Austerity and Disruption

With a concerted effort now to reduce government spending, higher education leaders should expect reduced state and federal support in 2025 and beyond, with demographic and climate trends also darkening the clouds. Workers and consumers should also see it all coming. 

Austerity has already begun. In July 2024, the Pew Foundation reported that state budgets were facing cuts as Covid-era funds ended.  The most notable cuts are coming to the California State University System, which is expected to reduce its budget by hundred of millions of dollars. But several other states are feeling the pinch. 

Austerity for higher education is also likely to increase at the state level as baby boomers reach advanced age and require more medical attention and nursing home care. How this demographic cliff of old age, reduced fertility, and fluctuating populations plays out will vary greatly across the United States. 

Some Southern states, like Florida, Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, have improved financially despite threats from climate change. Anti-tax, anti-regulation, and anti-union laws make them friendly to corporations in search of relocation and a better deal. States in the West, like Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, are are also likely to continue thriving. Besides climate change, which is profoundly disruptive but takes generations to notice, mass deportations could affect their economies quickly--if the Trump Administration's threats can be carried out. 

Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon, and several states in the Midwest and Atlantic regions will face more austerity as their populations remain stagnant or decline and folks move to states with lower housing costs and less taxes, leaving others to die. Deaths of despair among youth will continue to ravage them. What happens with these failing states in the future is anyone's guess. One would hope higher education leaders would have solutions and be courageous enough to act, or at the very least allow those with solutions to talk. 

Universities on Fire wins AAC&U book award (Bryan Alexander)

For the past several years I’d focused much of my research capacity on forecasting how the climate crisis might impact higher education, and what academics might do in response. That work appeared in many blog posts, presentations, meetings, Future Trends Forum sessions, and my 2023 book, Universities on Fire.

Today I’m delighted to announce that this work has received some splendid recognition. The American Association of Colleges and Universities is a 109-year-old organization devoted to liberal education, with more than 1,000 campuses as members. AAC&U has just chosen Universities on Fire for its Frederic W. Ness Book Award. The award goes to books which make “outstanding contributions to the understanding and improvement of liberal education.”

I am both humbled and ecstatic to learn of this. As someone who has worked in liberal education for decades, this is a signal honor, a career highlight. This award also feels like a validation of years of work on climate change. It’s especially delightful coming from a group I’ve followed and worked with for decades.

More important than my own self and career, by choosing to give the Ness award to Universities on Fire the AAC&U indicates that climate change should be a major concern for colleges and universities. It connects global warming to liberal education by virtue of the award’s emphasis “on liberal education as an evolving tradition,” as well as by signaling climate as “an issue or topic in postsecondary education that is discussed substantially in relation to liberal education.”

This is how they describe climate change as the very point of this year’s award:

“Among an exceptionally strong pool of nominees, Universities on Fire stood out because of how effectively and constructively it speaks to the urgency of the moment—its subject matter, interdisciplinarity, creativity, continual grounding in learning, and focus on the future,” said [Lynn] Pasquerella [president of AAC&U].

I’m so glad they recognized the interdisciplinary nature of the topic. I raised the idea that responding to climate change might be the new liberal arts.

AAC&U has long been a leader in encouraging higher education to address a series of key topics. The organization created the high impact learning practices (HIP) model, which helped institutions implement those teaching and student support ideas. Similarly, AAC&U advanced the concept of liberal education preparing students for active civic life, as well as supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion . They also introduced eportfolios to campus assessment and curricular strategies. My hope is that the group now adds climate thought and action to that list of major, good ideas… and that colleges and universities are inspired to think and act accordingly.

I’m deeply grateful to AAC&U for this award and excited about what comes next.

Shall we all pretend we didn't see it coming, again?: higher education, climate change, climate refugees, and climate denial by elites

Can US higher education do much to reduce climate change, either as a leader or as a teacher?  The answer so far is no. That's not to say that there aren't universities (like Rutgers) doing outstanding climate change research or students concerned about the planet's future. There are. But that research and resistance is outweighed by those who control higher education, trustees and endowment managers, and their financial interests. 

While devastating occurrences like Hurricane Helene (and possibly Hurricane Milton) serve as high-rated entertainment, news coverage also makes the stakes seemingly more visible to those who are not directly affected. 

For many, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and heat waves are quickly forgotten or remembered merely as single acts of god or seasonal anomalies, not as ongoing acts of greedy rich men. And melting icebergs and disappearing islands are something most Americans don't see, at least firsthand. Generations of data and information are ignored by those who are poorly educated and those who claim to be educated, but uneducated morally. 

