inhibit enrollment of low-income students and/or that additional investments in need-based financial aid hold students harmless.

Same goes for the "success" of programs like the Carolina Covenant. Don't get me wrong-- the program seems great, and feels great, and the leadership is great. And for sure, the program's data looks nice-- they've seen an uptick in the representation of Pell recipients on campus and increased retention over time. As an evaluation they show better outcomes than prior cohorts of students. But as compelling as those numbers seem to be, they cannot be interpreted as evidence that these changes are attributable to the program itself-- and that's where the burden of proof lies. Indiana saw increases in college enrollment among the children of low-income families when its 21st Century Scholars Program was implemented, but reforms to the k-12 system were made at the same time, and the economy was booming. The program "effects" may have been little more than happy coincidence. We cannot rely on the potential for such happy coincidences when crafting new policies and making decisions about affordability.

It's time to get honest about what data can and cannot tell us. I've heard too many claims around here that it can tell us whatever we want. While that's undoubtedly partially true under the best of circumstances, it is especially true when we take no steps to collect data systematically and use sophisticated tools when analyzing it. If we were really committed to holding students harmless from tuition increases, we'd have commissioned an external evaluation (external= not done by institutional researchers) and made the data available for analysis. There are plenty of talented folks on campus who know how to do this work-- why not ask them to take a look at what happened under MIU?

Equity and Diversity Implications of the NBP

Interested in how the New Badger Partnership could affect the composition and quality of the student body? Of faculty?

Please take a look at this memo I drafted for several campus committees, posted by Sifting and Winnowing.

More Hard Conversations We Need to Have

As we think about ways to cope with proposed cuts to the UW System budget, here are a few more facts to ponder:

1. Costs-per-student are remarkably unequal throughout Wisconsin public higher education.

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, "The cost per student calculation is based on standard accounting procedures that identify direct and indirect student-related costs funded by GPR and student fees. The calculation includes the direct costs of instruction, student services, and academic support. Other activity costs, such as physical plant, institutional support, and fringe benefits, are included in the cost per student calculation with the costs allocated based on the teaching mission's share of those costs. In those instances where a faculty or staff member performs research as part of his or her educational responsibilities, only those costs directly related to instruction are included in the cost pool for setting tuition."

The disparities by universities are nothing short of enormous: "Systemwide, the average instructional cost per undergraduate student is $9,910. The cost of educating an undergraduate student ranges from $8,289 at La Crosse and Whitewater to $12,747 at Madison, a difference of more than 50%." Overall, there is a variance of 42% in instructional costs across campuses!

Moreover, there are enormous disparities in the proportion of their instructional costs students and their families are being asked to cover: "Students at the campuses where instructional costs are the lowest, such as Whitewater, La Crosse, and Oshkosh, are paying a greater share of their educational costs than students at campuses with the highest instructional costs, including Superior and Parkside. For example, while upper level (Junior/Senior) students at Parkside paid 36% of the cost of their education, lower level (Freshmen/Sophomore) students at La Crosse paid 90%."

Here is the real kicker: "Despite paying a higher amount of tuition, students at UW-Madison pay a lower percentage of their instructional costs than the average for students at the comprehensive campuses. By contrast, students at Milwaukee pay a greater share of their instructional costs than students at the comprehensive campuses. This is due to both lower than average instructional costs and the tuition premium students pay for attending a doctoral institution."

Students at UW-Madison are from wealthier families compared to students at the other institutions, and enter with higher test scores-- so why is it that they cost more to educate and chip in a smaller share of those costs????

2. We have two different types of two year colleges-- the UW Colleges (branch campuses of the 4-year universities) and the Wisconsin Technical College System. In some parts of the state, a UW College and a technical college exist within a mile of one another! Many students have no idea what the difference is between these schools. The UW College students benefit from established articulation agreements within the UW System, while the technical colleges are constrained to only having transfer as an explicit mission at a very few campuses. Why is this? Who benefits?

The analysis by the LFB reveals that the UW Colleges spend more per student than most of the universities spend on their freshman and sophomores. Those freshman and sophomores also contribute a lower percentage of their instructional costs. Why is this? Are the retention rates higher at UW Colleges than at universities? In other words, is this higher spending cost-effective?

This are tough questions and these difficult times demand answers. In a recent paper Doug Harris and I argued for a new approach to considering how scarce resources in higher education should be spent. The data needed to estimate the effects of different strategies (including number of campuses, spending, program coordination etc) should be made available so that the public and the administrations can begin to consider costs relative to effects.

Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning

4.6 million students in the United States (1 out of every 4) took a college-level online course at the start of the 2008/9 academic year. That figure rose to 5.6 million students in 2009/10, according to the eighth annual Sloan Survey of Online Learning, a report which uses data from more than 2,500 colleges and universities in the United States.

The importance of face-to-face lectures for students’ academic achievement has been demonstrated in previous economics studies such as Schmidt (1983); Romer (1993); Durden and Ellis (1995); Dolton, Marcenaro and Navarro (2003); Martins and Walker (2006) and Cohn and Johnson (2006). Therefore, it should be a priority to establish how online lectures compare; as many students are already learning online to some extent (as indicated by the Sloan Survey). A recent NBER paper by Figlio, Rush and Lin (2010) investigates the issue; details below.

Is it Live or is it Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning
David Figlio (figlio@northwestern.edu), Mark Rush and Lu Yin
No 16089, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. Counter to the conclusions drawn by a recent U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of non-experimental analyses of internet instruction in higher education, we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

JEL-codes: I20 I23
Date: 2010-06

I wrote this before I heard about the WIP

From yesterday's EPS conference... my remarks. I hope they prove useful in some way.

Saving Public Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: The Case for Pragmatic Idealism

By now we are all well aware—the United States is “losing the future” by falling in international rankings of the stock of college educated labor. Here at home, we are told that “for the good of the state we cannot afford to have the quality of UW-Madison … erode because we have our hands tied behind us in a range of ways that make us uncompetitive with other public and private universities around the world."

The need to compete – with other colleges and universities across the world, across the country, and across our state – is the dominant and ever-present message stalking public higher education today. It drives our administrators to seek creative financing strategies and new governance structures, pushes our faculty to take on extensive grant-writing efforts and build in time-consuming travel, and makes students and families reach ever-deeper into their savings and lifetime earnings to try and buy the best.

The implications for the educational enterprise that we call higher education are devastating. Rather than working together towards common goals—for example of producing a thoughtful, engaged group of citizens, land-grant institutions have thrown aside their core missions and silently declared war on one another. It has become a “survival of the fittest” where the terms of success are dictated by how many of the best-prepared and most able-to-pay students you can admit. The spirit of education has been lost.

Education requires cooperation—cooperation between teachers, administrators, students, and parents. In higher education, where movement among colleges is rampant—nearly half of all undergraduates today attend more than one college—cooperation and coordination is paramount. But the fight for prestige, for resources, and for status condemns cooperation to sound almost quaint. Instead of working together to gain a bigger loaf for public higher education, we are scheming over how to squirrel away the most breadcrumbs.

What’s more, we never compete over how well we educate. Let’s be honest: higher education in this country is not primarily—and perhaps never really has been—about the students. If it were, we would be doing more to make sure that we not only enroll them but that we also educate them. We would not simply hire more faculty and staff, but ensure that those inputs translated into greater student success. We have done a remarkable job of inviting in more “customers” over the last several decades, but made absolutely no progress in helping them obtain the “product” they came for—the degree. We have done very little to ensure that we convey lessons that result in deep learning, have steadfastly refused to measure achievement, and even put up roadblocks to doing so. One of the biggest roadblocks is the claim that institutional autonomy is the key to success—that institutional leaders “know what’s best” and are hindered if not given flexibility to control their own destiny. It’s true, institutions are very good at acting on their own behalf—but in this competitive environment they cannot be trusted to act for the common good.

Contemporary higher education policies are not up to the job of reforming this broken system of public education. The Obama Administration’s agenda operates at a very shallow level, aiming at enhancing excellence by increasing graduation rates (not necessarily learning), promoting equity that helps students to pay more for college without asking them “what for”, and selling an efficiency agenda that places politics and costs first, and only includes effectiveness related to the very narrow excellence agenda (measuring completion but nothing deeper). Is it any wonder that none of these efforts have really succeeded?

The results of this unchecked competition are stark. Higher education today is a savagely unequal place. In some colleges in this country, students benefit from the resources created by enormous endowments, high tuition, and significant tax breaks. Per pupil spending is as much as eight to ten times higher at some private colleges as it is at the nonselective institutions where most of America experiences postsecondary education. But even within public education—even within a single state—enormous divides are evident. For example, here in Wisconsin, the public university educating the best prepared kids spends $2,700 more per student on instruction – not research, or services—just instruction---than the rest of the public universities. That’s right—we spend far more on the easiest to educate in this state than we do on the hardest to educate.

