How US Colleges Became Corporations (Second Thought)

Chancellor Martin: Public Means Public (Neil Kraus)

Recently, Chancellor Mike Martin laid out his views on UWRF (the University of Wisconsin River Falls) and higher education in the Student Voice.  I’d like to offer a very different perspective on public higher education.  But given his stated belief in the importance of making the case that higher education is a public good, I believe that Chancellor Martin would agree with my argument.

Chancellor Martin correctly stated that: “In an attempt to appeal to students, we told students, if you get a degree, here’s what your lifelong income is going to be. We made it a private good. When it’s a private good, and then asking the public to pay for it, you’ve got to disconnect, right?”  He then went on to say that: “And I think we need to return not just in Wisconsin, but across public higher education, to the argument that what we have is also a very powerful public good.”

I agree completely.  For many decades, higher education has been made into a private good.  This resulted from the unquestioned dominance of human capital theory, which, as an economist, Chancellor Martin is certainly well-versed in.  In brief, human capital theory promulgates the notion that one’s income is – and should be – tied to one’s education and training levels.

Politically, of course, this framing set up education to fail, which explains our current predicament.  The education system cannot change the jobs that exist or wage levels.  The education system educates.

Yet education is very intentionally and incorrectly held responsible for a predominately low wage, low education labor market.  As a result, decades ago it became politically acceptable to cut public higher education spending perpetually, even during the current period of fiscal prosperity.

This is just politics.  Business and the wealthy want to talk solely about education as the path to economic opportunity because it is in their self-interests to do so.  Because when we’re talking about education, we’re not talking about an economy that has been intentionally constructed for owners and shareholders while it leaves a significant majority of workers behind.

Yet Chancellor Martin inadequately addressed the role that the legislature plays in our public institution when he states: “But if the legislature isn’t going to solve it for you, you better damn well solve it for yourself….But the bottom line, it comes back to what can this institution do innovatively.”

When Chancellor Martin refers to “change in the wind,” he fails to mention who’s in charge of the wind machine.  He seems to be arguing in favor of a fully privatized UWRF, a campus funded by donors, corporations, and foundations, which will necessarily reflect their narrow economic interests.  Private funders have no interest in training students for the larger labor market let alone to be well informed, democratic citizens.

Chancellor Martin’s analysis implies our defunded public institution will never receive any funding increases in the future, which would effectively make it a public institution in name only.  This is the narrative we’ve been hearing from all our administrators since last school year, and it appears to be coming directly from the UW System.

But it is a hopeless narrative, and particularly demoralizing and utterly incomprehensible at a time when the state is drowning in money and the UW System continues to spend tens of millions on software and consultants as our campuses shed faculty, staff, and academic programs.

Is this even real?

The word “public” means something very specific: if a good is public, it means it is paid for with tax dollars, not with private dollars.  The military, the local police department, city park, and school district are public institutions.  Public higher education, on the other hand, has been largely privatized because of decisions made by elected officials.

But we can’t be public and rely on private funds.  That’s not what public means.

Private funders – which represent a miniscule slice of the population -- have their own interests.  They’re primarily interested in getting workers for their narrow industries.

And the question of priorities hangs over the Chancellor’s interview.  The UW System has made its priorities clear – we will continue to purchase, without question, more and more expensive software (most of which we don’t need), as we get rid of faculty, staff, and academic programs.

For all the talk of budget cuts on campus, I’ve yet to hear anyone in front of the room say: “You know, I’m sorry, but we just can’t afford [fill in expensive tech product here] anymore.”  Our leaders only tell us they can’t afford employees.

And Chancellor Martin asserts, yet provides no evidence for, the claim that the campus has surplus capacity. I’ve been at UWRF since 2005, and it’s common knowledge that we have far fewer tenured and tenure track faculty positions now in the College of Arts and Sciences than we had several years ago.

But I’m all for data analysis, so let’s make data-informed decisions.

I’ll say again that Chancellor Martin is correct when he states that public higher education is “a very powerful public good.”  But making this case while moving full steam ahead for a privatized UWRF is a massive contradiction in terms.