Predictions of more global conflicts and an estimated 1.2 billion climate chaos refugees are barely mentioned in the news, but they are looming.   

Related links: 

Thinking about climate change and international study (Bryan Alexander)

How campuses engage with the climate crisis: a taxonomy (Bryan Alexander)

"Let's all pretend we couldn't see it coming" (The US Working-Class Depression)

Wealth and Want Part 1: Multi-Billion Dollar Endowments

US higher education reflects and reinforces a world of increasing inequality, injustice, and inhumanity. This system (or some would call it an industry) should function as a conduit between good K-12 education, good jobs, and the wellness of all its citizens, whether they attend or not. But increasingly, it does not. 

The first installments of the Wealth and Want series examine the concentration of wealth in the US higher education system.  And this article focuses on loosely regulated university endowments. While many American schools struggle to provide basic amenities and academic resources, elite universities boast endowments that rival the GDPs of small nations. And they pay little in taxes. 

The Endowment Elite and Ill-Gotten Gains

At the pinnacle of higher education wealth are Harvard ($49B), The University of Texas System ($44B), Yale ($40B), Stanford ($36B), and Princeton ($34B). These institutions have amassed endowments that provide a steady stream of income for investments, scholarships, and research initiatives. How their money is invested is rarely known.  

Endowment managers at elite schools typically make more than a million dollars a year. The most elite schools pay their managers $5M-$10M a year, with compensation largely based on returns. But those managers still get hefty salaries even when they lose money.

There are more than 120 schools with endowments greater than a billion dollars. But the 20 richest university endowments together hold more wealth than the other 5000 or so other higher education institutions combined. 

Elite endowments are often the result of centuries of fundraising, donations, and strategic (sometimes shady) investments. For many of the most prestigious schools, it began with land theft and generations of forced labor. 

For other wealthy schools, it was the result of philanthropic robber barons like Johns Hopkins (who also held captives), Andrew Carnegie, Leland Stanford, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and James Buchanan Duke who made their wealth through mass exploitation of people and the planet. 

For wealthy flagship state universities, it also came from land theft. In the case of the University of Texas, its wealth largely came from, and to some degree still comes from the exploitation of fossil fuels that jeopardize the planet.

Historical Context and Structural Inequality

• Land Theft and the Founding of Institutions: The establishment of many American universities, including Ivy League institutions and those founded under the Morrill Act, was often intertwined with land theft from Native American tribes. This practice, often referred to as "land dispossession" or "Indian removal," was a key component of Manifest Destiny and the expansion of European settlement across the continent.
• Ivy League Universities: Institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Columbia were granted land by colonial governments, which often acquired these lands through treaties that were coerced or violated. They also used enslaved labor to build and maintain their wealth.  
• Funding Models: The funding models for public higher education often favor larger, research-intensive universities. This can lead to underfunding for smaller, less prestigious institutions, particularly those serving marginalized communities.
• Endowment Inequality and Profits Over People and Planet: Endowments are a powerful tool for wealth accumulation and institutional advantage. The concentration of endowments in a few elite universities can exacerbate existing inequalities and create a self-perpetuating cycle of privilege.  These endowments have also engaged in shady investments that perpetuated worker oppression, genocide, and environmental destruction. 

Related links:

Pay and Chief Investment Officers: Good Money while It Lasts

Tax Wealthy Private Universities Now (Paul Prescod, Jacobin)

Higher Education Uncensored

The Higher Education Inquirer is a rare space for students (consumers), workers, debtors, and community members to speak the truth about higher education and its most important issues, including the truth related to climate change and environmental destruction, human rights, student rights and worker rights, mass surveillance and policing, sexual assault and rape culture, racism and bullying, mental illness and suicide prevention, hypercredentialism, student loan debt and underemployment, NCAA money sports, higher education scams, cheating, and AI, university endowments, land theft and gentrification by universities, and any issues that are too politically charged for other news outlets to consider.

HEI fills this role because many student newspapers cannot perform that service. No mainstream media outlet (large or industry niche) or nonprofit can do that either. In those cases, the purse strings affect what is published and what isn't. Writers and editors are censored, and sometimes they censor themselves to avoid retribution or the possibility of retribution. If you are a student journalist, whistleblower, or concerned citizen, we invite you to submit your work to us. If you have a petition or an event, or want to leak documents anonymously, please let us know.  

Related links:

Ahead of the Learned Herd

 

Good ideas are stolen. Great ideas are buried. We uncover both. And we publish them.  

A People's History of Higher Education in the US