Competition is embedded in our history. There’s been a consistent trend in which individuals and institutions “consciously or unconsciously align…themselves into teams in an effort to protect or enhance their own team’s advantage.” There are team efforts to maximize benefits relative to costs, and team efforts to evade costs entirely. Economist Nancy Folbre recently observed that the maneuvering that has taken place among American colleges and universities over the last century, a “game of strategy,” “makes World of Warcraft truly seem like child’s play.”

We have created an aspirational elite that aims to compete in games it cannot ever win. The proliferation of power among the truly elite colleges and universities –those with billion dollar endowments and admissions rates below 10 percent--is bolstered by entire industries—the testing industry, the private counselors, the media (whose journalists themselves often attended elite institutions), and ranking systems at the national and international levels. Public higher education will never win in a competition with those folks. But it seems unable to adjust to that reality, insisting on the need to get further ahead. In a sense this is unsurprising, since the elites, as Louis Menand has noted, have “the visibility to set standards for the system as a whole.” Thus the claim that elites can and should dictate the terms of “quality” is practically hegemonic—it is, for so many, beyond question.

This is a terrible shame, since people have powerful college experiences in non-elite institutions that frequently go unnoticed. They are ashamed to admit that a community or technical college contributed to their education, or that before their graduate degree they attended State U. The elites reinforce this feeling by constraining opportunities for other institutions in ways that are often barely visible. Public support on the part of a flagship for its local community college or branch campus may be bolstered by an unacknowledged, unstated desire to preserve “quality” (aka high tuition and high admissions standards) at one’s own institution. Similarly, what appears to be a laissez faire “let all flowers bloom” attitude towards for-profits, schools that “aren’t even playing in the same game,” is at the same time a way to ensure that the working class has somewhere else to go.

The scramble to climb even just one more rung up the status ladder is all-consuming. The quest feels so necessary that it swamps realities—realities about the massive resource disparities that make achieving such “success” impossible. It makes us willing to leave behind those who cannot afford our newly jacked-up tuition, or cannot meet our newly-raised admissions standards—since after all, we have no choice but to race ahead.

Except that we do have a choice. As sociologist Peter Berger once said, “Unlike puppets we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first steps towards freedom.”

We can no longer continue to skirt the moral and ethical justifications for the existence of public higher education by relying on the tired excuse that we are being pragmatic. The realists do not have this one in the bag. We can think bigger and better—envisioning public colleges and universities that achieve excellence not because they employ the biggest names, attract the biggest grants, or enroll the brightest students but rather because they successfully create individuals who are connected to their state and the world. With this vision, they would take students as they are and work to help them become outstanding—in other words, we’d help mold human beings into smart, ethical members of our community. Wouldn’t that be something worth being known for?

This way forward for public higher education lies in a new focus on institutional cooperation on behalf of students. We must begin to take actions based not on our shared fears, but rather on shared values. We cannot continue to act based on self-interest, but rather begin to consider that higher education generates societal goods in which we all have a stake.
This would be a very different way of doing “business.” It would require value-realignment. It would require a new approach to distributing resources. It necessities a real accountability system—one that is accountable to students. It would require those of us who work in the most elite public institutions to take on responsibility for the low graduation rates at other universities—which themselves are the consequence of systematic under-resourcing and demoralization from which we, at Madison, have benefited. We can no longer allow there to be colleges for “other peoples’ children” and attempt to leave them behind.

Mine is a vision of pragmatic idealism in higher education. We can be realistic, effective, moral and directed. The chancellor of UW-Madison recently asked a very good question: “What to do, what to do?” in the face of pending budget cuts. She offered a very common, and highly pragmatic response: “Begin with the hand we are dealt…” and seek new “flexibilities” to accommodate it. Instead, I recommend the pragmatic idealist’s response: Take the inevitable budget cuts, and use the resulting crisis to rethink goals and missions, and build a stronger, incremental case for future public investment that is consistent with our ideals. In cooperation with the full system of leaders, professors, and students ask: “Why is this the hand we are dealt? Who benefits from this hand? What are the alternative hands we could be dealt if we work together to make education the priority?”

What we do next is not merely a political or economic calculation. It is a moral calculation. Our actions reflect our beliefs and our awareness about what is really happening around us. If we confine ourselves to merely offering smart but dispassionate critiques, adapt to our new circumstances rather than actively resisting this change, and don’t begin to openly question the dominance of this competitive, elitist spirit, we will collectively fail to achieve the goal of educating students. As Diane Ravitch so eloquently put it last night, "schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration.” We have done a poor job of collaborating on solutions to the crisis we are now facing. The answer is not to pull further apart, but rather, to finally—on behalf of Wisconsin students—to come together.

Pick Your Poison

This is a strange new horrible world we live in. I have no idea what happen to democracy, but it's clearly left the station.