The public wants affordable, quality, comprehensive, in-person, public higher education.  And in this state, the only way to get this is by attending a UW institution.  Corporate interests want the opposite of all these things.  They want to not pay taxes and make as much money as possible.  This isn’t complicated.

If we go further down the path of privatization – which is clearly the path sought by the UW System -- we directly undermine the notion that higher education is a public good.  More importantly, we will be providing our students with an inferior, expensive, tech-heavy, narrowed educational experience.  We will be walking away entirely from the Wisconsin Idea.

Public means public.  I ask Chancellor Martin to stand with AFT-Wisconsin for comprehensive, in-person, public higher education that prioritizes students and the public over corporations and the wealthy.


Neil Kraus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls since 2005, President of United Falcons, the local chapter of AFT-Wisconsin, and author of three books, including The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement (Temple University Press, 2023).

This article first appeared in the UWRF Student Voice. 

What a Second Trump Administration May Mean for Higher Education (Robert Kelchen)

For the last two presidential transitions, I have written pieces about what the new president (Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020) may mean for higher education. My expectations back in 2016 were the following:

• He would not repeal the Department of Education. (He never seriously tried.)
• Tuition-free public college was dead. (True at the federal level, but state-level programs grew following Tennessee’s lead.)
• He talked about income-driven repayment changes and going back to having private banks guarantee loans. (Neither happened, although he did pause payments during the pandemic.)
• There would be fewer regulations and an accountability reprieve for the for-profit college sector. (True.)

After four years of President Trump in power, the higher education community has a better sense of what is coming than we did back in 2016. Here are some of the key things that I am watching over the next several months and years.

(1) The subtitle for my piece on the incoming Biden administration was, “If the Democrat wins, he will have to govern by executive order, much as his predecessor did.” That is not going to be as easy this time around. One of conservatives' biggest Supreme Court wins recently was the overturning of the Chevron precedent that will result in less authority for federal agencies to enact regulations. For at least the next four years, this is going to bite the Trump administration right in the behind. Unless…

(2) Political appointees try acting through issuing directives that are implemented before courts can step in, hoping that they will be unwilling to unwind something that is already being done. It hearkens back to the alleged quote from Andrew Jackson: The Chief Justice “has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” A frequent refrain among progressives over the last few years has been that the Biden administration should immediately cancel student debt, making it difficult for the debt to be reinstated later upon court order. It would not be surprising to see Trump appointees trying to score a policy win (or at least some political points with their base) in that manner. Two likely areas are around federal financial aid to so-called “woke” colleges and international student visas.

(3) While Republicans retook the Senate with at least three votes to spare, House control is still too early to tell as of this writing and is likely to be razor-thin. House Republicans had more than a few challenges in the current Congress with a slim majority, and it is going to be difficult to pass a lot of legislation when hardliners and moderates within the GOP disagree on so many things. Conservatives detest omnibus budget bills and have been pushing for 12 separate budget bills for years. But the result is usually one large bill passed in mid-December, which creates incentives for compromise. Trump has not been particularly concerned about deficits, so conservatives are unlikely to get major budget cuts.

(4) The Higher Education Act was last reauthorized in 2008. I still might retire before it happens again, and I don’t plan on going anywhere for a while. While the Department of Education is not going away anytime soon, there are enough Republicans who would rather throw out the entire department than make substantive reforms. Democrats likely prefer the status quo to any new major legislation, so we can keep waiting on reauthorization for a long time. This does not mean that some policy changes cannot happen; the major changes to the FAFSA last year came through an omnibus budget bill in 2020. But any changes will be piecemeal in the grand scheme of things.

(5) President Trump and Congressional leaders will use the bully pulpit to go after selective colleges and their leaders. Last year's House hearings were very effective for Republicans, as they led to several presidents resigning. If something works in Washington, expect to see it again—especially as both Trump and Vance are products of those institutions. Community colleges and regionally-focused public and private institutions are likely to fly under the radar, as going after them will not generate media attention. But I would not want to be a president of a blue-state flagship university or an elite private college right now, and any leader who is not a white man is likely to face additional scrutiny if last year’s hearings were a guide.

