Bret Devereaux

See, universities don't compete on academics - those aren't really measured by US News or whatever. And only a handful of nationally known big schools can compete on raw prestige. But you can try to draw in the best students by promising a fun student life... 15/xx

...in place of an educational one. The problem is that it leads to a Red Queen Effect - if *everyone* invests in fancy student amenities, costs go up, tuition goes up, but no university wins. 16/xx

Meanwhile, business-style management imposes all new administrative overhead as admin. functions are moved out of the faculty departments and into big centralized administrations that look more like companies. The thing is, there's no effective cost control...17/xx

...because the Pale Horse of the Business Model is federally subsidized student debt. 18-year-olds are not great at calculating long-term cost-benefit; offer them a fun time now for money paid in the future and most will take it. So more admin, more amenities, more debt. 18/xx

To be clear, basically none of this massive increase in tuition - and it is *massive* - goes to professors. Let me repeat that: BASICALLY NONE OF THIS MONEY GOES TO ANYONE WHO TEACHES. (rip your ears, I know). 19/xx

Instead - it's hard to get good data - but instructor pay has probably gone *down* over the same period. Not because professor pay has been cut, but because the teachers have been adjunctified under the business-model imperative to cut costs. 20/xx

75% - SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT - of university instructors are non-tenure track and more than half - *more*than*half* are adjuncts! (https://www.newfacultymajority.info/facts-about-adjuncts/ …). So the average *teacher* - not professor because most aren't anymore - gets paid LESS. 21/xx

Now you might ask - why the Business Model of Education? Well the answer is it goes back to our first horseman - legislatures looking to cut back on universities demanded this model as a way to cut costs and have continued to demand it even after the economy improved. 22/xx

Here's the thing: it's all a false economy. No, not that the economy is fake - it's fake savings. Like when you overbuy at the grocery store because everything is on sale - you haven't 'saved' anything - you've spent more. It's that kind of false economy. 23/xx

Not only does the amenities-admin-tuition inflation turn into a treadmill going nowhere, but adjunctification is just as bad for the core mission of the university. Because you are burning these adjuncts out at a fearful rate; overloaded and underpaid...24/xx

They often can't teach as intensively as TT faculty and they don't stay in the job long enough to get excellent at it. Teachers get better over time - so burning them out wastes experience. The result is inferior teaching, even though most adjuncts work hard! 25/-continues-

In essence, the 'business model of education' ends up diverting university funds away from the *education* part of the university's mission. It also imposes larger and larger fixed operation costs, compensated for by higher and higher tuition...26/41

Which then finally brings us to our last horseman, Pestilence. Because if you are running one of these universities, you have massive problems - you can't simply say "we'll do the courses online and charge full freight"...27/x

...because you've been competing on everything *but* the education for the last twenty years! Moreover, the cost of all of those other things is paid for by fees - if you waive the fees, you still have to do the upkeep and the whole thing crumbles. 28/41

And even in normal years, the public funding has slowed to a trickle - in a pandemic, it might as well stop. Calling a halt to university operations, or doing everything online and waiving the on-campus living fees is financial suicide. It was the *right* course...29/41

...and at the same time, one that the reckless, ruinous system could *never* take. At the same time, even without Pestilence, the system is still broken. Demanding that universities 'run like businesses' to save the public money just doesn't work. 30/41

Now don't get me wrong, I am an ardent capitalist. Like, really very much so. Like - it irritates my colleagues. But just because markets work in *some* things doesn't mean markets work in *everything*...31/41

Almost no one suggests, for instance, we should have for-profit fire departments (M. Licinius Crassus not withstanding). Or for-profit churches. And here's the thing: there is a large for-profit college sector in the United States. And it is *terrible* 32/41

Default rates on student loans at for-profits are 3-4 times higher than traditional colleges; the quality of the education there is well known to be garbage - and despite basically being sham-schools, many of them still run out of money and fail. 33/41

*That* is why US colleges were so fragile going into COVID that they really had no good options. So what about solutions? We should start with the big public universities. Step 1: After COVID has passed, states need to reverse the endless budget cuts...35/41

...BUT most of that money needs to be flagged to go for instructional budgets. Legislatures: condition funding on tenure-track hires! Make sure your money pays for *teachers* and *teaching* not amenities or more empty-chair administrators. 36/41

Step 2: Shift administration and leadership back to the faculty, where it used to be. If it were me, I'd argue that every university ought to be led by *teaching track* faculty elevated into leadership positions for a period of years. 37/41

(Teaching track faculty are typically non-tenure-track faculty with heavier teaching loads and less research expectations. It's mostly a form of permanent academic serfdom, but in my experience, teaching-track faculty tend to value education and students the most). 38/41

Step 3: Using the first two steps as conditions, *cap*tuition.* And I mean *all*in* tuition - fees, everything. Index the cap to the average of inflation and teacher pay (counted as an average per-credit-hour so it reflects adjunct pay, not just TT pay). 39/41

That way, if universities want to raise tuition, they need to be reinvesting that money into smaller classes, more instructors and more instructional resources. And honestly, legislatures should demand the superior teaching that comes from TT-faculty...40/41

...who have the time to truly perfect the craft of teaching. That way the next time we have to go online for a pandemic (it will happen again!) students will know they are still getting the thing they paid for: an education. end/41

Addendum 2: Some folks are pointing out that adjunctification here is a little lopsided and incomplete. And they're right! There just wasn't space in an already overlong thread. Being an adjunct myself, you can bet I have thoughts! But that will have to wait for another thread.