So, let me try to apply a little "pragmatic idealism" to the current moment regarding the New Badger Partnership. Today the UW System put the WIP on the table-- the Wisconsin Idea Partnership. It looks a lot like the NBP except it's for the whole System and it comes with real performance accountability measures. That means the most horrific part of the NBP--the splintering of System into a million selfish little pieces-- goes away. That's good-- that split wasn't Biddy's idea, it was Walker's-- and so it's something we ought to be awfully suspicious about.

That doesn't mean the WIP is great, or even good. The question is whether it's better than the alternatives.

I think the NBP is untenable. Even if it currently includes Chapter 37, it may not when the day is finally done. You simply can't trust this guy. It sets Madison up to be hated even more than it already is by the rest of the state, and it will come with great costs to equity--if not diversity.

So here are what I see as the best alternatives to supporting the NBP right now:

(1) Fight both the NBP and the WIP in the name of protecting public higher education--meaning holding the state accountable for paying its share, and doing everything we can to keep corporate interests at bay. In the short term this means taking a godawful cut and working really hard across institutions to find efficiency gains, which could involve, for example, closing an entire campus. I'm not saying I want that to happen but it might be one of the only viable ways to go.

(2) Support the WIP and work hard to ensure that it includes the following elements: (1) One board. Not 13. 13 is insane, and if Walker appoints 11 people on each of 13 boards, lord help us. If it's a 21 person board, and the governor gets 11, make sure that of our 10 ALL of them have vested interests in the INSTRUCTIONAL FUNCTION of Wisconsin higher education-- not the research or corporate functions. (2) Maintain tuition setting authority with that board-- do not give each campus tuition flexibility. They can have flexibility in procurement, compensation and construction, but tuition setting needs to be done by a coordinating body that has the interests of ALL STUDENTS at heart. Individual institutions do not-- they protect their own.

I'm inclined to support the WIP as I've described it above. I remain deeply worried about the invasion of corporate interests and I am scared to death of a board with a majority appointed by Walker, and I understand that Chapter 37 could be revoked from WIP as well. But I hear unanimous support from all sides for the need for flexibilities, and at some point even us idealists have to be pragmatic. I want the System to work together on its common educational mission.

I'm still thinking this through, as I'm sure you all are too. I want to hear your thoughts. Please share.

What Do Students Learn in College?

They might attend their lectures, do additional hours of study and get good grades; but... what are students learning in college? A recent article in the New York Times asks just this question: "what are America's kids actually learning in college?". Thanks to Peter C for sending on the link. According to the NYT article, "a provocative new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, makes a strong case that for a large portion of the nation’s seemingly successful undergraduates, the years in college barely improve their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing." The authors are Professors Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. A Google-Books preview is available here.

Arum and Roska's research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardised test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. More details on the authors' research project are available here. According to the authors' analysis (of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions), 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills, including: critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing (during their first two years of college). According to the authors, "many students come to college not only poorly prepared by prior schooling for highly demanding academic tasks that ideally lie in front of them, but — more troubling still — they enter college with attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors that are often at odds with academic commitment."

In relation to academic commitment, education economists would draw attention to the idea of non-cognitive skills. Pedro Martins has shown that a targeted program related to non-cognitive ability – study skills, motivation, and self-esteem – can improve student achievement at state schools in Portugal. In work that I have done with Liam and Colm, there is a clear demonstration of academic advantage for Irish university students who are more future-orientated and more conscientious. A targeted program (providing academic and social supports) was evaluated in the setting of an Irish university by Denny, Doyle, O’Reilly and O’Sullivan (2010); the results suggesting it was an effective means of improving academic outcomes for socio-economically disadvantaged students attending Irish universities.

Returning to the NYT article, it interprets Arum and Roksa's research to indicate that "students are hitting the books less and partying more. Easier courses and easier majors have become more and more popular. Perhaps more now than ever, the point of the college experience is to have a good time and walk away with a valuable credential after putting in the least effort possible." A study by three Cornell economists found a large increase in enrollment in courses with a median grade of A; after a new policy which introduced the publication of course median grades on the Internet. This is suggestive of students enrolling in classes where it easier to obtain higher grade-scores; an issue which I raised before in relation to the Irish Leaving Certificate: the final examination at the end of second-level education Ireland.