(6) Keep a close eye on who ends up at the Department of Education. Most of the commentary out there about potential Cabinet secretaries barely even mentions ED, but he still needs to identify someone to run the agency on an acting basis. Betsy DeVos is off the table for a second term because she resigned in the aftermath of January 6, and this is a job that many conservatives do not aspire to reach. A name that I am watching is Oklahoma’s state superintendent of education, Ryan Walters, as he tried to get Trump-branded Bibles into public school classrooms and supports the elimination of the Department of Education. Will K-12 or higher education be the focus? I have long contended that higher ed is the area of greatest importance for a Secretary of Education, but a focus on social issues may change that.

Higher education was in for a challenging period regardless of who was elected, thanks to growing skepticism over the value of a college education, increasing political polarization by educational attainment, and the state of federal student loans. This week’s election just magnified all of those concerns. Buckle up, folks…it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

[Editor's note: This article first appeared at the Kelchen on Education blog.] 

Christian University Students Celebrate After Trump Wins Election

Students at two of America's largest Christian universities had boisterous public celebrations as Donald Trump was elected the 47th President of the United States. This first video is from Phoenix, Arizona, home of Grand Canyon University.

 

 

A similar celebration occurred at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. 

 

Grand Canyon University and Liberty University are schools with more than 100,000 students apiece. Both are bolstered by their online robocolleges, which have an enormous national and international presence.

Perspective After a Trump Victory

It is clear that when thousands demonstrate over a prolonged period dramatic changes can be made. People have wrought changes in the past, and they will continue to do so. Dr. DuBois, the great Negro historian, wrote in his "Farewell Message": "Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth because the great end comes slowly; because time is long..." We should proceed calmly and with optimism—our actions tempered always by our perception of reality.

Bettina Apthekar, Big Business and the American University (1966)

Questioning the Higher Education Establishment

"So that's how it is," sighed Yakov. "Behind the world lies another world." Bernard Malamud

The Higher Education Inquirer has published a number of articles about how US higher education works and the institutions, organizations, and individuals it serves. 

We have written about US higher education in a number of ways, discussing the history, economics, and underlying ideologies (e.g. neoliberalism, white supremacy) and theories making it what it is--an industry that reinforces a larger (and environmentally unsustainable) economic system and an industry that produces too many unneeded credentials--and soul crushing student loan debt. 

We have listed the myths that US higher education perpetuates and the methods it uses to disseminate them. We have examined a number of higher education institutions and their categories (including university hospitals, state universities, private colleges, community colleges, and online robocolleges). We have investigated several businesses associated with higher education, some nefarious, many profit driven, and a few (like TuitionFit and College Viability App) driven by integrity and values. And we have followed the struggle of labor and consumers. HEI has even created an outline for a People's History of US Higher Education.

But we haven't examined higher education as part of the establishment. Like the establishment that students of the 1960s talked about as something not to trust. The trustees, endowment managers, trustees, foundation presidents, accreditors, bankers, bond raters, CEOs and CFOs who make the decisions that affect how higher ed operates and who at the same time work to make consumers, workers, and activists invisible. 

To say we cannot trust US higher education administrators and business leaders may sound passe, or something that only extremists of the Left or Right might say, but it isn't, and more folks are seeing that. 

Examining US higher education needs to be assessed more deeply (like Craig Steven Wilder, Davarian Baldwin, and Gary Roth have done) and more comprehensively (like Marc Bousquet), and it needs to be explained to the People. It's something few have endeavored, because it isn't profitable, not even for tenure in some cases. 

Without our own sustainable business model, the Higher Education Inquirer will continue writing (and prompt others to write) stories significant to workers and consumers, the folks who deserve to be enlightened and who deserve to tell their stories. 

And as long as we can, the Higher Education Inquirer will ask the Establishment for answers that only they know, something few others are willing to do. 

Can the newly formed PA Board of Higher Education do much for the People?

In 2024, Pennsylvania has formed a state Board of Higher Education. Can the organization create value for all its citizens and improve the Quality of Life for Pennsylvanians, or is it just another layer of bureaucracy whose major role is to maintain the status quo? 

The Pennsylvania Board of Higher Education is composed of 21 members, representing postsecondary education, government, business, labor and students. Some schools like Penn State, Pitt, and Temple each have a representative. Other institutions, like the state's 15 community colleges and 10 PASSHE schools are represented by one person.

The University of Pennsylvania ($20.9 billion endowment and 1,085 acres of urban property), Carnegie-Mellon University ($2.7 billion and 157 acres of urban property), and other elite private schools are not represented and stand apart from the oversight.

What's the Mission?

There is no mention about how this new Board can make a difference. No progressive ideas or policies have been introduced other than that the organization seeks to ensure that there is no undue competition among the schools. 

Wealth and Want in PA Higher Education 

Pennsylvania has more than 150 colleges, universities, and technical schools. They are all connected by a harsh economic system that promotes increasing wealth and want. Pennsylvania's immense wealth is illustrated in a handful of elite and brand name colleges and universities primarily in and around its two major urban areas: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. And wealth is demonstrated in their endowments and real estate holdings. 

University of Pennsylvania: $20.9 billion and 1,085 acres of urban property

Pennsylvania State University: $4.44 billion and 22,484 acres of property statewide

Carnegie-Mellon: $2.7 billion and 157 acres of urban property

Thomas Jefferson University: $2.3 billion and 100 acres of urban property

Swarthmore: $2.2 billion and 425 acres of suburban property

Lehigh University: $1.8 billion and 2350 acres of suburban property

Bryn Mawr College: $1.6 billion and 135 acres of suburban property

Villanova University $1.5 billion and 408 acres of suburban property

University of Pittsburgh: $1.1 billion and 132 acres of suburban property

Drexel University: $1.1 billion and 96 acres of urban property

Lafayette College: $1 billion and 340 acres of suburban property

Bucknell: $1 billion and 450 acres of suburban property

Duquesne University: $1 billion and 50 acres of urban property

Temple University: $750 million and 115 acres of urban property

Haverford University: $643 million and 216 acres of suburban property. 

Washington and Jefferson: $380 million and 60 acres of small-town property

Widener University: $90 million and 216 acres of urban property

The differences between life outside of Penn, Temple, and Drexel and other parts of Philadelphia (North and West Philly) are stark.  And the Philadelphia suburbs that include some of the elite schools are reflective of wealth, power, and prestige. Scenes of wealth and want are also apparent in and around Pittsburgh. 

State universities outside of these urban and suburban areas, aside from College Park, have been declining for more than a decade. The Community College of Philadelphia, a career lifeline for the working class, has one of the lowest graduation rates in the US. The same goes for Harrisburg Area Community College. Pennsylvania also has Lincoln University and Cheyney University of Pennsylvania: two Historically Black Colleges and Universities that have been historically underfunded and serve as lasting symbols of resistance against white supremacy, an ideology still deeply embedded in Pennsylvania's society and economy.

PA Economy: Growing Inequality and Rural Decline 

Pennsylvania's economy is diverse yet unsustainable. It consists of traditional industries such as manufacturing and agriculture as well as healthcare, energy, technology, and education. Healthcare (reactive medicine) and energy (fossil fuels), in particular, are expensive for the state and expensive the planet. 

The problems in Pennsylvania's higher education system extend beyond the schools represented in the new Board. These economic and social problems are persistent and worsening for the working class. Pennsylvania's population is stagnant, increasing slightly in urban areas and declining in rural areas. 

There is also a demographic cliff with Baby Boomers reaching their 80s (and greater disability) and fewer children being born in the Commonwealth. Children living with Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) families is 41 percent.  

Savage Inequalities in K-12 Education

Pennsylvania has some of the widest education gaps in the country. A national study found Pennsylvania at the bottom of all states in school funding fairness. Among the 50 states, Pennsylvania ranked 49th in the Black-white opportunity gap, 50th in the Hispanic-white opportunity gap, and 49th in the gap between students from low-income families and their wealthier peers. 

Unequal Wealth Distribution 

Pennsylvania is one of the most unequal states in the country, with the top 1% of earners making 21.7 times more than the bottom 99%. 