Recent research by Brian Jacob, Brian McCall and Kevin Stange (all from the University of Michigan) specifically addresses the issue of the consumption-value of college education. Jacob, McCall and Stange report that students "appear to value several college attributes which we categorize as consumption because their benefits arguably accrue only while actually enrolled, including college spending on student activities, sports, and dormitories." In addition, research by Babcock and Marks (discussed on this blog before) documents that academic time investment among full-time college students fell from 40 hours per in 1961 to 27 hours per week in 2003. Another article from the NYT tells us that Arum and Roksa's research is "consistent with the findings of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which has polled more than 2 million students at more than 1,000 colleges and universities over more than a decade — and reported that many spend little time studying or writing."

According to this article in the Huffington Post, the Collegiate Learning Assessment "has its share of critics who say it doesn't capture learning in specialized majors or isn't a reliable measure of college performance because so many factors are beyond their control." Nonetheless, it looks like this debate is set to grow more widespread in the future. It also resonates with last year's debate in Ireland about the issue of grade inflation. Introducing a research component into the undergraduate curriculum could be one way to improve students' skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing. In 2005, Trinity College Dublin launched a summer programme offering undergraduate students, typically from Science and Engineering, the opportunity to work in research for an 11 week period, on projects in laboratory environments.

Advocates for Whom?

The Badger Advocates formed this week to make sure the New Badger Partnership (NBP)--complete with split from the University of Wisconsin System--is passed in the Guv's budget this summer. Thank goodness someone is really digging into who these guys are -- this is a must read.

My question is this: I have heard plenty of folks argue this is great for the research enterprise at UW-Madison. I have no doubt that's true. I've also heard some who think it's good for faculty. And plenty who think it's good for alumni. I also hear from current students who *think* it's good for them. But how, exactly?

How does hiring 72 new faculty benefit students if teaching experience is not a requirement for hiring? If we continue to make tenure decisions based primarily on activities that don't involve students? Where is the evidence that any of the things we are dumping money into are causing improvements either in graduation rates, time-to-degree, gaps in degree completion and/or measured learning gains? Inquiring minds want to know. I've been pointed to the MIU website and told we're working on "quality." That's not enough when the case is being made that doing the one thing we ARE known for--serving as the flagship of a great public university system--is being taken away from the other 140,000 undergraduates and prospective undergraduates across Wisconsin.

What Would You Do?

Some proponents of the NBP are asking a reasonable question: If not the New Badger Partnership, then what? How to cope with the pending massive cut to UW funding without hiking tuition and getting a nice new toolbox?

Good question.

First, begin by convening experts (scholarly experts, not only your fellow administrators) with competing viewpoints and ask them to review the relevant documents and make proposals. Don't hire an outside expert for $3 million-- heck that's more than the annual budget for many departments!

Second, make information on current spending widely available and accessible and ask for input. Take that input seriously. Don't promise people ice cream with sprinkles and cherries on top for telling you what you want to hear.

Third, consider the possibility that real innovation--a whole new way of thinking about how to deliver higher education--could save public higher education. Keep the core mission: educating the children of the state at a reasonable pricepoint, as best you are able given the resources you have. Act like an "A" student and stop worrying about competition--just put your head down and do your best work. Only "B" students spend their valuable time trying to constantly compete and push down their opponents. Madison's focus on per-student spending and exclusivity - an attitude reinforced by rankings systems like U.S. News and internalized by an ill-informed public-- is getting us nowhere. It's time for the Madison administration to act "responsible for training and educating the people they have been elected and appointed to serve, rather than acting as custodians of institutions."

There are many experts on higher education policy who think the current budget crisis is a true opportunity to disrupt business as usual in public higher education-- while keeping it truly public (and not in name only). The current NBP is neoliberalism at its finest and it will only perpetuate the growth of income inequality in Wisconsin and beyond. Telling your constituents that there is only one way to solve this problem--and without you the Titanic will sink-- is in no one's best interest. Let's call it what it is--exclusion-- and bring some more creative minds to a much bigger table.

More Flexibility to Raise Tuition?

Central to debates over the New Badger Partnership is the question of whether additional flexibilities that make it possible to raise tuition are desirable.

Evidence can and must be used to make these decisions. A robust, evidence-based debate on our campus is obviously needed but to date has not occurred. Instead, to many of us outside Bascom it seems as though administrators have mostly relied on the input of a few economists and some other folks who work in higher education but are not scholars of higher education. It also seems like seeking advice from those mostly likely to agree with you. (Please--correct me if I'm wrong--very happy to be corrected with evidence on this point.)

It would be wonderful to see a more thorough review of existing evidence and the development of an evaluation plan that will assess positive and negative impacts of any new policy in ways that allow for the identification of policy effects-- not correlations. (Let's be clear: comparing enrollment of Pell recipients before and after the implementation of a policy like the MIU does not count.)