The richest people in Pennsylvania are Jeff Yass ($29B), Michael Rubin ($11.5B), Victoria Mars ($9.7B), Arthur Dantchik ($7.3B), Thomas Hagen ($5.2B), Jeff Lurie ($4.9B), Maggie Hardy ($4.1B), Mary Alice Dorrance Malone ($3.7B), John Middleton ($3.7B), and Thomas Tull ($2.9B). 

The average income of the top 1% is $1,100,962, compared to $50,830 for the rest of the state. Income inequality in Pennsylvania has been worsening since the 1970s. The richest 5% of households have incomes that are 11.7 times larger than the bottom 20%. 

Over half of Pennsylvania's wealth is concentrated in six counties: Montgomery, Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Philadelphia. The wealthiest county is Chester, with a median household income of $104,161 in 2020. 

Regressive Tax Structure 

Pennsylvania has a flat tax rate of 3 percent, and its corporate tax rate is a flat 8.49 percent and falling. The combined state personal income tax and local earned income tax led to Pennsylvania having the 18th highest income tax burden. Pennsylvania ranked 25th for its total per capita property tax burden. New Jersey, New York, and Maryland had a higher tax burden in both comparisons.  

Mass Incarceration for Social Control, Deaths of Despair

Pennsylvania has the highest incarceration rate in the Northeast and the second highest rate in the country when including people on probation or parole. And its correctional system spends nearly $3 billion annually. Black adults make up 46% of Pennsylvania's prison population, even though they only make up 11% of the state's population. The flip side of the coin, deaths of despair (suicide, drug overdoses) are common among the working class in rural and urban areas.  

Related links:

"20-20": Many US States Have Seen Enrollment Drops of More Than 20 Percent 

College Meltdown: NY, IL, MI, PA, VA hardest hit

What is the future of libraries? (Bryan Alexander with Sandra Hirsh and R. David Lankes)

The Future Trends Forum was delighted to host Sandy Hirsh and David Lankes, editors of and contributors to a new book on the future of that institution, Library 2035.

How College Destroyed the Labor Market (Damon Cassidy)

Underemployment, low wage jobs, and bullsh*t jobs are an important part of the US economy. And the higher education system does not appear to have done much to change this depressing reality. While this video may represent a distortion of US history and society, it should not be ignored. Skepticism about higher education is real, and for good reason, especially for the working class. There are also good points made in this video, including the federal and corporate de-funding of vocational education and crushing student loan debt. 

To understand what can be done, the US needs to look at what more progressive nations have done with education at all levels, and how education is tied to the larger economy and to Quality Of Life. Being able to reform the American system is a challenge, however, when vested interests (corporations and their government surrogates) work to keep the existing system of inequality and injustice in place.

Related links: 

The College Dream is Over (Gary Roth) 

A People's History of Higher Education in the US 

Student Loan Debt

Wealth and Want

Student Newspaper Promotes Cheating Services for Cash (Derek Newton)

The Daily, the student newspaper at Ball State University in Indiana, ran an article recently with this headline:

Best Way to Remove AI Plagiarism from Text: Bypass AI Detectors

So, that’s pretty bad. There’s no real justification that I can imagine for advising students on how not to get caught committing academic fraud. But here we are.

The article is absent a byline, of course. And it comes with the standard disclaimer that papers and publishers probably believe absolves them of responsibility:

This post is provided by a third party who may receive compensation from the products or services they mention.

Translated, this means that some company, probably a soulless, astroturf digital content and placement agent, was paid by a cheating provider to place their dubious content and improve their SEO results. The agent, in turn, pays the newspaper for the “post” to appear on their pages, under their masthead. The paper, in turn, gets to play the ridiculous and tiring game of — “that’s not us.”

We covered similar antics before, in Issue 204.

Did not mean to rhyme. Though, I do it all the time.

Anyway, seeing cheating services in a student newspaper feels new, and doubly problematic — not only increasing the digital credibility of companies that sell deception and misconduct, but perhaps actually reaching target customers. It’s not ideal.

I did e-mail The Daily to ask about the article/advertisement and where they thought their duties sat related to integrity and fraud. They have not replied, and the article is still up.

That article is what you may expect. It starts:

Is your text AI-generated? If so, it may need to be revised to remove AI plagiarism.