A few years ago I blogged about studies on the effects of tuition and financial aid on individual decision-making. To summarize-- effects of each are relatively small (especially when compared to effects of academic under-preparation, for example) but usually statistically significant. Also, what we call "small" reflects our value judgments, and we must recognize that.

Effects of "sticker shock" are thought to accrue early, such that the "shocked" students end up academically unprepared for college (for example don't even graduate high school) and thus are omitted from the eligible population of students on whom effects of aid and tuition are usually estimated. So hypotheses about sticker shock are very hard to test, partly because a good test requires measuring both the initial "shock" and the resulting behavior many years later (when college enrollment decisions are made).

There are other ways to think about these questions, beyond individual-level analyses. For example, we could contemplate possible effects of tuition hikes and aid increases on overall enrollment (which results from the aggregation of behaviors of many individuals). We could also look at evidence on how common it is for institutions like ours that hike tuition and raise aid to sustain the commitment to that aid over time.

Let's start down that path by examining one study that sheds light on the first of those questions. I will review more such studies in the coming days. My goal is to help facts and figures replace fear as the driving force behind our campus decisions.

*************

In "Rising Tuition and Enrollment in Public Higher Education" Hemelt and Marcotte examine the relationships between tuition and aid on the one hand, and enrollment on the other. Essential to this discussion, for most of their analyses they disaggregate by type of institution, making it possible to isolate effects on universities comparable to UW-Madison.

Using national IPEDS data on public 4-year colleges and universities from 1991 to 2007, the authors find that on average a $100 increase in tuition and fees (in 2006 dollars) would lead to a decline in enrollment of a little more than 0.25 percent. Since we rarely raise tuition by $100, let's instead consider that a $1,000 increase in tuition would result in an enrollment decline of 2.5 percent.

But most relevant to this discussion, these economists find that the tuition elasticity of enrollment is largest at Research I universities-- and they specifically give the example of UW-Madison. According to these scholars, freshmen at universities like Madison's are "much more" affected by tuition increases than students at other kinds of institutions (for example, freshmen at UW-Stout). (The tuition elasticity is -0.24 at Research I's compared to -.107 on average). And, the average amount of aid received has the smallest effects for students at Research I universities, compared to other colleges (.06 on average, compared to .01 at Research 1's).

In plain English, what does this mean? The consequences of raising tuition are greatest for students at places like Madison, and the benefits of increasing aid are smallest.

Why is this? The authors consider the possibility that students at Madison are not weighing the price of Madison relative to the price of Stout or Eau Claire, nor the price of other Big 10 schools writ large, but rather the price of comparably elite Research I institutions. Restricting their analysis to the top 120 public universities in the country, then, they again find that these students are particularly price sensitive, and particularly aid insensitive.

A few words from the authors: "These patterns in price and aid sensitivity are consistent with students opting out of “top 120” schools for competitors as price rises, while finding a way to pay tuition bills at other state schools where students may have fewer options....The evidence...of higher price sensitivity but lower aid sensitivity at “top 120” and Research I institutions raises general questions about enrollment patterns at public four-year colleges and universities, beyond the implications of tuition on enrollment at single institutions. One implication may be a shift of students from higher income families to private institutions or public universities in other states, along with a shift of students from lower income families to less expensive public universities within the state. This would suggest a redistribution of students across public colleges and universities within a state, with those most financially able leaving the system, and others scaling back to enroll at more affordable
institutions. Obviously, student-level data are needed to test this."

Distributional consequences of tuition policies are too rarely considered, and are not addressed in the NBP.

Sure, consequences and benefits should be put into context-- for example considered against the consequences of not raising tuition. But this paper by respected economists clearly indicates that it is not appropriate to assert that increasing financial aid at institutions like UW-Madison will effectively hold students harmless from the negative effects of tuition increases. Enrollment will be affected, and distribution of enrollment across institutions may be particularly affected. Who will measure those effects? And who will care?

Politics As Usual?

There is much buzz here at UW-Madison about the proposed New Badger Partnership. You can read all the details about what the Chancellor has proposed here, and you can read about some of the concerns expressed here.

In the interest of a rich discussion of this important policy proposal, I want to draw your attention to some relevant research on the topic. I'll start off with a recent paper by Michael McLendon, professor at Vanderbilt University, and his colleagues Russ Deaton and Jim Hearn.

In a 2007 article McLendon discusses trends in higher education governance reforms over the last several decades, and in particular the rationales posed for these reforms. The piece is worth reading in its entirety, but here are some highlights relevant to the campus debate:

Between 1985-2002 states considered more than 100 different ways to modify governance of higher education systems. "Policy rationales asserted in justification of these changes often pointed to the desire for improved accountability, operating efficiency, cost savings, competitiveness, coordination, and innovativeness....Paralleling roughly the emergence globally of a public sector reform movement christened the “new public management” (Brudney & Wright, 2002, p. 354), some American states experimented with changes to their governance systems for higher education that focused on efficiency rather than equity, choice rather than standardization, decentralized rather than centralized decision-making, performance rather than process, and outcome rather than input measures."

Sound familiar?

Why so much reform? As McLendon and his colleagues note, it is most common to depict "reforms as a rational response by state leaders to policy problems for which the redesign of higher education systems might serve as a suitable solution." But, McLendon posits, building on an argument advanced earlier by Aims McGuiness, an entirely different explanation is possible: political instability. Turnover in who's in charge- and the threat of turnover-- may in and of itself lead to these reforms-- even though they are posed as rational and necessary, in fact the reforms themselves may be political animals.

And this is, in fact, what McLendon finds. "Fluctuations on the political landscape of states [are] the primary drivers of legislation to reform governance arrangements for higher education."

In particular:

(1) "States are more likely to enact governance legislation in years in which the legislature became captured by one of the two major political parties, following a period of divided party control of the institution."

(2) "As the percentage of a state’s legislature that is Republican increases, so too does the probability of a state changing its higher education governance system."

(3)"The longer governors occupy office, the lower the probability of their states enacting structural changes. Conversely, states whose governors are newer to office appear more likely to undertake such reforms...A turnover in administration could present the most opportune time for a governor to seek to maximize control over executive branch agencies, leading to the changes in higher education governance we have documented."

(4) "Our analysis yielded no evidence linking passage of governance legislation with the economic conditions of states, the characteristics of their college and university systems, or regional diffusion."

In other words, historically states have not made decisions about the governance of state higher education institutions based on stated rationales but rather based on politics.

Is the situation here in Wisconsin at this moment in time really any different?

Overachievers

You don't get to be a professor at a top university by settling or compromising. You get there by striving, competing, and working against all odds to cram extra hours into already-long days. You expect the best, of everyone.

So it's hard to be a professor at a public university right now. Almost by definition, public universities aren't the top of the heap in spending on the things that professors are trained to care most about-- research, salaries, resources. This leads to frustration, anger, and indignation when our talents go unrecognized, our fields disrespected, and our friends leave for private universities.

It's hard to be a professor at a public university, for sure.

Of course, it's also hard to be a kid whose entire future depends on achieving economic stability and that seems to depend on college-- but college is increasingly out of reach. You're told that the flagship college in your state is really the only one that's worth going to and despite your desire to ignore those elitist comments, they nag at you. You want to go there, but annual costs of attendance are more than your family makes in a year. Your parents didn't go to college, and none of your friends managed to get to that place. So really, why bother? Why work your tail off in high school to get the best grades, work after school jobs to save money, and why knock yourself out to take that ACT? You're never going to be able to get in, and if you do, it's gonna financially cripple your family to afford it. The government has never come through with real financial help before, why expect it to now?

Somehow, my heart tells me it's harder to be that kid than it is to be me.

It's time for UW-Madison to be with the children of Wisconsin's working poor families. Offering financial aid -- accompanied as it is by a byzantine system of paperwork, rules, and caveats-- is clearly insufficient to overcome the fear instilled by widespread talk that tuition is high and getting higher. (I am a researcher of financial aid-- it "works" but it by no means demonstrates sufficiently large effects to hold students harmless from high tuition.) Financial aid won't help combat word on the street that the place is so elite it won't even hang with the other UW universities or colleges anymore. It's out for itself--its alumni, current students, and professors-- not for you.

I am not naive-- we are going to take a bone-crushing hit this year. Our belts are going to tighten so much that we can hardly breathe-- at least we will think that's true. But the fact is, UW-Madison doesn't know poverty. Not even close. It's been blessed to have what it needs to be nearly everything it's wanted to be. That's getting harder to do, and now in these times choices will have to be made. Programs will have to be cut. Faculty will have to teach. Class sizes might have to be a bit larger. The truth is, we will survive this-- and we will be more respectable for it. UW-Madison is nothing without the respect of Wisconsin. Leaving the state behind is not an acceptable approach to accommodating our desires to be the "best."

What Do Elite Institutions Owe Their States?