You may need to remove the plagiarism — not actually do the work, by the way — because, they say, submitting “AI-plagiarized content” in assignments and research papers is, and I quote, “not advisable.”

Do tell, how do you use AI to generate text and remove the plagiarism? The Ball State paper is happy to share. Always check your paper through an AI-detector, they advise. Then, “it should be converted to human-like content.”

The article continues:

Dozens of AI humanizing tools are available to bypass AI detectors and produce 100% human-like content.

And, being super helpful, the article lists and links to several of them. But first, in what I can just barely describe as English, the article includes:

• If the text is generated or paraphrased with AI models are most likely that AI plagiarised.

• If you write the content using custom LLMs with advanced prompts are less liked AI-generated.

• When you copied word-to-word content from other AI writers.

• Trying to humanize AI content with cheap Humanizer tools leads to AI plagiarism. 

Ah, what’s that again?

Following that, the piece offers step-by-step advice to remove AI content, directing readers to AI detectors, then pasting the flagged content into a different software and:

Click the “Humanize” button.

The suggested software, the article says:

produces human content for you.

First, way creepy. Second, there is zero chance that’s not academic cheating. Covering your tracks is not clever, it’s an admission of intent to deceive.

And, the article goes on:

If you successfully removed AI-generated content with [company redacted], you can use it.

Go ahead, use it. But let’s also reflect on the obvious — using AI content to replace AI content is no way removing AI content.

Surprising absolutely no one, the article also suggests using QuillBot, which is owned by cheating titan Course Hero (now Learneo), and backed by several education investors (see Issue 80).

Continuing:

Quillbot can accurately rewrite any AI-generated content into human-like content

Yes, the company that education investors have backed is being marketed as a way to sneak AI-created academic work past AI detection systems. It’s being marketed that way because that is exactly what it does. These investors, so far as I can tell, seem not the least bit bothered by the fact that one of their companies is polluting and destroying the teaching and learning value proposition they claim to support.

As long as the checks keep coming - amiright?

After listing other step-by-step ways to get around AI detectors, the article says:

If you use a good service, you can definitely transform AI-generated content into human-like content.

By that, they mean not getting caught cheating.

None of this should really surprise anyone. Where there’s a dollar to be made by peddling unethical shortcuts, someone will do it because people will pay.

Before moving on, let me point out once again the paradox — if AI detectors do not work, as some people mistakenly claim, why are companies paying for articles such as this one to sell services to bypass them? If AI detection was useless, there would be no market at all for these fingerprint erasure services. 

This article first appeared at Derek Newton's The Cheat Sheet.  

Octavia Butler on Choosing a Leader (Democracy Now!)

This 2005 Democracy Now! interview of Octavia Butler warns us about choosing the wrong leader who could take us down the path of fascism. This discussion seems as important today as it was then, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. If you can't listen to the entire segment, start at minute 3:20. The most salient quote, is from Parable of the Talents, written in 1998. Let us know what you think. 

 

 

Why the Higher Education Inquirer Continues to Gain Popularity

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) continues to grow, with no revenues, no advertising, and no SEO help. And for good reason. HEI fills a niche for student/consumers and workers and their allies. It provides valuable information about how the US higher education system works and what folks can do to navigate that system. 

We cover layoffs and union organizing and strikes in higher education, and we expose predators with some degree of risk-risk that other outlets often won't take. We take a stand on holding big business accountable and we side with struggling student debtors and their families. We question and interrogate higher ducation technology and credentials.  And we dispel myths, disinformation, and hype. 

We research documents of all sorts, including information from the US Department of Education, Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense, Department of Labor, and Federal Election Commission. 

The Higher Education Inquirer provides trustworthy information and expert opinions and analysis. Our list of authors is diverse and impressive, for many reasons. HEI treats our readers with respect. It gives students and workers a voice, accepting information and evidence from whistleblowers. And it allows for comments (including anonymous comments), comments that we value. 

When others do accept our research, we appreciate it. HEI has been a background source for the NY Times, Bloomberg, Chronicle of Higher Education, ProPublica, Forbes, Military Times, the American Prospect, and several other outlets. We strive to be ahead of the learned herd.