Dear readers,

It's quite a time here in Wisconsin. I've spent the academic year juggling a major research project, teaching, and being a wife and mom of two young kids. This blog is something I've had to set aside in an effort to get all of that done. And I know I should stick with that focus, especially seeing as how this is the semester I'm up for tenure. But there is just so much going on around me, it's getting near impossible not to comment. That said, as I do comment, I cannot help but feel that Madison--and Wisconsin--is not the same place it was when I started blogging in early 2009. It no longer feels like a safe bastion of liberalism where freedom of speech is secure and all voices respected. It feels, frankly, a bit like Virginia where I grew up-- or maybe (god forbid) even Florida. So, you can bet I'm going to be a more cautious optimist as I write.

In fact, I think for now I will let others speak for me. On the topic of whether the University of Wisconsin-Madison should break from the University of Wisconsin System in its effort to preserve its greatness, I'm chewing on these words, and hope you will too...

"Students who have the greatest educational need—low-income, part-time, first-generation, working parents, immigrants, and people of color—are systematically funneled into institutions with the fewest resources. In response, elite universities must be uncommonly generous in the years ahead with respect to funding, transfers, and the amount of students they will serve....This campus, Madison, spends far more money per student than other branches of the University of Wisconsin System [setting differences in research funding aside and focusing solely on instruction, academic support, and student services] , spending [at all other UW 4 years] is $8,500 per student...in Madison, it's more than twice as much. So here’s my question: why are you so expensive to educate? Why do you deserve so much more? After all, you’re supposed to be the smart ones....Maybe it should take less money to help you reach your educational goals.... The answer, I think, has very little to do with concepts like cost. Rather, you were here first and you're the best. When people look at resource allocation numbers for K-12 schools and see massive inequality...they call it injustice and file massive lawsuits. When they see the same numbers for higher education, they call it meritocracy and a job well-done.... Only by subordinating some of their self-interest...and embracing the interest of all institutions--including the students within them and the students who aren't within them at all--will America's elite institutions be able to live up to the historic ideals that have done so much to make us the nation we are today." KEVIN CAREY.


Tonight I leave you with this. I am a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor deeply proud of my students and my colleagues-- all of them. Those at Madison, those at other UW's, and those who are not yet but perhaps hope to become part of the UW community. I chose UW because I was deeply impressed by its longstanding service and commitment to the state-- not its self-interested desire to get the highest rankings, attract only the easiest to educate, or offer the highest salaries. In other words, I came because UW-Madison seemed the exception to the elite Research I gatekeepers--it was a place where one could do research while also fulfilling the major commitments of public higher education. I sincerely hope that Madison will right its course and make its state proud.

PhD Fellowship Restrictions to Residents

According to the Nature blog "The Great Beyond", it was announced today that Spain will restrict one of its main PhD fellowship programmes to current Spanish residents. Various countries in Europe have various rules on this. To the best of my knowledge (e.g. application form for IRCHSS here) the Irish programmes are open to non-Irish people who are EU citizens and there was even experimentation with making them available to non-EU citizens, which does not seem to operate anymore. This is something we really need to debate in Ireland and across Europe.

For the Irish case, given that money is being made available to fund PhD students, is it necessarily better that this would go to Irish residents or to EU residents instead of being opened up? If a bright Chinese student wins the competition, doesn't that yield benefits in terms of attracting bright people to Ireland? Ed Glaeser (talking in a general sense rather than specifically about this) argues that the best way for cities to grow is to attract bright people and let them do their thing. Restricting bright people from applying for your PhD funding is not a great way of achieving this. This is particularly serious in Europe compared to America as even the best universities in Europe have far more limitations in the extent to which they can provide their own funding to PhD students compared to US universities.

Related to this, if a bright Irish person gets accepted to a PhD programme abroad and at home, is it necessarily better for the Irish taxpayer if that person takes the home programme due to funding instead of being funded to take the programme abroad, particularly in cases where the programme abroad is better than the home programme? It really is an open question as to whether it would have been better had the 10 years or so of IRCHSS/IRCSET scholars gone away to whereever they would have got accepted, rather than doing their PhD to a large degree in Irish institutions. One model could be for every country to restrict some of its funding to natives but then to allow the natives to go to the best programmes they get accepted to.

A lot of the model now seems to be to retain bright natives and view foreign postgrads as effectively a cost. Does it make as much sense to think about viewing foreign postgrads as something worth subsidising and viewing native students going away as yielding more benefits than if they stayed at home?

Another way of putting this is that it is tempting to think that Spain is effectively free-riding by doing this. But perhaps it is inadvertently doing the opposite and instead pushing the brightest people in the rest of Europe from Spain to other countries.

Emotional health of undergraduates

This article from the New York Times reports "The emotional health of college freshmen — who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school — has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago".